Eloquence

Words and language

Sentences and paragraphs

Thoughts and attitudes

Action and transformation

Communication binds a culture together and frees individuals from isolation.

Words lift heavy hearts, condemn the proud and guilty, motivate the apathetic, slow the impulsive.

The mastery of language, its style and structure, inspired the adage “the pen is mightier than the sword.”

We treasure, revere, the words that move us.

Ideas flutter helplessly in the mind without the enfolding, invigorating medium of clear speech.

Few are the literary lodestars born blademasters of wordplay.

Full immersion into the depths of literature intubates the mind with the pure oxygen of eloquence.

Inhale deeply, O thou short of breath!

Exhale the overflow of your spirit!

Let apathy never deprive our children full passage of their potential to move hearts through command of their native tongue.

Get ‘em to read!

Teach ‘em to write!

SDG

Following Which Design Plan?

Part of my wing of the chemistry building is nearing the completion of a year-long renovation project. As my teaching lab is moving to the ‘new’ space, I gave the architects detailed plans for how I wanted the space built out, to scale, using industry standard design software, and gave them both hard and electronic copies of the design. You know where this is heading.

Large Nobility

On my mother’s desk is the following quote by Abraham Lincoln, “We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.”

Today's post comes from observing how a major incident costing many people their jobs escalated from an unwise but relatively minor comment made in a meeting. How many troubles would be avoided if we would ignore offensive things said by others and sought to minimize the opportunities for others to take offense at our words. In today’s culture, the burden for avoiding conflict lies almost exclusively with the speaker and the hearers are rarely expected to let things slide by. In fact, much of the “politically correct” mentality seeks to hunt for any potential opportunity to infer offense in someone’s words. Author intent and gracious forgiveness are not options. To me, what is even more diabolical is when a hearer is offended on behalf of some hypothetical person not even present who might be offended had they heard the comment.

Who Helped You?

Today while walking to class, I passed a student sitting outside. As I walked by, he was looking over a paper that had been graded and returned to him. In red ink, it said, “95   Who helped you?”

As I was in a hurry, I didn’t stop or turn around to see his face, so my musings are just speculation. However, this was a profound situation. The grader’s comment can be taken at least two ways.

1)      The positive way—who has helped you to improve? Who inspired you? Who helped obtain the information? The grader is saying “way to go!” “Good job!” and so on.

2)      The negative way—From whom did you cheat? Who did this for you? With whom did you commit collusion? The grader is saying, “you aren’t good enough to do this well.” “Not only are you a bad student, but you’re a dishonest one.”

Either interpretation tells a significant story. What story does your feedback tell your students?

SDG