Salubrious syllabus

[alice wellintown]

Teaching Latin is easy, so staying ahead of a class is not tough.
teaching Latin is lot easier than teaching a Language Other Than
English (LOTE replaced the less than PC "foreign language" recently),
and teaching a LOTE is cake. Teaching Physics is cream. Chemistry
needs a spoon full of sugar and most students won't open up for it,
but I always give a diagnostic text with some chem on it to see who
the smart students are. Math is pie.  Anyone can do math and those
that can't teach gym usually teach math. It can be taught  to almost
anyone. Didn't Plato's Socrates teach it to a slave boy?  But English
is the toughest subject to teach. Most English teachers avoid the
subject for this reason. And writing? Can you read my writing now? Cab
you read it now? Grammar and writing and rhetoric were tossed in the
dustbin by the NCTE along with any guide to a curriculum, so English
teachers teach whatever they want to, usually film and Shakespeare and
Good Bad books like Uncle Tom's 1984, but never writing. To stay in
front of students is impossible and a stupid idea to boot; they can
run and climb steps two at a time and use the new technology and do
all sorts of things way ahead of any young and cool teacher. It's best
to forget about keeping up with the young or any other Pygmalion Jones
wasting the youth to Supermans & Superwomans.

On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 5:57 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Thornton Wilder had trouble getting a job after he was graduated from college.
>
> His dad had connections and helped.
>
> He got him a job teaching Latin at a prestigious prep school.
>
> He sent him a telegram telling him that. Next line,
>
> Learn Latin!
>
> Wilder said he stayed about a week ahead of his students...............
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Charles J. Shields <cjs1994 at earthlink.net>
> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Sun, March 20, 2011 7:44:38 AM
> Subject: Salubrious syllabus
>
> Thanks, friends, for suggested reading list. This is going to open worlds
> for me.
>
> I agree that starting the background instead of the foreground seems
> backwards (being left-handed, I'm used to that). And I've always responded
> enthusiastically to Chet Baker's adjuration: "Let's get lost!"
>
> But think of this: Imagine you've enrolled in a math class and you purchase
> the text. Instead of beginning at the beginning, you study the last four or
> five chapters. What a puzzlement! What alphabet soup! How can anyone make
> sense of this runic silliness? But you try to absorb as much as possible.
>
> And then you go to chapter 1. And lo, it seems so easy to grok. Well, it's
> still new information, but now that you've seen the really recondite stuff,
> it doesn't seem so bad.
>
> This approach isn't my idea. I owe it to a ten-year-old. As a boy, I had a
> friend who always read a chapter ahead.
>
> "Why?" I asked.
>
> "So I know what the teacher is going to talk about."
>
> Smart guy. Teaches physics at a university.
>
> Best,
>
> Charles
>
> ‹ www.writingkurtvonnegut.com
>
> A Biographer's Notebook
>
>
>
>