This is kind of an old article, but it’s a link one of my students had in his class blog and it looks to me like an article that might be interesting for teaching in 516:
Month: July 2006
Umpteenth article on student writing (but this one says its good!)
Here’s a piece in Inside Higher Ed that might come in handy for English 596 for the Fall: “Worse Than Ever?” by Laurence Musgrove. It’s a refreshing piece because it actually makes the argument that I think is clearly the case: students are not actually becoming worse writers. And it’s a frustrating piece because there are a whole bunch of comments that basically say “I don’t care what various forms of evidence say– I still think that the kids are going to hell in a handbasket!”
At times like these, I always like to remind folks of one of my favorite quotes from the canon of ancient Greek rhetoricians; it comes from Isocrates’ Antidosis
Yes, and you have brought it about that the most promising of our young men are wasting their youth in drinking-bouts, in parties, in soft living and childish folly, to the neglect of all efforts to improve themselves; while those of grosser nature are engaged from morning until night in extremes of dissipation which in former days an honest slave would have despised. You see some of them chilling their wine at the “Nine-fountains”; others, drinking in taverns; others, tossing dice in gambling dens; and many, hanging about the training-schools of the flute-girls.And as for those who encourage them in these things, no one of those who profess to be concerned for our youth has ever haled them before you for trial, but instead they persecute me, who, whatever else I may deserve, do at any rate deserve thanks for this, that I discourage such habits in my pupils.
In other words, about 2400 years ago, the teacher/writer/rhetorician Isocrates was noting the bad habits of Greek young men– basically, back then, they too had too much in the way of drugs, sex, and rock-n-roll. The fact that adults/elders have problems with young people strikes me as more a factor of adults/elders facing their own mortality and distance from their own wasted youth than anything else.
So, once again, how’s summer treating you?
Back in May, I posted this quasi-goal/”to do” list for my Spring/Summer. I thought I’d report on my lack of progress so far:
- Lose weight. This is going quite badly, thank you very much. There are a variety of reasons why this is the case, but a lot of it has to do with being busier with schoolwork (teaching, meeting with students, scholarly projects, etc.) than I thought I was going to be, and my lack of willingness to stop stuffing my face with food and drink. I have been in my own version of “training” as of late though because I’m trying to be as ready as possible for our trip to Italy and Germany.
- Oh, and as a tangent: I came across this web site on “How to Begin Running” this morning. Seems like an interesting plan to me. I have no interest in running marathons or anything like that, but being able to run a mile or two without stopping would be cool. I’ve never met anyone who jogs who is a fatty.
- Write a book about eating. What book? Jeesh, this part of my summer has pretty much faded out of the picture. Besides getting distracted by other projects, both work and life, I guess I lost interest. Part of it was that after reading about competitive eating for a while, I got kind of bored, which made me doubt my or anyone else’s interest in reading a novel about eating. Who knows, maybe I’ll come back to this one.
- Get up stupid early. Still no/yes on this one. I gave up setting the alarm at 5 am (though I might take this practice up during the school year), but I have regularly out of bed by about 6:30 am. It depends on when I go to bed. My latest thing has been to get up and get exercising, before coffee and everything. This has been something of a revelation to me since I have made it a point to start the day with a couple of cups of coffee before doing anything for– well, as long as I can remember. It turns out there is life before coffee, and the exercise thing is a lot easier for me if I “just do it” as they say.
- House cleaning/maintenance. About the same as before. I’ve been focusing lately on turning our weed garden back into an herb garden with some success.
- Italian phrases Ah, pizza? cappuccino? Rico suave? Actually, Annette and I made some progress on planning the Italian leg of our trip by booking some museums and such via the internet. I’ll probably save the Italian phrase stuff until the end of July/beginning of August though, after I am done with this pesky work stuff for a while.
Family visit to the Museum of Science and Industry: The Movie
I’ve spent too much time over the last couple of days playing around with iMovie and the stuff from our trip to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Here’s my result— warning, 12.8 MB!
A couple of quasi-fun facts about this:
- I “borrowed” some of the sound resources from different places, and the opening and closing sound comes with iLife.
- The cool photo album-like animations are built into iMovie.
- Really, what was interesting about iMovie is that it’s surprisingly easy to just kind of figure out.
I’m looking forward to playing around with this stuff after our European trip….
