Competent Writing Skills (was Re: teacher rants)

[Sojourner]

At 11:37 AM 7/14/97 PST, MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu wrote:

>Good comments on my rant.  I did't mean to imply rules mean nothing, and
>I certainly help my students w/ mechanics (in office conferences usually). 
>
>I also was much too simplistic in how I separated form and content in my
>post.  I hope I know better.
>
> My beef has to do with a rules-oriented approach to the teaching and
evaluation
> of student writing, and to a certain kind of all-too-common, often
> elitist droning in English departments about the teddible state
> of affairs, an entire generation of illiterates!
>
>My real bile is towards the culture at large which seems to be hell-bent on
> stifling creative and critical thought;  academia, which IMO could be a 
>counterforce, makes the problem worse by blaming the victims--the
>students who've already been cheated out of a decent grounding in thinking 
>analytically and using writing as a mode of learning--by bewailing
> their error rates.
>
>Also makes nice fodder for right-wing maniacs who do things like destroy
> Head Start programs because, well, y'know Bob, those little, eh, those 
>whatchamacallems?  No matter what you do for 'em, they still don't want to
>improve their stock portfolios or anything.  Hopless case.  Time for a
> Capital Gains cut to BOOST the ECONOMY.
>
>Call me the education president!
>
>john (spinning hopelessly out of control) m
>

That's because academia is full of the students of Aristotle and the
Rhetoricians.



	"Sumur aftarnewns win the tar bubals bloom in the 
	rode, wyld dayzees backun gyrlz to sic pehdal fortyoons 
	and weev chayns of frahgrunt dreems."

		--unknown