A teaching assistant's rant

Poststructural Pub
1

From my daughter, Stacy, (with her permission) written at 2 a.m. after grading college philosophy papers. She got a bit fizzled with the shall do/shall not do so there’s a bit of editiorial license.

Ten Things Thou Shalt Not Do When Writing Answers to
Short Essay Questions

  1. Thou shalt read the directions–all of them.

  2. More than that, thou shalt abide by them, lest I
    curse thee.

  3. The comma loves conjunctions, thou shalt not
    splice, that is lame and reveals thy wretched
    ignorance of grammar just so, I take that sort of
    run-on sentence personally.

  4. Thou shalt print thy paper with printer or
    typewriter, not scratch it out verily like a chicken
    and expect me to decipher six pages (front and back)
    of it. Not, and live, that is.

  5. If the question is, “What does this word mean when
    so-and-so uses it here?”, thou shalt not tell me that
    (in essence) train A is leaving Cleveland at 3:30,
    while train B is leaving Chicago at 4… Answer the
    question, dammit, or suffer the bloody strokes of the
    Red Pen!

  6. Thou shalt not reduce the rigors rational
    argumentation to the desire of the philosopher that
    all persons be “kind, considerate, and responsible.”
    John Locke is NOT a fuzzy bunny; kindly do not make
    him one, unless thou art desirous of rabbit stew,
    spiced with shreds of thy paper.

  7. The Lord is thy Shepherd, and leads thee to many
    good things, excepting my good graces: the question
    asks thee to explain how a natural right arises from
    human nature; appeal to the Godhead is therefore
    right out.

  8. Thou shalt cite the text. At all times, thou shalt
    cite the text, for otherwise, I grow cranky.

  9. Thou shalt not quote Hooker and claim to quote
    Locke. Yea, though Locke quoted Hooker in para. 5,
    this does not mean that Hooker is Locke.

  10. Thou shalt not forget to write in complete.

2

I personally have found that most (though, thankfully, not all) college students are woefully stupid.

3

Very funny to someone who marks a very large number of philosophy essays every year.

Just one word of warning. If she hands out those ten commandments with the essay topics next semester, the essays will be every bit as bad. Depressing, isn’t it?

4

Agreed.

5

It makes me sad because some of them know how to string out long mathematical scientific theories on the chalkboard, but they can’t do laundry or balance a checkbook.

6

For several years I used to teach a course in high school mathematics entitled “Survival Math”. It was designed for non-college-bound students who, in their senior year, needed a review of basic mathematics and beginning algebra. The focus of the mathematical applications was with survival skills. I invited professionals in the community to come into my classroom and present a lecture/demonstration on their field of expertise. A car dealer explained what you needed to know if you wanted to buy a car and not get ripped off. A tax accountant explained about keeping records and tax preparation. A real estate rental agent told how to go about renting a house or apartment. These are a few examples of real life situations where mathemathical ideas are applied.

You would think that the young people in my class would have been eager to benefit from the expertise and experience of people from the community who were willing to donate their time and energy to help them.
However, the general receptivity of the students was often dull and inattentive, and they usually had very few questions. I know for a fact that some of the community presenters were shocked by the meager response from the students. I found it a little depressing to try help these young people become more enthusiastic about learning things that would be very helpful to them. I think that by the time they were in their senior year, they had had it with the school system and just wanted out. They were merely treading water until the end of the school year.

7

Doug, I’ve always wondered something. Why does the letter m stand for slope?

8

I wouldn’t have thought that at all. I suspect that many of them would have paid a lot of attention had they had an extra 20 years experience of life. My guess is that those teachers probably sounded just like nagging soundalikes of their academic teachers and parents. Academically uninterested kids about to leave school don’t want to be lectured about responsibility or prudence. They just want to get out and let the hormones drive them where they will.

9

I would very much appreciate a Survival Skills Math course now that I have been working for over 30 years and actually have some money to show for it. For someone who can’t afford a tank of gas to get out to the bar with their friends on a Friday night, buying a house is as relevent as calculating the movement of the planets.

djm

10

Hmm… Perhaps its that many kids 18-22 are ‘woefully stupid’ and the kids in college are just trying to remedy the situation.


Doug,
If the kids had been the type that benefit from expert advice, they’d be going to college. Your course was for non-college bound?

Perhaps starting with a pay check on their estimated income, (HS grad), then working it down to their take home after tax, expenses, etc. Then do comparitive shopping to put food on the table and fill their bellies. For that special someone with which they want to spend the night, they make a dinner. They cover measurements with (4) 8 oz. classes, no measuring cup, and a recipe for a meal that say’s ‘Add 1/4 cup water’. Then they do the finance to buy the car, with alternately 2 year and 3 year loans to cover the car that last 27 months, and don’t forget to cover it’s effect on their dating budget in the 29th month.

