Writing

Read Part 1.

Teachers are supposed to discover things ahead of time and then share them with students. But sometimes the discoveries come during the teaching. It’s part of the compensation package.

A month or so ago, I experienced one of these moments of discovery during the 9^th grade class I teach three days a week—a class in formal logic. (Yes, logic. I dare you to read a short essay about formal logic. What are you afraid of?)

My light bulb moment was not the discovery that evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity are desperate for more constituents capable of thinking clearly about hard questions. That reality struck home a couple of years ago, and I’m reminded almost daily. (Often enough, the guy in the mirror is the evidence.) Nor was my light bulb moment the realization that if we start teaching kids logic again, as in the good old days, we might see a generation of better Christian thinkers succeed the “this feels true to me” generations we’ve raised up in America over the last century or so. I already believed that. It’s why I’m teaching the class.

The light bulb came on when an idea I’d accepted as true in theory became “real” by experience. The students and I were working through some exercises sixteen chapters or so into our textbook¹ when we arrived at this question:

Smith said, “Pro-lifers don’t care about children who are already born. All they care about is their stupid political agenda.” Jones disagreed by saying, “No, there are many pro-lifers who are involved in caring for children.”

The assigned task was to analyze the paragraph, “isolate the related statements, and put them into categorical form. Assign abbreviations to the terms, place them on the square of opposition, and determine their relationship.” In this case, the available relationships were contradiction, contrariety or subcontrariety.read more

1. You have opinions. There’s got to be something a lot of people are mixed up about. You could set them straight.

“Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio.” (William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost. Act i. Sc. 2.)

2. Tradition. You have a chance to participate in the grand, ancient tradition of rhetoric: persuasive verbal communication.

“An essayist is a lucky person who has found a way to discourse without being interrupted.” (Charles Poore)

“To hold a pen is to be at war.” (Voltaire)

3. It’s good for your brain (and better yet—your mind). Writing forces you to think more clearly than you would otherwise have to. You have to look at how ideas relate to one another and to your overall message. Though writing doesn’t always cure muddled thinking, it always leads to less-muddled thinking.

“Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.” (Francis Bacon)

“What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he’s staring out the window.” (Burton Rascoe)

“How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” (E. M. Forster)

4. Life is short. Written ideas have a far longer useful lifespan than spoken ones. Rather than being heard and quickly forgotten, your ideas can become part of a conversation that continues for years. Others can build their ideas on yours. On the Internet in particular, your thoughts can be linked to or easily quoted, then discussed and discussed again.read more

Please consider this post as being intentionally below our usual front page standards. “Intentionally,” because we’re coming off of a holiday and I haven’t completely taken my heels off my desk yet.

What I aim to do here is share some pretty much random thoughts on the year past and the one head from a SharperIron point of view.

The year past

Over all, twenty-ten was not a bad year for SI. Site traffic was down about 3% compared to the year before, but from October 1 on, was higher than the year before by a significant and increasing margin. November increased over October and December increased over November. It’s hard to tell yet whether that represents a trend. But I’m encouraged by the fact that we began 2010 with traffic levels below those of 2009 and finished the year well above them.

Of course, site traffic is kind of like church attendance. It’s just the easiest factor to look at to gauge how you’re doing—not necessarily the most meaningful one.

In 2010, we completed our first-ever survey of SI readers. Some interesting results came from the survey. While I can’t say we attempted any specific changes in response to the survey, the results did become a part of the team’s perspective on what we’re doing. And survey responses did shape our discussions on things like approach to moderating, selection of Filings and other posts, and the site’s relationship to doctrinal issues.read more

Our 2010 Writing Contest ended over a month ago. So some of you are probably wondering, when will the winners be announced? Well, this is not that announcement! 

But it’s coming soon. Several excellent articles were submitted this year, and we’ve already posted a few of them. Our panel of volunteer judges is slowly narrowing the choices down to three winners. We should have the decision nailed down in a couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, our thanks to all of you who contributed pieces for the contest this year.

Video here. read more