Stuff like that used to drive me batshit crazy as a student, so I don’t do it as a teacher, but I can understand why gets get bent about it. Who wants to have their assignment get a zero because they wrote in black ink instead of blue? (And yes, there are HS teachers like that). So in that sense, it’s not hand-holding, it’s self-protection.

You know what? These little pissants may as well start growing the fuck up. Because in the real world, no one gives a flying fuck about whatever excuse you throw out there for your failure to follow instructions, meet deadlines, follow through with duties, etc. There are plenty of people who do those things, and thus there is absofuckinglutely no reason to waste even a nanosecond attending to bullshit excuse-making by those who don’t.

So my 9th graders and some of the 10th graders ask “does this need to be in blue pen” or “can I use pencil.” Seniors rarely ask after the first assignment. They ask because in middle school the teachers are very particular about that sort of thing. Even some Upper School teachers go ballistic if certain instructions are followed down to the smallest details (points off for improper line spacing on a title page for example). Stuff like that used to drive me batshit crazy as a student, so I don’t do it as a teacher, but I can understand why gets get bent about it. Who wants to have their assignment get a zero because they wrote in black ink instead of blue? (And yes, there are HS teachers like that). So in that sense, it’s not hand-holding, it’s self-protection.

But, in my honors classes, I used to always have one or two kids out of 18 who wouldn’t risk being wrong in an essay. They would only write stuff that they knew was absolutely right. Sometimes, this kid was from a Catholic school, and they got over it pretty quick once they saw that as long as the facts checked out, plausible arguments were okay. But other kids, mo matter how many times I came at them with “all the great historians were wrong,” or “until you take some risks, you’re grade is going to be stuck in the B-range” or whatever other trick phrases I have, just couldn’t break through.

So in the last year or two, that’s jumped to maybe 4 or 5 kids stuck in that spot. It’s weird, because there’s been a massive push towards more creative projects in the school as a whole (documentary making using laptops, blogging, podcasting, etc.) but it seems like unless a project is billed as a creative project, they don’t dare get creative. This year, my 9th graders did some of the best poetry in the style of Tang and Song dynasties ever and their Courtly Love stories/poems/sonnets etc. were outstanding. But the comparative essays on who was more influential, Byzantium or Sassanid Persia? blech. There’s a limited amount of evidence, so you might have to do a counter-example paragraph. The point of the essay is to decide on the criteria for what counts as influential. Instead, a lot of kids went nuts looking for evidence on line (and one of them even got caught up plagiarizing). They just weren’t comfortable deciding for themselves what the criteria should be. Given how strong the class was overall, it was disappointing. Although, some of it came because this was a very grade conscious (although not grade-grubbing) group.

I am still in touch with my college classmates who are historians!

I liked the reflections in the guest post. I kind of wish my college experience had been like that. I would like my students at Woebegone State to have a Great Issues class or lecture series.

I would go to a renunion of my college dorm, though, which was a hilarious place, and they do have reunions. It’s the timing and the expense that stops me.

But college … for undergrad I went to a Big 10, where they didn’t even read our names individually at our graduation. “Class of 19xx, College of Arts and Sciences, please rise!” Boo. But a couple of years ago I did go back (halfway across the country) to the reunion of an interest group that I had been part of; the gathering was organized almost completely outside the realms of the U., and I see that the U. is now also fostering smaller interest-based reunions within the giant all-campus reunion events. Our particular group is planning another reunion as part of the larger university event next year. I think that is the way to go in the bigger schools, where I can also say I can’t recall 5 names – or even 3 – of those who shared my major.

Alcohol abuse was a problem; weed and street drugs were non-existant.

College without weed????? That’s fucking fucked up!