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