"In the Basement of the ivory Tower" by Professor X"

 

 

This article was about an instructor who gave a student an “F” on the first writing assignment. An older woman in her forties gave her teacher a hard time. She had no computer skills and didn’t know how to use the internet. After class the teacher would try to help her but she was not absorbing any of the information.  He gave her an idea and said “you might want to get extra help; you could set up a private session with the librarian for extra help.” After all many people cannot right a research paper, and a few have to do so in a work place day to day in life. We learn in a college where we pay high amounts of tuition for to pursue a degree and improve skills.

In my opinion I feel like that author could have argued the point a little bit better, using more examples then just one student who didn’t understand the material. There should be more examples of why students receive a failing grade on papers. There should also be more examples on how teachers decide to grade a paper and give an “F” as a grade. I think the author is trying to show how a particular student was unfamiliar with computers, changed her topic several different times and failed an English paper for her first time to make her a better student in writing. I don’t really think there’s to many holes in the argument, I’m just left with the question; what is the authors point of showing an example of one student who couldn’t write a paper? How did she understand the concept of writing a good paper?

I agree and disagree with this author because he gave me ideas about some writing and reminded me the pros and cons of writing a good paper and failing a paper in English. Then again I don’t understand why the article was concentrated on one particular student who failed her first paper. He just focused on her negatives about the paper being too short and her doing a bad job. I feel like that wouldn’t motivate people who can’t write well like myself, to get the message directed to the reader the way the author wants to. I feel like teachers in schools should prepare us to become better writers for our future. Other than that this article didn’t change my thinking about school.

My golden line from this article would be : “Her deficits don’t make her a bad person or even unintelligent or unusual”  I picked that line because I feel like we all come from different situations, as being in a high school or home schooled  and we all learn different. I feel like some people are more advanced in subjects then others, and others have talents that most people don’t have. But that doesn’t make people unusual or dumb just because there different or don’t understand something.