My High School Teacher Doesn't Agree

I get a lot of static from students when I say something that differs from what they were taught in high school. They seem insulted that a college lecturer might know more or be more specialized than a high school teacher. They are put out that the information from Miss Phipps in the 7th grade isn't the last word on a topic. For those people, I'll throw out a few observations and a question or two:

Public school teachers don't need specialized education. Yes it's true. Especially in the lower grades (and many of my students haven't actually done anything with English since the 7th grade) a general degree in education is enough. That's not true in college. A master's degree in the specific subject is the minimum to teach here, and most college instructors have more.

Ohio doesn't require any public school teachers to know anything about English grammar. (That one speaks for itself, though they may have tightened up the requirements in the last few years. Even if the rules do tighten up, there are plenty of ignorant teachers out there.)

Even the best teacher in the world pitches a topic differently to a 12-year-old than to a college freshman. Seventh-graders are wonderful people, but they simply cannot deal very well with abstract thinking. They don't have much experience. They are on a very elementary level.

The source of the problem

A teacher who doesn't know grammar and usage that well is facing a bright-eyed 12-year-old who needs a concrete answer that will always be true. The result? The teacher (who doesn't want to look like an idiot to this child) makes up a fake rule on the spot, and the child faithfully memorizes it. Other (better) teachers talk to the same child and know that the elementary levels are better for laying down foundations, not for inserting insecurity, so more rules (nearly correct ones) come in. Yet other teachers who were taught in ancient tradition show up and don't realize that the English language likes to change and adapt very quickly, so they teach the child rules that come from Latin—rules that never did work in English.

A partial list of fake rules

1. Put in a comma when you take a breath. No! No! No! A comma is not a mark for public speaking. It has nothing to do with the writer's physical condition. It's a grammar mark.
2. There are no grammar rules, just opinions. People who teach this are just plain ignorant. They simply do not know what they are talking about. Punctuation isn't like the sprinkles on an ice cream cone. It's not a matter of personal taste. (If it were, then written communication would be impossible. We would all have our own systems.)
3. Any sentence over seven words long is a run-on. Obviously people who teach that one have never read anything in their lives. One teacher who taught this lie told me the reason: "It's easier than teaching structure." I nearly punched here then and there.
4. Every essay must have five paragraphs. This is another rule from people who haven't read anything. I'll sometimes teach the five, but only as a means of getting people into structure. REAL writing has a structure that comes from the subject.
5. You must end with the words "In conclusion." This rule only applies if you are speaking at a Rotary Club dinner and want to kill your audience with boredom.
6. The word "Although" at the beginning of a sentence always has a comma after it. No! No! No! It almost never has a comma after it. Yes, the CLAUSE it begins usually ends with a comma, but that's a different matter.

Yes, there are a lot of "always" and "never" rules. (For example, always begin a sentence with a capital letter and end a sentence with some kind of punctuation that has a dot.) Generally, though, the "always" rules that involve counting things or avoid thinking about structure and meaning are LIES.

Phishing

That's pronounced "fishing." It's an attempt to trick you into revealing information that a criminal can use. College e-mail accounts seem to attract a lot of it, and here's a very typical example I just got on my University of Akron account. The sender was "CAMPUS WEB EMAIL TECHNICAL SERVICE" but strangely, the e-mail address was in England. The subject line read: Weekly Email Maintenance!!

Dear campus e-mail User,

A Computer Database Maintainance is currently going on. This Message is Very Important. We are very concerned with stopping the proliferation of spam. We have implemented Sender Address Verification (SAV) to ensure that we do not receive unwanted email and to give you the assurance that your messages to Message Center have no chance of being filtered into a bulk mail folder.

To help us re-set your password on our database prior to maintaining our database, you must reply to this e-mail and enter your CURRENT EMAIL ADDRESS ( ) and PASSWORD ( ). Please kindly fill in the bracket with the Exact Email and Password, your domain name will also be required. If you are the rightful owner of this account, Our message center will confirm your identity including the secret question and answer immediately and We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause you.We assure you more quality service at the end of this maintenance.

