Time to begin rethinking some writing assignments for 2023

One goal of mine for winter break is to beef up some of my units/lessons for "Composing Arguments," the First Year Writing course I have taught for over a decade for Metro State University. All courses need a refresh every once in a while, but when an instructor is consistently disappointed by student performance in a particular assignment, there is no time to waste.

A classic argument genre I like to use is the "critical review," which asks the writer to analyze and judge, with the intention of being helpful for the reader who is trying to decide how to allocate limited money, time, or attention.

One staple for all teaching is the model, or series of models, and I clearly need to be more intentional about which models I choose and how I share them with students. 

The immediate cause here is that most of the reviews I have been reading over the past few years have been underwhelming, if not downright horrible.

Here is a sample review (chosen for length and timeliness rather than artistic value) from the New York Times site on a somewhat new Netflix release called "the Noel Diary" that fits this time of year:

The actor Justin Hartley, who won fame on “This Is Us,” is no stranger to the themes in the holiday romance “The Noel Diary.” The yearning of adoptees, the tug of interracial connections and the repercussions of a family tragedy should ring a welcome bell for fans of NBC’s wonderfully weepy melodrama.

In the movie, Hartley plays Jake Turner, a best-selling author who returns to his estranged mother’s home in Connecticut after her death. He learns she had become a hoarder — though a notably hygienic one — and finds a journal by an unknown author amid the clutter.

A young woman pens her worries onto its pages in the movie’s opening scene.

Barrett Doss (“Station 19”) brings nuanced comedic timing and charm to Rachel, whose search for her birth mother — the journal writer — has led her to Jake’s childhood home, where she’s seen standing tentatively across the street.

Although Rachel is engaged, the two immediately share a spark, one stoked by their road trip to Jake’s even more estranged father in hopes of learning about Rachel’s mother.

James Remar, Bonnie Bedelia and Essence Atkins do nicely buttressing work as Jake’s rueful dad, a compassionate neighbor and Rachel’s birth mother. And the director Charles Shyer brings a journeyman’s ease to the screenplay (based on Richard Paul Evans’s novel by the same name): embracing holiday movie expectations here, gently deflecting them there.

The roadways are as snow-dappled as the town of Maple Falls, where a showing of a holiday classic further bonds the traveling pair. Their on-the-road revelations offer hints of what could turn out to be a wonderful life. While this will come as heartwarming news for sentimental viewers, it’s sure to leave one unsuspecting fiancé out in the cold.

Worth discussing: How important to a reader are references to actors the public may know previously? How important is briefly summarizing the overall theme of a movie? How important is giving readers a rough plot summary? How important is it to not simply give away the ending to a new film?

And one thing about the above review, which is rather brief (288 words is too brief for a college argument, so I would be asking for something closer to 600 or more): How important is it to provide examples that support claims made in a review? I highlighted two unsupported claims that a reader might have questions about. Students might wonder what "buttressing" means, and "a journeyman's ease" is so vague that it practically demands more examination and explanation. 

In the end, the above sample review is well-written while remaining remarkable free of "nutritional value," so to speak. Is that what we want our arguments to amount to?

Locally, we worry about the cold snap; nationally, we just worry

I subscribe to a free daily e-newsletter called WT Just Happened Today, and it always begins with a (long) one-sentence summary of the top news as chosen by this site. Here was yesterday's:

Today in one sentence: The Jan. 6 Committee formally accused Trump of inciting an insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., and obstructing Congress’ Jan. 6 joint session, and unanimously voted to refer the crimes to the Justice Department for prosecution; the House Ways and Means Committee is expected to vote Tuesday on whether to make six years of Trump’s tax records public; a federal appeals court rejected an effort by 19 Republican-led states to keep a Trump-era border policy in place; the Senate gave final approval to an $858 billion defense spending bill; the national average for gasoline dropped to $3.14 a gallon; nearly half of 18-to-29-year-olds live at home with their parents; and 65% of Americans say the country is on the wrong track and not headed in the right direction.

This sort of "headline" approach rarely provides much true insight, but does provide some sort of broad sampling of what is going on. I knew something about each of these items, but seeing them all strung together with the help of our friend the semicolon really caught my eye.

It's tough to miss the news about the Jan. 6 Committee (and the soon-to-shift committee power with the Angry White People Party soon to take over the House), and I have no idea where all this is going. It is nice, however, to have an on-going process finally reach a clear conclusion. 

Our border policies are chaotic, as is most everything happening around immigration, and it is certain that we won't be making any helpful changes in the coming year or two, thanks to that slight R majority in the House. I don't know what the clear solution is to it all, but voters really can't complain much about the government doing nothing when they opt for split chambers. That will not keep the whining and moaning from continuing, of course, much like all those "thoughts and prayers" will not stop or even diminish the slaughter of our fellow Americans with guns. Freedom!

