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If ye dinnae ken what Scots is, it’s the leid o the Scots fowk. Fae Scotland, ken?

Scots has been a written language since medieval times, but it lost much of its social prestige as a written language after the Act of Union (1707), when it became fashionable for young, upper middle class, trend-setting Scottish people to speak English as if they were from the newly reinforced center of political and economic power, London (and I don’t mean they spoke Cockney, either). The language of London trickled down to the middle class, until there was a quite the social bias against speaking Scots.

And so Scots became, for a long time, the language of home and hearth, street and field. But not the language of books, school, academics, politics, or finance. There was an institutional bias against Scots, and it was not used formally in politics or education. Children were scolded– beaten even– for using Scots words and grammar in school. It never died out, but with some notable exceptions, it wasn’t much of a publishing medium for a few hundred years. Many Scots speakers do not think of Scots as a language; it’s quite common for them to describe it as “bad English.” It doesn’t help that some linguists still do too.

Now, however, as you may know, especially if I’ve bent your ear on the subject, Scots is flourishing, and so its prestige is rising again. It’s been building for decades. And to ring in the 21st Century, there is a spate of fiction, poetry and drama writing, a slew of new childrens’ books (indeed, childrens’ presses), language learning materials, and so on.

There’s still room for growth, though; the Scottish Parliament has a Cross Pairty Group on the Scots Leid which has written a document called “Scots: a Statement o Principles” that you can download here; and there’s a link to the SCPB Leid Policy here, which outlines which languages are used in the Scottish Parliament, and when. The language of the Scottish Parliament is mainly English, though debate is allowed in Scots as well as English, and in other languages (for example, Gaelic or British Sign Language, in which case translators are provided).

All this is progress. The day the Scottish Parliament re-convened on 12 May 1999 (the previous meeting adjourned on 25 March 1707), Dr. Winnie Ewing greeted the Parliament in English and Gaelic. Scots, spoken by more people in Scotland than Gaelic, was not officially used in this address. According to the documents above, Scots has some limited role in the new Parliament, and given the way things are going for Scots, it is bound to grow, as it should. On the other hand, the European Parliament, which has many official languages, does not give official status to many minority or regional languages, especially those that aren’t official languages of the various nations; Scots is one of those.

But now, there is a Scots-language Wikipedia at http://sco.wikipedia.org. There are other wikipedias besides the one English speakers are most familiar with. The Scots one differs from some of the wikipedias in other languages, because its the first Encyclopedia in the Scots language in the world. It also differs from these other wikipedias because Scots is not yet a codified language. Scots speakers aren’t in 100% agreement about how to represent their language in writing. (This may sound strange to you, but look at books written just a few hundred years ago in English, and you’ll see more than a little variety in how words are spelled, for example.)

Despite any minor disagreements, though, communication is flourishing. And it’s braw.

Glossary:
braw: a. Fine, elegant, beautiful, excellent
ken: v. know
leid: n. language

Interesting. I have seen many funny comments posted about professors on Ratemyprofessors.com. I have seen many offensive comments written by students on Ratemyprofessors.com. I have wondered about the long-term effects of a professor-rating system that ranks “hot” professors who give easy A’s more highly than professors who are either (a) not hot, or (b) not easy graders, or (c) none of the above.

But this is the first time I have seen a professor do anything in response. Mano was offended by a sexist, objectifying comment a student left about her on the site. She’s now told the entire section she won’t write recommendations for them because she does not know which student wrote the offensive comment. (Remember, the profs’ names are public; the students can post anonymously.) As she said,

They can write it, but I don’t have to tolerate it.

I have found that most of my friends who have “chili peppers” next to their names find Ratemyprofessors.com funny. But — like the paper evaluation system most colleges use for student evaluations — there are problems with anonymous evaluations of professors / courses. Only students are protected by anonymity. Some colleges take course evaluations a little too seriously, considering they’re written by people who often will rate a course most highly when they get a good grade. (Can you see the flaws in such a system?) How different things might be if evaluations were written after course grades had been distributed, and if students’ names were attached.

I wonder if any other profs have retaliated against the chili-pepper weilding crowd?

A UMass-Dartmouth undergrad was visited by Federal Agents after he ordered a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book via the college’s interlibrary loan service. According to the agents, the visit was triggered because the book was on a “watch list.” I would love, love, love to see what other books the government is monitoring. Agents brought the book when they visited the student, but they did not leave it with him.

He needed it for a paper for a history class on fascism and totalitarianism. Irony, anyone?

What’s also disturbing is that a second UM-D history professor, Brian Glyn Williams, was considering not teaching a course about terrorism, since it might subject his students to this sort of federal scrutiny:

Dr. Williams said in his research, he regularly contacts people in Afghanistan, Chechnya and other Muslim hot spots, and suspects that some of his calls are monitored.
“My instinct is that there is a lot more monitoring than we think,” he said.
Dr. Williams said he had been planning to offer a course on terrorism next semester, but is reconsidering, because it might put his students at risk.
“I shudder to think of all the students I’ve had monitoring al-Qaeda Web sites, what the government must think of that,” he said. “Mao Tse-Tung is completely harmless.”

When I was in high school, little revolutionary me went to the local college library to get a copy of the Little Red Book, among other resources, for a paper about Mao. Since the government did not intercept the book, I was able to learn that while Mao had some great ideas, he also had some terrible ones, and subjected a lot of people to a lot of trauma. I am glad I was left alone to read about that for myself.

More on the story above here, from Inside Higher Ed.

And then, an update on the story from the South Coast Today, which broke the story and the subsequent “it’s a hoax” story. Yeah, it’s a hoax. As Williams says in the follow-up piece, “it’s safe to do research” again. Let’s all go and order us a copy of the 1965 Little Red Book from Interlibrary Loan, eh? Thanks to Bicyclemark for pointing out the new developments.

Okay, so first I am very scarce, dear readers. And then I pop back in periodically, write, and disappear again. And now I am blogging “shop”: in this case, something for the teachers among you.

Those of you who teach (especially in colleges) know that plagiarism is a serious problem, and teaching students what it is and how to avoid it is not as simple or straightforward as one might think. Students often do not know they are plagiarizing, by not citing or using sources correctly, and simply showing them the MLA works cited format in a writing handbook is not enough. We’ve all caught students who plagiarized part of even the most carefully-constructed assignment, at one time or another. Mike, at Vitia,suggests forcing students to quickly produce an essay by plagirizing net sources, in order to show them how not to plagizrize. Here, he describes the assignment in an entry wonderfully entitled “Let’s Plagirize,” and here, he gives a follow-up report. I think it is a cool idea with a lot of possibilities for adaptation in different fields of study.

Matt Groening’s advice to grad students in Grad School is Hell:

Inside Higher Ed reports that David Horowitz’s campaign to control college classrooms is in full swing in Florida, where the state House of Representatives has approved an Academic Bill of Rights. The legislation has the support of Jeb Bush, after all.

The bill sounds innocuous enough. It is couched in terms of “Academic Freedom,” though, oddly enough, “Academic Freedom” implies a restriction on what professors can say, and perhaps a requirement that they say other things, instead. It seems like what the bill restricts most is academic freedom.

The proponents of such legislation believe that students are being forcibly indoctrinated by liberal professors. All of this begs the question of what conservative students are so worried about, in Florida, a state where it seems like the only time their views might be challenged, even gently, is in college? If the election of 2000 taught us anything, it’s that the powers that be in Florida are looking out for those oppressed conservative minorities. Because, in fact, they run the state.

The problem is that the bill opens the way for people to challenge, left and right, what happens in classrooms–which, of course, they can already do without clogging the courts. From a logistical standpoint, we can expect much extra litigation. And I am not sure there’s evidence that universities aren’t already handling such complaints well enough. But if every student with a grade dispute simply has to call “foul!” and call a lawyer, there are going to be all kinds of nasty results.

I also worry whether requiring professors to be fair to all sides (and I don’t believe that most aren’t fair) is going to mean liberal professors are eventually replaced with replacements who are “fair and balanced” in the Fox News sense of the term.

The article in Inside Higher Ed states, “Rep. Dennis K. Baxley said his own undergraduate education at Florida State University — in the 1970s — illustrated the failings of higher education: The problem was that an anthropology professor “did a tirade” in his course that evolution was correct and that creationism was not. Baxley said that students should not “get blasted” as he did for not believing in evolution.”

Um, maybe students in an anthropology seminar in a public university should hear a “tirade” about evolution. And what kind of lasting trauma did this cause, anyway? If a student believes in creationism, is being exposed to evolution, or even to a strong proponent of it, going to shatter his/her world?
When I read comments like Baxley’s, I wonder about the way Thomas Jefferson is quoted in the preamble to the bill:

94 WHEREAS, the value of the life of the mind was articulated
95 by Thomas Jefferson when he stated, “We are not afraid to follow
96 truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as
97 reason is left free to combat it…”

It seems like a student whose world was so horribly shaken by a discussion of evolution (yes, I said discussion–as “tirades” are in the ears of the beholder) is exhibiting, if nothing else, this fear Jefferson warns us of. And yet the problem lies in the words “truth” and “error.” The anthro professor believes s/he is sharing the “truth,” whereas the student Baxley thought he was being confronted with error. Oh dear. What to do? The answer, I believe, is not to add legislation. (Wow, that is the first libertarian-sounding thing I can remember saying ever.)

Interestingly, the Academic Bill of Rights would apply only to public colleges. According to the bill:

11 WHEREAS, the principles enumerated in this act fully apply
12 only to public postsecondary institutions, and nothing in this
13 act shall be construed as interfering with the right of a
14 private postsecondary institution to restrict academic freedom
15 on the basis of creed or belief…

It’s nice that professors in private universities–including religious institutions where one-sidedness is more often a problem–are allowed to indoctrinate to their hearts’ content. No class at (assuming this were a nationwide bill) Bob Jones or Oral Roberts or Brigham Young would be troubled by hearing a different point of view.

And no, in case anyone is worried, I do not believe professors should ideologically bully students. I know there are professors out there whose grading is swayed by ideology. But I believe it is extremely rare (indeed, rarer even than professors getting threatened physically by students, but that’s another story).

As a teacher, I try very hard to create an environment where respectful dialogue is possible. And the topics covered in class are appropriate: I don’t launch into tirades about George Bush when we’re talking about W. B Yeats. I don’t think the vast majority of teachers do, though I think is the sort of thing Horowitz wants us to think goes on in classrooms everyday. And I do believe that this sort of legislation will just yield court cases and instill fear in the hearts of professors, who will be anything but academically free. And believe it or not, students-of-different-ideologies everywhere, we will all be the losers.

Addendum 1: After writing this, I discovered applecidercheesefudge and Crooked Timber have much more coherent stuff to say about this. Check them out.

Addendum 2: You know, the more I think about it, graduate level study will really be screwed up by a bill like this. Think about a seminar in Marxist Literary Theory: Will the prof have to balance that out with another approach? That’s another course. Oy!

“Where is your business located?

“Unlike the vast number of websites on the Internet, we are NOT BASED IN PAKISTAN. Our company is based in North America. We want to make this very clear so everyone knows that they can reach us by dialing 1-888-774-9994. Our office is located in Toronto and our writers are based out of the United States, Canada, U.K., and Australia. All of our writers are Native English speakers meaning their first language is English and their experience in this matter will be evident in your essay. We are meticulous about what our writer’s produce because we understand that we are only as good as the last essay we write.”

Let’s leave behind the bizarre suggestion that “the vast number of websites on the Internet” are based in Pakistan. (Obviously, they meant to say “essay mill websites,” rather than “websites,” but even so, is this true?) The only legitimate reason this might be a problem is if a wonder-bread-eating, blonde, Swedish-American from Minnesota turns in a paper with obvious traces of English that clearly originates from another corner of the world, be it Ireland, Pakistan, or Australia. (Please, no hate mail; I have nothing against the wonder-bread eating community.)

What this paragraph says to me is “we don’t know how to use commas, apostrophes, or the past tense.” I was thinking this site might be that of the group the wonderful-but-defunct magazine Lingua Franca ( R.I.P.) profiled years ago–in a wonderful expose of a Canadian essay mill. But the people in that story seemed quite intelligent.

I am not a grammar fiend. I make spelling and punctuation errors a-go-go. Heck, there are some in this very posting. But when people are buying essays for upwards of $60 for four pages, well, doggonit, they deserve quality.

Check it out: (Questions – James Joyce Essay, Critical Essays on James Joyce, James Joyce Essays Boarding House, James Joyce free essays

Not least confusing was why a site called http://www.essays-james-joyce.com was doing selling essays on such a wide variety of subjects.

But maybe I shouldn’t diss them. Selling and buying essays is morally reprehensible. But so is the exploitation of contingent faculty (adjuncts). Maybe soon all of us overeducated underpaid exploited academic workers will just sell out, and sell our essays. In the new world of the academy, will students buy essays from ex-adjunct professors to be handed in to other adjunct professors? I think if if it comes to that, I’ll instead just go into Management Consulting.