HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: wkl1@Ra.MsState.Edu (Wing-Keong Loke                                               the consummate chronic prevaricator)
Subject: Re: Getting a C
Organization: Mississippi State University
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 08:22:51 GMT

In article <9211200358.AA24212@cwis.unomaha.edu> Irvin Peckham <peckham@CWIS.UNOMAHA.EDU> writes:
>> being incompatible to learning.  In fact, I think the discussion of grades

In answer to myt post that discussing grades might be beneficial:--

>I would suggest that some instructive comments from your teacher (and,
>if your teacher is doing a good job, from your peers) might tell you
>how you are doing.  Ever a believer in language, I think discourse
>gives us more information than reductive symbols like grades.
>Irv
>--
>Irvin Peckham
>Internet: peckham@unomaha.edu

	Yup, but somehow I get a funny feeling, because after all the
good info I get, in the end my efforts are reduced to a single letter
grade which is frustrating.  I mean, I had this English class where
I had the first 4 papers about the B-range grade, got fed up and
said goodbye to deadlines and took the time to write and got the next
3 around A and the last a B+.  One of the three A range papers was,
according to the teach, or would be of publishable quality if I added
some 10-15 pages which I was told would be easy enough.  So my
average grade is a B, but due to absences I get a C.  I know I did
good work and so does the prof who taught me, but anybody looking at my
transcript would only note that I got a C and that C did pull my GPA
down.  Now, if I want to go to grad school, that C would be
problematic, wouldn't it?  In fact, the prof told me that there'd be a
problem in him writing a recommendation if he said good things and
the people checked up and saw that I only got a C for the profs' class.
For this reawson, grades ARE important, and the prof himself brought up
the subject of upping my grades.
	It's like learning is fine, but getting a job is going to
require good grades.  If I ever grub for good grades hereon, I'll be
doing it not because I want to but social circumstances force me to.
I think somebody had better warn Bill Clinton before he starts going
the way Bush did with his America 2000 and impose even more standardized
testing.

Wing

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Date:         Wed, 18 Nov 1992 10:40:00 EST
From:         Pseudopodia can only be so long <TABRON@BRANDEIS.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Getting a C

Though the SLAC's themselves are committed to, as you say, learning rather than
credentialling, I would question whether the majority of the _students_ are
committed to the same goal. I have only anecdotal evidence -- from professors
at my college, Bryn Mawr, and professors I've known at Haverford and Swarthmore
-- but I think that an increasing number of students come to these SLAC's with
the goal of credentialling themselves rather than educating themselves. They
_are_ self-motivated -- towards getting credentialled. I believe David Schwalm
said, just graduating from a SLAC is considered credential enough. Certainly to
some degree that's true, and parents often have that in mind, I think, when
they agree to send their children to an obscenely expensive SLAC. But there is
also a very prevalent idea, among both students and parents of students at such
schools, that grades are a _very_ important part of the credential. Even at a
school like Bryn Mawr where students discussing their grades with each other
was against the Honor Code, many students (I'm talking around 1/3 to 1/2 here,
possibly more since I left college, according to my increasingly bemused
professors) couldn't resist doing it at least in private because they were
_there_ for the grades -- _nothing_ was as important as the grades.

I also know that for a lot of people who graduated from Bryn Mawr and
Haverford, having just the degree was _not_ enough.

Bryn Mawr announced in the late 80's that while they were going to continue
their need-blind admissions policy, they were also going to try to recruit and
accept more students who could actually pay for their educations in order to
try to solve some of their fiscal problems. Swarthmore has always had a policy
of handing out less financial aid than other SLAC's in the area, and they're in
fine fiscal shape. But I wouldn't go there and I don't know that I would want
to teach there -- the students I've met there were the most class-conscious and
some of the most grade-conscious students I've ever seen.

judith tabron
(humble grad student, brandeis university)
>if I got in here just 'cause I had a bryn mawr degree, nobody told _me_!
From: woodson@SOE.BERKELEY.EDU ((Charles Woodson))
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
Subject: What makes a good exercise?
Date: 19 Nov 92 01:33:49 GMT
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Does anyone have some wise thoughts on what makes a good exercise?
We select them almost every day.  What criteria should we use?
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Date:         Thu, 19 Nov 1992 17:29:22 CST
From:         Irvin Peckham <peckham@CWIS.UNOMAHA.EDU>
Subject:      RE: Re:Multimedia/In Defense of Reason

From Martin:>
>              I guess what I was referring to was Bakhtin's distinction
>              between "official" and "unofficial" speech, which refers not
>              to a single speaker, or to a multiplicity of speakers, but to
>              the *kind* of speech that one or more speakers speak.
>              On several occasions, Bakhtin allows slippage between monological
>              and "official", and between dialogical and "unofficial."

