Re: a few answers

Pasha Paterson (gpaterso@richmond.edu)
Fri, 06 Nov 1998 12:15:45 -0500

At 09:08 11/06/98 +0000, Scottie Bowman wrote:
>	The gain for a teacher is a captive audience of impressionable minds 
>	(almost certainly over-impressionable if it's an English class...) 
>	that he is paid - modestly but reliably - to fill up with his own 
>	private & neurotic preoccupations, using as his pretext & piggy-back 
>	work by elementally more gifted & harder working people.

In other subjects, I would agree, but in a GOOD English class (notice the
exclusion of bad teachers) a teacher of literature puts forth his views
and/or the "most widely accepted" opinions on the material presented, but
it is still up to the students to respond with ___THEIR OWN THOUGHTS___
(sufficient emphasis is impossible) in analytical papers.  The teacher,
then, is also a bit captive himself, and cannot ignore a student's
argument as "wrong" even if it does decisively strike down a more
"popular" opinion.


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 G.H.G.A.Paterson  (804)662-3737  gpaterso@richmond.edu
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