Re: Eric and Fred's ideas on grading -Reply

[Neal Lerner <nlerner@acs.bu.edu>]

James, just to piggy back on one thing you said:
 
> now i wonder about literacy:  associating literacy with literature bothers 
> me.  i wonder if the cumulative effect of years and generations of the 
> academy's ministrations at teaching them together has somehow had the 
> unfortunate effect of convincing folks that literacy can only be the 
> literacy of the elite who read the "high" canon.  Might they think, "I 
> can't write because I know I'll never be able to write like those folks 
> who write the textbooks and the 'fancy' stuff"? 

A great deal of my teaching over the last six years has been on-site at 
students' workplaces (it's a business communication/writing course).  I'm 
always amazed as to how these students will denigrate themselves as 
writers while, at the same time, devote the majority of their working 
days to improving their writing and communicating, and, in fact, write 
much much more than most people in their day-to-day lives.  Nevertheless, 
for most of my students, good writers are "out there" in a mysterious 
world these folks have resisted since high school when they were required 
to read _Moby Dick_.  These kinds of stories, along with finding out that 
so many of my 19 to 20-year old students "hate" writing but rely on 
personal journals to keep sane, make me wonder about the "secret life" of 
writing in our culture.  Rather than affix blame, I just wonder who is it 
that gains with the creation of such walls?	

	Neal Lerner
	nlerner@acs.bu.edu