Today I wanted to find some very simple literary criticism to have my composition 102 students read, after they had shared their own views on James Joyce’s short story, “Araby.”
The literary criticism databases only provided stuff that was a little to complicated for them. So, I googled “araby” and what did I get? Not information about the story or the author, but hundreds of pages offering pre-written essays for sale!!!
God dammit! Mother F!@#$R
Aparantly the availability of pre-written essays has really gone through the roof since the last time I checked. I mean, I literally couldn’t find what I wanted because of all the “cheat.com” sites that were spamming my search.
I have to believe that this is due, in part, to No Child Left Behind. A generation of students has gone through a primary and secondary school system that has taught them how to “pass the test.” The problem is they don’t have any idea how to form a coherent argument (not unlike the head of the administration who came up with “no child”)
When I read what some of my students have written, my heart just f**king breaks. They clearly have intelligent thoughts and passionate feelings about their subjects, but they don’t know how to express them. It’s like watching a stroke victim (or Brian Wilson) try and tell you what they’re thinking.
I suppose the counterpoint to my complaint would be this: “Well, Fouts, that’s your job. Teach them how to express themselves using standard written English. Teach them the available means of persuasion for any given situation. Teach them how to use the library, how to think critically, how to organize an argument, cite sources, create a bibliography, and also to put their names on every page. You have two months—-GO!”
