When will I be 'done' with this?

As we wrap up May (and mark the midpoint of the little four-week professional writing course I am leading for CSU this summer), I find myself thinking about deadlines and goals.

The class is filled with weekly deadlines, and they are what we might call "date certain" deadlines, with planned dates and times. In fact, missing some of the deadlines can cause problems with LATER assignments and deadlines, so keeping current is key.

There is a final formal report required for the course, due in (gulp!) two weeks, but an important step is writing a proposal memo that demonstrates a clear plan, credentials, some preliminary reading, etc. There is pressure on me to get comments back within a day or so to allow for students to make adjustments to their plans (if needed) ASAP.

Bottom line for the course: June 13 is the "date certain" to complete the class. The university schedules a "date certain" for grades to be uploaded. 

Now, will June 13 mark the end of our journey as writers? Duh. There is much more to learn and practice and refine and explore... though even writing that list seems vague and difficult to measure.

"I want to become a better writer" is something I have heard from countless students through the years, but that is far from a "date certain" sort of goal. Not only is "better" about as vague a goal as we can imagine, but the idea that there is a clear end point for the quest to become a better writer or thinker is silly.

But there is something comforting about checking off SOMETHING, like completing a class or finishing that blog post or just getting the floors cleaned in the house. 

It's the same with all sorts of life goals, like those "bucket list" challenges. We can vaguely get enthused about that future trip to Tuscany, but until we book the tickets, we can't claim any true progress toward something we desire.

When I was a yearbook adviser, we would often say that the book could never truly be finished, but that it had to be "done." 

There will always be another deadline or another yearbook or another class. Make progress. Do your best. Reflect on what worked and what did not. 

"Date certain" deadlines are how we move ahead.

Mask wearing and Nazi imagery = a dangerous mix

From a letter to the editor in today's Washington Post: 

"The May 16 news article “Months later, bitter anger over the Capitol riot lingers in the House” said that Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) “have nothing but ill will between them.” This false equivalency on the part of The Post has got to stop. It’s unacceptable.

"Greene is the one who is harassing and attacking Ocasio-Cortez. Greene is the source of the ill will."

A false equivalency is a common rhetorical fallacy and one that writers need to pay attention to. In a lot of informal debate, there is a tendency to simply brand all sides of an issue as contemptible and equally suspect. For instance, it's peculiarly American to simply brand all politicians and other government officials as selfish and even evil. 

"A plague on both your houses," as Mercutio would say.

False equivalence has to be measured by degree or "order of magnitude," which is why we need carefully researched arguments to sort through the fallacies. 

It is possible that the two representatives the letter writer mentions don't like each other and that each has attacked the other. But the question of degree remains. 

Effective arguments explore the differences rather than simply lumping everything into one category.

Even Mercutio, anguished by his imminent death when he was accidentally stabbed by Tybalt when Romeo tried to break up the silly duel, would likely criticize his friend Romeo less than Tybalt. Neither were his kin but he clearly hung out with Romeo's group. Mostly, he is angry that he is dying.

The letter writer in today's Post is making a claim that needs much more support, don't you think? Letters in a publication tend to be very short... too short to fully develop an argument. 

In fact, just browsing through any online letters in any mass medium will demonstrate the lack of support in claims, and that means the letters are basically just provocative starting points. We can and should be much better in our own arguments.

No crying, but there might be some laughing in baseball

There is a lot serious news to read about and explore. If you believe social media, most EVERYTHING is serious and we are awash in "what if x happens" stories, written in breathless prose but with only slender wisps of actual data to support the fears explored.

I have begun simply skipping all stories I encounter that are based on polls asking people about future elections as a way to counter some of the clutter. You may have your own list of stories in the printed and broadcast news that cause you to skip ahead. 

That seems like a smart way to maintain our mental health.

The stories that grab me are like the report in the Washington Post today about last night's Nationals vs. Reds game. Several oddities were featured.

First, the game was suspended due to looming rain storms after just 3 and one-half innings. The game will be resumed today from where it left off, and will be followed by a second game of 7 innings. Welcome to Covid baseball, though the virus has nothing to do with this game.

It took over three hours for the officials to suspend the game, and fans remaining were treated to a streaker splashing across the tarp, running from cops, hiding in the tarp roller for a few minutes, and eventually being cuffed and taken away. It's nice to know that some traditions -- streaking become popular on college campuses in the 1970s -- still retain the power to amuse. 

A more modern issue arose in the third inning, when the closed captioning board above each bullpen read: “Right Fielder North Korea Castellanos.” It was supposed to say, “Right Fielder Nicholas Castellanos.”

