School

[Alex Colter]

A-and, Keith, do tell us your thoughts on Borges. He is one of my
favorites, though I have only been able to access him through Andrew
Hurley's translation... sad I know... and I grew up so close to the Border,
too...

On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 1:20 AM, Alex Colter <recoignishon at gmail.com> wrote:

> Having graduated about five years ago I cannot say I learned anything from
> High School... maybe a thing or two about girls that I promptly forgot...
> mostly I taught myself how to read...
> how to keep my dogeared copy of Gravity's Rainbow from the (un)watchful
> eyes of the teacher...
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 1:08 AM, Brian Kempf <btkempf at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Having just graduated high school I may have a different perspective on
>> this, but here's my two bits...
>>
>> When having writing assignments, we were given a rubric. We were expected
>> to include all aspects of the rubric in our paper to get the most points.
>> From my memory, around 90% of possible points on most papers were about
>> substance. How well did your paragraphs support your thesis statement? How
>> many sources did you use? Many of my peers would hit high marks in these
>> categories. Style (syntax, grammar, spelling), however, made up only
>> about 5-10% of the possible amount of points. Occasionally my friends and I
>> would proofread each other's papers. They would hit all of major items they
>> need to cover and much more, but sentences would be run-on's, "then" and
>> "than" were used interchangeably, and how the message was being
>> communicated - as opposed to *what* the message was that was being
>> communicated - was neglected.
>>
>> In my high school experience (and I would be interested in hearing other
>> perspectives on this), we are not taught how to write. We are taught about
>> having supporting paragraphs, vocabulary, similes and metaphors, etc. but
>> not how to combine these elements into making good writing. That being
>> said, I thought that my HS's English department was outstanding and
>> inspired me to take English as a major in college. But for those who don't
>> care about the subject, they only learn how to follow directions to get
>> from point A to point B. But that is only half of the battle. As the cliche
>> goes, "it's the journey, not the destination". This applies to writing,
>> where what you say is equally, if not more important than how you say it.
>>
>> As an anecdote, when my mom went back to college to take classes in early
>> childhood education, she was shocked that her professor had to specifically
>> tell students that "texting language in papers" was not allowed.
>>
>> B.K.
>>
>> On Aug 9, 2012, at 11:08 PM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Tomorrow is the final day of summer session at Furman, where I teach Jazz
>> Piano.
>> This summer I've been teaching Intro to Jazz, my first time teaching a
>> class other than a workshop
>> or Taiji class. It has been very gratifying, until time to read the
>> research papers. These kids
>> obviously did the research, but the writing, for the most part, is
>> horrible. I found myself correcting
>> grammar and syntax, until deciding that was not my job in this course.
>>
>> I'm obviously no Mr. P, but these kids, for the most part, don't even
>> know how to write proper sentences
>> or separate thoughts into paragraphs. It is a real eye-opener, and not in
>> a good way.
>>
>> Anyway, I'll be finishing M & D tonight, and then treating myself to some
>> Borges, so, onward...
>>
>>
>> --
>> www.innergroovemusic.com
>>
>>
>
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