The Defense bill came in many billions OVER what President Biden proposed, which shows that however much partisan debate there is, we can all agree that showering the military with unimaginable funding always passes. If having more guns in the country than people remains our policy, it's tough to argue against providing ever-more money for the Pentagon. And both are equally effective.

A gallon of gas had dropped almost $2 since summer, and no one gives Biden any credit. He doesn't really deserve any, in fact, but he also did not deserve all the criticism when rich oligarchs pushed the prices so high for several months. We are a country of morons.

Learning that a huge percentage of young Americans are basically delaying their full entry into adulthood is distressing. It also tells us a lot about the economy and job opportunities. And why wouldn't young people, many coddled a bit too much by anxious parents, think living in their parent's basement sounds like a bad idea?

Bottom line: nearly two-thirds of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction, but I would guess there is virtually no consensus as to what direction the nation should be heading. What could be more American than complaining to no effect (as with gas prices)?

We are becoming a nation with no true leaders other than the technocrats who keep things running, enforce rules, and issue checks. 

Maybe someone will show up to take on that role in the coming year. We can hope.

You can't run and you can't hide

It took almost three years, but Covid finally caught up to Kathleen and me about a week ago... and we are now on the backside of the illness (which resembled a bad cold more than anything else). The timing could have been worse, since we are confident that we will be well past the infectious stage (not to mention the sneezing/coughing stage) by the time Saturday rolls around. That is when we fly to Seattle for Christmas.

I am thankful that we both had our flu shots (super shots for seniors!) as well as five total vaccine shots, with the most recent being in September for the Omicron variant, which is likely what got us in the end. But we are not in the hospital or dead or otherwise impaired... and that could be sheer luck but more likely is due to the support our aging immune systems received from our various shots, not to mention staying home more than we would have guessed prior to the pandemic.

We have discussed how and where and when we might have been exposed... and we might have exposed one another in the end. There are no good answers since we were among several large groups in the past couple weeks, mostly involving holiday concerts and churches. We aren't sure exactly when we became "positive," since that may happen days before any symptoms show.

We finally did those at-home tests last Thursday, despite feeling that our colds were exactly like past colds, pre-pandemic, so today may mark one week of Covid, or maybe a bit more. The CDC says on its site that all should be well about five days after symptoms subside, so we feel OK about flying (masked) to Seattle on Christmas Eve.

We have delayed getting together with Lesley, Ian, and girls until after we return from Seattle "in an abundance of caution." as they say.

Bottom line: we feel fortunate that our Covid encounter didn't overwhelm, though today's story that China now predicts up a million deaths from Covid in the next few months is sobering. 

They seem to face some of the same problems the U.S. did in suffering our own million deaths over the past three years. China's extreme lockdown policies appear to have simply delayed the inevitable, and they have not convinced most of their elderly to get vaccines, etc. Their own vaccines may not be as effective, which may end up being one of those "national pride" situations that backfire. Who knows?

The U.S. deaths now are concentrated among the over-65 population (90 percent!), and it turns out that being old equals being vulnerable to this virus, no matter the race or location of the population. 

We are hopeful that we did not inadvertently spread the virus while infectious, but I suppose we can only feel a tiny bit of guilt. After all, the virus is everywhere and we are all behaving as if it's no big deal. I never really believed we were invulnerable, but going so long without catching even a minor illness might have led us to taking a few extra chances. Perhaps we were blissfully "naive."

At some point, though, we have to come to grips with the fact that we did everything we could, for as long as we could. My hope is that our systems are now even more strongly protected, since our immune systems were called upon to fight the nasty bug. We may be stronger in the coming year.

Maybe the virus is not a big deal at this point for a huge chunk of the Western World population, but tell that to the hundreds of thousands of Chinese who will be suffering and dying in 2023. 

Two similes, a metaphor, and an allusion in today's model sentences

You can find great sports writing quite easily, partly because the very nature of sports contains all the elements of story-telling: characters, setting, challenges/problems, and resolution. Sports are also just plain fun and people are so passionate about them.

This week's Frank Bruni feature on "for the love of sentences" reminded me of that, though I will share just a couple examples as we wrap up the week and the semester. The following sentence ends with a striking simile: 

The New York Times’s coverage of the World Cup has brimmed with too many standout passages to mention, but here’s a characteristically excellent one from Rory Smith, regarding Portugal’s often underwhelming play: “The country has for years boasted enough individual talent to match any team on the planet and yet, under the aegis of Fernando Santos, it has been assiduously, unapologetically, and in many ways successfully dour, as if a group of the finest artists in the world had been gathered together and asked to wallpaper a bedroom.”