North Korean hackers at work? Autocorrect messing with us? Who knows? 

My point is that I need more news like this, full of the weird, the unexplained, and the amusing. I am grateful for journalists who are reporting in-person and who can share what they see and hear and taste and smell... and wonder about.

It doesn't make me smarter or better-equipped to handle the challenges of life. 

But neither did the new Peacock comedy "Girls5Eva." You should check it out. No news. Just some fun.

Trust is a fragile thing

Here I go mentioning the plague once again, so soon after I promised I was done... but my thoughts are more general than Covid-related. 

Here is a key graf from today's "The Morning," a weekday e-newsletter from The New York Times. The lead article was trying to explain how the CDC came up with its advice for children at summer camps to wear masks all summer long.

"There does not seem to be much scientific reason that campers and counselors, or most other people, should wear a mask outdoors all summer. Telling them to do so is an example of extreme cation -- like staying out of the ocean to avoid sharks -- that seems to have a greater cost than benefit."

It turns out that the CDC relied on meta data to make this decision, and that led to ONE small study from Singapore leading them to say that there is less than a 10 percent chance of virus transmission outdoors, when the reality is something more like 0.1 percent.

My first thought for writers is that this a great reminder that "outliers" may be dramatic and get attention, but they should often be discounted when trying to make a sound decision or argument.

My second thought is that the CDC is doing no favors for anyone with its excessive caution. No one wants a kid to die or even become quite ill, so MAYBE we can see where someone in authority can defend requiring masks for summer camp participants.

But any thoughtful cost-benefit analysis would probably produce another set of recommendations. 

Look, I WANT to trust the CDC and government more generally. By and large, I do trust local, state and federal leaders, particularly the unelected folks who simply want what is best for Americans. But I can certainly feel some sympathy for people who cannot find that level of trust.

This whole chaotic mess reminds me of how easy it is to LOSE reputation, or have it damaged. Regaining a reputation, on the other hand, will take loads of time and effort, and may not even be possible.

For some Americans, the CDC's reputation is in tatters. I honestly don't know how it gets it back.

With great power comes... great stupidity

The chests of high school girls are back in the news with the controversy over a Florida high school yearbook adviser rather clumsily covering "offending" cleavage with Photoshop tools.

I don't know this for certain, but assume this was done at the direction of the administration of this public school. Tellingly, a group photo of the boys swim team featured them in their competition Speedos. Not much is left to guesswork about swimmers' bodies, as you can imagine.

But about 80 girls had their bodies covered in some way, though it also seems likely that their dress was fine during the actual taking of the yearbook portraits. Parents are outraged at the clear body shaming and some are demanding that the books be reprinted with the original portraits (which parents often purchase through the school).

That is incredibly expensive but that is another issue (parents' ignorance about how yearbooks are produced). My concern is that school administrators are so quick to use their power to censor, from the words of students -- even an off-campus Snapchat from a former cheerleader has appeared recently before the Supreme Court -- to dress codes.

It's not easy to be an administrator, of course, and they tend to take the heat no matter how they "rule." If you know you are going to be criticized no matter what, that should make it more attractive to simply "do the right thing."

High school girls have breasts, though it seems that the line that cannot be crossed is revealing the nipples. I'm not sure how it happened, but society has come to agreement over that (though there is a vigorous Free the Nipple movement in various parts of the country).

This time of year usually brings stories of offensive content slipping by the authorities in yearbooks as they arrive at schools. And this school is in Florida, which has become the state most likely to feature dysfunctional laws, politicians, ex-president Big Lies, and so much more.

No wonder so many American students can't wait to get out of high school. 

The power of pretending

One of my favorite bloggers is Seth Godin, who has been a thought-leader in marketing and communications for decades. He has been blogging for years and he posts something every day, 365 days per year. 

Here is today's post, in its entirety:

The Consequence

Attitude follows action far more than action follows attitude.

We change our mood as a result of how we act. if you want to feel a certain way, begin by acting s if you do. On the other hand, if you truly want to accomplish something, waiting for the mood to strike is ineffective.

As you can see, his posts can be quite brief, and the content is difficult to categorize. Some days I read the post and shrug, not seeing any connection to my interests in education and leadership. But the daily posts hit often enough that I keep subscribing. I have saved dozens of them in a folder on my computer.

This one, arriving on a Monday morning, was timed just right (for me). New week. New challenges. Entering the second week of a four-week professional writing course that I am teaching this summer (I blinked, and the course is already one quarter over!). 