I haven't read this in Bakhtin.  I think I understand your distinctions.
He claims that official speech is monological?  I can understand this
claim if one means monological to a degree--in that other voices are
not physically, if you will, participating in the discourse.  The section
of Mead that I was referring to would of course claim that even official
speech is internally dialogic--speakers shaping their discourse according
to how they imagine the 'other' interpreting it.  This 'other' is obviously
impossibly variable.  Could be one dominant imagined audience (either present
or in the past); could be a cluster or constellation of real and imagined
audiences.  Or is B. saying that in official speech, the speaker doesn't
"hear" an audience?
>
> You might agreee that argumentation officially sanctioned form of
speech these days, no?
>
Well, in some circles, Martin.  Depends on who's the official.

>              There may seem to be more than one voice, but given complicity
>              theory, the agreement to disagree confirms that exclusive
>              positions taken by opposing individuals are in fact components
>              of an articulated web of dominance over the nature of speech
>              acts at a particular historical and cultural moment.
>
I don't really believe that this articulated web is very well woven.

>              Forgive my naivety Irv; you gotta remember I'm new to rhetoric
>              and composition.  Could you give me the Mead reference?  Thanks.
>
You'll have to forgive me, Martin.  I suppose I was just trying to be
smart.  I think I was also misunderstanding (either thick or skimming
too quickly) the "monological" discussion.  I know I wasn't directing
my too smart response to any one speaker.
Mead:  it was in Man, Self, and Society.  To be honest, I got it from
a cite (and very useful discussion) in Moffett's TEaching the Universe
of Discouse.  About p. 60.  It's in the chap. when he talks about drama.
Very interesting chapter.
Irv
--
Irvin Peckham
Internet: peckham@unomaha.edu
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Date:         Mon, 23 Nov 1992 07:40:24 AST
Comments:     <23NOV92.08311029.0037.MUSIC@UNB.CA>
From:         Russ Hunt <HUNT@UNB.CA>
Subject:      Dialogue-driven teaching

Leland McCleary says:
>               I liked your 'dialogue-driven' metaphor.  Has ancient
> roots.
     Tell me more about the roots.  It's more than a metaphor
for me, but I don't know of roots going deeper than, say, the
thirties.

>       I've also been bothered by the 'student-centered' dogma
> (very strong in ESL/EFL), came across a devastating critique in
> James Tollefson's _Planning Language, Planning Inequality_ (Longman).
     It's not so much the "dogma" that bothers me -- most of the
people I know whom the label would describe are doing things I'd
find congenial -- as the fact that the label has come to be a
distortion of what we're doing, implying that for us teaching is
mainly a matter of leaving students alone to learn (the same
distortions that ultimately destroyed Dewey's "progressive
education").
                                    -- Russ
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Date:         Mon, 23 Nov 1992 18:10:40 -0600
Reply-To:     scha0027@student.tc.umn.edu
From:         Karen M Schaffer-2 <scha0027@STUDENT.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject:      Re: responses to Sophistic Rhet of Hypertext

On Thu, 19 Nov 1992, mcmorg%VAX1.BEMIDJI.MSUS.EDU@KSUVM.KSU.EDU wrote:
> . . . especially in trying to help them
> move from the straightforward-eyes-to-the-front-don't-let-anything-
> distract-you kind of writing I see when students first enter the
> university towards the more complexly intertwined kinds of arguments that
> we tend to value in academia.

As an ESL composition teacher this quarter, I've spent a lot of time
teaching my students to overcome their inclination, in part cultural, to
intertwine their information and to set it out instead in the naked linear
order that the Michael is trying *discourage* in his students! I have
wondered at times if I'm doing them a disservice to train them in this
rigid, bland style.  (Students have been known to exclaim, once they
realize what we're asking for, "But it's so ugly!")

