So says the opening statement of a tuttee's paper from today's tutoring sessions. The paper was about Reading Lolita in Tehran, and the influence that Big Brother can have on our modern societies. I think.
And of course the sentence doesn't make any sense whatsoever (and could quite possibly come out of the mouth of some of our current political leaders), but I still really love it.
Nobody likes it. When there are restrictions on everything.
Because you know what? It's true. Nobody likes restrictions. And for sure, nobody likes it when there are so many restrictions as to encompass 'everything'.
So how do you fix it? How do you go back to the student and ask them to make the sentence work? The answer they'll give you will obviously be "How come it doesn't make sense? It's true." And to that, I have no answer.
These poor kids - they are required to write these torturous 5-page essays on articles that they couldn't care less about, and then we sit there and tell them why the essays are wrong, and even go so far as to give them a 'paragraph formula', guaranteed to help you pass the class.
And so they write within the confines of the formula, trying to fill in the blanks, and then they just want to write an introduction that feels like it's their own... and then the tutor immediately negates it's relevancy.
And so I understand. I understand the frustration, but moreso, I understand where she's coming from with that opening sentence.
Afterall, 'nobody likes it when there are restrictions on everything'.
2 comments:
Great post. I hate seeing that type of logic where there are restrictions purely for the sake of restrictions. As to invent the box to keep people from making thier own.
Yes, but even Mozart studied counterpoint and voice leading. It doesn't matter how sophisticated and creative the massive briefing project is that I'm working on, I'm still just writing variations on the five paragraph theme I learned in AP English in 1984-85. (But Gawd, I despised that woman.)
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