Anyway, today's post reminded me of something I said to my students over many years, beginning on the very first day of class each term.

"I ask that you PRETEND to love this class. You don't need to actually love it, but it's OK if you do. It will just be so much more pleasant for me if you at least pretend to love it. In fact, if you pretend well enough it will be difficult to see the difference between pretending and real love.

"In return, here is what I say to you: I LOVE YOU. I don't really. In fact, I just met most of you so how could I possibly love you in actuality. But if I do my job of pretending to love you, to care about you, you won't be able to tell the difference."

I'm not sure my students had ever been given this trade-off or really thought of all the times in life that our best option is to PRETEND. We might pretend to be intrigued by grandpa's story that he has already shared dozen of times. We might pretend to enjoy a slice of coconut pie to spare the baker's feelings, even though we despise coconut. We might keep our eyes open and sit up straight during a church sermon that seems to repeat the same advice as always (while our minds are off somewhere else).

Being good at pretending is a secret to a happy life. And, who knows? If we pretend long enough, can we really see much difference between pretending and the real thing?

A last post on the plague... until further notice

I probably need to stop writing about the pandemic and our national dysfunction about everything from masks to vaccines, but I just wanted to try to capture some of my own confusion and angst, while also making a basic point about logic in arguments.

The CDC announced that anyone fully vaccinated is, in effect, immune (at least to the worst effects of the virus) and also unlikely to spread the virus (though there seems to be no clear evidence about that). That put a number of rational states in a bind and most states and businesses have simply dropped the mask requirement completely.

I see the Rockies announced last night that masks are no longer required at Coors Field, though there is reduced seating until June 1, when it goes up to 35,000. The best part of the announcement was that the Rockies still recommend that those not fully vaccinated continue to wear a mask... but there will be no enforcement or checking. After all, what is there to enforce?

The pandemic is over. 

But is there one person who can honestly say that their neighbors can be trusted to wear that mask without vaccination? If I have learned anything over the past five years, starting with the Trump cult and extending through the pandemic, it's that a significant percentage of Americans are willing to reject logic, expert advice, and even the evidence of their own eyes (see the incredible feats of denial by many Republican legislators regarding Jan. 6).

On the other hand, something that never really changes throughout history is that people ultimately are selfish and take care of themselves (and their loved one, mostly). 

I see that about 60 percent of Americans over 18 have had at least one shot, and the total is going up about 2 percent per week. If that holds, we could reach 70 percent fully vaccinated by July 4, as President Biden hopes. 

That means that a number of people who gleefully engage in all manner of conspiracy theories and political posturing eventually do what is best for THEM: they get the vaccine. I'm not sure why this is not stated more frequently, but the former president got vaccinated just before leaving the White House.

Fear is the great motivator, and this is universal. The race to get to an overwhelming majority of vaccinated Americans (not to mention the rest of the planet) comes down to which fear seems most immediate: tiny robots from Bill Gates injected into our arms or the threat of so many unhealthy people dying of Covid.

Those brave Americans who raise their middle finger to the government, except when their social security or PPP payments roll in, may tick me off. But, at some point, my way forward is to make sure those I love are vaccinated and ignore the naysayers.

They should not expect sympathy when they find themselves seriously ill, but they will still be cared for. Even bad neighbors are still neighbors.

The noises in my head

A newish book that is drawing some attention is Noise: A flaw in human judgment, and it's been reviewed in several publications. I heard an interview on NPR with one of the authors, and just those quick teasers are enough to get me to buy a copy for summer reading.

The book's foundation is data gathered over several years involving many different situations where people must make judgments of some sort. A study of 1.5 million court cases, for instance, found that judges issued measurably harsher sentences the day after their local football team lost. In another case, oncologists at one center correctly diagnosed 65 percent of cancers, meaning they misdiagnosed one third of the time. And a study found that one company's insurance adjusters varied up to 55 percent in the premiums they came up with.

Those variations are startling for all of us imagining that justice is blind or that doctors and insurance professionals are, well, professional and basically in agreement on cause and effect.

Those variations are "noise" and noise means we often wonder how life can be so unfair.

There is a lot of noise in education, particularly in assessment and grades, don't you think? One sophomore English class in one large high school should be similar in content and assessment to the sophomore English class being taught down the hall by another teacher. Hah! We don't need a study to doubt that.

I am not immune to some noise in my own grading practices, though it's tough to come up with a number. At some point, after reading a dozen not-so-great essays, for instance, I likely get overly excited by an essay that features an intriguing writing "voice," or simply demonstrates a strong thesis. Multiple grammar errors or some weird logic may be overlooked when it comes time to assign points. 

