Archives: 2006 February 07

Inbox: Reading and Writing in All Subject Areas

Feb 07

The Ideas section for today’s Inbox focuses on Reading and Writing in All Subject Areas. As the piece explains, “President Bush’s proposal to focus solely on the quality of math, science, and technological education ignores the important critical thinking and literacy skills that take place in the English language arts and composition classrooms. By focusing on reading and writing in all subject areas, we can ensure that students are better prepared to improve the analytical, technical, and problem-solving skills that the President’s plan targets. These resources offer suggestions for working toward these goals.”

Naturally, students need to do better. They deserve better. But as it’s presented the American Competitiveness Initiative comes up short. To suggest that reading and writing aren’t just as important to a student’s success is shortsighted and foolish. Not only do we want students to be able to read those math, science, and engineering texts in thoughtful and analytical ways, but we want them to be able to compose their own work in relationship to the ideas that they develop in these content areas. The President’s plan comes up short. With a wife who is a librarian, you would think that his educational initiatives would more fully represent the full range of learning that students need for lifelong learning and achievement.

In the News: What Makes a Memoir?

Feb 07

By Traci GardnerUncategorized Comments Off

As I was driving to work this morning, the local NPR station was talking with Philip Graham, Professor of English at the University of Illinois, and
Antonia Leotsakos of the staff of Pages For All Ages Bookstore about book recommendations (archived interview). As seems to always be the case these days, the conversation turned to A Million Little Pieces AKA the “Million Little Lies” of James Frey.

In the course of the conversation, Leotsakos mentioned that the basic issue in the Frey controversy, the question that needed to be asked, was “What makes a memoir?” Most folks know the problems with Frey’s “memoir” at this point, but the question lingered for me as a key one that could be useful in the classroom.

When we ask students to write autobiographical pieces, to what extent do we discuss the importance of truth in that project? When we push them to add specific and concrete details, do we ever ultimately push them to embellishing the truth in the way that Frey has? Memory is such a tricky thing. It’s often embellished in the retellings in ways that become socially constructed and “true” to the teller, even though they may not be truthful to the facts that an independent observer might record.

As teachers, we need to talk about the differences between truth and embellishment and how that interplay works in storytelling. I’m sure there’s an easy lesson for the site that focuses on the Frey articles; but it’s probably more important to create something that gets at the underlying issues without the sensationalism.

In the News: Book Publishing

Feb 07

By Traci GardnerUncategorized Comments Off

Blurb Home: Washington Post review of a demo of the product explains that you go from “Blogs to Books, using a ‘Blog Slurper.’” The service is still in beta testing.

It looks like an interesting product, but it’s not publishing books in the Library of Congress sense of things. No ISBN, etc. You’re publishing your own book in the same way that you could if you just printed it out using your home printer. Don’t really want to knock it, but it’s sort of like saying your photo album is a coffee table book.

Now I realize that in the classroom definition of things where we talk about publishing students work, it’s clearly publishing. And it’s a book if you think it’s a book. But it felt as if they left things out. It’s just a new tool for vanity publishing.