[lit-ideas] Re: Sunday waffle...
- From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 21:38:44 EDT
:
I had a student once who wrote, in a final exam, a sentence
about Noa Zark.
My father, who had a PhD in philosophy and a Masters in Divinity, taught a
class to a group of freshmen on the Old Testament. He had recently covered
the plagues in Egypt which culminated in the freedom of the Hebrews from
Egypt.
His exams were always essay-style. When one question asked was to choose a
particularly meaningful aspect of the passage of the escape of the Hebrews,
and why it was meaningful, one thoughtful student merely wrote "I liked the
part about the frogs".
I think that was the year my Father went back to computer programming.
Julie Krueger
========Original Message======== Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: Sunday waffle...
Date: 5/30/05 11:42:16 A.M. Central Daylight Time From: _Ursula@xxxxxxxxxxx
(mailto:Ursula@xxxxxxxxxx) To: _lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) Sent on:
Sadly, we can no longer take for granted that our students understand
the many cultural references (most obviously the Bible and Shakespeare)
that generations of past students were expected to have at their
fingertips. I had a student once who wrote, in a final exam, a sentence
about Noa Zark. (I shudder to think how this story reflects on my
teaching, of course.) Perhaps they learn too much of their language
through their ears, and too little through their eyes. More proof: the
legions who don't differentiate between 'past' and 'passed.'
It's tempting as we get on in years, to imagine some distant 'golden
age' when students were more prepared (and men were men and women were
quiet?...). Perhaps a truer answer lies in who goes to college these
days. If public policy encourages everyone to attend (keeps them out
of the job market and off the streets, after all), perhaps the lowering
of expectations and standards is inevitable but not really indicative of
worse teaching or learning.
Ursula
North Bay
Steven G. Cameron wrote:
>we rely enormously on our cultural myths as instructional underpinnings:
>Tanach, Edith Hamilton, Robin Hood, etc.
>
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