Links for June 3, 2008
June 4, 2008 @ 4:00 am | Filed under: Links
- O’DonnellWeb – Fun with health insurance companies, part whatever – This post made me crazy, because I can SO RELATE. Sputter.
- In the Basement of the Ivory Tower – An adjunct English prof at a "college of last resort" ponders whether college is for everyone. HT: Charlottesville words
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Karen Edmisten says:
Oh, funny — I just posted a link to the Basement article yesterday, too. Atticus had read it and sent it on to me. Great piece. But sad.
On June 4, 2008 at 5:22 am
JoVE says:
That Baesement article is good. But I end up wondering if he is using the best methods of teaching writing to these folks. Clearly they need to start somewhere different than the younger students that attend in the daytime but he seems to not really know how to do that. Not that his points about the general characteristics of this group are not valid, but he seems to have decided that literature is inherently interesting and is then baffled with how to teach it to folks that don’t share that premise.
The economics of higher education is a whole other kettle of fish. Smelly fish.
On June 4, 2008 at 6:11 am
Melissa Wiley says:
JoVE, that thought struck me too. He wants to teach a straight-up Comp 101 course. Sounds like what most of those students need is a remedial English course. I respect that he’s trying not to strip the meaning from a passing grade, but I wonder if he could take a more proactive approach with his bosses (and why DON’T they care that more than half of his students are failing, anyhow??) to change a course track that clearly isn’t meeting the needs of the students.
On June 4, 2008 at 7:08 am
Jessica says:
I attended a community college in high school and was required to take Writing 101. However, at this college, you had to take placement tests for reading, writing, and mathematics. There were like five different test levels you could chose from for each area. You were given descriptions of the basic content and were told to choose appropriately. Then based on the results of your tests, you were sent on to Writing 101 or to remedial writing and/or reading classes, etc. There were even several classes (that did not count as college level transfer credits), depending on how much remediation the student needed. That way the student was actually PREPARED for Writing 101. I thought the article was interesting and well-written, but there definitely appears to be flaws in his college’s administration (and his lack of speaking out!).
On June 6, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Katya says:
I read that article on an airplane this weekend.. and I was really angry at the professor for caring so little about teaching and teaching so poorly that people can take his course multiple times and fail. I won’t rehash all of the things that bothered me… but I wrote a rather long rant on my blog:
http://itinerant-oak.blogspot.com/2008/06/i-spout-off.html
On June 11, 2008 at 5:34 am