regarding power point pt. 2
Which brings me to my next point. Comp is a class where teachers attempt to teach people to write--people know that writing really isn't that important to their major, and who are told as such by the various practices and professors of their department.
Furthermore, comp teachers are under pressure by these various departments to both teach their students to write essays for their department (business wants you to teach business writing, psych wants you to teach psych writing), and to not flunk their students for not knowing how to write. Flunking a student in the wrong department, for those who need a metaphor, would be like getting grounded by the babysitter.
If you say, for instance, "I can't pass this student. Every time I ask them to write an essay they ask if they can make a powerpoint presentation!" Business is likely to retort that this is all the student needs to know how to do. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
One of the major problems with people teaching in comp is that the teachers are either of two basic types, and I am one of them. Let us call my type the elitist.
The Elitist believes that one of the prerequisites for being in college is that you know how to write. If you don't, why the fuck are you here! Had I my power, there would be few schools with five digit student poplulations and WalMart would be well stocked with employees. Some people are just not, to be frank, college material. I do not base this view on economics or sexual preference, or race, or whatever. I base it on intelligence. Some people are dipshits, and it doesn't really matter that they can fork over twenty grand in tuition, they shouldn't be in college.
Other people, can write and should be in college, but in that case, why are they in my class, since I teach basic writing which they already know. If I were teaching some breed of advanced writing, I would understand, but I teach basic writing. As a result, I can divide my classes between two types of students: those who rocket through my class and who I attempt not to bore and those who will never get it, and who my attempts to help become a source of frustration. Don't get me wrong, as a teacher I'm an optimist. It's here that I'm a pessimist. While teaching I go more than the extra mile for my students; it's just that I've never seen a student turn in a barely literate essay at the beginning of the semester and turn in model work at the end. It never happens.
I'll be honest, I really don't think writing as writing can be taught. First you teach people to think interesting things, then they may have some motivation to write that shit down, but if you just say, "write an essay about something that you feel defines you," what the hell does that do? Make them write in every fucking course. Afterwards they'll know how to write. But you see I'm basing my opinion on the old model. In the new model, what would be the writing component of half the courses on campus. Two three to five page essays a semester generally, and normally, these are summaries of what's been read in class. We're not exactly talking personal engagement.
The other basic type of comp teacher is the paycheck gatherer, and whenever I think about my teaching experience with its faults, I need only hear about one of these people. These are teachers for whom anything goes. They learn writing, they don't learn writing, as long as they do the assignment and the teacher gets paid, everything is okay.
Now, you may be wondering, where are those true believers who think that writing can be taught and that this project is worthwhile? Well, first of all, you have to understand that a comp teacher is basically conscripted labor. Either the comp teacher is a grad student studying to teach literature (which is where you get the elitist) or they're studying to become poets. Nobody is actually studying to become a comp teacher, and those who do teach comp, those who are responsible for keeping up the purposefulness of our jobs, are generally running the show--in other words, not actually teaching any of these comp classes.
So, those who teach are generally those with the least vested interest in whether or not the thing they're teaching can be taught at all. Furthermore, while they're teaching it, they're under considerable pressure from all sides to pass the students despite an overwhelming lack of skills. From other departments there's disagreement about what skills a comp teacher should be basing the grade on, and from above, there is both the pressure not to piss off the other departments by flunking their students and the pressure to play out the philosophy that good writing can be taught (even if you know that you aren't teaching it, and you have suspicions that the entire enterprise is in bad faith).
Which brings me finally to my last point, and then a really good story about powerpoint, I swear.
Given that teachers with little confidence in their material must tap dance in front of a class for about two and a half hours a week (which doesn't sound long until you've tried to stand in front of people for two and a half hours over and over again and keep them interested). Anyway, given all these factors, is it any wonder that so much energy is spent on indoctrination? Honestly, I'm here at my university, attempting to become a literature professor, right? I haven't had a single class to help me in my profession. Not a one. Meanwhile, I have already had four semesters training in teaching comp. FOUR SEMESTERS. That's training in a profession that isn't mine, that I have no interest in at all. Two years.
My current training regimen, is in alternative teaching practices for composition, which is a class where we meet and talk about various ways that comp is taught at other institutions and that we might want to employ if we were ever to run a comp program. We are, of course, not to employ these practices at this university because the program is already layed out, and we probably won't get a chance to run these practices at another university because someone there will most likely be in charge, but it's important for us to see the abominations that are sometimes put forward at other universities to match the demands of their academic programs.
Now, also important to the story at hand is the fact that we as grad students can sign up to teach an experimental writing class which counts as freshman comp but is...experimental. The higher ups have to okay your design, but if they do, you can basically bust out of the mold. Of course, they only okay designs with significant mold busting properties, and they never okay anything that remotely resembles creative writing.
Last, Wednesday, a teacher of one of these experimental writing classes came to share with us her work. And here's the ultimate point of my story. She was teaching a class on multimedia essay production. Wait for it...wait for it....
Powerpoint.
She was teaching a fucking class on powerpoint in an English department.
Next semester, I'm proposing to teach "the illiterate essay" or "aerobics as discourse."
Furthermore, comp teachers are under pressure by these various departments to both teach their students to write essays for their department (business wants you to teach business writing, psych wants you to teach psych writing), and to not flunk their students for not knowing how to write. Flunking a student in the wrong department, for those who need a metaphor, would be like getting grounded by the babysitter.
