Education Guardian - Literary Boredom

'Academics love a dull read' according to Jonathan Wolff. I totally agree with him but would point out that Kurt Vonnegut recommends the following for short story writers:

'Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.'

Wolff's main point is that good writing involves keeping the reader in suspenders while academics encourage the opposite:

'At least in my subject, we teach students to go sub-zero on the tension scale: to give the game away right from the start. A detective novel written by a good philosophy student would begin: 'In this novel I shall show that the butler did it.' The rest will be just filling in the details.'

I've often advised students to follow Vonnegut's advice on the tension question. His other rules are worth a look too. You can find them here:

American State - Kurt Vonnegut's rules for writing fiction

And here's the book where you'll find them:

B-)

Dear All

With apologies for cross posting.
I am sure most of you are aware of the budget cuts the government is proposing to impose on the British Library. According to a press release on the BL website, these cuts may force the library to start charging for users to access the collections (see:
http://www.bl.uk/spendingreview.html )

If you think, as I do, that this is a really bad idea - please sign the online petition:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/library/

And do tell your friends to sign it too!

According to their website, the BL is actively campaigning against the proposed cuts and Lynne Brindley has asked those who feel strongly about this issue to contact the library and explain "why the British Library is important to you and give us permission to use your letter in our campaign.

Please e-mail chief-executive@bl.uk with your name, contact number and message, or write to Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive, The British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB."
So if you have five minutes to spare, do send an e-mail or letter too.

Gave two talks to Year 12 students on Friday with the title 'English Language at University'

Response was quite mixed at the time, with one group much more lively and interested than the other, but spies in the corridor said my session was described as 'proper good'.

I had a problem being understood when I quoted students in the tea break saying that 'bourbons are butters'** and that jammie dodgers are 'not too shabby' but I'm still not sure whether my leg was being pulled when one group told me they'd never heard the word 'chav'. One member of the group suggested that it was a word that just 'hasn't reached that part of London' yet. Is this possible?

B-}

** 'butters' means ugly/nasty/disgusting, originally from 'butt ugly', I believe

Guardian Education Blog - Rating the Ratings

I'm pleased the Guardian's Education blog exists. Haven't yet found loads of interesting stuff but I'm sure it'll warm up.

But I did enjoy the top 20 funniest professor ratings on ratemyprofessors.com

B-))

Education Guardian - Do the maths

I thought this article by Jonathan Wolff was a nice, clear discussion of what's been going on in universities recently. Fairly depressing reading. I particularly admire him for admitting that he doesn't know what the solution might be to the problems he identifies. I have to say, though, that I didn't enjoy this sentence:

But taught students must be

I've always felt bad about journalists using this kind of construction (not that Jonathan Wolff is a journalist, really - he's head of philosophy at UCL) as it seems like a fairly crude way of trying to sound authoritative. This one is particularly bad, but it is a useful example of how something short and simple can still cause a bit of a processing hiccup.

B-)