Professor X

After reading "In the Basement of the Ivory Tower", I understand why the professor in question decided to go with a single letter instead of a last name.  His/her opinion about teaching writing did not sit very well with me, or apparently, Mike Rose. 

 The first thing about this essay was the elitist attitude that he/she brought to it.  The overall tone of the essay was just mean, especially how he/she mentions "future police officers" or "future state troopers" every other paragraph.  He/she feels that future police officers or state troopers aren't in need of or capable of writing a paper or analyzing literature.  

Secondly, the writer of this essay has an overall crappy attitude toward teaching.  As a teacher, I have realized that if I go into the classroom thinking that my students will not understand something, I just become frustrated.  He/she says, that "I fail nine out of 15 students".  With any job, if I go in saying that I will fail, or my students will, then generally somebody is failing.  I also understand that students get bored, as the students did in the writer's class.  The students also may be picking up on some of bad attitude of their professor.  

The biggest problem I have with this essay is how Professor X lays all the blame for the student failure on the students.  I'm not saying that students are perfect.  (I've had some slackers and heard some of the lamest excuses ever.)  Professor X seems to sit up on his intellectual throne and look down on his poor peasant students.  That's not right.  

As for the actual writing, Professor X focuses on sentence level problems more than the context of the writing.  In the case of Ms. L's paper, "Sentences broke off in the middle of a line and resumed on the next one, with the first word inappropriately capitalized.  The was some wavering between single-and double-spacing.  She quoted articles, but cited only databases-where were the journals themselves?"  Professor X already knew that Ms. L lacked in computer skills.  I don't think it was a coincidence that most of the problems with Ms. L's paper were with grammar and formatting, both easily fixed if the student is apt with computer programs.  

Mike Rose apparently noticed this too because he says in his response, "writing filled with grammatical error does not preclude engagement with sophisticated intellectual material".  Error happens for various reasons.  More often than not, error happens because the student thinks they are correct or they learned something incorrectly.  There is almost always some sort of pattern to the error.  It is entirely possible to look beyond the surface and sentence level problems and see the content of the text.