There is something about our relatively slower sports -- like soccer and baseball -- that seems to inspire writers. Maybe that is due to writers having time to process what happens on the field, with plenty of time to speculate about the causes of great success or spectacular failures... not to mention the quirky, driven personalities who dominate at the highest level of sports.

This soccer writing features a provocative metaphor:

Andrew Das, also covering the World Cup for The Times, described a match in which Brazil grew frustrated and “pivoted to some of soccer’s darker arts: dives and flops, shirt pulls and shoves and appeals to the referee for justice. None of it worked. Croatia had brought a vise to a gunfight, and for more than two long hours on Friday it calmly and methodically squeezed the life and the joy out of Brazil.”

It helps if our students realize the expected cliche is "a knife to a gunfight," but it's not strictly necessary for them to get the idea. 

This comparison requires the reader to be familiar with both a 1981 movie and recent controversies with Ye and a fellow-bigot dining with the former president:

And Bret Stephens rued our country’s trajectory: “Pretty depressing how American culture has descended from ‘My Dinner With Andre’ to that dinner with Kanye.”

For most of our students, this may be asking too much, and it's a good reminder that allusions always assume a lot from our readers. Handle with care. 

And let's finish with another simile:

An unsigned article in The Economist asserted: “Trying to learn about sex from Hollywood is like watching James Bond for tips on a career as a British civil servant.” 

This one appealed to me both as a nice figure of speech but also because we have decided to revisit our James Bond collection of DVDs, combining Friday nights with the movies in chronological order and pizza night. 

There's little meaning to be found in those movies and lots of things to criticize and bemoan, but if we turn off our critical minds for a couple hours each Friday evening, what's the harm?

Don't look now, but the machines are catching up

From today's Seth Godin post:

Typing the right things into Google makes it more likely you will find what you’re looking for.

Now, with GPT and Stable Diffusion and other machine learning AI tools gaining widespread use, there’s a gap between people who are simply stumbling around with silly short prompts and folks who are figuring out how to engineer an excellent prompt.

We’re all the boss. Giving better instructions gets better results.

I have been fiddling with ChatGPT for a few days, establishing an OpenAI account and experimenting with various prompts that might approximate assignments I make in my online writing classes. 

Here's a quick example:

My prompt that I shared with the AI software: write a Hallmark TV movie parody opening scene. 

What the software came up with: 

As the camera pans across a cozy suburban neighborhood, the narrator's voiceover begins:

"Welcome to the town of Maplewood, where the picket fences are white, the yards are perfectly manicured, and the residents all seem to have picture-perfect lives. But as we all know, things are never as they seem...

Cut to a montage of scenes showing the main characters: a perky housewife struggling with her husband's infidelity, a single mom working two jobs to make ends meet, and a high school mean girl scheming to ruin her classmates' lives.

"Join us for an emotional rollercoaster of love, heartbreak, and triumph as we explore the deep, dark secrets of Maplewood," the narrator continues. "Will love conquer all? Or will the town's hidden skeletons come back to haunt its inhabitants? Tune in to find out on tonight's episode of 'Maplewood Lane: A Hallmark TV Movie Parody.'"

Not a bad starting point for something more, IMHO. Note the choice of "Maplewood" for the town name, which is entirely the computer's decision. Note the rhythm of "three" in that second graf (fences are white. yards are manicured, and all seem to live perfect lives. Note the main characters that the software created: a housewife, a single mom and a mean girl. I don't know why they are all female, but the AI knows that female characters are usually the leads in Hallmark movies. 

Of course, the AI also chose to explicitly create a title for the show that gives away the fact that the show is a parody, which is a bit clunky. 

But there is quite a bit to work with here if I were trying to write such a script. There would be lots to do to develop each main character, plus the supporting characters we would need. But I would have some basic themes to work with, including the importance of love as well as the carefully hidden "sins" that many in the town would like to keep covered up.

Let's face it: students will soon be exploring AI software for writing assignments, among other things, which makes Mr. Godin's advice about teaching how to write more sophisticated prompts quite timely. 

The point is not that traditional writing assignments are going to become obsolete (though they certainly MIGHT) but that we can add ChatGPT to student "toolboxes," along with spellcheck and grammar check.

The best writing often surprises us. In our little parody test above, I have say I was a bit surprised, and in a good way.

The 'magic' of science is hard to resist

The announcement of a successful test of nuclear fusion yesterday, which produced more power than it took to create the very fast reaction, is a reminder that progress in many areas of life are not obvious or even on most people's radar. 

If lots of technical challenges can be overcome -- and it likely will take decades for that -- fusion offers a way to further disentangle fossil fuels and even nuclear fission from the power grid. The process produces no harmful radiation or other environmental damage. It's the stuff of Star Trek or other sci-fi shows and books.

I assume the development of cell phones was somewhat similar, with decades of work going into the technology and then the "sudden" release of smart phones. 

