Archive for June, 2006
Macrorie on the Socratic Method
From Uptaught: A couple of years ago I attended a general education conference where a young leader of a new school at the University of Chicago told of his supposedly radical methods of teaching. He had found the Socratic method. At first he won me because he admitted Socratic questions are not questions at all, [...]
burn!
Graduate school needs grades to determine whom to admit. Nonsense. What graduate school needs is an expectation that the students it accepts will do independent, mature work. The last place to find out whether they can do that is a transcript of grades from undergraduate days. (93) Macrorie, Ken. Uptaught. New York: Hayden, 1970.
Macrorie: Student as Slave
In my previous post, I discussed Macrorie’s book Uptaught and how, in the chapter “Discipline,” the student essays didn’t have the criticism (or analysis) that I would like: they were enjoyable to read, but that’s it. I just read a few more chapters, and when the students are writing about school, there is the analysis [...]
Macrorie’s “Third Way”
I’ve read about a quarter of Ken Macrorie’s Uptaught, and I like some of the sentiments he expresses. For example, he gives an example of how a textbook might start: If you are a student qho desires assistance in order to write effectively and fluently, then this textbook is written for you. (7) Macrorie describes [...]
Keeping Young Persons in Line
This way of keeping young persons in line, of making sure they do not speak in their own voices of anything that counts for them, goes back to Roman times when schoolboys declaimed on proper topics in weekly themes. It is an ancient tradition, one of the principal causes of whining boys crawling like snails [...]
Yagelski review in CE
I just read Robert P. Yagelski’s review, “‘Radical to Many in the Educational Establishment’: The Writing Process Movement after the Hurricanes,“ in the May 2006 CE. Yagelski takes the stance that Elbow, Murray, and Freire are of the same vein and are all still considered radical. Yagelski takes on critics of both Elbow and Murray [...]
classoom as a museum?
I’m re-reading Sirc’s book (well, part of it; I haven’t finished it yet), and when I read again that Sirc compares the Modernist classroom to a museum (2), I was reminded of what Gloria Anzaldúa writes in Borderlands: La Frontera. Here is what I wrote in a previous post, followed by some more thoughts after [...]
Interview with Anzaldúa in her book
[a] 227-246, Interview with Gloria Anzaldúa by Karin Ikas [b] In this interview, Anzaldúa discusses her childhood and background, such as growing up and missing some of her education because her father was a migrant worker (228). She describes how she has changed since writing Borderlands, though she states “I was always angry and I [...]
Anzaldúa’s poetry
[a] 124-225 [b] In Un Agitado Viento, the second half of the book, Anzaldúa prints her poetry from a variety of voices and in a variety of styles. Some poems are mostly English, others are a strong mixture of English and Spanish, and others are wholly in Spanish. Anzaldúa’s poetry covers a lot of themes, [...]
Anzaldúa, Chapters 6 & 7
[a] pages 87-113, Chapter 6: “Tlilli, Tlapalli; The Path of the Red and Black Ink,“ and Chapter 7: “La conciencia de la mestiza; Towards a New Consciousness“ [b] In Chapter 6, Anzaldúa describes her vision of the writer: a “shape-changer,…a nahual, a shaman“ (88). Writing this book is like weaving and like creating a mosaic; [...]
