Logical Fallacies, again

I'm always challenged when I teach logic in a composition course. It's not strict mathematical syllogism that the philosophers study/teach; it's the rhetorical syllogism Aristotle lays out for his students -- he calls this the "enthymeme."

I'm thinking of that kind of rhetorical reasoning as I read an article entitled "The Fine Line Between Clever and Stupid," which points out faulty causality. The writer is a smart blogger, Kathy G. of "The G Spot: Politics, Economics, Feminism, Labor, Culture, Ideas." She's responding to a Wall Street Journal article called "Vote Republican if You Want Equal Pay." The writer of that article "looked at Census data on women's pay relative to men's in every presidential administration from LBJ to the present. And lo and behold, he found that women's relative pay increased far more under Republican presidents than Democrat ones."

The cause? Well, you'll have to look at the article yourself, but let's just say that more than one thing can cause a statistic to rise (pay increases can show up in one group because another group's pay *decreases*). Kathy G. rightly points out that men's falling salaries during Republican presidents can make women's salaries appear to rise.

Uh huh. I like smart women.

What an experience!

Class Assignment: Evaluation essay, using the genre of restaurant review.
Student's Topic: Jax Cafe
Student's Sentence: "There is a waterfall and greenery along with a pond that has live trout that they catch and cook for the guests swimming around."

Lovely reading

Friday night's event was terrific: great selection of poets and prose writers. Cullen's the best reader: serious, slow, respectful of the poem and of her listeners. Other writers read well, too -- one poet in particular who acted out her poem, but not in a cheesy way (a remarkable feat, actually). Only a couple folks seemed to zip or stumble through. Most writers were from MN and IA -- don't know if that's true for all of the contributors. Makes you realize we have *really good* writers in our neck-of-the-woods. One thing I noted, though: I'd forgotten how important it is to wear black to such events!

The gathering afterward in the auditorium lobby was a bit awkward: cramped space, food difficult to eat without sitting down (and the meatballs were terrible - like dog food!). Even in such straits, however, a nice red wine (even if its in a plastic "glass") can make an evening an occasion.

Water~Stone Review

TONIGHT, Oct. 24, at Hamline University, 7:30 p.m., the publication reading for the 11th issue of Water~Stone Review, a literary journal published locally by the Hamline University Graduate School of Liberal Studies.

GO! You'll hear the emotionally eloquent poet (and Century College faculty member) Cullen Bailey Burns read some of her exquisite poems. I don't know what she'll read tonight, but you can read these by clicking on them: "Involution" "We Just Want It to be Healthy" "Nostalgia"

Here's a tribute to Cullen by a former student: it shows you something of the powerful teacher she is.

Here's a blog entry about Cullen's publications on the side of Black Cherry Berry Celestial Seasonings tea boxes.

Here's another blog entry about Cullen's Sweet Apple Chamomile box.

Cullen's lovely book of poems is Paper Boat. Buy it!!

Loss. Prevention.

This morning is the funeral for a Century student, Jeremy Caulkins, who took his own life last week. His brother Chris is on our faculty and has been working on raising campus awareness about depression, the apparent cause of his brother's death (and the cause of Chris's wife's suicide some years ago).

Yesterday afternoon, I listened to the amazing writer Kate Bornstein talk about many things, among them her six close-calls with suicide: she planned it down to "a T six times," she said, but she never attempted it. She always found something to stop her, and she wrote a book about those alternatives, a radical-truth-telling book I immediately bought: Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws.

I'm going to recommend that our library order this book. Perhaps books truly are medicine.

Lost opportunity?

Education Minnesota, formerly known as the Minnesota Education Association, has its yearly conference in mid-October -- right now, to be exact. Educators from around the state, primarily in K-12 education, gather to hear speakers, go to workshops, and visit exhibits in the St. Paul RiverCentre. In other words, it's a normal conference.

