Setting aside serious questions about technology, even the uncritical embrace of computers and the Internet in the classroom poses real problems. First of all, while most public schools have some computers and Internet access, they usually do not have enough computers for even a small portion of the student population. Thus, teaching students to use […]
Of all the issues I’ve discussed with teachers, classroom discipline always ranks as a very pressing, if not the greatest, concern. Educators are happy to dream up interesting and innovative pedagogical techniques, but behavior problems more often than not prevent these ideas from actually being adopted in the classroom. In fact, discipline issues are the […]
Let me start by confessing that I am unquestionably a member of the bourgeoisie. This fact combined with the fact that I am male and white should undercut much of what I have to say, at least from a Marxist perspective. Despite these handicaps, or perhaps as a result of them, I have to admit […]
In his book Teaching Shakespeare, Rex Gibson does an admirable job of offering an exhaustive list of Shakespeare’s literary conventions, but I am tempted to say that all, or almost all, depend upon the interplay of difference and repetition. Obviously, repeating phrases makes use of similarities in language. Building emotional tension in this way is […]
On the surface, literary criticism seems to be writing about writing. Often its purpose, stated or unstated, is simply to arrive at a better understanding of the text. In this respect, such writing often presumes that works have a single meaning, and that this meaning is pretty much what the author intended when he or […]
This web log was started as part of a graduate course on the theory and pedagogy of English instruction at the secondary level. It is my hope that this blog will enable me to better understand the nature of blogging and the possibility of using web logs as part of the secondary English curriculum. I also […]