"Someone to Watch Over Me" article
I wasn’t planning on writing anything here this morning because I gave myself the treat of buying the Sunday New York Times and was planning on just reading and hanging out. But I came across an article that I think might be good for teaching, especially in 516, “Someone to Watch Over Me.” It’s sort of an exaggerated story of the virtual social life of the writer, though it might not be that much of an exaggeration.
I guess that just goes to show you that when academic-types aren’t working, they’re still working….
Don't throw out the library yet
NCTE’s Inbox lead me to a Des Moines Register article on public libraries in Iowa which lead me to a report by the Americans for Libraries Council called “Long Overdue” (ha-ha; library report humor; get it? get it?). In the nutshell, both the article and the report say that Americans still very much like libraries. This is the sort of piece that would probably fit into my 516 class, where we usually talk about the implications of “internet technologies” and the library for one class period.
Two other things seem kind of interesting to me about this stuff. First, it seems kind of at odds with the glut of articles about how stupid Americans are– especially the kids– and how all they do is watch TV and play video games and heat the house by burning books.
Second and more important perhaps, it seems from my skimming of the article and the 2 page summary of the report suggests that people very much value the “community” aspect of libraries and they value the computer and other network tools available there. For example, consider this passage from The Des Monies Register article:
“Libraries are not that quiet place anymore, they’re where it’s happening,” said [Iowa first lady Christie] Vilsack, one of 34 civic leaders interviewed for the report, which was sponsored by the Americans for Libraries Council and paid for by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Vilsack, who has toured nearly 500 of Iowa’s 543 libraries, said Iowa libraries have added coffee shops, increased the number of computer workstations, and opened themselves for gatherings and other activities.
State librarian Mary Wegner said the report affirmed what experts already knew: Libraries are still necessary.
“What the study found is both encouraging and enlightening,” she said. “Most Americans believe that libraries are not only relevant to our time, but essential to their communities.”
Now, I guess what’s missing from my brief reading here is that people value libraries because it’s where they keep the books. But like I said, perhaps libraries are still important though in different ways.
Textbook Independence Day!
Well, it’s official, finally: McGraw-Hill and I have seperated ways. The signed and sealed copy of my “TERMINATION LETTER” was in my school mail box today. I’m finally free (well, sort of….)
In a way, this process is a little version of the way the whole thing with McGraw-Hill went, especially in terms of the time line.
- In December 2005, things weren’t going well, and we had a mutual “parting of the ways,” so to speak. At the time, they said if I wanted the book back, I’d have to give them the advance. Needless to say, I was not happy about that.
- In March 2006, I talked with some folks (no publishers, just people) at the CCCCs and, because they thought I was getting a raw deal here, they encouraged me to ask for my book back again. So in early April 2006 or so, they decided they could set me free.
- They sent me the frightfully titled “TERMINATION LETTER” at the end of April 2006. In brief, it says all the rights revert back to me, but if I sell it to some other press and/or figure out another way to make money off of this, then McGraw-Hill is entitled to the advance they gave me. Seems like a reasonable deal to me.
- I signed this document on May 8, 2006.
- The folks at McGraw-Hill signed it between May 30 and June 1, 2006.
- The envelope indicates it was mailed on June 30, 3006.
In short, I couldn’t even get TERMINATION in a timely fashion.
Anyway, I’m going to let bygones be bygones and bask in my new textbook independence to do… what, exactly? Well, I haven’t completely decided, but I’m not interested in going through the whole textbook revision process with another press. Because while I would ultimately describe my experiences with McGraw-Hill as “bad,” I’m not convinced that any other textbook publisher would treat me a whole lot better. Some other publisher would send the thing out to a group of readers and then want me to make revisions based on every little whim of the 10 or so readers roped into reviewing my book in the first place.
So, not interested in all of that rig-a-ma-roll but still interested in making my book accessible (at least to my students and myself), I think what I’ll probably do is throw it all up on a web site some place. I don’t have the time or energy to format it for the web, so I think what I’m going to do is just try to clean up a few things here and there and then post it all as a series of PDFs.
Oh, and I’m gonna change the title. One of the sets of reviews came back with two or so readers who said something cryptic about wanting more info on “critical thinking.” So one of my editors insisted suggested that I title the book Thinking Through Research. I’ve never been crazy about that. So I’m going back to my original title, The Process of Research Writing.
Hey, it’s my book. I can do whatever the hell I want.
Anyway, stay tuned for more details and free and open availability of the complete manuscript.
