Volume 142, Issue #6
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FICTION VS. NONFICTION City College’s English courses 90 through 1A will change their emphasis of teaching from literary stories to non-fiction texts, according to a new implementation proposed by the Department of Education. In the past few years, reports and studies have concluded that many community college and high school students are facing difficulties once they are transferred to four-year institutions. This lack of academic standards, alongside the inability of college students to write basic essays in various disciplines, has drawn a big question mark about the old way of schooling, and has triggered the Department of Education to come up with a new plan for teaching college-level English. While some students may feel that the new curriculum will better prepare them for their academic careers, others view non-fiction texts as boring nonsense and will be critical of the new standards. Indeed, non-fiction texts might be a little more difficult to comprehend, because their content is not as interesting as fictional stories. However, in order to write essays on subjects other than English, students must learn how to analyze non-fiction. Taking away the literature aspect from English courses is a wrong move. It is an important part of contemporary education because it engages students in a complex set of symbolic, moral, intellectual and social considerations. Overall, both fiction and non-fiction explore the texture and meaning of the human experience in a compelling way and give students an insight on different aspects of culture and art — that is why they should be taught simultaneously. e-mail: editorial@theguardsman.com
ONLINE CLASSES GIVE OPTIONS
Every semester, City College is offering more and more classes taught via the Internet. There is nothing unusual about that, since we live in a technology-driven world and most people are online anyway. The first online classes were taught in the fall of 2000; back then, there were only nine classes. Six years later, there are 88, and in spring of 2007 there will be 32 more. For City College students who are a little bit older and don’t care much about campus life, nothing can be better. The more classes they can take from home, the better it gets. Although it takes a lot of discipline to do it, and it is easy to get lazy and drop the class, the idea of not being physically present on campus and get credit beats the challenge. Love for online classes is growing but there are disadvantages. Classmates and teachers sometimes never meet in person. There are no conversations, no questions asked in person and answers never come in real-time. Although there are reading assignments, essays to write, questions to answer and quizzes to do, students will not learn much from them, because the circumstances are not challenging enough. For those who have not taken online classes yet, go for it. But think first of what can be learned from it. One of the best things about online classes is that it is possible to be anywhere in the world and still be able to get an education — and what could be better than that. e-mail: acnilsson@theguardsman.com INNOVATE THE FOURTH ESTATE
Journalism is rooted in science and public service. Journalists, like scientists, ascertain the truth to the closest degree, then report the facts —not only make the public aware, but also to insist that the public form their own opinions. In recent months, there have been several "Top 25" lists printed of stories that the mainstream media have slipped on or allowed to vanish from the public's collective consciousness. An Indiana University study found that Comedy Central's fake-news program, "The Daily Show," was just as informative as network news; yet both are still a terrible means of gathering information.
Faculty Poll Yes: 4 out of 7 “I don't think you should exclude anything. There are things to be learned from both." Which do you prefer: online or regular courses? Why?
BY JOHN GOINS "Along this road Goes no one This autumn evening." -- Matsuo Basho Winter in Istanbul: The two men, black with coal dust, looked like shadows in the snow — apparitions made of dust — and swung their sledgehammers with a resignation that reminded me of convicts in a chain gang. They were breaking up a large block of coal to heat an apartment building that they were too poor to live in, for people who chose not to see or think about them except when their homes were cold. I had moved to Turkey to forget what it felt like to be a black man in America, and to teach English; but when I saw those two men laboring in the snow, I felt like an imposter. I wondered if the Turks who had treated me so kindly knew how black folks were treated in America. “Are you Egyptian?” strangers would ask, “Moroccan?” When I told them that I was a black American, they would say “Ah, Rodney King!” But Turkey had its own problems: Kurds, poverty, religion … That’s why I was delighted to hear that a writer like Orhan Pamuk had recently won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Pamuk, a writer from Istanbul, almost went to prison for breaking one of the great taboos of Turkish culture — admitting that the Turks had committed genocide against the Armenians. Race and class are the great taboos of American culture. That is why writers and artists are so important, to remind us of men in threadbare clothes who swing sledgehammers in the snow, sleep on park benches, or die in residential hotels without their families by their side. Orhan Pamuk is a worthy recipient of the Nobel Prize, as are many other writers like him. Isn’t it time for us to start reading them?
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Executive Director of CannaCare Steve Sarich holds one of the clone marijuana plants he's grown for people who use marijuana for medical purposes. CannaCare is based in Everett, WA.