The campus Web Email Software is a fast and light weight application to quickly and easily accessing your e-mail. Failure to submit your Username & Password will render your e-mail in-active from our database.

Thank you for using the campus Web Email!
WEBMAIL TECHNICAL ADMIN

It had a very professional-sounding website address to visit (which sort of compensated for the immature spelling, grammar, and English usage of the message). I forwarded the message to the UAkron computer people, who gave this terse response:

The University of Akron will never ask for your password, in an email, or in person.

Ashland University has issued this blanket warning because of a similar problem:

The Information Technology Department is warning people to ignore and not respond to the request to confirm your email identity that is being sent to many Ashland accounts. The email is titled “Verify and Update Your Ashland University Webmail Account” and asks for personal information such as email password and date of birth. IT will never request this type of personal information in an email format.

So there you have it. People who want that sort of information in an e-mail are never from the University.

Football Schedule Arithmetic

Most non-football players think team members spend their time goofing off in the gym. Most football players disagree. Other sports probably have similar problems, but the football players seem to have the most intense schedule problems. Let's look at it in some detail:

Each day has 24 hours, and we can't do much with that—the number is probably going to stay the same for a while. Now let's consider the five weekdays, Monday through Friday. Weekends are a special problem, and I'll get to those in a minute. Here's what we are deducting from each of those five days:

• 3 hours for academic classes (Assuming a 15-credit load, spread evenly over the five days)
• 8 hours for sleep (a number you probably should not cut back on—an athlete in training might need more)
• 3 hours eating, dressing, brushing your teeth, etc.
• 2 hours in the weight room
• 1 hour for required team meetings
• 2 hours for practice

So far, I've accounted for 19 hours. Most people find that at least an hour daily is just sort of lost (the phone rings, a friend stops to talk on campus, etc.). Assuming that the team meeting, the weight room, and the practice somehow limit themselves to those five hours, the student has a full four hours to spend on ALL other activities: studying, doing the laundry, and so forth. That's a total of 20 hours a week.

Most counselors advise that you follow the "two for one" rule in studying: two hours outside class for every hour in class, so our football player should be studying something like 30 hours a week. No problem! There's always the weekend.

No, there isn't. Every in-town game destroys all of Saturday (and somehow I don't think the average player can hit the books for 10 hours straight on Sunday after a game). Every away game wipes out the entire weekend, from Friday afternoon (thus killing those four hours of Friday study) to late Sunday night. Somewhere someone has the impossible dream that you can study on the bus, the airplane, and in a strange hotel room with three teammates. Maybe, but I have trouble believing you can cram in 14 hours of quality time (remember the Friday we killed?) in a hotel room and on a bus.

There's the problem. I don't know the solution, but I do know that you can't afford to slack off, even for a moment. Most assignments keep rolling forward, no matter what your life is like outside the classroom.

People with Issues

The spring semester has been finished for about two weeks now, and as usual, I get to thinking about the students who should have passed with a good grade, but didn't. From my reading and talking with other faculty, I know this isn't an issue that's restricted to my classrooms. These people are everywhere, and they seem to divide neatly into three groups:

1. Clueless

Some students seem totally bewildered by the whole education process: they don't know why they are here, what they are supposed to be doing, or how to do it. I have to wonder exactly what happened during the previous twelve years of public education.

These people won't be reading this blog, and I'm not writing to them anyhow.

1a. Not on my wavelength

I've always got a couple of truly smart, dedicated students, good writers, who have a strongly-defined personal style that interferes with being an English student. Often these students are artists of some variety, people who get focused on another task (to the exclusion of things such as English papers) and miss deadlines. These are the people who can't quite do what is assigned.