The food synthesizers of Star Trek are a great example of a fictional breakthrough that quickly changes attitudes toward food and hunger... though most viewers have no idea HOW a machine creates food on demand. there has to be some sort of fuel, I would think, or at least some substance to mold into a requested hot tea or ice cream sundae. 

We should not passively sit back and hope that scientists will "solve" or at least minimize problems like affordable energy and the abolition of hunger, and we should always be alert for how technological leaps might turn out to be negative.

Smart phones are a terrific example of "unintended consequences" and how the ubiquitous phone connects everyone at all times, though only tenuously, and how the phone contributes to shorter attention spans, distracted driving and walking, etc. 

Barring some disaster, we don't go backwards technologically. Smart phones will not go away any time soon, nor will artificial intelligence or online shopping through Amazon. Our only hope is to find best ways to incorporate tech into our lives without losing our humanity.

During an online department meeting for Metro yesterday (a wrap up for the semester), I brought up ChatGPT, the newly released AI software that does a solid job of mimicking human speech and sentence construction.

It was apparent that I was the only one of the college teachers who had actually established an OpenAI account and experimented with the program. In fact, the chair clearly thought the samples of essays that she had read in the media were not "up to snuff." Maybe, but technology tends to pick up momentum and how long will it take for the ChatGPT responses to create well-argued essays and posts that are indistinguishable (maybe better!) than even solid college writers?

As usual, universities will hang back until they are forced to recognize new trends and then will try to hustle to create new policies and ethics documents. They will be flawed since they will be rushed. 

But it occurred to me that it shouldn't be the 72-year-old writing instructor who is fiddling with AI for writing... at least not ONLY me. 

At least one of my teaching peers described the AI-produced writing as "terrifying," which led me to mention that for many of the students I work with there might be some good coming out of quickly creating a basic essay structure. Would it be top-notch? Probably not (for a while) but a solid start can lead to giving young writers a foundation on which to add specific examples, for instance. 

My initial experiments have produced solid short pieces filled with assorted claims. Most of those claims are not supported with specific examples. Perhaps THAT will be the future of student writing: expanding and sharpening arguments that begin with machine-created claims.

Yes, AI could go horribly wrong, but it might become a useful tool to produce better thinkers and better writers. 

It will be up to us, if we take the time to explore.

Sometimes we need to return to the 'obvious'

This week's Scott Young blog post featured some thoughts based on the idea that "everything is obvious once you know the answer," and the timing connected perfectly with this week, which is the last of the fall semester for my college writing classes.

His conclusion is that most people he knows tend to fall into one of two camps when it comes to taking and using advice.

I, of course, translated "most people" into "most students." A large group of students believe in "secrets." They are quite certain that there are special methods and ideas that can make you a successful academic writer (or any sort of writer). They are in the class hoping I will reveal those secrets. I have met so many students who believe there must be some sort of "recipe" that they can follow on the road to success.

A second group of students believes they already know what to do to succeed, but that a lack of willpower, motivation, or talent is holding them back. These may be students who have been exhorted to "work harder," whatever that means.

Perhaps the lack of rapid progress among my college writers is due to most students missing the "obvious" points... despite me repeating them over and over all term. 

The problem may be that advice like "show, don't tell," and "no claims without support" are too obvious to many students, since they have heard teachers urging them to write with those simple ideas in mind for years. 

Here is Young's concluding sentence: "... it’s about figuring out which boring, yet plausible, account of how things work is actually right."

I will try to keep this idea more firmly in my head as I make adjustments in the spring semester courses I will take on, and am thinking I should make this idea explicit in my first week's readings. Maybe THAT tactic will flip some sort of switch and allow students to unlock the many examples they have in their memories and finally share them on paper (or the screen, in my case). 

I suspect that students tend to find my repeating "show us" and "use specific examples" as boring because I am a bit bored simply typing versions of those two pieces of writing advice over and over, for years and years, with little evidence that anyone is incorporating tried and true advice into their essays, reviews, and reports. 

Some of my college writers think they are poor writers because they aren't solid on basic grammar and sentence structure, and while I do want college writers to be more precise in their mechanics, what is really at the heart of their writing problems is that they can't seem to create a clear thesis/claim to work from. 

Many just sit down at the computer and start "writing their way" into what they want to say... and once they finally get to a meaningful point they almost always choose to not return to all the junk they used to get themselves there. 

Just typing the above statement into this blog leads me to a new goal for this spring: Slow down the course early and concentrate on strong theses and claims... and only then ask for more complete essays that provide compelling evidence that will back up those claims.

My error has been to assume that my college students had covered how to write a solid claim in high school and earlier college classes. 

That is an assumption that is not working.

