Profile picture
John Warner
@biblioracle
, 9 tweets, 3 min read Read on Twitter
Hey, @chronicle, rather than publishing the zillionth of this type of essay, let me offer a suggestion, interview a guy who wrote a book looking deeply at the barriers standing between students and writing well. chronicle.com/article/Our-St…
I don't have all the answers, @chronicle, but I can promise that my book, Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities at the very least opens up a new avenue of conversation about the problems that gets beyond this crap. jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/why-th…
I am going to explode with frustration if I read another essay about what's wrong with student writing from a guy who in the essay himself TALKS ABOUT HOW IT'S NOT HIS JOB TO TEACH WRITING! He admits he has neither the time, interest for incentive to do it!
Yes, his argument is that we need to change the incentive structures, but his ideas are hugely disconnected from the kinds of shifts that must and could be done. It's almost a parody.
He also quotes student work directly in the opening which a writing teacher would not do. You can exemplify the sorts of errors one sees in student writing without shaming specific students. You can also do it without signaling that you think students are defective.
"nor" incentive.
And get a load of this suggestion. "Retooling" tenured professors as composition teachers as though there isn't already a wealth of highly skilled composition teachers out in the world eager to do the job, but unable to do so because of their contingent status. WTF?
This guy is plug ignorant about how writing works. Sentences are not the "staples" of this kind of writing. Ideas are. If the student's sentences are troubled it's because they don't have access to ideas that they can grab ahold of and express. That's a pedagogy issue.
I promise that the word salad the professor decries in the first sentence is being delivered because the student believes that what the professor sees as word salad is what that professor wants, a performance of erudition. That misapprehension can be addressed...easily.
Missing some Tweet in this thread?
You can try to force a refresh.

Like this thread? Get email updates or save it to PDF!

Subscribe to John Warner
Profile picture

Get real-time email alerts when new unrolls are available from this author!

This content may be removed anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime, convert it as a PDF, save and print for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video

1) Follow Thread Reader App on Twitter so you can easily mention us!

2) Go to a Twitter thread (series of Tweets by the same owner) and mention us with a keyword "unroll" @threadreaderapp unroll

You can practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @biblioracle see all

Profile picture
John Warner
@biblioracle
I'm pretty sure I first mailed a story to the New Yorker sometime in 1991, being the sort of clueless young a-hole who thought that's what you do after you talk about it in your undergraduate fiction workshop. That process lasted until 1993 when I gave up on such things.
But! I just fired something into the NYer slush for the first time in over 25 years because I was pleased with what I'd done and even though I shall never hear from them (they only get in touch if they want to publish), one thing writers must do is submit their work.
Part of me thought I'd given up on trying to publish fiction, even though I continue to write it. Maybe this is the first step back. It's a fictionalized version of the apparent spiritual crisis of a prominent public intellectual whose biography resembles that of David Brooks.
Read 3 tweets
Profile picture
John Warner
@biblioracle
Working with the Raj Chetty data on institutions and income mobility and thinking that someone else must've certainly noticed something about the institutions championed as good for economic mobility, namely they're all in New York, California and Texas.
A slightly different scale, but essentially the same thing. Except for one institution, everything is in NY (or NY area), California, and Texas.
Maybe this is obvious, but it seems to me that while it's likely these institutions are doing some things right, those right things matter less than graduating into (and living in) three states with the most dynamic economies in the country.
Read 5 tweets
Profile picture
John Warner
@biblioracle
I'm happy to see an article that nibbles at the notion that education is a market where people necessarily act rationally, but why not take the whole step and just recognize there will never be a wholly rational (consumer) market for education? nytimes.com/2019/06/03/ups…
Or rather, recognize that the rationale for this market is housed not in economic theory, but sociology and @tressiemcphd's #LowerEd. The programs highlighted in the article are an example of a market that "makes our collective insecurity more profitable."
That schools explicitly or implicitly promising access to "dream" careers like the Academy of Art university can get people to take on gigantic loan debt isn't a problem of irrational markets. It's a consequence of human behavior in all its complicated glory.
Read 15 tweets