I know something about artists, both visual artists and writers, and often the difference between "starving artist" and someone with a bank account has to do with discipline. A person who can hit deadlines, satisfy publishers, and do what's requested gets to pass college courses and eventually become a professional. That's when the whole thing becomes more than a hobby. This kind of skill is just as important in sculpture class as it is in English

2. People with issues

As a general rule, English departments begin lowering grades for people who have been absent more than one week a semester. That's only two or three class meetings. About 25% of my students can't come anywhere near that. I don't ask too closely because it's none of my business, but this group seems to include:

• Drunks. Nationwide, something like 25% of college freshmen drink enough to interfere with their academic work. You can't drink hard on Sunday night and be any good in class on Monday. That's all there is to it.
• Depressed people. I was one of these myself—still am to some extent. Medical and counseling help is available. It's included in the price of your tuition, confidential, and effective. You really don't want to stay that way, do you?
• Sick people. Dormitory living is incredibly unhealthy. You spend your time close to other sick people. You eat junk food, go to bed late, don't exercise, and forget the most elementary personal hygiene that your mother forced on you. Do what you can to break the cycle. Throw away the moldy pizza box. Eat an orange. Go to bed at a reasonable hour. Do you want to spend your entire college career sick?
• Messiahs. I always have a couple of students whose role in life is to go home frequently to straighten things out there. That's very noble, but not always a good priority choice. You need to ask whether your intervention really did fix things and whether that's actually more important than passing your courses.

I often get people who vaguely say they "have issues," and it doesn't seem to mean that they dislike me or the course. It usually seems to be related to physical or psychological health. If that's you, get help. You really can't afford to remain as you are.

3. Athletes

We need to face several rock-solid truths:

A. Being on a team consumes an incredible amount of time and energy. Even though you get an excused absence when the team is on the road, the arithmetic never seems to add up, and it's often close to impossible to hit all your deadlines.

B. Coaches don't always get it. Some coaches understand the academic priorities very well, but there are always a few who can't seem to remember that you need to balance practice, weight room, and games with the real business of being a student. They think they hired a professional athlete. You need to pass your courses.

C. Teachers don't always get it. In fact, many teachers neither know nor care whether you are on a team. Out of town game? The lab report is still due on Monday.

D. Confrontation won't help you any. Maybe our American tradition of screaming in the face of baseball umpires is behind all this, but too many athletes think rudeness and intimidation will improve a grade. It simply won't. Want to fail the course? Want to get expelled? Want to get in trouble with the law? Threaten a teacher. Lose the image of the baseball coach screaming at the umpire (and that never worked anyhow). Look up the kinds of offenses that get someone a red card in soccer. Then look up what happens to the player who receives the red card.

Who will stay; who will leave

I haven't written much on this blog recently—in a sense I said it all. I'm near the end of the second semester, though, and looking at a disturbing trend among my students.

Warning! Yet another politically-incorrect comment coming

I'm going to give out several grades that are C minus or below this semester. We have enough grades on the books that even perfection in the next two papers will not save these students from a low grade. That's a shame, because several of them can write. It's a shame, too, because they will probably lose scholarships. Their problem? They cannot attend class. The word seems to be spreading through several teams that attendance is optional. It isn't. Just to put some numbers out: I have a football player with a "D" average, but his papers are averaging 86%. Another is a plain "F" (with a 56% average), but his papers are a 95%. One of my soccer players has a D minus, but the writing is a 75%.

I could go on, but I won't.

These students will get poor grades for the course; they are very likely to think I have been unfair; they might not be back in school next year. Yes, they could do the work. They just couldn't turn in small assignments, be here for quizzes—be here at all!

I don't think these students are the drunks. (I do have a number of drunks who can't show up for class either, but their written work isn't often very good.) These aren't the distracted students who have "issues" that seem to conflict with every class meeting (someone is always sick or dying or needing a ride to the airport). Those students often write like distracted students—giving me a quick rough draft with the language and spelling of a high school lunch table. I'm especially troubled by the smart ones, the good writers, the ones who could make it if they didn't have the idea athletics are the main business here and academics are a poor second.

Flash Drives

Also known as "thumb drives" (if you're very old, I guess, and have a very small thumb).

