I sent a message to my family the other day, and in it I used the term 'Sisyphean task.' I worried for a moment that using the term might come off as obnoxious. I thought to myself, “Perhaps that’s a bit much. Can people still allude to Greek mythology in everyday conversation, or will that go over some heads?”
I dismissed the thought for two reasons:
1) My family is a smart group of people.
2) The term suited the situation far too well.
You see, my cousin Kim is working very hard to organize a Hayes family reunion. There are two words in that last sentence that should give away the interminable and thankless nature of her task, 'Hayes' and 'Organize'.
So I used the term, but my brief hesitation highlights an issue I deal with in the classroom.
At Davis, I took a seminar on how to teach creative writing. It was led by Jack Hicks. He gave us all a very good piece of advice, “You’ve got to take them where they are.” Meaning, as teachers, we get students of varied skill levels, varied backgrounds, varied temperaments, and varied intelligence. This fact, along with the challenges it presents, is part of the job.
I understand and accept that. My issue is not that some students arrive in my classroom with subpar writing skills. I can fix that. My issue is that the world they come from, and the world they’ll go back to when they leave my classroom is...
A) Full of dumb people...
AND
B) Those dumb people are often in positions of power and influence.
This seems to suggest that the pursuit of knowledge is a waste of time. Now, I know that's not true, but I am just one quiet voice. And the dumb are loud and many.
Here’s an example from my area of instruction.
The headline from USA Today's top story reads as follows: “Suspected NY shooter may have lost job.” I don’t wish to make light of the shooting, but that sloppy bit of writing suggests that since the shooting, the suspect might have lost his job. In other words, after killing 13 people and then himself, the shooter may no longer be employed.
As a grammar issue, it's an interesting problem. The auxiliary verb 'have' is used to place the modal 'may lose' in the past, and you get 'may have lost.' But the word 'have' can also make a verb present perfect, which means the verb's action affects the present moment (the cause of my gripe). Introducing the past perfect would solve this, but then the headline would read 'NY shooter may have had lost job.' Yuck. The headline could have added a time indicator like "NY shooter may have lost job before rampage." It's certainly not as catchy a headline, so I can see why they didn’t go with that. The headline they chose, however, is sloppy to the point of blurring the meaning of the intended message.
1) My family is a smart group of people.
2) The term suited the situation far too well.
You see, my cousin Kim is working very hard to organize a Hayes family reunion. There are two words in that last sentence that should give away the interminable and thankless nature of her task, 'Hayes' and 'Organize'.
So I used the term, but my brief hesitation highlights an issue I deal with in the classroom.
At Davis, I took a seminar on how to teach creative writing. It was led by Jack Hicks. He gave us all a very good piece of advice, “You’ve got to take them where they are.” Meaning, as teachers, we get students of varied skill levels, varied backgrounds, varied temperaments, and varied intelligence. This fact, along with the challenges it presents, is part of the job.
I understand and accept that. My issue is not that some students arrive in my classroom with subpar writing skills. I can fix that. My issue is that the world they come from, and the world they’ll go back to when they leave my classroom is...
A) Full of dumb people...
AND
B) Those dumb people are often in positions of power and influence.
This seems to suggest that the pursuit of knowledge is a waste of time. Now, I know that's not true, but I am just one quiet voice. And the dumb are loud and many.
Here’s an example from my area of instruction.
The headline from USA Today's top story reads as follows: “Suspected NY shooter may have lost job.” I don’t wish to make light of the shooting, but that sloppy bit of writing suggests that since the shooting, the suspect might have lost his job. In other words, after killing 13 people and then himself, the shooter may no longer be employed.
As a grammar issue, it's an interesting problem. The auxiliary verb 'have' is used to place the modal 'may lose' in the past, and you get 'may have lost.' But the word 'have' can also make a verb present perfect, which means the verb's action affects the present moment (the cause of my gripe). Introducing the past perfect would solve this, but then the headline would read 'NY shooter may have had lost job.' Yuck. The headline could have added a time indicator like "NY shooter may have lost job before rampage." It's certainly not as catchy a headline, so I can see why they didn’t go with that. The headline they chose, however, is sloppy to the point of blurring the meaning of the intended message.
(And why is a newspaper speculating about past events in the first place? I don't want to read about what might have happened. Tell me what did happen.)
How am I supposed to convince young people that the rules of grammar are there to help craft precise meaning when the editors of a major national newspaper print a headline that ignores those rules?
How am I supposed to convince young people that the rules of grammar are there to help craft precise meaning when the editors of a major national newspaper print a headline that ignores those rules?
2 comments:
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How am I supposed to convince young people that the rules of grammar are there to help craft precise meaning when the editors of a major national newspaper print a headline that ignores those rules?
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Ironic coming from you considering you wrote:
http://hoganhayes.blogspot.com/2009/03/questions-about-teaching-business.html
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The NYT article and the Pestiside.hu article that promoted me to write today both indirectly address an issue that most teachers grapple with: the relationship between what a teacher wants to do, what a student wants, and what a university should do.
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They promoted you to write? I think you meant prompted.
Wow. There's a typo in my blog.
That clearly disqualifies me from commenting on a sloppy headline from a national newspaper. Because after all, newspapers are held to the same editorial standards as blogs. Right?
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