Related threads

Profile picture
Housatonic™ 🇺🇸
@HousatonicITS
Never a Dulles moment studying the Symington family until now

cia.gov/library/readin…
[2]
* CJ #Symington
* #Dulles
* #Firestone
* #CIA

Keep digging, #TeamW @GeorgWebb
[3]
* National Planning Association
* ----> That means Rexford #Tugwell
* Liberia #Mining Company
* #Goodrich
* Initial references to petroleum in Venezuela (Franklin Tugwell wrote the book on Venezuela's oil reserves, released in 1974)
Read 5 tweets
Profile picture
Gerry Doyle
@mgerrydoyle
a remarkable essay questioning (in a very personal way) more swathes of abramson's book. also lays bare the real tension between "establishment" and "insurgent" journalism medium.com/@thomas.morton…
personally, I'm a big fan of journalism school, at least the one I went to. no one told me there was just one way to do things (except in copy editing and ethics), and I learned basics of how to write and report. a good foundation for "real" school, e.g. doing it professionally
as long as you learn on the job, care about what you're doing and don't think too highly of yourself, you can be a great journalist regardless of where you went to school or what you studied. it helps also to know how to spell good and write nice
Read 5 tweets
Profile picture
PlainSite
@PlainSite
Our third Reality Check report: Facebook, Inc. $FB. We link the company's origins to the Cambridge Analytica affair, and find that over 50% of Facebook accounts are very likely fake, despite Facebook's many false and self-contradictory disclosures. plainsite.org/realitycheck/f…
These findings have implications for United States national security and for $FB investors. Although the exact percentage of fake accounts is impossible to pin down, what is clear is that the company has been lying for years, and its lawyers know that it has.
The key table: what is actually going with $FB's fake account problem? Mostly, Facebook won't say. It stopped reporting quarterly numbers in its SEC filings long ago. There may be an update next week. Otherwise, the numbers make no sense whatsoever and are couched in disclaimers.
Read 40 tweets
Profile picture
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
Actually, @KenDilanianNBC, you have a paid job in media; your income is dependent on you continuing to find "exclusives" even if rehashed and poorly sourced. I write on Twitter for free. If you disagree with what I said in my thread, say so—don't ascribe your profit motive to me.
2/ Moreover, this feed became popular because of my coverage—again, for free—of the 2016 Democratic primary; I stayed on to write about the general election and the Trump-Russia case because I believe this is a national emergency. You may *want* to be on TV and famous; I *don't*.
3/ I'm one of thousands of citizens telling you and your peers, @KenDilanianNBC, why journalism is failing—in fact, my *job* (as in actual career) is to teach journalism at a large public research university. Don't heap your failures on my shoulders. I was and am trying to help.
Read 8 tweets
Profile picture
Beth⭐️
@PersuasivePR
Thread: I'm finally reading #BobWoodward 's book #Fear .

It's worse than you thought.
p. 65: US intel distilled 35 pages of sourced material down to 1.5 pages to present to Trump in initial meeting, a "summary that focused on the allegation of coordination between the Russians and the [Trump] campaign." 2/
p.67: "All of the sources fit together and told a consistent story from different vantages in the Kremlin, Clapper said. These human sources had been so-called "legacy sources" -- they had been right in their intelligence and assessments over the years..." 3/
Read 23 tweets
Profile picture
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
(THREAD) 20 QUESTIONS FOR GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS. Now that @GeorgePapa19 is talking Russia on Twitter—and keeping in mind he follows this feed, so I know he'll see these tweets—I want to see if he'll answer tough questions from a guy who wrote a book about him. Read on and find out.
2/ Q1: You connected with Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias 3 times: early May 2016, late May, then via George Tzitzikos—his aide—in September. You said you blurted Mifsud's intel on HRC emails in late May from nervousness. Why? You'd already met Nikos.
3/ Q2: You went to Greece in early May 2016 with Seth Cropsey—who you call a Hudson Institute friend though he was a fellow and you an intern. Cropsey knows Bud McFarlane and K.T. McFarland—which of them sent Cropsey to babysit you? Or was it someone else?
Read 24 tweets

Trending hashtags

#btsau #OPPORTUNITY #profundity #disbarred #selfevident #interview #early #literally #Goodrich #TeamW #maintenance #MyDataMyLife #YoureFired #RAILROADING #reliability #TheRainMakers #PascSheriff #providence #intimidated #canons #ham4ham #delistBSV #Deflection #Ukraine #Interview
Follow Us on Twitter!

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just three indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3.00/month or $30.00/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!