Controversial Monday Ideas

…that I heard over the weekend. For your consideration:
1. “Student centered classrooms” and “task based learning” have been invented to cover and compensate for having teachers trained in classroom management but not knowledgeable about the subject matter.
2. “Communicative” and “proficiency” oriented language teaching is part of vocational education, not part of a liberal arts education. [...]

How Long Would It Take You?

It took me seven hours, working steadily, to do book orders for four courses and make a poster for one. I have taught all of these courses before, so I had a head start. But I also had some decisions to make, as I wanted to choose books that would really work. Then one must [...]

On Getting By

With some effort — not inordinate effort, mind you, but some — I have put together a two year long speaker series for my other department. That is eight outside speakers a year, four per semester, for two years, for a program that has no budget of its own.
I have done this for the sake [...]

The Textbook Industrial Complex, or, The Baroque Era

In my foreign language class we have a thick textbook, a workbook, a lab manual, three websites, CDs, DVDs, PowerPoint slides, and videos. It is not yet clear to me how well these materials fit together or to what extent they repeat each other. It may take me more than this semester to learn.
I have [...]

Heu Mihi

A GENERAL QUESTION
Is this only my bad luck, or is it a trend — new professors, graduate students somewhere last year, who (a) refuse to write their own grant applications because that is “administration,” (b) have, however, big ideas for administrative and service projects in related to their fields that they think I should undertake [...]

Some Concerns About White People

Are they willing to integrate themselves into all facets of American society?
Do they share core American values?
Why do they keep to themselves so much?
Why do they insist so upon maintaining their own cultural traditions?
*
Jennifer adds some concerns about white men:
Are they willing to put aside their emotions (especially sexual) so that women can get on [...]

On Transference

I had a realization about how Reeducation worked and what it killed via a comments thread on a different post. I could write a coherent post about that if I had time, and the comment is really just a pre-note, the thoughts in it are not well worked out at all. For now I am [...]

Popol Vuh

It was the weekend, and I was so hard at work that I forgot to have us sing. We will sing soon! I was not doing what I ought to have been doing.  Something that had come up and had to be taken care of.
I had to do a kind of psychological operation upon myself [...]

Independence Day

This post is being written in real time. There are posts coming up which actually predate it. Remember that this novel is modernist and follows no chronological order.
I have declared independence at yet deeper levels and bringing more of myself out of the deep freeze where I have been keeping it, saved for later.
We spent [...]

On Handling Emotional Bullies: Open Thread

Much popular advice on handling emotional bullies is misguided, among other ways in that it replicates the bullying by placing the burden on victims and making them doubt themselves. That, I suspect, is partly because our culture sanctions bullying, and partly because it is really hard to understand if one is not familiar with it [...]