More evidence that famous people often have little connection to intelligence, judgment

Our politics have been heading toward "all performance, all the time" in recent years, with few substantive debates or even conversations about issues that might benefit Americans who need some support or some options.

That Trump is all in on being a performance artist is so established that we hardly flinch when he calls for "terminating" part or all of the U.S. Constitution. That's a real issue for us all, as his bizarre authoritarianism has become normalized. Normalizing hate and bigotry and assorted specialties of Trumpism is the gateway to disaster.

But his acolytes don't want to be left out of the public eye for long, and here is the lead to today's report in the Washington Post on the reactions to a Angry White People Party representative:

The White House on Monday strongly condemned the claim from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) that she and former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon would have executed a successful attack on Jan. 6, 2021, if they had organized the storming of the U.S. Capitol and they would have “been armed.”

The divisive Republican pushed back on theories that she was a ringleader of the violent incident that left more than 100 law enforcement officers injured. “I want to tell you something, if Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, we would’ve been armed,” Greene said Saturday at a dinner hosted by the New York Young Republican Club, according to the New York Post.

Deputy White House press secretary Andrew Bates said the comments were a “slap in the face” to the law enforcement officers who risked their lives to keep Greene and other lawmakers safe from the violent mob seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and stop Congress from counting the electoral votes for Joe Biden’s win over President Donald Trump.

Two thoughts about the wacko Greene: she was playing to the crowd at the Young Republicans Club -- I am certain they cheered wildly -- and she reminds us that boasting without any need to actually DO anything is not limited to males.

Here's a stat I read just this morning: over the past few years the country has added over 15 MILLION AR-15 style weapons to our personal stockpiles of guns. So, yes, she and Bannon likely could have brought together many militant revolutionaries, each armed with a death-spewing semi-automatic weapon. 

Next time, they likely will.

I'm not sure if Bannon is delighted to be lumped in with Greene, but it hardly matters. 

If Greene represents even a tiny percentage of the Republican Party, that percentage is too large and quite frightening. She wants power and she holds out the promise of power to lots of depressed and lonely and aggrieved followers.

Her misuse of her position and her extreme positions add to the classroom teacher's job to encourage rational debate and argument. And there are many others just like her (but less obsessed with the spotlight).

And there's Sinema, of course, so Dems can't claim to be immune to longing for publicity at all costs.

And the country's level of discourse continues to plunge.

The 'final five' notable quotes of the year

Today I share the final five "top quotes" from 2022, as chosen by those in charge of a supplement to the New Yale Book of Quotations, with personal commentary.

6. “Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie?” — U.S. President Joe Biden, calling out for deceased Congresswoman Jackie Walorski, White House conference on ending hunger, Sept. 28.

Catching the rich and powerful making errors is always fun (schadenfreude) and this one adds the concern that our now-80-year-old president may be a bit foggy from time to time. But so am I and I am eight years younger. If I were a Republican operative in the coming election cycle, this quote would be irresistible.

As is usually the case, the quote itself doesn't make much sense without added context, a good reminder to our reporters to include enough context for readers who weren't there (which is almost all of them) can follow along.

7. “FTX is fine. Assets are fine.” — Sam Bankman-Fried, a Twitter post shortly before his cryptocurrency exchange FTX declared bankruptcy, Nov. 7.

I enjoy irony, though I worry about the "new normal" for the rich and powerful to simply lie outright about decisions and even facts. Trump did not begin this deluge of blatantly lying, but he certainly expanded on the practice since he has never really suffered from his twisting of truth. 

From a rhetorical standpoint, those two three-word sentences are quite powerful. They remind us that when we want to make a strong claim, going with a shorter sentence is usually our best choice.

8. “If you’re the President of the United States, you can declassify just by saying ‘It’s declassified,’ even by thinking about it.” — Trump, Fox News interview, Sept. 21.

This quote makes the list partially due to its sheer looniness and partially as a marker of a precise moment when the ex-president may have crossed into some serious mental illness. I was reminded of the Maya Angelou quote: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

The teaching point is not to stubbornly print whatever weird quote comes from a source but to evaluate just how "media-savvy" a source is. If a freshman makes some wacky claim just to get attention or shock, we can certainly choose NOT to share that with the world. We are not out to embarrass our community. But if the principal makes a wacky statement, that seems like fair game.

9. “The U.S. News rankings are profoundly flawed ... As a result, we will no longer participate.” — Heather Gerken, Yale Law School statement on U.S. News & World Report law school rankings, Nov. 16.

This quote might function as the gateway to more in-depth coverage of how students are making college choices and whether they are affected by these ratings. We could also discuss more deeply the fact that people LOVE rankings and if the "U.S. News" feature goes away, something else will replace it. 

10. “African American voters are voting at just as high a percentage as Americans.” — U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, remarks at news conference, Jan. 19.

