Okay, so our first night in California, Edgar’s sisters insisted on putting on Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, which is a uniquely bad film.
Read MoreThis is the point of failure for American writing education: it simply produced bad writers. The reason it does this is because it treats writing as something where requirements are meant to be filled, as if lining up all of the ingredients of a cake on the counter were the same thing as baking. Which, I would like to emphasize, is not the fault of the teachers, but the fault of the administrators and bureaucrats who decided that writing education needed to be standardized.
Read MoreIt’s been a while since I did a Pirating College piece (I’ve only done the one, honestly,) and I’m not teaching at the moment, so there’s a bit of an itch. So, let me talk a bit today about a key concept I bring into my classes: Register.
Read MoreHistory is forever looking over her shoulder at fiction, denying the relation like the embarrassed, preppy child of hippies.
Read MoreAs a free service, I’m going to provide a truncated version of one of my best lessons here. Some of you might get some mileage out of it. It’s a basic tool, and many of my freshman students can use it with some confidence and a bit of prodding after about an hour. It’s known by the vaguely-scatological acronym “CRAAP.”
Read More