"The Last Professors" an interview

InsideHigherEd.com has a interview with Frank Donoghue about his book "The Last Professor." While the interview sounds a rather pessimistic (realistic?) view of the future of tenor, the meat of the discussion--alluded to but not explored--is in the "the casualization of the teaching workforce"--which I would have liked way more discussion about.

What is interesting about the article is that the bulk of the comments focused on the role and nature of tenor, much, I think, to the dismissal of the larger forces at work.

I think I have more to say, but just not yet.

The state of writing today

I was doing my daily reading, which I haven't been able to do for months, and this article about teen girl's and writing sucked me in. Pookie is only 5 odd years away from teendom, and I am already starting to worry.

With story after hand-wringing story about the decline of literacy due to short attention spans, texting, et al, it is refreshing to note that the "kids" are doing pretty well by themselves. Doing pretty damn fine, really.

Perhaps the text-laden, word-saturated world they live in now (you are, yourself, reading a blog) actually increases a sense of rhetorical power...makes it tacit, like grammar. Perhaps those time-wasting movies (Saw IV, anyone?) provides a sense of pacing, story-telling and framing for effect.

Infants learn to speak by listening. Perhaps, to a greater degree than has been acknowledged, teens learn to write by "reading" their world.