Khalid Hussain

A theme that has come across in the feedback from students this semester, and which echoes similar comments I have received in recent years, is that students simply do not want faculty to teach them how to be literate in their chosen fields of study. Everything must be expressed in common language, i.e. the students' common language, or there is something wrong with the teaching, and therefore something wrong with the professor as well.

What these people fail to realize is that most people come from some backwater or other, and that it takes real effort to develop communication skills that are more cosmopolitan in nature. These communication skills are recognized immediately by people who also possess them, and they contribute to the mobility of the people who possess them.

So, I'm not going to try to teach writing as much as I did before. I will save my literacy for myself. I will also try to speak in the manner of a third-grade teacher, and we'll see how that goes.


Peace,

kh