I just read this comment that one student made to another on a peer review sheet that made me drop my pen. So, the paper is an analysis of an article about "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" (a short story by Joyce Carol Oates) that argues for a connection between Arnold Friend (the story's "bad guy") and Bob Dylan. It's a heck of an article and the student who is writing about it did a great job summarizing the main argument. All good, right?
The peer-reviewer's suggestion to the writer: "Maybe explain who Dylan is because I have no idea who he is."
Did that just kill you a little bit on the inside? It's bad enough that they don't get references to movies like The Breakfast Club, but this strikes me as much more disturbing.
Side note: Today while I was teaching my ENGL 312 class, someone on the floor below was playing The Eurythmic's "Sweet Dreams" quite loudly. I have no idea why. The students in my class recognized the song. English majors, I have found, are generally much more conversant in pop culture references than other majors.
Anyway, I mentioned that that song creeped me out when I was a little kid and it first came out. (Seriously--I have very clear memories of my siblings playing it at night when I was in bed--they had later bed times, of course--and finding myself terrified by the line "Some of them want to abuse you.") Then I realized that most of them weren't even born then. After class, I looked it up and sure enough, the song came out in 1983. Most of this year's freshman class was born in/around 1990. Ugh.
2 comments:
No one should be allowed to be that young! I have a lot of trouble accepting that kids born in the 90s are now adults. It kinda freaks me out.
By the way, now "Sweet Dreams" is stuck in my head.
Ummmmm...you two feel old? I don't have much sympathy.
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