This is a special public service announcement about Writer.

[Writer]

Writer cannot come to the Lounge right now, for Writer is on the cliched journey of discovering her "voice."

If you would like to leave a personal message for Writer, feel free to do so at any time. She will return your message as soon as she is able.

Writer doesn't know when she will emerge from her self-imposed exile, but in the meantime, let's pray that one day Writer may actually live up to her namesake. Otherwise, Writer may have to change her horribly misapplied handle to "Lounger."

This is the end of this special public service announcement. Now, we will return to your far more interesting threads, already in progress.

[hfojvt]

1. "But let me say something, too, about the 'successful' teaching of reading

and writing in the schools. Consider, by contrast, the method employed by Sylvia Ashton-Warner in teaching young Maoris. She gets them to ask for their own words, the particular gut-word of fear, lust or despair that is obsessing the child that day; this is written for him on strong cardboard; he learns it instantaneously and never forgets it; and soon he has an exciting, if odd, vocabulary. From the beginning, writing is by demand, practical, magical; and, of course, it is simply an extension of speech - it is the best and strongest speech, as writing should be. What is read is what somebody is importantly trying to tell. Now what do our schools do? We use tricks of mechanical conditioning. These do positive damage to spontaneous speech, meant expression, earnest understanding. Inevitably, they create in the majority the wooden attitude toward 'writing,' as entirely different from speech, that college teachers later try to cope with in Freshman Composition. And reading inevitably becomes a manipulation of signs, e.g. for test-passing, that has no relation to experience." Paul Goodman "Compulsory Mis-education"

Write on! :hi:

[billyskank]

2. Not that there's anything wrong with the name Lounger

;)

:hi: