Dear World,

I hit the wrong "follow" button when I followed you last week. I am following you twice -- oops!

Dave

To continue the discussion we had in class, I would like to bring in the piece by Kitzhaber (257). In this piece, it assesses the "present" (it was published in 1963) state of freshman comp. As we started discussing with the Brereton piece, when English was first being introduced, there are still many flaws in the program. Kitzhaber cites many reasons such as syllabuses going out of date rapidly, "confusion in purpose, content, and organization; inexpert teaching; poor textbooks" as explanation as to the unrest in freshman comp (258). He also makes the note, almost obviously, that these reasons are the same the professors themselves are blaming high school composition teachers for the unpreparedness of college freshmen.
Brereton's subjects knew that the programs they were developing were sub-par, but they were merely getting started, so why, after almost 70 years (the programs he examined began in 1895) are there still these problems? Is it the constant change of the language as we discussed? Is it truly inexperience of professors and teachers? If so, how do we assess these changes and "fix" this problem. Are these issues that are seen at CSU-Pueblo? How are they being addressed?

FIRE!!

I guess it had been a while since I had had a history class, but I had forgotten that the London fire of 1666 had been the possible beginning of the Victorian age. The near destruction of the largest city in The Empire would be a devastation and would have to initiate a change an age of history.
Starting the Industrial Revolution was an inevitable response to this tragedy as the technology was available to make everything from weapons to textiles more efficient and automated. Unfortunately the nearly immediate effects of the Victorian Age are sometimes overlooked. The institution of child labor, poor wages for difficult work, and the rise of middle management are often frowned upon, but the age demanded these difficult effects. Had it not been for child labor and the poor conditions, many of the labor laws we have today would not be in place. The same is true for wages and the institution of unions and competition for wages and placement in companies in general.
The Victorian Age gave us much more than great literature and rhetoric. It began the proverbial snowball that has escalated to many of today's largest debates about wages, age, and appropriate placement for employees within a structure.

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