Joe Update

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Kathy

I wrote about my GED student Joe back in November, when I recounted our travails in trying to get him some extra time for the test, due to a learning disability originally diagnosed when he was nineteen. We weren’t able to get that accommodation. Joe retook portions of the test in December, without that time accommodation, hoping to bring his overall score up to passing. He needed 450 points. He earned 448 points.

Consequently, Joe is starting over this month. He needs to take all sections of the new, “improved” GED test, because none of his previous passing scores carry over. The new test is online, so he and our other students need to work on their computer skills, in addition to the academic and test-taking skills they need.

For example, the new test includes an essay portion, as did the old test. But the new test no longer requires the old five-paragraph essay, for which our students have practiced. Instead, it provides a reading of several paragraphs and then asks the student to analyze the reading. The student constructs a response of a couple of paragraphs agreeing or disagreeing with what he or she has read and types in this response. For the reading, the pre-writing, organizing, and the writing—for the whole process, in other words—the student gets 45 minutes.

Once again, these are by and large people who never learned to type and rely on public computers in the library for their email and other internet needs. Often they have learning disabilities and reading deficits. The students at the universities where I teach, in contrast, almost all grew up with computers in their homes and have owned their own computers for years. They have been typing essays and homework since they were little kids. Their reading, writing, and computer skills were handed to them as a birthright.

By the way, I never hear complaints like this among my GED students. They focus on their own failings and poor decisions beyond the most rigid and moralistic critic. They put their heads down and plow ahead. Fortunately, Joe is a determined and poised young man. “It wouldn’t make any sense for me to quit now,” he told us calmly. He’s planning to attend GED classes every day and begin all over again, from the beginning.

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I Am Beset by a Grammatical Dilemma

Posted on January 23, 2014 by Kathy

In the winter semester (they call it “spring,” but, um, no), I teach a writing seminar at an institution I’ll call the More Prestigious University, or MPU. It’s a choosy place, which selects students carefully based on grades and high SAT scores. A few years ago, before I started teaching there, I chatted with an MPU professor at a holiday party. He was complaining about a colleague who encouraged students to use the passive voice in their writing, of which he disapproved. He advised his students against the passive voice and was chagrined that they didn’t heed his advice. When I suggested that maybe his students didn’t understand the term, he sniffed,  “Of course students at MPU know what  passive voice is.”

Before I continue my story, let’s take a timeout to review passive voice, because I don’t expect every adult who’s been out of school for twenty years immediately to recall every grammatical construction. Here’s active voice: I teach a class at MPU. Here’s passive voice: A class at MPU is taught by me.

In active voice, the subject (I) is performing the action of the verb. In the second, the subject (class) is not performing the action, but is passively sitting around waiting to be taught. I hope you’ll notice a couple of things about those sentences. The first one is direct and clear, and the second is wordy and awkward. Moreover, passive voice lends itself to mealy-mouthed equivocation. You’ll frequently hear craven politicians say Mistakes were made (passive voice) instead of I made mistakes (active voice). Though passive voice isn’t incorrect and fits certain situations, it can become a bad habit.

Back to the story. Now that I’m teaching at MPU myself, I find that MPU students are inclined to this sort of thing: Students are expected to spend countless hours on homework and extracurricular activities, and for this reason their own interests are put aside in the hope that a higher grade will be attained and a more impressive resume will be created. Every verb in this unpleasant sentence is in passive voice: are expected, are put aside, will be attained, and will be created.

To address this issue, I always assign George Orwell’s powerful essay “Politics and the English Language,” which rails against verbosity, unnecessary euphemisms, equivocation, and passive voice. I spend a little time reviewing passive voice, cautioning my students to avoid it. They seem to catch on in class, but usually, to my frustration, continue to rely on it, padding their essay with unnecessary words.

This semester, I tried a new tack. After our discussion of George Orwell and a thorough (I thought) lesson on active and passive, I asked them to underline the passive voice verbs in their own first essay before they turned it in. As you’re probably guessing, they were unable to do this. They underlined bunches of active voice verbs while overlooking bunches of passive voice verbs. They don’t know the difference. That MPU prof at the holiday party was making a big assumption.

This brings up bunches of fascinating questions. I expect my students to explain, when we discuss this next week, that it’s much harder to find your own passive voice verbs (or comma splices or sentence fragments) than to identify them in a class exercise. How to move students from comprehending a concept in class to applying it? How often do we “cover” something in class, with no actual learning going on?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on these and other questions. Should I spend more valuable time in class trying to teach them the grammar they should have learned in high school? Or, should I just mark the offending verbs in their papers, hoping that they’ll catch on? Should I lower their grades every time they slip a passive voice verb in their essays? Or, should I stop worrying about it because it’s A. a lost cause, or B. not really important?