Finally, don’t underestimate the skill of students to pick up a lot of knowledge and still appear, unaffected. I had a kid at the group home where I worked, who after 18 months, failed the program, got in more trouble and was placed in a more restrictive institution. About 4 years later, he came back to tell me how things had gotten better for him. He said while in the second institution, he finally got serious about his life. He then found that what they were teaching wasn’t working for him; but, by applying things he learned with us, he was able to turn his life around.

So even if the students appeared uneffected, don’t count it a failure. You won’t know until they are confronted with reality and start to use, (or re-learn and use,) the things you were teaching. Sometimes it not passing skills and information, as much as, knowing how and where the information and skills can be learned when needed.

Fel, I have this comment for Stacey.

While some of your 'Thou Shalt’s are sound, please remember the course is in Philosophy, not English Composition or Persuative Writting. It was a pet peave of mine, when a professor (or teaching assitant), spent more time on the form than on the substance. This is especially true in testing situations, where the extra time to recheck spelling and grammar may not be available. Even if the test is take home, it is still time limited, often by the fact that the student has a number of take home tests to complete or by other requirements, like having to show up for a work-study job or having to hand write the essay because he can’t afford a computer and printer. Taking off a point or two for form may be valid on the grounds that the student needs to communicate their understanding. But if the answer would have been worth 95 percent as an oral response, it shouldn’t be worth only 40 percent turned in on paper.

11

I KNOW!

Descartes, as you know, invented the cartesian plane and all that. Well, Descartes was french, and he chose the letter ‘m’ for slope from the french verb ‘monter,’ meaning ‘to rise, ascend.’

If memory serves.

12

Why do you confine it to college students?

A large percentage of humanity is woefully stupid. And the rest (self certainly included), despite their best intentions, occasionally do stupid things.

Sometimes, education and credentials merely mean that you can go wrong with both confidence and authority. :smiling_imp:

13

There is no such thing as a “comma splice”. This is one of those imaginary, “school-marm” rules like the other silly rule about splitting infinitives.

You get taught not to do this in elementary school because it’s hard to do well, not because it’s against the rules.

Technically, however, a comma-splice is “parataxis” (or “paratactic structure”) and much of the finest writing in English is structured this way.

The most familiar example, of course, is the bible.

Parataxis is a multi-clause sentence which employs coordinating conjunctions. It contrasts with hypotaxis, which is multiple subordinate clauses.

14

Yeah..about half are below average :wink:

15

And 95 percent of those think their in the upper half.
And the remaining 5 percent don’t care because they know they are right and are waiting for the rest of us to convert … or else.

(Clarification stupidity has nothing to do with intellectual ability, my reference is more to foolish choices, not rationalizaiton of the same).

16

In Garrison Keillor’s home town of Lake Wobegone (radio program, “Praire Home Companion”) all of the children are above average, or so he says. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone could be above average? We could make that possible if we were willing to change a few definitions.

17

True. I’ve known a number of book-smart people who have very little common sense. Different kinds of intelligence. But it’s difficult to have common sense about something you know nothing about. So for those who can extrapolate, the more you know, the better (look out, splices!).

18

So I wouldn’t have been too far off if I’d said it was because the letter “m” had two hills in it . . .

19

My daughter responds:

Yes, of course, there are many ways in which the English language fails to conform to the exacting standards of Latin-based grammar books, thanks to the fact that English is not a Romance language (not entirely). The technical name for some such phenomena is much appreciated, and it has made for a most excellent diversion from actually grading the papers. However :

The comma loves conjunctions, thou shalt not
splice, that is lame and reveals thy wretched
ignorance of grammar just so, I take that sort of
run-on sentence personally.

I was tired when I wrote this, but not that tired–the comma loves conjunctions. (Note the paratactic construction in this sentence–we tend to use punctuation markers other than commas, however, to make such sentences hold together.) Conjunctions and commas go together when stringing together clauses that could otherwise be independent of ! each other.

Thus, multi-clause sentences with conjunctions and commas are fine. That is not what the “comma splice” refers to here. I use it to mean ‘splicing’ separate sentences together without any conjunctions just because the person doing the writing was apparently too excited to pause for a period or too lazy to write in a three letter conjunction.

Seriously, look at #3 and ask yourself whether that “sentence” is in any way Biblical in its majesty. Saying it’s an apocalyptically bad sentence does not count as justification.

Stacy, who likes parataxis quite a lot and would hate to see it defamed by association with a monstrosity like #3

Hey-this is tough being the go-between. I do like the rationale for “m”.

20

English isn’t a romance language at all. English is a germanic language with a lot of loan-words from latin.