I've just skimmed the Exhibitors list, and I see some higher education institutions have booths: Alexandria Technical College, Augsburg, Bemidji State, Bethel, St. Catherine, St. Scholastica, Concordia, Hamline, Mankato, North Hennepin CC, St. Cloud, UW-River Falls, UW-Stout, U of M (both Twin Cities and Duluth), St. Thomas -- even Globe "University" and Walden.

Notice anything about this list? Century's absent. Yet we have an "education program," a relatively new program designed to produce "paraeducators" as well as students who will transfer to four-year education programs.

Why isn't Century setting up shop at this conference? Especially when we are trying to grow our program. I really don't understand the choices our institution makes.

Video Your Vote

Check this out: PBS has teamed up with YouTube on a project called "Video Your Vote." They're inviting voters to take cameras when we vote, using them to record what our experience is like. Long lines? Confusing ballots? Broken machines? Video what we see and submit the videos to YouTube.

Wow - what an intersection of technology and democracy. What a *great* way to empower citizens, to document real experience, to reveal the material conditions of people around the country.

Can you imagine what Florida in 2000 would have looked like if folks had videoed their experiences with the "butterfly ballot" (does anyone even remember these)?

Technology: extending the speed and reach of humanity.

Feels like work

I've had a good day, accomplished some important things, it seems (or feels -- pick your copula).

My FYC students took their midterm exam, and my three-exam option evidently worked pretty well since they all buckled down and impressed me with their serious attention to the task. I made three exams: an "objective" exam consisting of multiple-choice questions, short answer questions, matching, etc. This one was in response to a student who really, really didn't want to write an in-class essay. I made five copies of this exam for my 25 students, estimating correctly.

The second and third exams were in-class essays, one a version of previous exams which included five options. These options ask students to refer back to readings from their textbook in order to answer the questions. I made 15 copies of this exam, printed on green paper, which turned out to be about right.

The third version was a completely new exam, asking students to conduct a rhetorical analysis of two short essays that appeared this month as editorials in my NEA Advocate newsletter. They had to read these new essays and find some of the rhetorical strategies we've been talking about this semester, strategies readily apparent in the essays (sadly, one exhibited so many logical fallacies and FYC infelicities that it's embarrassing the writer is a higher education professional!). I printed 10 copies of this option, more than twice what I needed, on yellow paper.

The other important task for today was getting the Q&S Club Lending Library set up - finally! I started this task in August before the semester began. But I hadn't labeled all the books (thought it might be a task for the Q&S Club members, but no one's been showing up to meetings except the club president). Today I printed signs, created the sign-out sheet (the honor system here), and stacked the bookshelf outside my office. So far, 35 books are available, mostly non-fiction. I hope they'll be safe in the hallway without monitoring. (Speaking of monitoring, the club president and I put up a table full of literature about "ally week," hoping that the materials don't get discarded by a bigot -- it's happened on campus before.)

So lots of work done: exams created, essays collected, students tutored (good online office hours today with my online students), library created, collegial conversations had with many (don't get me started on Turnitin.com, which one of my colleagues thought might be a good thing to purchase -- NO!).

What could students learn

I'm fascinated by the interplay of images and text. This video via The Margins of Error impresses me on so many levels, but how can I use it in class? Ideas welcome.


Oh, yeah, and then there's this kind of visual argument: this comic is a brilliant way to teach so many things.
via xkdc: A webcomic of romance,sarcasm, math, and language. Click to enlarge and see the message.

Students don't realize

In all my courses, I give exams. But these exams must be tailored to every class because my pedagogy requires me to teach the students who appear in my classrooms, not to teach subject matter.

In the liberal arts, my students and I become a community of learners that focuses on something slightly different every semester. This variation is especially common in a composition course because it's a skill-building course, not so-much a "content specific" course.

So this week, I've asked students what they'd like to see on the Midterm Exam because my philosophy of exams is that they're opportunities for students to show me what they've learned. I really want them to do well, to show me their strengths, to tell me what they feel confident that they've understood to this point in the semester.

This conversation often seems like a role reversal for students because when they ask me "What's on the exam? Will you give us a review sheet?," I say, "What would you like me to ask you on the exam? What do you think you've learned so far?"

