Jason Blake’s guest column this week is on the issue of plagiarism. Jason’s experience matches my own: it takes more work to produce a successful plagiarism than to write an acceptable essay. Plagiarism is generally so obvious that the plagiarist resembles Tom Sawyer in the episode involving memorized Bible verses. As you may recall, students [...]
Time was when grammar was king in the public schools. It didn’t seem to matter whether a student’s writing was interesting but whether it was correct. Then came the “process writing movement” and (in the lower grades) the “creative spelling movement.” The design was to unlock the writing energies that were being stifled by [...]
Educational experts have long been concerned about the large numbers of underachieving boys in our school systems.
My wife, once a public school teacher and now a member of our Education Department, provided me with some of the explanations. She notes that, of the three learning styles—aural, visual, and kinesthetic—the first two tend to get [...]
Many readers of Huckleberry Finn enjoy laughing at Miss Watson’s approach to teaching Huck. She tries to use the Bible to scare him into good behavior, insists that he sit still, and prohibits him from smoking and drinking. Romantics that we are, we make fun of her educational philosophy and find her a hypocrite, especially [...]
Yesterday I talked about irresponsible political commentators and politicians and how they reminded me of the scribblers that John Dryden was worried about in the 1680’s. In the 1740’s Alexander Pope was even more pessimistic about the threat they posed. In The Dunciad he imagines an inevitable cultural slide until “universal darkness buries all.” Harold [...]
Robert Donat as Mr. Chips
I mentioned yesterday an article in American Scholar (Autumn 2009) on “The Decline of the English Department: How It Happened and What Could Be Done to Reverse It.” (My thanks to my father for sending it to me.) The author’s solution: put literature first. Which I indeed think we should do but doubt [...]
巴勃果夫. C ‘ Little Nurse’ 1962
When you are dying, would you want a former English major caring for you?
You would want Sarah Tennant Simmons, a former student of mine who is now a hospice care nurse. Sarah dropped by for lunch this past Monday and told me about the [...]
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Film Friday
A film doesn’t have to be masterpiece to help us at critical times in our lives. For instance, La Bamba may be a so-so biopic about rock legend Ritchie Valens, but it opened my eyes to the difficulties of being a second child. In Ritcie’s younger brother I saw [...]
Although reading and grading student essays is the most demanding aspect of my job—I graded around 535 formal and informal essays this past semester, as well as reading another 100 essay proposals and early drafts—it can also be the most rewarding. That’s because I will regularly see students working through major life issues at the [...]
Flowers for Justin
This past Saturday St. Mary’s College held its graduation and, as always, it was a time of good-byes. Good-byes are the theme of today’s post.
One good-bye was to poet Lucille Clifton, a former member of the faculty whose poem “blessing the boats (at St. Mary’s)” has become a regular part of our Commencement [...]
