I still find myself busy and tired as this academic semester comes mercifully to a limping, apathetic end. I am writing the final exam for my students this evening. It is a complex challenge. It must be a fair gauge of the student's knowledge (which is itself mostly a reflection of their effort) but it must also be just difficult enough to conclusively reveal the lollygaggers. Of course I myself am not without lollygag tendencies, so I am pulling for them to get their act together and come through in the clutch. They are not stupid, but they are not good students and it is clear that the American educational system has largely failed them. Part of me is inclined to give everyone an A, the logic being that the system is so fucked that to hold students to rigid standards for grading is to ignore reality and punish them for participating in it. Those students who genuinely earned their grade will take away a degree of mastery of a new subject and that is a reward in and of itself.
But, no, I'm not going to do that. Not when I have students who by any fair standard of evaluation should be failing the class. So the final exam must provide the means for demonstrating their failure should their pattern hold true, while still providing them the chance to finish strong should they decide to change their ways at the last minute. And all the while I still wrestle with the question of what sort of pedogogical methods might overcome the apathy of the lollygagger.
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Here is an interesting little site that allows you to see the political contributions that folks in your neighborhood have made. I find this a bit disquieting.
Here is a link to a story on freearabvoice.org, an "interesting" site that describes itself as "Your Voice in a World where Zionism, Steel, and Fire have turned Justice Mute." The arab media can be quite a surprise to those experiencing it for the first time. This particular story concerns "US aggressor troops laughing in battle" because, according to the report, they've been givensome sort of pharmaceutical agent before being sent into battle. "The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent writes that the Resistance learned later from interrogations of captured American Marines that the US military medical service distributes a type of halucinogenic (sic) pill to the troops that prompts laughter and reduces the sense of fear in combat conditions." Sounds absurd certainly, but we know the military has experimented with this sort of thing before, so perhaps it's not entirely farfetched.
And by the way, google has invited me, and lots of other Blogger users I think, to test the beta version of Gmail, their new email system. So if you want to help me take it for a spin, you can now email me at trickgnosis@gmail.com