Eventually, we negotiate a reasonable exam that meets the criteria I have, the learning outcomes I want them to achieve, which include being able to support their own points, as they do in during this negotiation. :-)

But they do not realize how long it will now take me to create the exams: two sections of FYC are getting slightly different exams. The third course will get an exam I create out of whole cloth since we're using new books this semester. All told, I expect to take more than 10 hours to create these exams.

I doubt some of my students spend that much time producing the essays that are also due at midterm, do you?

Why it matters

Attending the Nobel Conference every year always stimulates my thinking, especially because my science background is sketchy.

This year, the question/topic is "Who Were the First Humans?" To begin answering this question, this year's scholars/researchers have come from around the world (Arizona, Leipzig, Stanford, Oxford, the Smithsonian) and from a range of disciplines (anthropology, paleogenetics, archaeology, cognitive biologists). Their talks are lucid, complex, profound, and their interaction with each other is polite, fraught, complicated.

Here's the message that becomes increasingly clear, a message I need to keep emphasizing with my students: Claims are asserted and supported (and perhaps persuasion happens) because people make inferences using logical reasoning.

Many of my students think that "evidence" is the only thing that can support a claim. But often, we don't have tangible evidence ("demonstration" Plato and Aristotle called it). Often we have to use our logical reasoning skills.

I need to give my students LOTS more practice with this important "first human" skill.

Must Watch

Check out Lawrence (Larry) Lessig's talk at/for TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), a most amazing, smart, necessary, relevant thing:

The "mash ups" at about 10:00 impress me: the voices of "young people" on the screen. How do we get more people to understand and have this conversation?

Will this work?

Here's a video aimed at young people. I'm intrigued.

The reverse psychology reverses. I'm wondering how young people will respond. I'll have to ask.

I was inspired to do some online research about rhetoric after attending the CPTSC Conference today at the University of Minnesota: an excellent way to spend my day. Of course I had my laptop, so I was able to engage my online tech writing students while I was there. Teaching isn't what it used to be!

It's been a while

I haven't read Robin Morgan, author of Sisterhood is Powerful, in a very long time. My mistake. Here's her latest commentary column for the Women's Media Center: "When Sisterhood is Suicide and Other Late Night Thoughts."

Great, tough, funny, outraged thinking/writing. Inspired. Inspires.

Monty Python works again

The Argument Clinic sketch never fails to make my FYC students laugh . . . and groan . . . and perhaps learn something about argument.
This short YouTube clip is good, but the whole sketch is even better.

Implications for online teaching

Listen to this interesting study I just heard on American Public Media's Future Tense. It's by Dr. Terri Kurtzberg of Rutgers University: it seems as though workers are more likely to lie when they communicate using email than when they use hand-written notes.

Yeah, well: no big surprise for many of us who deal with academic honesty.

Great Video

I've been showing some videos in my Intro to GLBT Studies course, and I just finished previewing another one tonight: "Daddy & Papa: A Documentary Film by Johnny Symons." (Here's a video clip.) It's a wonderful look at gay fatherhood, many different kinds. We had it in the Century College Library when I went to pick up my usual "alternative families" video, "That's a Family!"

Both films raise more issues than simply sexual orientation; the intersections of race and class are not far under the surface. It's tough to see the blatant discrimination still alive in so many places, such as Florida. It's only *last week* that a judged ruled the state's ban on gay adoptions as unconstitutional. What century are we in?

It worked, maybe

I had a brainstorm the other day about a trick to lessen students' obsession with grades to the exclusion of feedback. If you teach writing, you might know what I mean:

Students look at the grade/score on an essay and come up to talk, saying things like, "What did you take off for? I did everything you said to do." or "What didn't you like in my essay? I thought it was good."

I often say, "Did you take a look at my comments? If you didn't understand something, I'd be happy to talk with you to explain what I meant."

Often, students haven't looked at them (let alone read them!). That always bothers me because writing comments is where I've spent time teaching, offering feedback designed to help them become better writers.

So the trick? Don't total their scores. Here's how.