This has got to be one of the finest inventions of the computer age. I have three of them. The joy is that they're almost totally device-independent (which means they don't care what kind of computer they're plugged into) and quite stable and robust. You do need one (or more—I have three). But I do have some advice:

• The worst thing about flash drives is that they are easy to lose. Protect yourself. Don't use a flash drive as your only storage place for important stuff. Make sure you frequently back up the drive (your campus server account is a great place to put flash drive info).
• A flash drive is robust, but not indestructible. Don't run it through the washing machine. If it sticks out of the front of your desktop computer, try not to hit it. One of my students used his for a foot rest, and for some reason it stopped working.
• They're very easy to leave in a computer lab. I've done it a lot myself. Try to get in the habit of checking any school computer for your flash before you leave. (By the way, you probably shouldn't put anything potentially embarrassing on the flash, just in case it falls into the wrong hands.)
• You really don't need to spend a lot of money on one. The flash drives with incredibly large capacity were made to store a lot of music and/or photos and/or movies. If you're just storing material for college writing (and backing up your information), a $10 drive should be just fine.
• Do, however, look at the physical size of your drive. Some of them have very large, bulky, and unnecessary plastic cases around them. Fat drives are a problem on some computers. Buy something slim. A few drives I've seen have a very short plug, combined with a fat body, so they can't even reach into all computer plugs. (I own one like this.) The answer to all these problems is to buy a very simple and cheap short USB extension cord.

Classifying Students

Warning! Politically incorrect message follows!

School begins in less than a week, and all the usual teacher stuff is happening. Department meetings are taking place this week to tell us at the last second that we have to change what we planned for the semester. Copiers are breaking down. Software for online courses is seizing up. Just the usual stuff. I've been at this game for a long time and I know who I'll be meeting this coming Monday. My students break down into several categories that are very obvious from the first week or so.

Top Students
Motivated, well prepared, eager to learn and able to write from day one. These students are often frustrated by my classes because the assignments and the lectures really are below them. Some of them write better than I do.

Bottom of the heap and see no hope
Students walk in and announce, "I can't write, and I never could. No force on earth can turn me into a person who can understand a written page or write something that makes sense." I think some of these people have been mistreated by previous teachers, and now they are making excuses for the lack of effort they will show during the semester. Until this kind of person loses this attitude, there's not much I can do.

Bottom of the heap and arrogant about it
These people come in several flavors:

• "This class is a waste of time because I'll never write anything anyhow." These students don't understand the realities of the modern business world, but they are probably right about never writing anything again—though they will have to learn to say the phrase, "Would you like fries with that?"
• "I learned it differently in high school (or somewhere else), so the whole English department is wrong." Let me ask you a gentle question: who is likely to know more—someone who remembers what was said to a class of 14-year-olds by a teacher with a bachelor's degree in general education, or a college lecturer with a master's or doctorate in English composition?
• "My brand of English is the only right one, so most of what you are telling me is wrong." Whatever you speak—white Kentucky rural, black inner-city, or California surfer—is the only legitimate English? And the people who run businesses and colleges (and give out the money and power) are all wrong? Amazing! Good luck!

Most of my students are in the middle
Kind of OK about writing and grammar and all that. Kind of frightened. Not too sure about how to proceed. This is the easiest group to teach, so most of what I do is aimed here.

What you can do

Top Students: Don't tune out. Stretch yourself. Ask the teacher for permission to do things that might be beyond the basic assignment. Have fun with English composition.

Desperate and frightened: Spend a lot of time with people in the writing lab. Talk to your English teacher about your fears. Don't give up on yourself or take failure as part of your essential identity.

Arrogant: Lose the attitude. College is a waste of time for you if you didn't come here to be changed into something different and better. There's really nothing I can teach you if you're fighting every inch of the way. (By the way, you'll probably fail the course because doing the assignments right and on-time just won't be your thing.)

The ones in the middle: Sometimes you need to pretend you're in the top group: write imaginative stuff, have fun with the assignments, and ask for more intensive work. Sometimes you need to pretend you're in the "Desperate and frightened" group: visit the writing lab and learn to trust in your own abilities. Aim at getting really good at writing.