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Neither Rain, Nor Sleet, Nor Snow

Posted on January 7, 2014 by Kathy

Dick Goddard

Here in Ohio we’re in the midst of an arctic vortex (they’re calling it), producing temperatures far colder than we’re accustomed to. It was around 10 degrees below zero most of yesterday. Schools and workplaces, including my husband’s, are closed today.  John views a day off, of course, not as an opportunity to kick back cozily at home, but to (what else) see a movie. He and my grownup son are soon to brave the cold in order to see Martin Scorsese’s new movie The Wolf of Wall Street.

Which reminds me. I recently ran across a poem I wrote for John one frigid evening thirty years ago, when our son was a baby. John had set out to see Raggedy Man, starring Sissy Spacek, sixty miles north to Cleveland from our Canton home. I am about to share this poem with you. You should know that at that time John worked at the Canton library, that he loves peanut butter and jelly sandwiches almost as much as movies, and, if you’re not from northeast Ohio,  that Dick Goddard is a legendary weatherman, who, at age 82, still forecasts regularly on Cleveland TV.

 

The weatherman Goddard said twenty below

with a dozen or two cubic inches of snow.

Al Roker agreed. (His opinion’s less credible,

but concurrence confirmed that the weather’d be dreadable.)

 

Our John’s heart was set on Raggedy Man,

but this movie required a trip to Cleveland.

It’s a city located on Erie, the lake,

And sometimes the weather there’s no piece of cake.

 

For Cleveland is girded by several snow belts,

And the snow that falls lingers, where elsewhere it melts.

The driving John dreaded; the snow and the ice

Make Route Double Seven not so very nice.

 

Still, Cinema called.  To see Sissy in 70,

Dolby, and Cinemascope just would be heavenly.

So he put on his hat and galoshes and gloves

and kissed Kath and Dougie goodbye, whom he loves.

 

On the way up to Cleveland, a town called The Plum,

of precipitation he saw not a crumb.

But departing the theater, a shock was in store:

The sidewalks, the streets, and the cars dressed in hoar.

 

On the slush-covered streets John’s Chevette forged ahead.

Wife Kathy, at home, to be nice, changed the bed.

In a cozy dry diaper Doug silently slept,

And Daddy instead while he slipped loudly wept.

 

Visibility nil, and traction without,

the driving so bad, it gave John some doubt.

For was it all worth it, the sixty-mile drive,

through which in foul weather, he may not survive?

 

For Cinema’s muse, for Sissy and Jean-Luc,

and Feddy and Rainer and Werner and the Duke,

he could lose it all:

the treats on the table and B. Village Mall,

 

R. Newman, and Dougie,  the rest of the family,

the Palace and orange juice and sandwiches (p.b.)?

But then John remembered—there’s also the laundry

and crying and spit-up and work at the library.

 

He realized quick when compared to a movie,

that life, sometimes good, isn’t always so groovy.

So now we all know, like the old postman poem,

Not rain, sleet, or snow will keep Ewing at home.

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Happy Childhoods

Posted on January 6, 2014 by Kathy

A couple of questions to consider:

What constitutes a happy childhood?

Did you have one?

How many people in the world have happy childhoods?

I was recently talking to someone who believes that he had an unequivocally happy childhood and that, moreover, “most people” have a happy childhood.

I said I probably didn’t. That is, I was happy some of the time, and I was certainly lucky compared to many millions of people on earth. But, seriously and honestly, I couldn’t say my childhood was happy overall. My household was too tense, too many people were mad or miserable at any particular time, and I was usually anxiously observant, trying to predict the next explosion or worrying about the last one.

Furthermore, I believe that since 80% of the world’s population earns less than $10 a day, most of the children of the world are not having a happy childhood. That is, they’re way worse off than I was, in that they’re likely hungry and thirsty a lot of the time and have little access to education and other advantages in life.  About half the world’s population lives in what is called “absolute poverty,” on less than $2.50 a day. (These dollar amounts, by the way, refer to buying power. You can’t use that “But it buys so much more in their country” argument.)

I know that people who are poor can have happy lives. That is, while doing without material goods, they can enjoy their families and their work. But lacking food, water, healthcare, shelter, and meaningful work precludes happiness. Moreover, living in dire poverty frequently also implies violence and humiliation and danger.

