No, not everybody does, so your experience is one most of us who have
taught know, Dominic.
Which is to say that many degree programs do not ask students to think
at length this way, but rather gather information & be able to figure
out which multiple choice answer reflects it. Not a way to become
fluent.
I also think that, at least here, the rising costs of post-secondary
education, the need therefore to work part time while at university,
has cut many of today's students off from what I always thought was one
of the major privileges of that privileged life, the bullshit session.
Where perhaps such fluency was learned & practiced...
I think many of us manage to get those essays etc written as well, as
you get all your work & your guitar practice done. So I'm not sure we
should mandate anything, though it's a nice idea... (I've gotta go
continue reading this book I have to review now...)
Doug
On 16-Nov-05, at 6:41 AM, Dominic Fox wrote:
> But I'm not so interested in the pathologies of the form, which
> everyone here's presumably *quite* familiar with. What interests me is
> the training you have to have, in writing and thinking on the hoof, to
> do this in the first place. Not everybody can. I remember being very
> impressed by university tutors who spoke in paragraphs, who could
> follow one paragraph with another, quite off-the-cuff; I remember
> wanting to be able to do that, already being able to do it to some
> degree, and honing that ability at some length whilst at university.
> It shocked me a great deal later on to find myself in a seminar room
> full of alleged degree students who couldn't do that at all, whom one
> had to coax a great deal into delivering even a few sentences on the
> topic at hand. And then marking their essays...
Douglas Barbour
11655 - 72 Avenue NW
Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
(780) 436 3320
Each leaf a runnel the
roofs now skiffs in green
I’ve never done anything
but begin.
Lisa Robertson
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