I weep for you.

What am I saying?! I weep with you!

*weeps*

This individual has definitely spent time reading a wide range of non-fiction. But, Wilson, this information is not comforting to someone who's money is going to LeTourneau

"Who's money is going to LeTourneau"?

Forgive this humble computer science major for pointing that Mrs. Garner has just asserted that she is money going to LeTourneau. Oh... and the sentence in question lacks a terminating punctuation mark.

Now, with that out of the way, I really must point out that there are those among the technical majors who decry the aforementioned level of literary incompetence in students at LeTourneau, technical majors and liberal arts stuents alike. My personal belief is that students should not be allowed to take upper-level liberal-arts classes until they have passed both English Comp 2 and English Review (either the test or the real class) so that quality may be maintained. Oh yeah, and GET SOME PREREQUISITES! Failing that, we just need to raise entrance requirements at LeTourneau and shoot people who fail the English Review Test.

I weep for the liberal arts in general. *Sigh*
Something tells me that LeTourneau is not the only university where conversations of this nature occur in a liberal arts class.

That said, most other schools at least have prerequisites of basic disciplinary and writing courses before allowing admittance to upper-level classes of that discipline, much less senior-level classes. Oh yeah, and the professors of those classes rarely are forced to dumb down their classes so that the poor and the idiotic can pass them. Yeah... I'm not bitter about unskilled engineers in senior-level history classes... not at all...

Forgive my apparent ignorance, but what demon from the seven circles of hell has managed to possess these idiotic technical majors and convince/force them to enroll in a high level history course? And which academic advisors signed the sheet to allow them to sign up for these classes?

Now, I can forgive some ignorance on their parts, seeing as how I was never taught footnotes and endnotes due to the overwhelming popularity of MLA in the schools I have attended. However, to be able to enroll in a high level history course without such knowledge is an absolute atrocity.

I always liked footnotes and endnotes better than parenthetical citation. It's so much fun to hunt the little numbers up elsewhere. Like decoding a treasure map.

(Brought to you by the letters X, G, and Ardith's Random Comment of the Day)

footnotes are friendly. endnotes are evil. parenthetical citation is for pansies. I like being able to read reference notes at the bottom of the page. I don't like flipping to the end of a chapter or the end of a book to find out info that might just help me understand something better before finishing the chapter. That, and the numbers look nicer in a paper than parentheses.

You would think that, wouldn't you Anna? :-p

Engineer jumping in to the fray!!

As a tutor for three years in the English proficiency class (the one taken when upon failing the test), I've seen a lot of interesting, otherwise bright people take that class. There's a major problem, though. The class can be avoided until the very last semester at LU. I see that as a major problem because the skills learned in the class are not given a chance to be practiced in other classes and assignments. I highly doubt anyone who takes the class is going to have another chance to write a paper directly after graduation; so those well-taught skills in the Junior proficiency class will likely go by the wayside for lack of practice. So sad.

I also tutored in the very basic English class for incoming Freshmen who were not eligible for Comp I. Those are the students that need some help! These are students of all backgrounds and majors--not nearly as dominated with aviation and engineering as the Junior class is. Apparently, very few people had the opportunity to have decent English training in high school and are somehow able to graduate. Really, I would be all in favor of a national English proficiency test! Almost all schools seem to lack tremendously in this vital area of teaching.

Uh, so, anyway, the dismal state of English education in America was the theme of my rant today. Go read Eats, Shoots & Leaves and at least be entertained by the current state!

Oh, and, forgive this technical major for enrolling in a high-level literature course. I quite enjoyed "Western Drama before Shakespeare". Next time I'll remember what a disdane liberal arts majors have for those "invading" techies. In my book, anyone is free to take Elab3 or Fields! But all the pre-reqs will take some time...

I was waiting for a technical major to come forward in defense of his kind ;-)

As I pointed out in the post, the problem really isn't the major. I know many engineers who can handle themselves very well in our liberal arts courses; meantime, I know quite a few deficient liberal arts students (I pointed that out, too). But I am tired of being told how "easy" liberal arts courses are by students who can't fit two clauses together without help. And I'm tired of these students' being able to get into my upper-level courses without meeting a few prerequisites.

If the engineering courses here had no prerequisites, they would be in ruins too -- and our engineering majors would know as little about vectors as our history majors seem to know about endnotes. But there are no prereqs on this particular senior-level course. Not one.

Curses to the lack of pre-reqs! But, then again, I wouldn't have been able to take that Western Drama Before Shakespeare class because I never took any other English classes in college. So curses on lack of pre-reqs except when it benefits me!

Oh, and just ignore my little type-o in the first sentence of my second paragraph. Everyone gets one mistake, right? Right?

As one of those technical majors that are terrible at English, I figured I would ring in. Besides making people like Eliot squeamish at times, my lack of skills are relatively harmless. The problem you have in that class has nothing to do with English skills. You got a problem with dumb questions. Instead of asking after class or doing a simple Google search, dumb questions waist time. It’s really the teachers fault for not saying “meet me after class”, or asking someone to explain it after class to the ignorant.

I think my problem is individuals (whether technical majors or liberal arts majors) who lack the basic competence and motivation necessary to participate in upper-level liberal arts classes. This includes idiots, people who can't be bothered to pay attention and/or read the material (and thus ask stupid questions) and those who lack the basic skills and understanding for the class.

In short, the solution is self-evident from the wise comments of those above:
1) Pre-requisites (preferably demanding and rigorous enough to weed out idiots) for upper-level liberal arts classes
2) Mandatory pre-requisites of either passing the English Proficiency test or Engish Review and Comp 1 and Comp 2 before entry into upper-level liberal arts classes
3) Teacher willingness to disallow idiocy (read: empower teachers to fail idiots and kick them out of class with impunity)

Oh... and yes Joe, we mind people with terrible English skills. Especially because, in many of these classes, one of us is going to be unfortunate enough to get stuck reviewing a paper that you wrote... and as you've no doubt noticed with Eliot, bad writing hurts many of us.