One last shot of schadenfreude here, with McConnell clearly leaving out the word "other" before "Americans." If he were that freshman boy I referenced earlier, we should give him a chance to amend his initial statement. But the guy is the minority leader of the U.S. Senate and showing members of the Angry White People Party denigrating Black voters is too on-the-nose to ignore.

I would never claim that an entire year could be captured through ten carefully chosen quotes, but this list could become something for our students to compile for themselves, on a more local level. 

What would be the top ten key moments from this past year for your students?

First five of the top ten notable quotes of the year

Teaching young reporters how to identify information that needs to be fully and accurately quoted is not easy. Raw rookies tend to quote almost everything they bring back from an interview. After all, someone definitely said what they heard and took notes on (or recorded).

But just as most novelists don't rely completely on dialog, reporters need to use direct quotations strategically and in the service of advancing the story.

A well-chosen quote from an authoritative source not only creates "voice" on the page but also provides a starting point for more in-depth analysis. And sometimes a single quote can become the anchor for our memories of an event or situation or trend.

An official at the Yale Law Library released his 2022 list of such quotes, a supplement to the New Yale Book of Quotations, and I am sharing the first five today (the final five on Friday), with personal commentary.

1. “I need ammunition, not a ride.” — Zelenskyy, response to U.S. offer to transport him to safety, Feb. 26. 

Zelenskyy was named Time magazine Person of the Year last night, and this quote helps us remember why the Ukraine president has become a near-universal symbol of standing up to raw power. Is it just coincidence that the U.S. is beset with legal and political cases that boil down to whether the powerful can create their own rules?

2. “Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” — Trump, post on Truth Social network, Dec. 3.

This is just the most recent egregious Trump pronouncement, but it's a doozy, implying that the Orange One doesn't care even a tiny bit about democracy or citizenship. He is an addled narcissist. (Was that too strong?)

The quote is from a social media post, so it comes complete with odd capitalization that is characteristic of the past president. Reporters normally correct grammar and confusing syntax when sharing quotes in the interest of clarity for readers (not to protect the speaker). Quoting from written documents demands more strict quoting rules.

3. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start.” — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, writing in the court’s opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade and took away women’s constitutional protections for abortion, June 24.

Most people suspected that our lopsidedly radical conservative court would cause problems for the country, but this was the key decision that brought vague fears into focus. Alito has since come under scrutiny for giving select supporters advance notice of court decisions and he seems increasingly belligerent and willing to throw our culture into disarray.

As a direct quote, it stands as a claim, and once stated the reporter can dig into the support offered for that claim (as well as opposing views). But we need somewhere to begin.

4. “The Court reverses course today for one reason and one reason only: because the composition of this Court has changed.” — U.S. Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, writing in the dissenting opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, June 24.

Sometimes a quote can capture the essence of the moment perfectly, and few on either side of the abortion issue could really argue against this dissenting view. It's not spicy but it's crystal clear, and that makes for a great direct quote.

5. “Will Smith just smacked the s--- out of me.” — Comedian Chris Rock at the Academy Awards ceremony, March 27.

Here we have a quote that requires some "sanitizing," as "shit" is likely to offend enough readers of the mainstream press (and of the high school press, for sure) that the use of the common vulgarity can become the story over the sense of the overall quotation. 

The vulgarity was bleeped during the televised Oscar Awards, of course, for that reason. It's worth a discussion in class to talk about where we draw the line on vulgarity, and whether we are being condescending to bleep words that most readers are quite aware of.

What we don't want reporters and editors to do is completely change the offending word to something like "crap." That amounts to changing the impact and intent of the quote. 

We can always choose to paraphrase instead of quote, and that allows more latitude in diction.

More tomorrow.

Threats to democracy come from within our system

In perhaps the most blatant attempt to replace what most Americans think representative democracy is with an autocracy that grows from raw power, the Supreme Court heard arguments today from North Carolina that asks the already disgraced court to choose power.

Here are the first three grafs of the Washington Post report on this:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday began debating whether state legislators have the power to set federal voting rules without oversight from state courts, in what would be a fundamental change in the way elections are conducted.

If the justices side with North Carolina’s Republican legislative leaders, state lawmakers throughout the country could have exclusive authority to structure federal elections, subject only to intervention by Congress, even if their actions result in extreme partisan voting maps for congressional seats – and violate voter protections enshrined in state constitutions. The case could have a major impact on the 2024 election.

Republican leaders in North Carolina want the Supreme Court to restore a redistricting map that was drawn by the GOP-led legislature but rejected as a violation of the state constitution by the state’s supreme court. The state Republican leaders are asking the justices to embrace the “independent state legislature theory,” which could end oversight by state courts enforcing the state constitution and put at risk citizen-backed initiatives aimed at taking partisan politics out of map-drawing and election rules.