No, I do realize that they need this mastery for the underlying structure
of any essays, compostions, and papers they will write, so I can only hope
that they will figure out how to clothe the skeleton appropriately.  But I
have to wonder what they would come up with if they were given a
Storyspace environment and left to devise their own structure.

Karen Schaffer
kschaffr@staff.tc.umn.edu
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Date:         Wed, 18 Nov 1992 08:45:00 CST
From:         GOS@UHDBIT.BITNET
Subject:      Re: bibliographic plea

Thanks, Ron.  Actually, the ultimate research will be with native speakers
but I figure I'll find most of this kind of work in ESL.  It's good to know
there is some closer to "home".
Michael
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Date:         Wed, 18 Nov 1992 07:45:00 CST
From:         SLATIN@UTXVM.BITNET
Subject:      Early labs

It occurs to me I ought to mention a small detail about computers & writing at
UT Austin.  At the time Fred Kemp and Locke Carter and Paul Taylor were
working with Jerry Bump to set up the CRL, I was working on another project
unrelated to theirs-- and in fact I didn't have any clear sense of what they
were doing-- that involved using computers equipped with speech synthesizers
to teach writing for a group of visually impaired students.  That was summer
86 and summer 87.  Mine wsa a very small project, involving no more than half
a dozen students, and I wouldn't make any claims for the quality of the
instruction I offered, either; what it did do was put me in a position to
appreciate the extraordinary things that were going on in the CRL; by the time
I got over there, Wayne Butler had signed on, and Val Balester and Kay Halasek
and Nancy Peterson and all were re-thinking pedagogy in some very important
ways. I tagged along and learned (am still learning) a lot.  And I do mean a
LOT.

John Slatin
UT Austin

PS: I raise this not to claim credit for myself, but because I think it's
important that both Trent Batson's pioneering work at Gallaudet and my own
much smaller effort at UT had to do with finding ways for disabled persons to
access language and language technology.  And, having said that, I have to add
that in this respect my own promoting of synchronous conferencing systems like
InterChange troubles me a lot: I have never tried participating in an
InterChange by using a speech output device to "read" incoming messages, and I
really think I ought to.  Anyone had any experience with this?  What are
people doing about ADA compliance?
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Date:         Mon, 23 Nov 1992 08:23:20 CST
From:         Bob Whipple <whippl@PARROT.CREIGHTON.EDU>
Subject:      Re: 2 requests for help

Thanks to everyone who replied to my request for Wyoming Resolution info
and my request for Dell longterm use info.  If you still wish to
send me info, please do so at my own address, rhetoric@creighton.edu.

I still need info on ideal class size/writing assignment load (what an
unfelicitous word!) for 1st/2nd year literature survey classes.  I'll
take either set policies, policies in the making, hopeful plans,
or personal opinions.  I know such classes have a very broad range of
foci, so here's what we've got: a 2-semester squence in World Lit.,
replacing our poetry/drama/fiction/novel sequence--which had 35 students/
class or more, depending on enrollment--often more.  The World Lit. class
will be part of our Writing Across the Curriculum spread in the A&S
college.    I think that such classes should be smaller--20 per class--
and have more then the previous sequence's 2 papers, 2 tests, but
then I've never taught many Lit surveys--tho I will soon, w/ the new
curriculum.  This request, btw, is on behalf of our dept.'s
Core Lit. committee. So--what do y'all think?

To end--I've begun to think of the MBU crew as part of my almost-daily
routine--checking, talking, laughing, disagreeing, responding, and, yes,
lurking (a bit).  So a Happy Thanksgiving to all of you/us.  Let's
wish ourselves a smooth end to the term, eh?

bob whipple
rhetoric@creighton.edu
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Date:         Thu, 19 Nov 1992 23:52:39 EST
From:         Mary Alm <T270102@UNIVSCVM.BITNET>
Subject:      reading the mail

