Who Else Wants To Say Thank You Moderators?

Censors aren't needed here. Their invisible hand has removed many good posts just because they (whoever "they" are anyway) didn't like the content.

beaucoup, Moderators...

For sticking up for me when I was banned, and I will thank Michael for unbanning me, and sending me a very personal response.

I will not thank the moderator who banned me, obviously.

Well...I've been thinking about this, because I'm not very strongly for censorship, and I've fallen afoul of an unidentified moderator on another website. So let me thank the moderators by sharing why I would make a really terrible one.

Long ago, in graduate school when studying English literature, I was made to teach Freshman English for one year. My fellowship ran dry. Yes, I tried to resist, saying that why should I have to teach a course I never took myself. But they said teach or starve, so I accepted the job.

The first semester I taught, I came into the classroom all softly spoken and determined to be their friend. Call me by my first name, I said, I'm not much on authority, and we are all here to learn together. This should go well, I thought in my little liberty lovin' utopian mind.

The thanks I got was constant classroom chatter, a student who came in with headphones on his head (which he never removed until I removed them for him), a continually intoxicated student, and occasional loud dissenters. After class and during office hours, I'd get stragglers who would say, "Amica, sorry I didn't get that paper done; I had to study for a Biology test instead," "Amica, sorry about that paper; I'll do it next week," "Amica, didn't do that paper because I was out late last night drinking." And worst of all, at semester's end, I caught a plagiarist whom I had to flunk for the entire course because of the university's honor code. Did they produce much of quality? Did they learn much from me?

I consulted with other teaching assistants, and they recommended a different strategy, that of playing the role of tyrant. For this role, I would need a loud voice and the prop of an angrily written, authoritarian-sounding syllabus. This one had attendance policies. This one docked entire letter grades for each day a paper was late. This one subtracted ten points out of one hundred for each and every grammatical or spelling error. Do the math. Ten such mistakes result in zero points (zenpiper, I know you are loving this one). Also, I was Ms. Jeffersoni, not Amica.

Implementing these policies initially made me sick, but it had the desired effect. People treated me respectfully. Talking in class was not a problem. Late papers were almost nonexistent...until a girl came to me with the verifiable story of a very sick grandmother, so I cut her a break. Students were doing the work, and many of them in my opinion learned to write better as a result.

But it still bothers me that it took this kind of behavior to create a proper environment for learning. It was as if behaving in an authoritarian way was the only way to get students to settle down and get to the real job of policing themselves. Why is that? These kids were conditioned to believe that they were incapable of self-discipline: that the only road to moderated, responsible behavior was to have an angry, screaming woman wielding the threat of bad grades over their fragile little heads.

And this was only a solution for the bulk of them. Some of them, seeing the grade on their first paper (I had also been counseled to give bad grades on that first paper, to scare them into submission), did not respond by increased effort; they just collapsed under the weight of the oppression they perceived. These were the students I simply lost. There was no recovering their spirits. Who were these students? What might they have gone on to learn had I not crushed them?

I don't see everything that is submitted to this site. Perhaps if I did I would change my mind. Clearly, however, from my limited experience as a writing teacher, there must be a place between that of complete freedom and that of overbearing policeman. Thank you, moderators, for seeking and operating everyday within that uncertain space.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson

Yes.

And the biggest thank you I can possibly give.

Thank you to the fabulous Mod Squad, and thank you, Legalize Liberty!

say it as well you legalizeliberty. Peace, Love & Courage Patriot