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[Mark P. Line]

Johanna Rubba wrote:
> Hey, Tom ...
>
> No disrespect, but -- write me up a ten-week syllabus in which I can
> teach all of that and I'll take you up on it. Be sure you keep the
> language accessible to, say, a ninth-grader.

Needing to Flesch-test college materials to ninth grade, isn't that sort
of a root cause of something here?

I'm not sure what I'd do if I ever had to teach in the US. My inclination
would be to refuse to use dumb-downed materials, but that may be only
because I have the easy option of not teaching in the US. When I was
teaching in Germany, all the students could read and write and everything.
I could even speak tangentially of algebraic equations without losing my
audience.

A viewing of Mike Judge's film _Idiocracy_ might help put this kind of
decision into perspective, i.e. what will be the end result if we always
dumb everything down, all the time?

-- Mark

Mark P. Line





>
> Happy New Year!
>
> Dr. Johanna Rubba, Ph. D.
> Professor, Linguistics
> Linguistics Minor Advisor
> English Dept.
> Cal Poly State University San Luis Obispo
> San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
> Ofc. tel. : 805-756-2184
> Dept. tel.: 805-756-2596
> Dept. fax: 805-756-6374
> E-mail: jrubba at calpoly.edu
> URL: http://cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
>
>
>
>
>


-- Mark

Mark P. Line
Bartlesville, OK