I really enjoyed the readings this week. At one point, Spandel said "formula leads to reassuring, sometimes maddeningly predictability." When I was reading that, I thought "you forgot boring as well.", but she talks about that later on. She says "it's extremely difficult to go from formulaic prewriting... to interesting reading.
The best quote that I have found in this whole book is by George Hillocks Jr. He says, "In my most cynical moments I wonder if the master plan is to train people not to think... If students learn to think and question, they might detect the nonsense in their own representative's speeches... Is there a plan to keep students from thinking, a kind of subtle 1984?" He is saying that he doesn't believe this all the time, but I kind of do. Writing makes you think. The last thing that the government wants is people that think for themselves, because if they do think for themselves they realize that all the propaganda that the government is feeding us is bull. I completely believe that the "hidden curriculum" is not just used for our minority students to keep them down, but to dumb down our privileged students so they will believe everything that they are told. Oh... sorry... I am on a hippie antiestablishment diatribe, sometimes I do that. (You don't wanna get me started with cell phones, On Starr, and GPS, just ask Brian:))
The section about writer's block in the Smith book is interesting. I think all blocks are a manifestation of fear. I think it was Hemingway that said something like the scariest thing it is a blank page.
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