Free Professor X by In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic Page B

college-level discourse is indeed conventional, and no, the students don’t share in it at all. Professor Reid’s language is academic and polite, and the very essence of euphemism, which I try to get the students to stop indulging in. Mike Rose, who has written several books on education and literacy, clucked his tongue at me for being disrespectful to the students and spoke of the methods he used when teaching remedial college classes:
    And because many of our students . . . did display in their writing all the grammatical, stylistic, and organizational problems that give rise to remedial writing courses in the first place, we did spend a good deal of time on error—in class, in conference, on comments on their papers— but in the context of their academic writing . This is a huge point and one that is tied to our core assumptions about cognition and language: that writing filled with grammatical error does not preclude engagement with sophisticated intellectual material, and that error can be addressed effectively as one is engaging such material. 5
    Rose goes on at great length about the lots of other ways I could have achieved my educational goals. Remediation is what he wants me to do, but he seems to forget that I do not teach remedial or developmental classes, and cannot transform my bona fide honest-to-God fully accredited college class into one. The truth, of course, without any sugarcoating, is that the work submitted by my students is often so garbled that it is impossible to understand what they are thinking.

    I read the compare-contrast essays that the students had written. I knew that we would have to start at the beginning. A sentence is a group of words expressing a complete thought. I wanted to go back there. I felt the tug of the past. I wanted to start at the very beginning and replicate the nineteen years of language arts study. I couldn’t, of course, so I compromised. We would start not at the roots of language or usage but the roots of thought.
    I read one essay aloud.
    â€œHere we have a piece delineating the differences between cats and dogs,” I said. “ ‘Dogs are friendly, cats are not. Dogs greet their owners at the end of the day; cats do not. Dogs appear grateful for everything they get in life; cats do not.’ Now, what’s the problem with this essay?”
    â€œIt’s not true?” said one student uncertainly.
    â€œWhy isn’t it true?”
    â€œYou can’t just say all cats are a certain way. You may have had a friendly cat.”
    I smiled to myself. She was young, not too long out of high school. You can’t just say. Are there any words more chilling to a writer? The high school teachers had schooled her in a curriculum of political correctness. She knew that she shouldn’t demean cats by stereotyping them. She was a nice young woman, I’m sure, and she’d never say a mean or unfair word about any living thing, particularly in a classroom setting.
    â€œI actually think what the essay says is true,” I said. “I’ve never known a friendly cat. No, the ideas behind the piece are, in some senses, valid. But in my mind the essay is not completely satisfying. Why is that?”
    I got several half hearted and confused answers.
    I was starting to get a little ticked at the students, I must admit. It seemed I was working a lot harder than they were.
    â€œThink of it this way,” I said. “You’re at a party. And there’s a beautiful person on the other side of the room—a person that you really, really want to get to know before the night is out. You sidle up to him or her. You introduce yourself. The person reciprocates. There is electricity. You feel a bit of magic. Your heart flutters. You really need something great to tell this person. You need the start of a conversation. You desperately require some witty repartee. And so you lean over to the person and, with all the suavity you