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A war against the empty thesis statement
To The Little Professor, who complains about student papers with the thesis statement declaring “many similarities and differences,” I say, I will join with you in this battle. In fact, I think I’ve been there all along, but I just didn’t know where the chain of command was. Lead on! My students don’t usually declare […]
Freudian slip of the day
From an otherwise well-written paper: “money is the fist necessity.”
Death by dictionary
Rule #13.5 for students: Do not cite dictionaries in social-science or humanities courses! Sometimes I’m tempted to strangle the K-12 teachers who encourage this bad habit. How Webster’s defines discrimination has nothing to do with demonstrating understanding of course material. It’s a distraction from what the student needs to do in a paper, it’s poor […]
Performance pay in teaching and in business
The following is a partial transcript of my live chat tonight. (I’ve rearranged a few lines so that the conversation reads more linearly than it really was, and I’ve done some other light editing for readability.) Paying for performance came up, and a student who works in private business started to talk as if it made no sense […]
Poking away…
By Sherman Dorn on December 14, 2006
Having a cold is not fun. Having a cold when you’re trying to grade papers, revise a book manuscript, keep up with journal editing stuff, and chaffeur children is particularly not fun. And then having a cold when it’s your spouse’s birthday? Yes, of course I’ll still pick the younger child up from school. What […]
Posted in Random comments, Teaching