{"id":633,"date":"2008-02-02T23:49:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-03T04:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/wordpress\/poetponders\/?p=633"},"modified":"2026-07-01T15:27:39","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T20:27:39","slug":"teaching-in-an-era-of-kos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/2008\/02\/02\/teaching-in-an-era-of-kos\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching in an Era of Kos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As some of us mourn (complain) the state of the Internet, I wonder how we can teach students to write and think in ways that rise above the [choose your own description | <span style=\"font-style: italic;font-weight: bold\">rancor<\/span>] they read on DailyKos, Free Republic, Town Hall, MoveOn&#8230; et al. Agree or disagree, the Web is home to a lot of angry tirades that would fail a basic debate course.<\/p>\n<p>Though I consider myself \u201cmoderate\u201d and want more fun and less politics in my life, I understand that many of my colleagues cannot resist being political in their courses. What they don\u2019t admit is that they might be tolerating weaker logic from those students expressing views that are aligned with the instructor.<\/p>\n<p>The students might be learning that weak, but passionate, arguments are acceptable if they support the dominant positions within their classroom communities. I worry that we might be little more than an echo chamber, suggesting to students that virtual shouting matches are acceptable.<\/p>\n<p>A post on the DailyKos did summarize my feelings (paraphrasing): We could replace \u201cHillary\u201d with \u201cHuckabee\u201d in most of these rants and readers would blindly cheer us on because it is so easy to hate when we all think alike.<\/p>\n<p>Is that the \u201cdemocratic participation\u201d we envision when teaching composition? If so, that is very, very sad. The short angry burst has replaced reasoned debate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As some of us mourn (complain) the state of the Internet, I wonder how we can teach students to write and think in ways that&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/2008\/02\/02\/teaching-in-an-era-of-kos\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Teaching in an Era of Kos<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1875,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"iawp_total_views":11,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,4,7,8],"tags":[387,425,463,526],"class_list":["post-633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-csw","category-education","category-teaching","category-technology","tag-online-communities","tag-political-speech","tag-rhetoric","tag-teaching","entry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Teaching in an Era of Kos - C. S. Wyatt<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/2008\/02\/02\/teaching-in-an-era-of-kos\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Teaching in an Era of Kos - C. S. Wyatt\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As some of us mourn (complain) the state of the Internet, I wonder how we can teach students to write and think in ways that&#8230;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/2008\/02\/02\/teaching-in-an-era-of-kos\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"C. S. 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