I assume most Americans are blissfully unaware of this case, and I am certainly not an expert on it. But it appears that the goal of the Angry White People Party is to create a system in which there are no "fair play" rules in the hopes of cementing minority rule for the foreseeable future. Courts? Who cares? Voters? Irrelevant. Basic justice? What is that?

I suppose Democrats could apply the same theory to the states they currently control (like Colorado), but blue states tend to adapt less partisan political processes (being the party of reason, after all). So equal actions from the "other side" are unlikely.

Imagine the Supreme Court upending our entire election system, mostly on a whim. If you can't imagine this, BTW, you haven't been paying attention to the past couple years. 

The court's abortion ruling certainly damaged its reputation with a majority of the country, but choosing power over democracy and basic fairness would be the final nail. At this point, the court's reputation may be beyond repair.

This case is unnecessary, much as Herschel Walker's doomed candidacy for Georgia senator was, but at this point in our history most of us are left to hold our collective breath in hopes for a reasonable choice. Choosing a rational human being (Senator Warnock) over a poor soul with obvious brain damage from years of football shouldn't have come down to a 51-49 split among voters, but I will take any margin of victory over the powers of ignorance.

Guess I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that even the radical conservatives on the Supreme Court will find a way to maintain the nation's election traditions and rebuff those who wish to govern through raw power.

Hey, the country had a good run.

One guess at a cause for student mental health issues, and one possible solution

I sometimes wonder how I would organize classes and motivate students were I thrust back into a high school job (the horror! the horror!). The current mental health challenges would need to be addressed. "Thoughts and prayers" for our young scholars to return to mental states that adults find more comfortable won't work by themselves.

My "solution" would be to continue or even expand upon "community building" activities for students.

In media production courses this would look pretty much like community (staff) activities have always looked in my advising life. Regularly scheduled after school and (often) Saturday morning work periods where staff can come and go when their own schedules permit. Lots of opportunities to eat together and celebrate each other (and discuss how we all did, which was not always great but which emphasize accountability). And occasional "group reporting" assignments, like all staff not playing or cheering to attend the first home football game and report on some chosen aspects of the event for at least a quarter, etc.

The opportunities to build strong communities among regular classes are more difficult to imagine. But I am often reminded of the old education truism: No one learns more than the teacher.

Students need to become teachers, at least in small "bits." This produces deeper learning and (maybe?) better engagement among others in the class, but also creates opportunities to practice leadership skills. 

For instance, assigning the mythical Jake and Noelle to prepare and present a ten-minute lesson on how recognize and "fix" comma splice errors would certainly make the presenters more aware. And those who already know the "rules" might appreciate knowing their peers are also now aware. Those who have been making that basic grammar error might benefit from hearing about it from someone other than the teacher.

Bottom line for improving student morale and encouraging more hope: Provide every student with regular opportunities to experience "ownership" of their learning. 

People rarely lose focus or interest in something where they "own" the process or product or experience. 

During the pandemic, students (most Americans in general) felt that life was out of control to some extent. It's tough to "own" something that is out of control, and that confusion and even depression can soon spread.

Or think of it this way: No one learns more than the teacher, so how can we make everyone a "teacher"?

American adults like to blame everyone but themselves

The big investigative story today is about "the crisis of student mental health" that much of the nation is confronting, at least according to the Washington Post... and so many adults who seem lost as to how to proceed.

Yes, there should be more counseling, and yes, there should be more access, and yes, there should be more community building activities. Schools probably haven't done enough, but when have they ever done enough?

My thought, however, is that with much of the country undergoing some sort of depression/avalanche of hate/lack of confidence in the future of the country... how could students NOT be having mental health issues? If they were not, THAT might the sign of something truly insidious (or perhaps something involving excessive medications).

The Angry White People Party is curiously silent about their cult leader's call for eliminating parts of the Constitution (or perhaps just leaping to a dictatorship?). Political division has paralyzed progress about a range of challenges, from gun violence to marital rights to immigration policy. We can't even find any ways to eliminate child hunger in the country. 

Add the insidious effects of social media and the unintended consequences of everyone being able to create their own "virtual community" rather than interacting with real humans... 

Yes, virtual learning during the pandemic was a disaster, but that is over (for the most part) and things continue to spiral among young people. 

It's the season for hope right now, but it must be tough to find much hope to latch onto for many young Americans.

But, by all means, the adults must keep fighting incessantly over "their deeply held beliefs." Really?

A Colorado woman who designs websites sued the state over a law that does not allow her to refuse service to same sex marriages, and now the Supreme Court is weighing whether her argument that doing so would offend her "deeply held moral beliefs" is OK. 

Breaking news: she has never been asked to create a website for same sex marriages and why would anyone do so? But let's go to the nation's highest court and further debase any claim that branch of government has to legitimacy?

