Argument: Fast Food Is Not Cheaper

My students are working on illustration essays right now, and many of them have opted to use the suggested topic of "Home cooking always wins over fast food (or vice-versa)." Although these are illustration essays, many of them have elements of argument. When we discuss argument later in the semester, I might have my students read this article by Mark Bittman. Not only is it a topic that students are interested in, but it is a great example of using counterarguments.

Good Examples of Use of Examples

"For modern adventurers, the blissful disconnectedness from the rest of the world ... may be gone for good. It’s harder than ever to get truly out there."

In "Exploits, Now Not So Daring," author and adventurer David Roberts argues that technology is robbing us of the opportunity to be "out there"--"near the limits of what is humanly possible, out there where nobody can save you."

Good Advice for Writing Teachers

I like this advice from the Two Writing Teachers blog:

If you are looking to lift the level of your writing instruction, then I invite you to write. Start a notebook (or dust off an old one), play with words, try your hand at the current writing project your students are working on, just write. Then make a little list of the things you notice about your own writing process.

With all the grading I have to do, I don't know if I'd have time to write essays along with my students, but I've written enough of those essays (mostly for fun, though occasionally for publication) that I can share first-hand my knowledge that the writing process truly does become more fluid as you mature as a writer.

I do hope I can find some time to work on a few essays this semester, though. "Having to do it for a class"--even though it's the class I'm teaching--seems like a good enough excuse!

An Argument for Teaching Applied Math in Schools

No time to expand on this now, but I want to post it so I didn't lose it. Sol Garfunkel argues in favor of teaching applied mathematics over the more abstract stuff in schools.

He mentions traditionalists who once(?) argued that we should teach Latin.

(I think I'm one of those traditionalists.)

The many comments at the end of the article are worth reading, too.

Halfway Through Week Two

I’m halfway through the second week of school, and I feel … calm. Balanced. Content.

The realist in me knows this can’t last, but the optimist in me (admittedly a very small part of my personality) is hoping it will.

Work is going well, and school is going well. At work, I’ve put together the development-season schedule for documentation, and I’ve begun working on some of the preliminary “what’s-new-this-year” documents that we’ll eventually supply to our Education and Support departments. Most of my job lately, however, has been a hodgepodge of smaller projects: editing some internal procedures, building a software patch or two, updating our intranet, editing articles for the company blog, etc. It’s been busy, but not overwhelmingly so. And that’s been nice. I like when work is this way.

School is going well, too; of course, I haven’t had to grade any major assignments yet. The stress will escalate pretty quickly when I the first drafts come in after Labor Day. I’m not looking forward to that; I have no contingency plans. My plan is to take everything one day at a time, and, if I have to pay the babysitter overtime and make the day last 18 hours so I can get all the grading done, then that’s just what I’ll have to do.

Something tells me that, by the end of this semester, I will be an expert in speed-grading of essays. Maybe. I can’t imagine grading a three-page essay in less than 20 minutes, but maybe I’ll work my way down to 15 minutes per essay. I’ll need to, or I’ll never sleep.

I’ve been making notes to myself after each class session this semester. So far, classes seem to be going really well, though they’ve turned out to be more teacher-centric and lecture-heavy than I want them to be. I want students writing and discussing and learning; I hate to stand in front of the room, flapping my mouth.

I’ve made an effort these last few days to talk less and have students contribute more. I think we’ll get more into that style of class as the semester progresses; at this point, we’re covering a lot of introductory information—what is a thesis statement, how revising is different from proofreading, etc.—so I’m explaining basic terms more than I’ll need to in the future.

So that’s my little update on life as a hack and a grunt.

Why the Japanese Surrendered

Here's an article from the Boston Globe about a theory of why the Japanese really surrendered to the U.S. in 1945. Historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa of U.C.-Santa Barbara believes it was the Soviet Union's entry into the war in the Pacific that precipitated the surrender--not the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as many believe.

It's a good cause-and-effect article, particularly because it shows that determining cause and effect can be a messy undertaking, and that even long-accepted conclusions can be open to debate. The article also goes into cause and effect on another level: "If the atomic bomb alone could not compel the Japanese to submit," writes Gareth Cook, "then perhaps the nuclear deterrent is not as strong as it seems"--and perhaps we should re-think our conviction that the atomic bomb, horrific as it was, was a necessary means to an end.

I think this article could yield good discussion from both a historian's perspective and a moral perspective.

Half-Abortions

Interesting Slate article by William Saletan on many pro-choicers' ethical uneasiness with "half-abortions," in which one twin is aborted and the other is spared.