I think those of us who spent a lot of time laboring in the gen ed underclass maybe had a better handle on this than others because the tensions over the transactional nature of the class were impossible to avoid. This was my primary struggle for two decades.
John Warner
@biblioracle.bsky.social
9199 Followers
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Writer, speaker, consultant. Chicago Tribune columnist, blogging at Inside Higher Ed. Coming soon, More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI. Previously: Why They Can't Write and The Writer's Practice. Www.whytheycantwrite.com
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I wrote about this a bit at my newsletter this weekend, but I started using the frame of the "academic conversation" for just this reason 20 or so years ago because the "you need to pay attention in FYC to do well in your other classes" stopped working. biblioracle.substack.com/p/the-best-o...
The Best Offense Is a Good Offense
What teaching writing and defeating nascent fascism have in common.
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I think this is the crux of things. I thought and said so before ChatGPT and as you show, it's pretty much non-negotiable now. We have to identify experiences worth having and then assess them in ways that honor the value of those experiences, making it transparent and legible to students.
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The letter really has to be read to be believed. He takes it as fact that any hiring of non-white faculty is de facto discrimination against white men. That is not an exaggeration.
i have said before that the fracas at UVA is a product, in large part, of a set of alumni who believe that the university was at its greatest when it was a segregated finishing school for white men. i was not exaggerating, as you can see here in this letter from Scott Douglas Gerber
GERBER: A letter of suggestions for U.Va.’s interim president
What follows are a few respectfully proffered suggestions that I think can help you try to restore the University to the greatness it enjoyed when I was a student decades ago.
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I try to get at this problem when it comes to writing (and reading) in my new book, in that I think part of what schools should be incentivizing is the development of "taste" and "discernment" as skills which enhance our lives because it's nice to be able to identify shit when it's obvious shit.
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That was my best laugh in a long time. Amen to all of that.
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There’s a number of things that I would’ve said in Nov 2022 that are so patently counterproductive they could go with saying and someone isn’t there advocating for all of them, e.g. AI “peer review” for one of many.
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Congratulations!
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This is just giving up on the whole enterprise of reading and writing as human, communicative, expressive exchange. Speed-run to dystopia in the name of making the education transaction more efficient. This should be anathema.
What the actual fucking fuck. www.theverge.com/news/760508/...
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In the Chicago Tribune! By the @biblioracle.bsky.social! In print!
#Booksky #penelopefitzgerald
