English 101 at Ashland

This is the Booker T. Washington quotation which I gave you for the midterm in-class: The highest education is that which fits an individual to live successfully in the community where his life is thrown. The object of all education, no matter by what name it is called, should be to fit the individual to articulate what he has learned in the school room into the active, everyday life of the community in which he lives. I would say that the really important part is the last, the idea that true education fits a person to give back to the community—not simply to make money for one’s own benefit.

Beginning this week, we will do a brief computer tutorial at the start of every Wednesday class. I am doing this for several reasons. The first is that about three or four students per section really do not know what they are doing, and they blunder along, struggling to do even the most basic tasks. Second, many of you never had any real computer teaching, partly because your high school teachers didn’t know this stuff either, and partly because of the myth that any kid who could work Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok had learned it all. (And, to be honest, many high schools function under the delusion that in the future nobody will write anything anyhow.) And third, there is always something new to learn, even for experts. I recently showed a colleague who was writing a PhD dissertation a quick, easy formatting trick for his References page. He had years of experience, but had never seen that one. Personal note here: I have been around the computer worl...

Back during Covid, I used the Blogger software to keep people rolling and to give a sense of community to the classroom. Over the last couple of days, I’ve been working on my fall courses, and that led me to rethink how this thing can help us, so I’ve decided to make a few changes in our course. The main change is that the blog will now contain a lot more of the lecture material. This should open up some time for in-class writing and should also help those who cannot be with us for a class session. I am trying to move away from the classroom model which says, “You sit there and listen to me talking.” A second change is that you will see links in Blackboard to specific blog items (similar to the link which led you here today). One more bonus point is that all these blog items have a way to post a comment, so you have a direct path to asking questions or starting a conversation.