If you say, for instance, "I can't pass this student. Every time I ask them to write an essay they ask if they can make a powerpoint presentation!" Business is likely to retort that this is all the student needs to know how to do. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
One of the major problems with people teaching in comp is that the teachers are either of two basic types, and I am one of them. Let us call my type the elitist.
The Elitist believes that one of the prerequisites for being in college is that you know how to write. If you don't, why the fuck are you here! Had I my power, there would be few schools with five digit student poplulations and WalMart would be well stocked with employees. Some people are just not, to be frank, college material. I do not base this view on economics or sexual preference, or race, or whatever. I base it on intelligence. Some people are dipshits, and it doesn't really matter that they can fork over twenty grand in tuition, they shouldn't be in college.
Other people, can write and should be in college, but in that case, why are they in my class, since I teach basic writing which they already know. If I were teaching some breed of advanced writing, I would understand, but I teach basic writing. As a result, I can divide my classes between two types of students: those who rocket through my class and who I attempt not to bore and those who will never get it, and who my attempts to help become a source of frustration. Don't get me wrong, as a teacher I'm an optimist. It's here that I'm a pessimist. While teaching I go more than the extra mile for my students; it's just that I've never seen a student turn in a barely literate essay at the beginning of the semester and turn in model work at the end. It never happens.
I'll be honest, I really don't think writing as writing can be taught. First you teach people to think interesting things, then they may have some motivation to write that shit down, but if you just say, "write an essay about something that you feel defines you," what the hell does that do? Make them write in every fucking course. Afterwards they'll know how to write. But you see I'm basing my opinion on the old model. In the new model, what would be the writing component of half the courses on campus. Two three to five page essays a semester generally, and normally, these are summaries of what's been read in class. We're not exactly talking personal engagement.
The other basic type of comp teacher is the paycheck gatherer, and whenever I think about my teaching experience with its faults, I need only hear about one of these people. These are teachers for whom anything goes. They learn writing, they don't learn writing, as long as they do the assignment and the teacher gets paid, everything is okay.
Now, you may be wondering, where are those true believers who think that writing can be taught and that this project is worthwhile? Well, first of all, you have to understand that a comp teacher is basically conscripted labor. Either the comp teacher is a grad student studying to teach literature (which is where you get the elitist) or they're studying to become poets. Nobody is actually studying to become a comp teacher, and those who do teach comp, those who are responsible for keeping up the purposefulness of our jobs, are generally running the show--in other words, not actually teaching any of these comp classes.
So, those who teach are generally those with the least vested interest in whether or not the thing they're teaching can be taught at all. Furthermore, while they're teaching it, they're under considerable pressure from all sides to pass the students despite an overwhelming lack of skills. From other departments there's disagreement about what skills a comp teacher should be basing the grade on, and from above, there is both the pressure not to piss off the other departments by flunking their students and the pressure to play out the philosophy that good writing can be taught (even if you know that you aren't teaching it, and you have suspicions that the entire enterprise is in bad faith).
Which brings me finally to my last point, and then a really good story about powerpoint, I swear.
Given that teachers with little confidence in their material must tap dance in front of a class for about two and a half hours a week (which doesn't sound long until you've tried to stand in front of people for two and a half hours over and over again and keep them interested). Anyway, given all these factors, is it any wonder that so much energy is spent on indoctrination? Honestly, I'm here at my university, attempting to become a literature professor, right? I haven't had a single class to help me in my profession. Not a one. Meanwhile, I have already had four semesters training in teaching comp. FOUR SEMESTERS. That's training in a profession that isn't mine, that I have no interest in at all. Two years.
My current training regimen, is in alternative teaching practices for composition, which is a class where we meet and talk about various ways that comp is taught at other institutions and that we might want to employ if we were ever to run a comp program. We are, of course, not to employ these practices at this university because the program is already layed out, and we probably won't get a chance to run these practices at another university because someone there will most likely be in charge, but it's important for us to see the abominations that are sometimes put forward at other universities to match the demands of their academic programs.
Now, also important to the story at hand is the fact that we as grad students can sign up to teach an experimental writing class which counts as freshman comp but is...experimental. The higher ups have to okay your design, but if they do, you can basically bust out of the mold. Of course, they only okay designs with significant mold busting properties, and they never okay anything that remotely resembles creative writing.
Last, Wednesday, a teacher of one of these experimental writing classes came to share with us her work. And here's the ultimate point of my story. She was teaching a class on multimedia essay production. Wait for it...wait for it....
Powerpoint.
She was teaching a fucking class on powerpoint in an English department.
Next semester, I'm proposing to teach "the illiterate essay" or "aerobics as discourse."
posted by Monstro D. Whale at
4:06 AM
1 Comments:
Absolutely agreed. Powerpoint is simply a tool to show a bunch of stuff on the board. It works in business and in the school because we are all a bunch of vapid apes now who have been trained to watch the bright lights of a television screen.
The problem is a lack of imagination. People can no longer intelligently LISTEN and RESPOND in a dialogue. Now we are a commentator pointing at the chalkboard, then the whiteboard, then the overhead projector, the slide projector, and finally the ulimate display machine: an overhead projector that shows the internet, videos, PowerPoint, and just about anything that can be displayed or played on the computer.
It's a nifty tool, but teachers use it as a crutch. These teachers suck anyway and try to distract their audience from knowing how stupid they are by distracting them with shiny lights.
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