Starting a course by asking students to write the worst papers possible alerts them to common faults and weaknesses.

Reacts to recent curriculum changes in Texas and California by offering a facetious teaching plan for reading whereby all the teacher's work is to be done for them in the form of workbooks and worksheets on skills. Suggests that children can read the same book for all six years of elementary school. (TB)

Familiarity with specific images or sets of images plays a role in a culture's visual heritage. Two questions can be asked about this type of visual literacy: Is this a type of knowledge that is worth building into the formal educational curriculum of our schools? What are the educational implications of visual literacy? There is a three-part…

Miguel de Cervantes' capture by the Turks and his imprisonment in Argel (Morocco) during the Battle of Lepanto in the sixteenth century have been studied by literary critics who have endeavored to determine fiction and reality in certain episodes of "Don Quijote" and in the drama, "Los banos de Argel". Twelve documents…

This book is a collection of Frost's letters, reviews, introductions, lectures, and interviews on writing dating back to 1913. It provides Frost's view of literature, and its relation to language and social order. Part one, "Frost as a Literary Critic," discusses the scope of Frost's criticism and Frost as both critical theorist and…

Argues that both the students and the adviser must be responsible for ensuring that humorous or satirical articles in student publications are not libelous. (SRT)

Criticizes topical readers on the English language now being used in freshman composition classes both for implying that language constrains more than aids thinking and for providing poor writing samples for the student to analyze and emulate. Discusses the influence of general semantics on these readers and the reliance on the parodic perspective…

Reports on ways of having fun with the classics of literature. Describes classroom uses of parody and satire to emphasize the themes and characterizations found in Shakespeare, J.D. Salinger, Ernest Hemingway, and other noted authors. (RL)

Satirical writing offers a means of encouraging students to criticize those forms of victimization and inequality that trouble them most without that overt, dogmatic indoctrination of a political agenda that many would consider an anathema to democratic teaching. The indirect, satirical jab provides students with an intellectually challenging and…

Imitation of organizational and sentence patterns is an ancient technique for teaching rhetoric, but to be effective, imitation must be informed, deliberate, and creative. Students must first learn to recognize the characteristics of a given style and then to appreciate the connection between specific stylistic qualities and their cumulative…

Humorous imitations of famous poems and quotations, altered with metric language, are presented in this document published by the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools Metric Education Project. In addition, a section entitled "A Metrikey" relates metric units to familiar items such as width of doorknobs, areas of typewriter keys, etc. (MP)

Writing parodies of advertising slogans can sensitize students to the emotional appeals of those slogans.

Presented as a fairy tale with the characters of Snow White and the seven dwarves, this paper points out some of the professional, emotional, and health characteristics and problems of individual teachers, and ways an administrator might deal with them. (SJL)

This paper discusses parody as an effective pedagogical device and as a way of teaching recognition of, and appreciation for, form. If the subject parodied is in poetic form, then rhyme and rhythm become factors for the parodist to consider. If the subject parodied is in prose, then the parodist must address the techniques of narrative,…

The purpose of the course on satire in the Quinmester Program is to make the student more aware of satire in literature and the other media, in order to add to his enjoyment of literature and add to his perception of human nature. The course includes the study of art, cartoons, movies, television, and editorials in addition to literature.…