How do I go about reading my mail?  Do I delete any messages before reading
them?  If so, how do I make the decision to delete? Well now ... I'm a
doctoral candidate and a teaching assistant who leaves her modem behind
every weekend as she leaves the university for a visit home with her husband,
cats, and dogs.  I read fast and I don't often join the conversation.  If the
messages get long and full of multi-syllabic abstract nouns, I start watching
the 'subject' lines and deleting that thread.  I use procomm and typically
bring up each message, one at a time.  On Monday evenings, there are 100 or
more messages waiting for me to read (late Thursday night 'til then); I
don't give any of them much of a hearing (seeing) -- quick scanning is all
I do.  Mid-week messages get more attention, but not much more.  One last
statement before I return to silence -- please, everyone, sign your notes
at the end, both name and institution; my rapid reading style leads me to
lose track of who's writing by the 2nd or 3rd screen.  Thanks--Mary, U of S.Car
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From: wkl1@Ra.MsState.Edu (Wing-Keong Loke                                               the consummate chronic prevaricator)
Subject: Re: Getting a C
Organization: Mississippi State University
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 19:09:58 GMT

In article <9211201709.AA18450@cwis.unomaha.edu> Irvin Peckham <peckham@CWIS.UNOMAHA.EDU> writes:
>  Oh, well.  I hope Clinton isn't as silly as Bush about "standards."
>Clinton obviously isn't silly.
>--
>Irvin Peckham
>Internet: peckham@unomaha.edu

Wing:
	Maybe it's not Clinton we should be worried about but his
advisers.  I read in the Nov 18 issue of The Chronicle of Higher
Education that some people in Clinton's group are suggesting that
the part of Bush's America 2000 plan about having national standards
assessment and more rigor would be kept.

	Maybe it's time for you guys to write "Dear Mr. President"
letters :).
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Date:         Mon, 16 Nov 1992 08:48:40 -0600
From:         RONRON@USU.BITNET
Subject:      Re: Multimedia and hypermedia

Myles -- re your question to Nancy, <Is there a rhetoric of images?>  You
might want to check our Goodman, _The Languages of Art_.  Anybody in the
visual and plastic arts, as well as the visual performance arts, would
say, "Of course." By the way, that's check _out_ Goodman. Ron Shook
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Date:         Tue, 17 Nov 1992 20:20:10 CST
From:         Irvin Peckham <peckham@CWIS.UNOMAHA.EDU>
Subject:      re: at-risk students

Ann:
Thanks for you message: I think you were writing "propagate
the traditional to the best?"  Meaning the people "up there"
want us to support the traditional as the best?  The claim
(which I take seriously) moves us into the realm of politics
and ideology--I'm not sure that's where you wanted to go.

I wonder if there is a kind of structure that really _wants_
some students to do poorly, that needs to have students who
fail.  If that were so, it would make sense to have a kind
of educational system in place in which teachers will become
angry with students and of course vice versa.

I think I wrote this elsewhere:  but I have recently been struck
by the incredible differences between the attitudes toward
students and pedagogy, rules, etc., that I have seen in the
schools we are considering for our daughter (generally reserved
for the wealthy or class crashers like us--Holyoak, Smith, Vassar,
Carleton, Grinell are the ones on our list) and large universities
like the ones I went to (Wisconsin--generally cheap) or like the
working class univ. where I teach.  These latter schools have
sink or swim attitudes (the tough boy pose).  The former make
sure that most (if not all--they consider their charges to be
too precious to waste) succeed.

A stat:  Grinell has 1200 students; library has about 300,000
volumes.  UNO (where I teach) has 16,000 students; 250,000
volumes.  Both libraries are about the same size.  Consider the
differences in the atmospheres in the libraries (availability of
texts, computers, reference librarians, etc.).  Holyoak (c. 2200
students has 5.7 (or close) million volumes.