I use a rubric for evaluating essays: five criteria categories that can earn 20 points each. This year, I've decided to just list the values in each category, and students have to do the addition themselves.

Yesterday, in FYC (my most juvenile, disruptive, unlikable class of the last five years), I didn't get one single person up to the desk at the end of class! Hooray. I had an email later last night, but it was a question about revising her essay, proof that she'd read my comments.

Tentative conclusion: this trick works. We'll see what happens with today's FYC, a class full of responsible, engaging, thoughful students.

High Percentages

This semester, I seem to have more students producing "excellence" than I remember in any other semester. Am I just seeing differently since I've returned from sabbatical?

For example, some of my online tech writers have produced Instructions that are of almost-professional quality: our college's IT folks could learn a thing or two from these students.

And another example: The narrative arguments (first graded assignment) from One Section of my FYComp students have charmed me: as I read, I kept thinking, "We have to collect these in a book! These folks have great stories to tell!"

I read about a fellow who ended up working in a florist shop while out of jail on work release: now he's a horticulture major at our college. Another woman wrestled with giving up coffee for her health, and now she's seeing more results than she anticipated. Another student vividly described a car trip back from the cabin, ramping up the emotional pitch toward the car flipping in front of her. A young father celebrated his 2-year-old son; an older father celebrated his 19-year-old son.

One Section pays attention, does their homework, listens, offers thoughtful feedback to each other during workshop, asks serious questions. That behavior is reflected in their good writing.

However:

The "other" section, not so much. But the "other" section is full of high school students (current and very very recent) who stare blankly at me a lot, text message during class, don't do their homework, don't listen, complain. A high percentage of their narrative arguments aren't: a weirdly large number of them contain research and (wrong) in-text citations, talk about social issues (obesity epidemics, drinking age, pet neutering) which could've been linked to a personal narrative but weren't at all.

What conclusion would you draw from the "other" section's first assignments? That they'd been written for another purpose in another setting? That seems reasonable, huh? I've had that conversation with a couple of the worst offenders, writers of essays that are so-far-off the mark. One of those students has already gone to the dean, saying I "accused" her/him of "cheating." Oy.

Especially "oy" since I was really careful to say that I was coming to this conclusion based on what s/he produced: I couldn't come up with any other reasonable explanation since we'd spent a couple of weeks in class 1) looking at example narrative arguments, 2) talking about the chapter that explains what they are, 3) brainstorming and drafting in class. I said that I was alerting her/him early in the semester because I wanted to keep the lines of communication open. S/he thanked me after we talked, then apparently went right down to the dean.

The dean thinks maybe a learning disability? I think it's an veracity disability.

Common Book Blog

One of my colleagues asked for input about how we faculty are using the college's Common Book. He's presenting about it at next month's TYCA conference in Duluth, Oct. 2-4.

I'm having a good experience, so far, with my students' engagement. Here's the message I sent my colleague:

Hi, Larry.

I'm having some interesting success with the Common Book this semester, my first time working with a common book since I was gone last year. I decided to think about about the book for my writing courses (Engl 1021 and 1025) as a common topic for class discussions. The place/space for these discussions is cyberspace.

For both courses, I've set up blog (with Blogger) where students are discussing the book. In my totally online Engl 1025, technical writing class, I think of it as a way for them to "talk" with each other even though they don't see each other in class. The blog space is a kind of classroom space: it's secure because I've set it up so only "invited authors" can read/write to it (I invited the students via their college email accounts). For my face-to-face Engl 1021 courses (I have two sections), I've set up ONE blog where students from these two different classes are talking to each other.

If you want, I can add you as a "reader" for the blog so you can see some of the thoughtful things they're saying, stuff like today's Engl 1025 student's post about chapter 3: the student wrote, "According to the last part of the chapter [three], I cannot understand why American negotiators rejected the policy documents because we all share the same planet, the existing of people is much more important than obligation of a country. One over all conclusion about this chapter: It is great."

Cool, huh?
Julie
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Julie K. Daniels
English Department
Women and Gender Studies Program
Century College