Another Ypsilanti July 4
As promised, here’s the second July 4 post, this one about the annual Ypsilanti July 4 parade. We watched it with Andre, Stephanie, their kids, Gerry and Stacy (or is that Staci?) on Cross Street. A good time was had by one and all. There were the usual things:
Lady Liberty….
Bands….
Fire Trucks….
(BTW, it seems to me that during the July 4 parade would be a good time to start a fire or, with all the police in the parade, a crime. Not that I would do that. I’m just saying.)
People in kilts….
Floats of the patriotic flavor….
Tractors….
Elvis…
(Oh, and Elvisfest will be in town this coming weekend, for those inclined).
Puppets in military vehicles…
You know, the usual.
But I have to say that the religious floats were a little strange this year. There are always these sorts of things in these sorts of parades (this is the kind of “free speech” the Republicans like!), but this year kind of takes the cake.
First off, there was this odd Noah’s Ark-themed float:
I don’t know about you, but when I think about July 4, I think of Noah. You know, Independence Day, etc.
Second, one of these church groups had the unfortunate theme of “I walk in Jesus name.” Now, for those of you who aren’t English geek-types, this should be “I walk in Jesus’ name–” that is, the “possessive s,” which, as any third grader can tell you, is indicated with an apostrophe. Unless you’re Albertson‘s grocery store, but even then, it’ll be the subject of a protest. Anyway, to see that grammar error about 150 times in a row was a bit much for this English professor.
Third, and most weird, was this religious float that involved African-Americans doing mime, which had the unfortunate and I assume unintended effect of a sort of reverse black face minstrel show, and a large cross with an American flag theme. Here’s a few seconds of kind of bad video (from my camera) to give you an idea of what I’m talking about here (warning: 12.5 MB). I’m not sure my video does it justice, but it was jaw-dropping distrubing, if you ask me.
Museum of Science and Industry: DaVinci, Subs, and More!
This is the first of what I expect will be two posts today on July 4 (I’m sure I’ll have picts and commentary from the famous Ypsi July 4 parade later on this morning), this first post about our recent adventures at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. Very cool, though I have to say that the purposefully dim lighting throughout most of the museum spaces means that some of my photos here are a bit suspect.
I recall going to this museum when I was a kid about Will’s age; I believe it was part of a Cub Scout trip when I lived in Davenport, IA, one where we left early in the morning on a bus, did the museum, and then came back late in the day. Much was the same, and much was different, at least based on my fuzzy memory.
For this particular trip, I planned it all over the phone and bought us a fistful of tickets for the various special exhibits. We started with the special Leonardo da Vinci Exhibit, which was one of the things that I for one really wanted to see. It did not disappoint, though as I think about it now, it is interesting how it didn’t really involve a whole lot of “original” da Vinci stuff– just one page from his famous notebooks, and that was kind of off to the side.
Most of the exhibit was of models of things that da Vinci either invented or imagined, like this model of a parachute:
Much of the exhibit involved things that you could make work, like this thing Will is bonking:
And much of it was kind of “audience participation,” like this bridge that Will helped build:
The museum still has an enormous model train set-up; here’s just one small piece:
Then there was this train with model John Deere tractors I thought was pretty cool:
We saw an exhibit on frogs that involved a pretty neat virtual disection tool, which naturally brought back memories for Annette and me on disecting the real thing:
We saw this kind of cool Omnimax movie about ancient Greece, but that was probably a mistake because we ended up running out of time and didn’t have time to go through the coal mine (I guess that’ll be next time). We did get to see the U-505 submarine, which is indeed a real German sub (think Das Boot) captured during World War II. When I was a kid, they had this thing parked outside; but now it’s in a new and spiffy inside facility. Sadly, it was pretty dim in there and they wouldn’t let you take pictures inside the sub (there is this virtual tour of the inside available on the web). Here’s a shot of the sub looking down the bow from the observation deck above the exhibit:
And here’s one along the side where you go in for the tour:
There was a whole bunch of other stuff too, and plenty of things to justify a return trip, but I’ll leave you with this weird picture of a Side Show diorama:
This thing was inside a case, about the size of a large dining room table, and it moved around and such. I think it’s one of those exhibits from the past that someone at the museum just couldn’t throw away.
Oh yeah– the picture at the top of Will making candy, which was one of the highlights for him, was in the gift shop. We bought him a token, he was able to select his flavors, and the machine pressed the powder into little sweet-tart-type candies.
Someone had a bad road-trip…
See this article, “The United States of Paranoia.” It’s always interesting to read foreign interpretations of your own country, especially when they’re funny.