Re: conlanging during class (Re: Grammatical Summary of Kemata)

On 12 Dec, Yoon Ha Lee wrpte:

> On Wednesday, December 12, 2001, at 11:25 , David Starner wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Dec 12, 2001 at 07:35:55PM +0100, Rune Haugseng wrote:
> [yhl]
> >>> (Of course, sometimes long dry lectures provide a perfect opportunity
to
> >>> surreptitiously work on a conlang.)
> >>
> >> Really? I'm far too afraid someone'll notice what I'm doing to do
> >> stuff like that in class.
> >
> > Between the large classes and the teachers who teach to the board,
> > college gives plenty of oppertunity to conlang in class. Of course, I
> > never had a problem doing stuff like that in high school, either, so
> > . . .
>
> <nod>  It really depends on the "withitness" of the teacher.  Frankly, in
> a majority of even high school classes, the teacher will check to see that
> your pencil/pen is moving at appropriate moments and that you're looking
> up at the board or him/her, or at least not looking somewhere "irrelevant.

    In my day  (late '60s, USA), the philosophy of colleges and universities
was that students were there on their own initiative. No one kept track
of attendence or what you did during class, and if you could pass the exams
(Without cheating, of course:  the exams themselves were usually monitored!)
without going to class or listening to the prof, well, more power to you!
    In fact, I once had a (required freshman) course where it was
_impossible_
to pay attention to the professor: he'd been _dead_  for some years before I
even came to the university! He'd videotaped all his lectures and they
simply played them  on overhead TVs to auditorium-sized collections of
students! Talk about tenure!  ;-)
(Tests were given and graded by [bored] teaching assistants!)



> "  Of course, I'm anal so when I teach, I go around and look at *what* the
> students are writing.  (Fortunately for those who like to write notes in
> pink gel-pen I just ask them to put the notes away and get to work...<G>)
    I also taught (one of my sections was large: over 100 students).
Those in the back row used to drink coffee and read newspapers during
my lectures. It never bothered me: if they didn't pass the exams, I felt no
guilt about failing them! (Better they fail out, than somehow  become
speech-language pathologists without adequate training! I wouldn't want
to be responsible for putting people's dysfunctional language ---
with all the personal problems it can cause --- in the hands of someone
who didn't care to learn the profession!)

Dan Sulani
------------------------------------
likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a.

A word is an awesome thing.

Reply