Notes from Table VIII:
An opening thought about the new world since 1960: the average American has gained, as a result of technological innovations, an extra month of leisure.
Despite all this leisure, we are still harried, why? How do you define leisure?
Walking to work for me is an important time for me, a moment of pleasure. Our time is being redefined. I have different e-mail accounts, and I open some of them at different times in relation to my need and my desire for a personal moment.
Language is a vehicle to use to make solutions:
The problem of solution/paradigm still exists. What happens in the middle has to be adaptable, based on the challenge of living in a changing media, changing culture.
In written communication, we use a certain kinds of filters. Oral communication another kind of filter. This alludes to Richard Lederer’s talk that there used to be a common body of knowledge, now there is a move away from that. There is now a new set of standards.
So is there a successful formula that writers use, a constant? Well, standards are evolving.
I see my students coming up with new interpretations of the great works. I’m wondering how to approach these new views.
Do you mean how to build possibilities of shared experience? Yes, even just the way a piece of literature is received.
To teach in CUNY is staggering.
The old curricular model of skills, values, and models seems out of place.
You never know what the students will bring to the table. You couldn’t survive teaching at CUNY without knowing the literary heroes of students from different backgrounds.
In the writing center, we see students with great ideas, but there are issues that result from English as their second language.
I had some good luck to do research on the history of English in America. And teaching the English language was initially to make “us” Americans with certain values. The English language is there for self-discovery.
Language:
It really comes down to using language as a frame; language to describe how we are thinking.
The word ‘language’ is a verb. How do we manage to live in this age? To survive; to manage; to thrive?
We need to come to conclusions about our first issue. What do we want to say at the end? We enjoyed having the keynote at our table. (Laughing)
SOLUTIONS:
No matter what it the question is the solution will always be related to language.
As in looking at language as a common place to live. We need to get language into the conversation.
We are language. We live in language.