"Children will listen," as we are reminded by "Into the Woods." And they are listening, and watching... and despairing.

Puns, metaphors, similes... oh my!

From today's Frank Bruni newsletter (still highly recommended) and his "For the love of sentences" regular feature.

Several varied honorees this week, beginning with an irresistible pun.

In The New Yorker, Jill Lepore described the return of the wild turkey: “In New England, the birds were once hunted nearly to extinction; now they’re swarming the streets like they own the place. Sometimes turnabout is fowl play.” 

Fair vs. foul... transformed into "fowl." Such wordplay is not suitable for lots of more serious reporting, but a lot of our school reporting could benefit from sounding a bit more like students: silly and smart in equal measure.

The next example is opinion, but uses the walking in circles metaphor to characterize lack of political will to change the nation's appalling murder rate.

Also in The New Yorker, Jesse Dorris visited a recently opened memorial to the 20 children and six adults who were fatally shot at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., about a decade ago: “It is only fitting that a visitor to the Sandy Hook memorial walks in circles; we are all trapped in a loop of carnage, campaign donations, thoughts and prayers.” 

A tightly constructed sentence can serve as a lead that cuts to the core of the issue.

In The Times, Michael Wilson reflected on the occurrence of three mass shootings just before Thanksgiving: “Yesterday’s parents, children and friends became Thursday’s empty chairs.” 

Many students will recognize the underlying emotions of this sentence that tries to recapture some of the agony of forced lessons, whether they be for piano or violin or swimming.

Ruth Whippman described her long-ago piano lessons: “I can still conjure up the chemical overload of my teacher’s after-shave — synthetic floral with a base note of trickle-down economics. Overpowering, but not quite able to drown out the background scent of my mother’s expectations.”

Sports writers often make use of allusions beyond sports, and this one may reflect what fans of the L.A. Rams are feeling this year after their 3-8 start to the season. I was thinking we might do a quick edit and make this work in describing the way the Broncos have fallen off the cliff after such high expectations over the summer.

Mike Tanier mulled the Los Angeles Rams’ dismal drop-off from their championship season last year: “The Rams aren’t just enduring a Super Bowl hangover. They have woken up next to a total stranger in a Nevada honeymoon suite with an empty wallet and no sign of their car keys.”

Back to sports for a fun simile that assumes the reader has actually seen a bullet train, either in person or on screen. And the U.S. is off to the elimination round in the World Cup this week.

Andrew Das described a Brazil player’s winning goal against Switzerland: “It was off his foot so fast, and was so well-placed, that the Swiss goalkeeper could only watch it pass like a man admiring a bullet train from the platform.” 

We are smart to remind our journalism students that all the fancy figures of speech they have been studying in ELA classes can effectively transfer to their reporting, and can delight readers.

Forcibly reminded about stylistic differences for different situations

Writing for the stage turns out to be quite different than the writing I do day in and day out: mostly brief comments on specific phrases or ideas found in student essays. And WAY different from how I write for this blog, among other little projects.

This was made crystal clear to me last night as the cast was doing its first read-through of a readers theater piece that I created for the Wesley Players Theatre Company. We have so many involved that I ended up double-casting and adding a 5 p.m. show, beyond the normal 7 p.m. show. So there is a lot of enthusiasm and amazing participation.

But there were times when members of both casts found themselves struggling with where to breathe and where to pause or where to hurry. It occurred to me that much of the difficulties came in the dialog I wrote for the Hallmark spoof that acts as the "frame" for the show. The epiphany was that I write like an English teacher, with loads of compound, complex sentences that are fine in print but that are challenging to speak aloud.

The Hallmark frame surrounds eight excerpts from famous Christmas movies and TV show (think things like "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and "Elf"), and the contrast between THOSE scenes and the ones I invented was stark.

Professional scripts feature shorter pieces of dialog, with much more back-and-forth, which likely does not surprise you... and if I had time I would revisit the current version of the show and fiddle with it to create more "action." But I don't have the time.

Most of my focus right now is on how we will be staging the show this Saturday (we have two tech rehearsal left), how to light the stage, and how to provide decent sound... but the script ultimately will make or break the show. Right now I wish I had a chance to take what I am learning in "previews" and apply it to a new draft.

We also have at least eight or more additional players in each cast, which I never imagined and which forces me to give some actors just a few lines, while others have longish speeches and roles in specific scenes. But that is a much different problem and perhaps without an early commitment from actors impossible to solve. I mean, how can I be certain I would have 24 cast members long before we even have auditions?

But I have enjoyed the process of creating this script and then bringing it to the stage, despite the stress and the looming exhaustion (TWO rehearsals each night, though there are just two nights left before we go up). 

Maybe I won't start thinking about a "next" readers theater idea for a few months, anyway.