Could I prove scientifically that Paper A deserves precisely 10 more points than Paper B? Not a chance.

Is it possible that the time of day I read an essay affects my reaction? Almost certainly.

There is no easy fix for noise in many situations, including grading college essays, but studying that noise and how it might be reduced seems like an important step in making life just a bit more fair.

I demand a recount!

Something that I repeat to writing students is "no claims without support." I consistently encounter writers who seem quite comfortable writing things like, "Ted Lasso was the best new series of 2020," followed by... nothing.

The claim may be true -- and I agree that "Ted Lasso" was the best TV series of the past year -- but without any evidence this is not a persuasive argument. Analysis and description and comparisons would need to be added to make that initial claim persuasive. It can be as simple as adding "for example" after the initial claim.

There is a related truth about writing (and thinking), which is, "Unserious claims make the writer look unserious."

That is my shorthand version of something called "Russell's Teapot." Bertrand Russell was a British philosopher who came up with this analogy while making an argument about religion. Some find flaws in his arguments about the existence of God. But the basic point of his analogy is taught in introduction to philosophy classes.

In a nutshell: Imagine claiming that there's a tiny teapot -- too small to be seen by telescopes -- orbiting the sun. It would be very difficult or impossible to prove you wrong. But the default assumption should NOT be that the teapot exists. It's not up to other people to prove you wrong; it's up to YOU to offer credible evidence before the claim is taken seriously.

We see what happens when a claim that contains no proof becomes the basis for an entire political party in our ongoing national "debate" over whether President Biden really won the election. The wacky Arizona recount of Maricopa County's votes is the most recent specific example.

Many Republican officials are arguing that since many Republican voters don't have much faith in the presidential election results, OF COURSE we need tighter voting laws and more recounts. The "unserious" part of this is that those very people were fed a steady series of lies by the former president and his various supportive cult media networks. All evidence points to the results being accurate.

It amounts to circular logic, which is a fallacy but one that is difficult to correct when so many Americans accept an initial unsupported claim. It's tough to argue against something that is made up.

A nutty conspiracy theory is about the Covid vaccine containing tiny microchips -- perhaps too small for detection -- allowing Bill Gates to... something? Therefore, you'd be crazy to get a vaccine. If you are a person willing to accept that initial lie, then what follows is compelling.

Emotion being so powerful make me wonder if there is any way out of this downward spiraling logical nightmare.

And we're off... sort of

Yesterday marked the start of the four-week summer session and the professional writing class I am shepherding. I have never taught a class that normally spans 16 weeks in a mere month, but maybe I will be pleasantly surprised. 

My skepticism is based on there being no real time for rewriting or simply rethinking a problem or challenge or situation. For a guy who spent decades asking for multiple drafts and engaging in conversations directly with writers, the lack of a process approach seems heretical.

The sheer volume of quizzes and readings and videos and various writing assignments that students will be navigating adds to my skepticism. Fall behind by just a few days, and the inexorable torrent of work may overwhelm even the most well-meaning student.

But the concentrated approach may also force concentrated attention on writing and creating persuasive documents, free of competition with other courses. A bit of enforced focus may be just what some students need to improve. We shall see.

In a normal semester, technical problems or the lag between when a student switches sections or adds a course can wipe out 2-3 work days, adding more pressure to the few remaining.

Our first tech issue arrived on the first day, as a student emailed me saying that he could not get the PDFs of most lecture PowerPoints to download. I fiddled a bit looking for a fix, but since I don't have much to do with the nuts and bolts of creating the course in Canvas, I had no luck.

Now my students and I are at the mercy of overworked technical course managers at CSU. 

I am but a small cog in a complex and forbidding system. That's the life of an adjunct professor.

To my imagined readers

I began this weekday blogging experiment  back in January as a way to share ideas about writing with any of my college students who might find time to check in. There was no way to know who actually read anything and that means my daily blogging was really for me.

Just as the CDC stating that fully vaccinated people could dispense with masks and social distancing (with some exceptions) gave permission for the many unvaccinated people to also dispense with masks -- after all, there are no good ways to check and no penalties for refusing or just not participating -- it is also the case that once a teacher makes something optional, with no grading repercussions, the tendency is for students to NOT keep something like reading a blog on the to-do list.

BTW: the above is quite a lengthy sentence, complete with two parentheticals and an introductory dependent clause as well as a meandering independent clause. I don't think there are any clear errors in that extraordinarily long sentence, but most readers will find that sort of compound-complex sentence a challenge.

Some will simply stop at some point. Some may not even start it. But it accurately reflects the way my thinking works -- I am a fan of the parenthetical, and I wanted to connect a recent event with a more general observation about teaching and grading.

If my prime audience is me, then there is no issue with that overloaded sentence. For other audiences? Time to edit and rethink.

The point of this post is that I decided early on that I would press on with the blog. Even though the spring semester has ended, the blog will carry on.

I find it amazing that this is post #80. I'm not sure how many total words I have compiled, but I would estimate that I have averaged about 300 words per post, and that amounts to 24,000 total words.

Most modern novels weigh in between 60,000 and 100,000 words, by way of comparison. 

A favorite writing teacher named Donald Murray, who died in 2006, always said, "Nulla dies sine linea," which is a quote in Latin from Horace. It means, "Never a day without a line." 

We become better writers the way we become better at most things: regular practice. 

There is a good chance that this blog will approach nearly 100,000 words in 2021. How about that?

Wrapping up the semester / Part 3

First, I guess those Republicans in Douglas County who defiantly proclaimed that the pandemic was over had information most people didn't have. Or maybe they were lucky. Or maybe even a broken clock is accurate twice a day.

When the CDC announced yesterday that anyone fully vaccinated can dispense with masks in most social situations, that was the end of masking as either a way to protect oneself or others or simply to show solidarity with children and the immuno-compromised.

Second, this surprising turn of events comes at the very end of another trying semester for most students, the third in a row. No matter how students performed, or teachers performed, we now have a reason to look forward rather than back. 

It's tough to pay attention and focus on education when you don't feel well or if you are consumed with worry about your family and vulnerable relatives and friends, or if you feel isolated and beaten down by the world. But many of my students found a way to rise to the challenge, did what they could, met deadlines, and generally demonstrate their thinking and writing progress.

That ain't nothin'.

I am still frustrated, though increasingly philosophical, about problems students have showing me that they see the fundamental point of "no claims without support." I have simplified my teaching approach over time and find that some progress can be made simply by going back time and again to some basic truths about writing. The need for evidence lies at the very heart of persuasive writing.

I am still frustrated that students mostly can't find an extra couple minutes to read over posts and essays prior than submitting them. I remain mystified that some students can't bring themselves to even click on words that the software has underlined as being misspelled or misused.

I see so many incomplete sentences that are clearly not intended to be incomplete as a syntactical choice. And comma splices are so common that it can't be long until the "grammar powers that be" will be throwing in the towel (as they did with "hopefully" a couple years ago). After all, language is an artificial construct and the rules can change rather quickly.

I am disappointed to find that many students can identify and correct grammar and spelling and usage errors in a multiple choice test but can't translate that knowledge to their own essays. 

I have a hazy theory that many students hate writing so much that they want nothing more than to STOP writing. What is the minimum word count, they ask. Who in their right mind would spend extra minutes re-reading a discussion post prior to hitting "send"? Thank the lord that's over.

And so ends another semester of seeing the very same errors and loose logic and missed opportunities ("you were onto something, and then you seemed to lose interest"), along with the occasional insightful, passionate and compelling arguments and narratives.

Too few of the latter, but writing teachers don't need much in terms of positive news to find hope and begin creating new approaches and searching for new writing models and fine-tuning curriculum.

After all, a new school year brings a new group of students. They aren't blank slates but August will provide a new start. 

And who doesn't appreciate a new start?

We don't have to be helpless

People are only occasionally logical and often make decisions that defy reason. Draining gasoline at stations up and down the east coast due to the recent hacking of a pipeline's systems is the most recent example.

The video of older couples filling up numerous one- or two-gallon plastic gas "cans" might strike us as a liquid version of the toilet paper "run" from this time last year. 

Logically, the hoarding of extra gas based on potential shortages actually accelerates and worsens the shortage, but most of us focus on our little corner of the world and our personal fears and needs. 

Bottom line: the panicked gasoline purchasing is entirely illogical but entirely predictable. I see that President Biden will be holding a press conference to reassure the public, though I am skeptical that the public will be moved to change behaviors.

The good news about this most recent hacking incident is that our nation's appalling lack of any sort of national cyber-defense may lead to focusing the work of a lot of smart people on fortifying internet security to the level at which we fortify border or military security.

Relying on individual companies to take care of this is a silly as relying on a collection of state militias to provide for the national defense. Perhaps THIS need for federal programs to provide for our electronic security can give our politicians the needed excuse to work on some solutions... together.

Numbers can be correct but deceptive

Sometimes going out of your way to avoid criticism and blame can cause unanticipated problems, and the CDC has continued to err on the side of caution about the pandemic and how to behave.

I have no doubt that officials at the CDC are trying to do the right thing and provide the best guidance they can, but the confusion and fact-twisting that is all around us about Covid might just have something to do with ineffective communication.

For instance, in late April the CDC proclaimed some new rules for outdoor mask wearing, saying that "less than 10 percent" of virus transmissions occurred in outdoor events/situations. The truth is that the REAL percentage is closer to 0.1 percent. 

A New York Times Morning Report story said this is like saying that you have a less than 20 percent chance of being attacked by a shark -- the actual number is 150 annually worldwide. Both stats are true, but one is not only exaggerated but might change behaviors. 

The CDC has been and continues to be quite cautious, and I can appreciate that on some level. But sharing correct yet deceptive numbers is not cautious so much as political. God forbid anyone would criticize them! 

I see that a recent study found that 99.75 percent of hospitalized Covid sufferers have NOT been vaccinated. Yup, you CAN still get the virus after being vaccinated but the chances are vanishingly small. But that is a powerful statistic when trying to expand the number of people being vaccinated.

I was thinking while sitting in a funeral yesterday that there is a 100 percent chance of death for all living beings, which is true but not very helpful. The chance that I will die TODAY is quite small, and a number of choices I get to make can make that percentage even smaller. Don't juggle knives. Drive at the speed limit and stay on the correct side of the road. Avoid imbibing bleach. You get the idea. Death could still visit, but I don't spend any time worrying.

Words matter but people are often less attuned to subtle analysis than in "sound bites." We can bemoan that, I guess, but doing so is just what "smart" people do to dismiss the peasants. 

Ever wonder if professional writing is important? Just consider how shifting and unclear CDC language continues to affect politics, health, and trust in the government.

Wrapping up a semester / Part 2

There can be no doubt that it's been a weird, stressful past year and past semester, though the accumulated stress and weirdness is hard to measure. 

But I have an online class with 15 students, and I just emailed 6 of them with a friendly nudge to submit an assignment worth 75 points that involves minimal technology (a video of an under-five minute presentation) and a quick PowerPoint. I gave them until Friday to do this, despite the fact that the assignment was due last Sunday and despite the fact that the final exam was yesterday (and all but one of them completed that).

Maybe 40 percent of a class having some sort of trouble with a deadline or with technology or whatever the problem is should not be considered unusual, but I've been teaching the class for a decade and I've never seen anything like it.

You don't have to be a math major to grasp that taking a zero on a 75-point assignment in a course that offers a total of 825 points can drop your grade by as much as a full letter. I also know grades aren't everything and some students may be fine with a C rather than a B. As much of America likes to chant, "Freedom!" 

But I also know that many college students consider any mark under an A to be a failure. Such a failure, BTW, may be blamed on the instructor -- and I'm sure good argument can be made to that end. But not submitting assignments? There's no subjectivity in grading in that case.

There will come a time when researchers have enough time, perspective, and data to provide us with a clearer picture of how the plague affected students at all grade levels. That time is years away.

But my anecdotal evidence is clear right now: college students are struggling more than ever.

Wrapping up a semester / Part 1

Finals week for many universities has arrived -- and many high schools are down to their last 2-3 weeks of instruction this school year -- and that is both a relief and a challenge.

One of the best things about teaching is that we get to finish something, no matter how flawed our performance, and recharge for another attempt.

But my many years of teaching have taught me that many of our grand plans have been compromised at this point in the year and that I always experience a mix of satisfaction ("hey, that was quite good") and remorse about missed opportunities or ideas/lessons/assignments that seemed so attractive months ago but that just never connected as I hoped.

And so I, and many other instructors in many disciplines, will be doing some reflection in the coming weeks about focusing on what is truly important, what could be added or subbed in for existing content, or writing assignments or technological tools that might benefit everyone.

Many college courses traditionally suffer a bit from opting for breadth over depth, but there is a trend among professor types to consider going a bit "smaller," as I often hear it discussed. As is often the case, secondary teachers have been choosing more depth over more breadth for decades, but this past year or so, in particular, has reminded post-secondary teachers that nothing can be on "autopilot" any more. 

Instructors are often given basic ideas about how many "major" assignments a particular writing course should contain. I honestly don't know how to define "major," though I suspect for most institutions the measurement is in total pages (a research course might require a 12-15 page final paper, for instance). 

In the Composing Arguments class I am just finishing, "major" tends to mean an essay over 600 words -- but that is MY interpretation. I find that my responses to students are much more targeted and specific when I don't have to wade through thousands of words.

Who is to say whether an essay of 800 words is less work than an essay of 1,200 words?

I hope to continue thinking about the end of term and how we measure writing skill throughout this week's blog entries.

Why would social media ever lead me astray?

I know. I know. You're tired of hearing about all the vaccine problems (and successes). Let's just get on with it.

But the raw data in Colorado that I saw today indicates that counties with higher rates of vaccination are experiencing LOWER rates of Covid infection. And not at all surprising, counties with lower rates of vaccination are seeing higher infection rates. 

There will always be some people who refuse to be vaccinated, I suppose, though it is interesting that there seems to be a hierarchy of refusal. Most children get the measles vaccine, for instance, and the CDC website claims that about 90 percent of American children have received that vaccine before they are two years old.

But today's New York Times found that a large percentage of parents say they won't be rushing to get their children vaccinated against Covid when the CDC makes that possible. The reason may be as simple as the measles vaccine has a long history of not causing dangerous side effects and has been proven to protect people from what used to be a dangerous disease.

A lot of parenting is done by "feel" and faith, and a lot of decisions parents make are based on what THEY remember their own parents doing. A family doctor can certainly be influential. But no one wants to put their child at risk, even though logic says that even worse things might happen if children's immune systems are left to themselves.

Mesa County in Colorado, a firmly red area of the state, has found at least four cases of the nasty Indian Covid variant this past week.

Want to guess about the area's vaccination rate?

You're not the boss of me!

I see that various entities are offering free beer, tickets to events and even $100 gift cards to each person who gets a vaccine. Over half of American adults have had at least one shot and that has made some difference in serious cases and deaths. But the "low hanging fruit" has already been picked -- in terms of those eager to get vaccinated -- and now comes the slog of reaching at least another 20 percent of adults prior to July 4. That would meet President Biden's new goal of 70 percent of adults vaccinated.

Think about that. A disturbingly large percentage of Americans needs even more convenience and more incentives to save their own lives. Many bemoan the political divides and how a weird "freedom" cult has decided that vaccines are evil or unnecessary or dangerous... and the line they will not cross.

Driving a few miles for a vaccine that could allow them to drop the masks, hang with friends, and more, is just too much, too cumbersome.

I'm sure everyone has an excuse of some sort to explain not finding time since the first of the year to get a shot, but laziness has to be the explanation for a healthy percentage of those not vaccinated.

I can imagine many people thinking, "Well, if someone can come to the office or even my front door with a syringe, I guess I could find a few spare minutes to make myself and my family safer."

All the hesitation has already guaranteed that we will not achieve herd immunity, since there are so many variants that have developed due to so many cases of the virus. So a Covid shot will join our other annual "booster" vaccine, for flu.

We are about to add vaccinated or refusing vaccination to the list of characteristics of our competing "sides" in America. We will soon have locations that have defeated the virus, while a few miles down the road people will be getting sick, maybe seriously, for years to come.

It's a weird and puzzling way to explore freedom.

You know who won't be enjoying that freedom? College students. An increasing number of schools are mandating that students be vaccinated prior to returning to campus this fall. For those brave souls who are not planning on college and who "want to do more research" on vaccines, the economic and political divide will widen.

And it won't be in their favor.

Someone to watch over me

An on-going argument that gets at the heart of the American system is over how much input and oversight government should have in our lives. To simplify, a significant group of people prefer less oversight ("government is the problem") and another large group sees benefits in having government heavily involved in business and health and safety issues.

Of course, there is quite a range of opinions that lie along the continuum that runs from "leave us alone" to "regulate everything." Intelligent debate and discussion tends to lie somewhere between the extremes.

I was thinking about this today when I read that Peloton is recalling its treadmills after at least one child died and at least 29 others were injured by the exercise devices. Individual families are the source of the complaints and the data had to be compiled by the government. The Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a warning on April 17 about the machines and posted a YouTube video showing a child pulled under the equipment.

Not surprisingly, the company initially called the warning "inaccurate and misleading," and said they would not be recalling the treadmills. 

But the reality of the data and the threat of lawsuits and the horrible publicity combined to change Peloton's position. 

I suppose a few child death's won't move the needle in our continuing debate about the role of government, but a lot of Americans are reminded today that someone needs to oversee manufacturers and food processors and providers of services. Failure to do so can lead to death and injury.

Some will argue that our system eventually weeds out the charlatans and the cost-cutters and the simply negligent companies and manufacturers. That may be true.

But how much suffering and injury and death and injustice should we be OK with until the system corrects itself? I opt for "the least possible," and that is why I welcome governmental experts investigating our products and services when warranted.

Curse of the curse words

Washington Post reporter Robert Barnes started off his story previewing the Brandi Levy Supreme Court case with this lead:

The high school cheerleader relegated to the JV squad for another year responded with a fleeting fit of frustration: a photo of her upraised middle finger and another word that begins with F.

“F—- school, f—- softball, f—- cheer, f—- everything,” 14-year-old Brandi Levy typed into Snapchat one spring Saturday. Like all “snaps” posted to a Snapchat “story,” this one sent to about 250 “friends” was to disappear within 24 hours, before everyone returned to Pennsylvania’s Mahoney Area High School on Monday.

Public writing, and formal persuasive writing in particular, tends to avoid using vulgarities (George Carlin's famous Seven Words) but there are times when those very words become part of the discussion. The above is the lead to a news story, not an argument per se, but the writer managed to make the situation clear while adding a bit of lightness to what might turn out to be an extremely important case for student free expression rights.

What might catch your eye (and ear, should you take a moment to read the first sentence aloud) is the alliteration of "fleeting fit of frustration," which sets readers up for a more earthy fourth F-word. 

A serious debate can be had about whether not simply writing the full word is silly or insulting or simply unnecessary, but it's difficult to imagine any reader of the Post not being able to fill in the blanks. 

So the choice to opt for something slightly less vulgar is a compromise. I certainly would not recommend obscuring the offending word to the point that readers are left to imagine what was so terrible. For instance, "Brandi Levy hurriedly typed a vulgar Snapchat message into her phone..." 

From the august position of seasoned adult, this entire situation might seem both amusing and quintessentially high school behavior. But the school certainly didn't think it was inconsequential and, as I mentioned yesterday, the school imposed a one-year punishment on Brandi. You might blithely shrug off the idea of not being allowed to cheer for a school team for a year -- let's face it: most people seem to enjoy mocking cheerleaders -- and might even think the school had done her a favor.

But imagine the implications of living in a society where a government institution exerts power over not only on-campus student behavior and speech but over speech and behavior in the home or on the street. 

But beyond the serious questions this case brings us, the introduction to the story is a model of being factual, with a side of fun with language, and setting the scene for readers who want to know how this all began.

Beyond smart diction and syntax points, this story should remind us of a constant struggle between those with power and those without much (and who could have less power than students?) to control expression.

We will learn what the court says this summer.

 

Free speech for me but not for thee

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments regarding the case of Brandi Levy and her punishment by the school back in 2017 (when she was 14) for her using some vulgarity in a Snapchat that was copied by someone in her Snapchat Friends group when she did not make the varsity team. That emotional and frustrated message was shared with her cheer coach and Brandi was suspended for a year from being part of the squad.

Here's the thing: she sent the message from off-campus and never intended it to be public. Full disclosure, here are the eight words of her message: “Fuck school fuck softball fuck cheer fuck everything"

I know. Shocking.

Levy sued and a lower court held that her First Amendment rights had been violated. The school district appealed and eventually this seemingly innocuous incident eventually arrived in the nation's highest court.

It's no Tinker vs. Des Moines, and it doesn't deal with life and death issues, like the Vietnam War, as that 1969 case did. But since that Tinker decision favored the students and their black armbands protest, it is a bit disturbing that the Supreme Court has not ruled in favor of any high schools students in subsequent free expression cases.

The Tinker case is famous for "Students and teachers do not shed their rights at the schoolhouse gate." It was a landmark case and one that many journalism teachers and even state legislatures have relied upon over more than 50 years. 

As usual, the powers that be found the idea that students, of all people, might actually exercise some of the basic freedoms our nation holds so dear a bit frightening. Thus, a number of more recent cases have chipped away at student free expression.

"My God! We can't have the animals running the zoo!"

I have hopes that the court will side with the student here, particularly since her suspension in moot -- she's not going back to her freshman year cheer squad. The idea of schools policing the speech of students no matter where they may be in our digitally connected world seems to be a clear overstepping of power.

I also assume that the court's decision will be quite narrow and that both sides will be able to claim some vindication. 

After all, she was just a high school student, and we all know that they can't be fully trusted until they are at least voting age. Many Americans seem to worship the concept of freedom as if it were Holy Writ, but the idea that EVERYONE enjoys that freedom? A bit too much for us, I'm afraid.

Tomorrow I plan to share some thoughts on a model piece of writing that a journalist published on the case and the hearing.