My happy childhood guy disagreed. While compassionate toward people suffering from malnutrition, war, and extreme poverty, he stuck to his argument that “most people” are happy and had a happy childhood.

I know it’s a stupid argument, because who can even define “happy”? I still want to know what you think, either about your own childhood or everybody else’s. Let me know.

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Documentaries and Delights

Posted on December 2, 2013 by Kathy

The Cinematheque offers unusual and interesting movies this weekend, which is, of course, its mission.

Frederick Wiseman

A documentary by Frederick Wiseman, At Berkeley, shows Thursday at 6:45 pm and Friday at 7:30 pm. Every year I teach a class on education reform at Case Western and show Wiseman’s brilliant 1968 doc High School to my students. Wiseman, now 83, sets his camera up and lets it roll, catching the quotidian doings of people and the institutions in which they operate: e.g., a state hospital for the insane, Titicut Follies (1967); Hospital  (1970); and Ballet (1995). Then, he edits down the footage ingeniously and lets the audience members draw their own conclusions about, in this case, the University of California at Berkeley—no Michael Moore proseletyzing here. Wiseman is brilliant, sardonic, and uncompromising. The down side is that, as in so many Wiseman films, the running time is long. 244 minutes long. There’s also a slightly higher admission price.

Niven, Cooper, Colbert

The Ernst Lubitsch films shown so far in the Cinematheque series have been delightful. Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (Saturday at 5:15 and Sunday at 8:35) promises more delights. With stars Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper and David Niven, and Billy Wilder as co-screenwriter, you can’t go wrong.

A third unique choice is another documentary, 1967’s Portrait of Jason. The biggest selling point for this film, in my book, is that director Ingmar Bergman called it the most extraordinary film he’d ever seen. That’s quite a testimonial. The Cinematheque flyer says the film. . .

“. . . was shot by indie giant Shirley Clarke in her Chelsea Hotel apartment during one marathon, 12-hour session that started at 9 pm on 12/2/66. Jason Holliday, a flamboyant, gay, 33-year-old African-American hustler and aspiring cabaret singer, recounts his tortured, troubled life for Clarke’s camera. He is drinking. Clarke continually goads Jason for more stories, more songs, more truth (was he making this stuff up?). Eventually his grandly theatrical façade shatters. This new restoration of Clarke’s cinéma vérité classic has a 100% ‘fresh’ rating on RottenTomatoes.com. ‘Says more about race, class, and sexuality than just about any movie before or since.’ -Village Voice.

See it on Saturday at 9:25 pm or Sunday at 6:30 pm.

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Rescinding Opportunity

Posted on November 22, 2013 by Kathy

There’s a new GED (high-school equivalency) in town, promoting itself as “a new comprehensive program.” The old GED test, phasing out next month, consisted of readings and multiple choice questions, often very challenging, in the areas of science, reading, and social studies (as well as writing and math). The new test appears on a computer and includes more writing and short-answer responses.

This new program, according to the website, “ensures that an adult’s high school equivalency credential signifies he or she has the skills and knowledge necessary to take the next critical steps in their life. We need to give these adults and their families a fighting chance. Their futures’ depend on it.”

In case you’re wondering, I cannot explain the apostrophe on “futures’,” nor the reason why “he or she,” referring correctly back to the singular “adult,” is followed by “their” in the next line.

Anyway, the new program offers sample questions to help educators like me help my students. Here’s one from the science portion.

Stimulus Material A farmer purchased 30 acres of farmland. The farmer calculated that the average topsoil thickness on the farmland is about 20 centimeters.

The farmer wants to maintain the thickness of the soil on this farmland by reducing erosion. The farmer plans to test the effectiveness of two different farming methods for reducing soil erosion.

Method 1: No-till (planting crops without plowing the soil)

Method 2: Winter cover crop (growing plants during the winter that are plowed into the soil in spring)

The farmer hypothesizes that using either method will reduce erosion compared to using traditional farming methods (plowing and no cover crop).

Prompt

Design a controlled experiment that the farmer can use to test this hypothesis. Include descriptions of data collection and how the farmer will determine whether his hypothesis is correct.

Type your response in the box. This task may require approximately 10 minutes to complete.

A few thoughts:

Most of the students I teach have never seen or been to a farm. They may be marginally aware of the meaning of “plowing.” It’s unlikely they’ve encountered “topsoil” before.

They have never worked in a lab or conducted an experiment, even if they made it through part of 12th grade, because many high schools in Cleveland do not have labs. Our students should encounter the word “hypothesis” in their GED preparation, but few of them know or routinely use that word.

My students live in a neighborhood where the rate of functional illiteracy is over 80%. You read right.

Most of them do not have computers at home and have never learned to type.

Phrases like “descriptions of data collection” are meaningless to them.

The website goes on to describe, from highest to lowest, 3-point responses, 2-point responses, and 1-point responses. (Also 0-point, in which the student has blown it completely.)

3- point Response

Response contains

ï‚· A well-formulated, complete controlled experimental design

ï‚· A well-formulated data collection method

ï‚· A well-formulated, complete explanation of the criteria for evaluating the hypothesis

2-Point Response

Response contains

ï‚· A logical controlled experimental design

ï‚· A logical data collection method

ï‚· A logical explanation of the criteria for evaluating the hypothesis

 1-Point Response

Response contains

ï‚· A minimal experimental design

ï‚· A minimal or poorly-formulated data collection method

ï‚· A minimal or poorly-formulated explanation of the criteria for evaluating the hypothesis

Here is a sample 3-point response listed on the website:

The farmer would have to set up 3 experiments. The first would be a years worth of traditional farming methods (plowing and no cover crop) on 5 x 5 acres of land. He would have to measure the top soil in every month throughout the year and record It In a lab table. For the second experiment the farmer would have to farm a plot of land 5×5 acres using a no-till plan. He would have to measure the top soil every month for a year and record it in a data table. Finally the farmer would farm a 5×5 acres of land with winter cover crop and measure the top soil every month and record It In a lab table. At the end of the year the farmer would have to compare the 2 methos agaisnt the traditional methid and determine ifhe is correct

The errors in spelling and punctuation indicate, I guess, the test graders’ generosity in overlooking proofreading errors.

I have a couple of scientist friends with Ph.D.’s who would write such an answer, or an even better one. I cannot imagine most of my friends, however–virtually all college graduates working in challenging careers–writing this response. I can see now why three experiments are necessary, but I wouldn’t have thought of it when taking the test.

With the old GED test, my students had a chance, barely, to earn a high-school diploma and qualify for a low-paying job and an opportunity to enroll in a community college or other training program. Under the new regime, as far as I can tell, very, very few will now have that chance.

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An Irksome Question

Posted on November 15, 2013 by Kathy

There are three weeks left in this semester, and after class today a student asked me one of my least favorite questions. “Will the final cover the whole semester,” she wondered, “or just since the midterm?”

This question might make sense in a literature class or history class. Maybe you didn’t read Moby Dick and therefore screwed up the midterm, but now you can read The Scarlet Letter so thoroughly that you do a stellar job on the final. Maybe you missed all your history prof’s lectures on the New Deal, but you started coming to class during the Truman administration. Your professors will not like to hear you dismissing the first half of the semester, but you do have a good chance of bringing up your grade.

But I teach Latin. What is a language student thinking by asking me that question, especially this late in the game? How could I even make up a test which doesn’t include material from the beginning? I feel a great temptation to answer sarcastically. “Of course,” I might say, “you can forget the verb ‘to love’ now and all its forms. That word came way back in August! Who can be expected to remember it? Same with ‘girl,’ ‘boy,’ ‘father,’ and ‘mother,’ and all those pesky verb endings. I promise never to use them again in any context.”

I suppress my sarcasm, however. I just say that learning a language is cumulative, like math. When you learn multiplication, I say, you still have to remember how to add, right?

My student smiles wanly and turns away. This is not the answer she was hoping for.

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Movies of Interest

Posted on November 13, 2013 by Kathy

Fellini + Lubitsch

An interesting event at the Cinematheque tomorrow night inaugurates a great weekend of films. Father Don Cozzens, a noted author and teacher, leads a discussion after La Strada, Federico Fellini’s 1954 Oscar winner (7:00 pm). Pope Francis has cited this as his favorite movie, and Fr. Cozzens will try to figure out why, along with the audience. I haven’t seen La Strada for years but remember liking this compassionate, poignant, and sometimes funny film very much. Special price of $10 for this event.

Robert Frank

Friday brings another special event with a very different film–a rare showing of photographer Robert Frank’s Cocksucker Blues, a 1972 documentary about the Rolling Stones. It’s the movie the Stones never wanted you to see, revealing their drug use and sexual antics (as though we didn’t know). This film, showing Friday at 9:15, has another special price of $15.

