Consumerist Catch-22

In Yancey’s article, she quotes Sheldon Jackson’s 1892 explanation of Alaskan education:

It was to instruct a people, the greatest portion of whom are uncivilized, who need to be taught sanitary regulations, the laws of health, improvement of dwellings, better methods of house-keeping, cooking and dressing, more remunerative forms of labor, honesty, chastity, the sacredness of [...]

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What Is Love?

I was a bit less impressed by Kirklighter’s article than my one classmate who already posted on Freire.  My first reaction is one of mild displeasure that a term as important as “liberatory dialogue” isn’t overtly defined.  I can read between the lines and develop my own working definition of the practice, but with something [...]

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Mini-Blog #2: Everyone Hates a Discount!

I suppose I was at a bigger disadvantage than many.  My parents were divorced and remarried, and of the four people in my life who had “dad” or “mom” someplace in their title, none of them had gone to college.  I knew that I was going to college, but I didn’t know what college was—and [...]

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Mini-Blog #1: The Other Half of Teaching

I am posting this week’s blogs in two truncated segments to align with the two articles that I am responsible for during the coming week; I figured this would be a good pedestal to begin my discussion of them.
 
Finders’ article has a relevance to it that goes well beyond the mere pedagogy he’s promoting.  In [...]

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Fact or Fiction: Length Doesn’t Matter?

Let me tell you about the days when I feel most like a failure of an English teacher.  They are typically centered around literature—the canon, because our syllabus knows no other option.  These texts are challenging: Beowulf, Canterbury Tales, and Macbeth are the only three mentioned by name in the twelfth grade curriculum.  Apart from [...]

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Confession of an Arrogant Snob

In the next seventy-two hours, fifty sophomores in the Fleetwood School District will be finishing up the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.  I have found the book to be a tough sell in the beginning, with greater success as the action intensifies.  I enjoy the book a lot—particularly everything it has to say—but I’ve [...]

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Real World Intertextuality

I know that I wasn’t the only person from this class to spend Monday with Dr. Daggett; not only did I see some of you there, but I also witnessed how far-reaching his presentation was after seeing a front-page newspaper article on the man.  My final reaction: wonderful speaker, frightening connections, great arguments, unclear direction.  [...]

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Order, Not Subtraction

Scholes provides an overview of the rise of English disciplinary history in his first chapter.  In his introduction to Yale, he says the following:

In 1767, English grammar, language, and composition were introduced by the tutors, who taught these subjects.  In 1768 a literary and debating society was established by the students.  In 1776 instruction in [...]

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General Education and New Criticism Sitting in a Tree

The problem with General Education and its marriage to New Criticism was neither General Education nor New Criticism themselves.  I embrace most of what “The Great Books” program represents; I’ve studied Hutchins in the past and found many of his policies to correspond with my own.  Do I think that college students should spend half [...]

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Oracy and Me

I’ve just completed the third chapter from Graff, and I am presently contemplating the value of oratorical culture in general as well as in my own classroom.  As an undergraduate, I was taught that English in the high school was three essential topics: reading, writing, and speaking.  Obviously, this graduate course has illuminated several other [...]

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I’m a Literary Man, So Help Me God!

Please take my blog for this week to be a continuation of my blog for last week; I’m trying to reconcile the same concerns.
 
I just finished reading Taylor’s article on “Literature and Literary Criticism,” and I’m more than a little nervous because so far I consider it to be the most effective introduction in the [...]

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Divided We Fall

Based on McComiskey’s introduction, this book is clearly designed—apart from its intention to introduce us, the students, to the various disciplines within English Studies—to the potential for interdisciplinarity within those same English fields.  To put it mildly, I agree.  I believe I have tried to do just that in my own English classroom; I may [...]

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