Seneca on teaching

Paul Martin over at The Teacher’s View has some excellent thoughts pulled from Seneca’s Epistulae Morales (published as Letters from a Stoic by Penguin Books) concerning teaching and learning. I own this book and haven’t picked it up since I bought it as a class text four semesters ago - looks like I should take a second look at what advice Seneca can give for teachers and those who have a passion at learning.

Fuel costs and virtual classrooms

We all know that gas prices right now suck. They’ve sucked for about, oh, 7 years now. (I think 9/11 was the beginning of the end, but I could be mistaken.) Like everything else, higher education is being affected.

Or so the New York Times reports today (“High Cost of Driving Ignites Online Classes Boom”), citing numerous schools (although the vast majority of them seem to be community colleges, there are some 4-year institutions represented as well) who have seen dramatic increases - at least one over 100%! - in their online enrollment.

Now, I’ve taken a handful of online courses - one sociology, one business, one literature, possibly others that I’m not recalling offhand - and I have to say that I do not find that they are not conducive to authentic learning. I found myself fighting to stay with the material and eventually not even really studying it, opting instead to do a little bit of cramming for the exams (which were universally simple and required very little thinking about the material other than regurgitation of facts). So I think this is a bad trend for a number of reasons.

Lost in translation?

A funny language thing happened to me today…

For a summer internship doing Web programming for a local marketing/web design firm, I’m working to develop a Spanish-language version of the client’s existing English site, and it’s been rather interesting. I certainly do not know enough Spanish to translate most things in a way that would probably make much sense to a native (or even fluent) speaker, but I know enough to know when little things are wrong in the translation I was given for the content.

Case in point: The original text used the phrase “is simply too complex”, which was then translated “es simplemente dificil” - “is simply difficult”. For one, it’s very arguable whether or not complexity and difficulty are the same, but let’s assume they are. The English phrase involves an additional relation apparent to the speaker - too complex for something or someone - but the translation does not. And it’s not like Spanish lacks the linguistic resources: the adverb demasiado gets across that relation, and complexity could be represented by the almost-cognate complejo.

I have virtually no experience in translation outside of translating my own thoughts into Spanish for my college language courses (I’ve taken two of the three required semesters for my degree), but I think this sort of thing is common if the translator isn’t careful. A former professor of mine said once in class that she made a similarly straightforward mistake when translating a line of a poem: “Mother this child.” Since she is a native speaker, she translated it by word - “Madre este niño” - even though Spanish does not generally make use of verbification as English very commonly does. She had to reconsider (upon an editor’s advice) that “mothering” in English means something like caring for, which could then be expressed in clearer Spanish.

On a different note, this strange construction made me consider the function of “simply <adjective>”. While in a sense “simply” does mean “in a way that lacks complexity” in some usages, it is also used as an intensifier, similarly to “really” or even the often frowned-upon “literally” (see here on some non-standard intensifiers). It makes sense to consider “simply” here as an intensifier because its stricter usage would entail a strange oxymoron: being complex in a simple manner.

Passed!

After several weeks and a bit of anxiety about my content area test, I got my unofficial score: 278 (out of 300). The minimum passing score is 240, so that means that I passed by a fair margin. To put the numbers into perspective by percentage, I had to get 80% to pass, and I ended up with ~93%. I’m very satisfied with the overall score, and the score given for literature (the area I was most concerned about, rather unnecessarily because of the low number of questions) was a perfect 300. Can’t beat that.

So now I only have to make it through this next semester - all 18 credit hours of it - and then it’s clear sailing on through to my student teaching. Exciting times!

Teachers, errors, and humility

The fine folks over at Language Log have presented a situation that is rather embarrassing: an English teachers’ association in Queensland, Australia, published a series of articles on grammar that were (to quote LLogger Geoff Pullum) “absolutely incompetent,” and from the looks of things, that’s a touch on the nice side. Whoever wrote these articles had better not be teaching the same - such would result in horribly miseducated students. (I hesitate to take this as an indictment of the organization, except in their poor editorial oversight.)

I agree with what Pullum says about what should have happened:

[T]he incident has turned (as one might have anticipated) into a full-scale assault on the credentials and mental acumen of all Queensland’s hard-working teachers. It might have been better for ETAQ to openly and honestly admit that it had unfortunately published a grammar article that was a complete crock. Memo to all: when you make a mistake, just admit it.