Some of this makes me think the kind of atmosphere you describe
is by design.
Irv
--
Irvin Peckham
Internet: peckham@unomaha.edu
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Date:         Sat, 21 Nov 1992 17:10:00 CST
From:         "Smith, Elizabeth O" <vkeos@TTACS1.TTU.EDU>
Subject:      RE: 2 requests for help

I have just completed a review *College Composition and Communication*.
You might find the following issues helpful in researching the Wyoming
Resolution:  CCC 40.1 F'89
                 40.3 O'89
                 41.3 O'90
		 42.3 O'91
		 43.2 M'92

Betsy Smith
Texas Tech
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Date:         Wed, 18 Nov 1992 09:08:00 CST
From:         GOS@UHDBIT.BITNET
Subject:      Re: bibliographic plea

Liz,
   I sent the full explanation of the topic to your personal E-mail address.
Yes, John was right on target, given the broad range of the study.  Thanks for
the other references.
Michael
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Date:         Mon, 23 Nov 1992 21:59:39 CST
From:         Irvin Peckham <peckham@CWIS.UNOMAHA.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Last (?) thoughts on lurking/Reason.Argggh!
              at Nov 20, 92 3:51 pm

Ronald:
I very much appreciated your analysis of how one might get on the
inside of the conversation--the analysis that led to the masters
house conversation.  I've been away for a few days and can't
say as much as I want to because I'm a stone skipping across
water tonight (consquence of this strange dichotomy on mbu between
lurkers and loudmouths :-) ).
  I have heard on these forums much about the "equalizing" force
of these kinds of computer conversations:  assertions that seem to
ignore how people are excluded, how people with recognized names
will be more seriously read and consequently responded to, etc.).
I think our conversation here can also be usefully compared to
conversations anywhere, with cliques, strategies of getting in,
getting in relying on keeping others out (after all, what kind
of conversation would this be if we _didn't_ have lurkers?).  There
simply isn't room for their chatter, is there?  Actually, I have
often wondered how much different the chat here is from the chat
and social grouping that goes on in, shall we say, at a teenage
party.  This musing is not to demean the teenage party; it is to
put us all at the same level and perhaps to deflate the hope that
in some way the conversation here is "special" (and the conversers)
likewise "special."
Irv
--
Irvin Peckham
Internet: peckham@unomaha.edu
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Date:         Tue, 17 Nov 1992 15:38:28 -0800
From:         tmcgee@GARNET.BERKELEY.EDU
Subject:      Success at U.C. Berkeley

        I wanted to write a note of thanks both to Fred Kemp for coming to
addess the Writing Focus Group at U.C. Berkeley last Wednesday, and for
those MBUers who dropped in from neighboring schools to make the meeting a
success.
        For those who couldn't make it, Fred did a great job of explaining
several of the pedagogical ramifications of computer-based writing
instruction, and despite the inevitable techno-glitch (we were running the
software from a server halfway across campus) he thoroughly impressed the
audience with the instructional possibilities of the Daedaus Integrated
Writing Environment.
       I'm especially grateful because one upshot of his visit is that
suddenly the Writing Focus Group of the instructional Technology Program
has been asked to address the pedagogy seminars in two of our biggest
departments which teach compostion, i.e. English and Comparative
Literature.  (Previous overtures to those departments had met with less
than overwhelming responses.)  It looks as though interest in
computer-based writing instruction may have suddenly reached critical mass
at U.C. Berkeley. After four years of Michael Day's Sisyphean struggles,
and a timely talk from Fred Kemp, a new day is dawning at Cal.
Tim Mcgee
Coordinator
Writing Focus Group
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Date:         Mon, 23 Nov 1992 22:35:14 CST
From:         Eric Crump <C509379@MIZZOU1.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: His Master's House
              23 Nov 1992 18:35:04 -0600 from <jedlund@ATSS.CALSTATELA.EDU>

On Mon, 23 Nov 1992 18:35:04 -0600 <jedlund@ATSS.CALSTATELA.EDU> said:
>
>Let's not push it too far.
>
Or push it farther. Heck, metaphors are fun. And did you notice that
for a good three or four msgs in a row, the exchange was almost
entirely metaphoric. A newsub to mbu joining the fray at that
moment would no doubt have squinted the screen for a long moment,
convinced that a wrong turn on the net had landed her or him in
ThisOldHouse-L.

But then a little disorientation keeps you on your toes.

--Eric Crump
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Date:         Fri, 20 Nov 1992 10:13:00 EST
From:         "JEFFREY R. GALIN" <WPWP@PITTVMS.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: still taking offense

Sorry for forwarding Bob C.'s message back to the list.  I goofed.
jeff galin
Univ. of Pitt.