 If that’s not enough, this weekend provides another great comedy by Ernst Lubitsch (Sat. 5:15; Sun. 4:00).  Trouble in Paradise (1932) has been called a perfect film and among his very excellent films is regarded as the best. How can you pass that up? I’ve never seen it, but so enjoyed To Be or Not to Be and Ninotchka the past couple weeks that I’m looking forward to this one. Lubitsch’s movies are pure enjoyment–beautifully written, shot, and acted.

 

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Chatty Kathy

Posted on November 6, 2013 by Kathy

I was thinking this morning how much better I am at talking to people than I used to be. This might be a common experience: as we get older, we’re more comfortable with ourselves and acquire better social skills. Along the same lines, I’ve been noticing how rarely young people ask me a question about myself. They may be gregarious and poised, but they usually prefer talking about themselves. That’s true of almost everyone, including me, but it’s noteworthy among the young. I have long conversations with students and other youthful sorts, with awkward pauses aplenty, during which they never break the silence by asking me something. My initiative—asking them a question—breaks the silence.

As I look back, I realize I was the same way. I was exceedingly shy when talking to adults, or even other young people. It never occurred to me to ask the other person a question. I wouldn’t have known what to ask and had no idea what information to volunteer. I was so self-conscious and inward-directed that I couldn’t think of things to say. If I was having a bad hair day or worried about my ugly shoes (or whatever), it was even worse.

Add to this self-consciousness an unfortunate tilt toward intensity. My husband reminds me I was intense in high school, way too intense. If I had thought of questions for adults, they would have been things like, “How does it feel to be so close to death?” which I fortunately had enough sense not to ask.

This reminds me of a Mary Grimm short story I was rereading over the weekend. In “Interview with My Mother,” a middle-aged woman is thinking of all the questions she would like to ask her mother and aunts, serious questions about love and mortality which the older women would probably shrug off. These are the kinds of questions I might have asked,  if I thought of asking at all.

The light-hearted comment, i.e., “small talk,” is a better way to go, at least to grease the conversational wheels. I wish I had known how much easier this would get. “Nice shoes.” “So windy today!” “TGIF!” Banal and boring, but also friendly and door-opening.

This morning I have chatted with the people on the elevator (one recited to me the inevitable “amo, amas, amat,” when he saw my Latin text), the custodian waiting for the elevator, a student who suffers from chronic back pain, a former student whom I haven’t seen for a long time, and other faculty members. Well into my twenties, and even further, probably none of those conversations would have happened. It would never have occurred to me to initiate them, or if it did, I would have agonized over what to say and even how to say it. Then by the time I figured something out, the opportunity would have been lost. The person would get off the elevator on another floor and disappear.

Do you find this true in your life? It’s easier to talk to people the older you get?

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Big Thumbs Up

Posted on November 4, 2013 by Kathy

Ernst Lubitsch

I should have told you to see To Be or Not to Be at the Cleveland Cinematheque last weekend. There was a big crowd there, anyway, because the Plain Dealer wrote a nice story about the film and the Ernst Lubitsch series it’s a part of.  Lubitsch’s films are the best kind: they’re classic works of art and also highly entertaining. As the spouse of a hardcore film buff, I can tell you those two things do not always go together.

Next in the series on the 9th and 10th (5:15 pm and 4:00 pm, respectively) is Ninotchka, in which, famously, “Garbo laughs.” Greta Garbo plays a Soviet agent who happens to fall in love with a playboy played by Melvyn Douglas. Bela Lugosi’s in it, too, but not as Dracula, and it was co-written by Billy Wilder of Sunset Boulevard fame. 1939 was an extraordinary year for films. Besides this one, there’s The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath, Wuthering Heights, and many others.

If you’ve never seen a film with Greta Garbo, you should see this one. If you’ve never seen a film by Ernst Lubitsch, come to this one; you may be hooked for the rest of the series.

Lubitsch was a Jewish German émigré who arrived in the U.S. in 1922 to direct a film starring Mary Pickford. He never left. Here’s what John wrote in the Cinematheque flyer about Lubitsch:

“Lubitsch’s films. . . were often cynical, amoral, and risqué, so to skirt the censors’ scissors, he had to be discreet in his depiction of taboo subjects. He managed to do this via a virtuosic, often elliptical visual style that used objects (e.g., closed doors) as metaphors, thus slyly suggesting illicit activities rather than showing them explicitly. This ability came to be celebrated as the ‘Lubitsch touch.'”

And, I might add, his movies are very funny.

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