Thinking About Education

I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think. ~Socrates

The Lost Art of Storytelling?

  My parents are the most literate people I know. They are in their 80’s and still attend a monthly book group where group members, including retired English professors, discuss an important book they have all read. They still learn and grow from such an experience. As a group they understand, connect, enrich, and enlarge upon the stories they read and tell. There is nothing quite like a discussion of a good book.. Read More

“Texts” vs. “Books”

One of the interesting things you notice if you’ve been in education a long time is how the language we use shows how we have shifted our thinking. I couldn’t help noticing a few years back when I was having a discussion with colleagues about literature that I was the only one referring to “books” instead of “texts.”  There was something definitely too clinical to me about calling a book a “text.” “Text” reminded.. Read More

A Definition of “Story”

Good definitions can be enlightening in themselves. I came across this one in a writing class I took. I think it was the one taught by Joyce Allen here at the Carrboro ArtsCenter: Story – a journey, actual or metaphorical, involving a person (or person equivalent) the reader engages with for whom something is at stake. The person finds problems and meets them in some way so that by the end something has.. Read More

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