Precisely the point: teachers are not perfect, nor should they ever be expected to be, but they have a professional obligation to have integrity and admit when they have erred, thereafter taking all necessary steps to prevent such a situation from occurring again. I think there is too often the presumption that teachers have to be experts, and while teachers should be competent in their areas of study, it should never be presumed that teachers have nothing to learn about teaching or their content area(s). That is far too much pressure for a teacher, on top of everything else. If teachers can learn this lesson, I would venture to guess that teachers would be esteemed much more highly.

The test

Last Saturday, I took what has probably been the most intimidating assessment of my training as an educator: the Illinois language arts/English content area test. This is a key assessment for me, as passing it is a requirement before student teaching next spring.

What is so strange to me about the test is that there was very information to prepare for it: one study guide on the ICTS website, and that’s it. The study guide spelled out all the objectives for testing, but some of them were so vague as to be unhelpful, and the rest left me wondering how best to study.

Fortunately, I can say that my lack of studying didn’t doom me (at least, not from what I can tell): the test was a mere 125 multiple-choice questions, focusing more on methods, pedagogy, and literacy than the “meat” of language arts (especially literature). I was even amazed that the very small portion of the test that was on literature was in fact not even to test one’s knowledge of literature, just one’s ability to analyze it. The only question I can remember, in fact, that can be construed as rote knowledge was a question asking which authors would be best suited for a middle school classroom. Many of the authors were foreign to me, but fortunately, one of the options included Madeleine L’Engle and Richard Peck, both of whom I had experience with through my previous middle school teaching experience. (Sigh of relief on that one!)

It was also remarkable to me that many of the questions - perhaps even an equal portion - were directed toward middle school classrooms. With so many of my classmates practically swearing off middle school as though it were below them, I was amazed at that. (Side note: I happened to see an old episode of King of the Hill where Peggy is substitute teaching in high school, and one teacher said what I think many high school teachers think about middle school: “This isn’t middle school, this is real life.” A hilarious yet disheartening commentary.)

I won’t hear back about the test for another few weeks, but I have high hopes that I didn’t fail and might - just maybe - have even done well on it. I hope so: if not for anxiety, then for the privilege of not having to pay for the test again. (Sorry, state of IL - you don’t need my $86 that badly.)

Blast! Foiled again!

It just goes to show that original ideas are hard to come by - especially good ones.

In a recent post, I proposed an annotation system where users could log in and add their own comments to works in the public domain. I thought this was a brilliant idea, and I expressed my surprise that no one had thought of it.

That’s because someone had - several people, actually.

While the second link is licensed, the first is not, and I am currently trying to see how it will work (using Orwell’s essay as a test). I had hoped that I might be able to do something like this (and even had a semi-working prototype), but why reinvent the wheel? Maybe I can take the work that has already been done (since it has been released under a GNU General Public License) and utilize it with a backend system (I have no idea if this system discriminates between users at all).

Here’s to hoping (and thanks in advance, Geof!).

Orwell on language

A very interesting primer on the use of language is British author and critic George Orwell’s (of Animal Farm and 1984 fame) essay “Politics and the English Language.” In it, Orwell does what he does best - he criticizes those who use language in ways that cause it to sound dull, stale, and unclear, creating bad language habits. (I often wonder if that won’t be a problem as a teacher of English: bad language habits that die hard, as the proverb goes.) He also, in the good spirit of his most famous works, links politics and language (as one might guess from the title).

I recommend reading the essay in its entirety, but here are some dislocated thoughts of mine:

An idea for a very interesting educational resource

I had a very interesting idea - one that I would like to see through - for an educational tool for teachers and students of literature, possibly even extending beyond the normal literary canon to historical or sociological works. Hopefully someone will give me some feedback on how useful this sounds.

Gender bias in a “different” writing space

Sometimes it’s fun to think about things seriously that might not be taken seriously by most people. If you’re one of those people who might think it absurd to think about the rhetoric of writings that are (probably justifiably) considered vandalism by most people, then you might not want to continue (although I hope you will). Caveat lector.