Re: This above all

On 5/20/08, eb wrote:
>
> That's why we need to track kids and stop believing all kids are
> the same. I have too many levels in one class. The high kids are
> bored, the low kids are lost, and the ones in the middle are
> attentive. So, I'm teaching to the middle--mediocrity abounds.
> We are watering down at all levels--even college I hear. It is a
> travesty. We are breeding illiteracy.
>

Don't think of it as mediocrity; think of it as the golden mean. The
pain isn't so bad when you do so. Never has this Yeats poem been more
prescient:

The Second Coming

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot
hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is
loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of
passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming
is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight:
somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the
head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is
moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the
indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare
by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at
last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

RESPOND TO THIS POST START A NEW THREAD RETURN TO CHATBOARD

Posts on this thread, including this one

beginning teaching English I, 5/14/08, by newteacher.
Re: beginning teaching English I, 5/14/08, by MM in Tampa.
Re: beginning teaching English I, 5/14/08, by Ennen.
Re: This above all , 5/15/08, by L. Swilley .
Re: gracias, 5/15/08, by newteacher.
Re: beginning teaching English I, 5/15/08, by Raftery.
Re: adding to comments of others, 5/16/08, by marjoryt.
Re: This above all , 5/20/08, by eb.
Re: This above all , 5/21/08, by t.

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