Crimes Against Convention,

Dear Language-ers, and Colleagues Across the Curriculum
toward Rubric-Defying Frontiers Yet Unknown & Courses
w/o Borders.

This is an APOLOGY  (I.E. apo – opening, unveiling;
Logos: words-for;  in other words: an apology is
originally an explanation for unveiling, uncovering.)

      Why does "apology" take-on the connotation:
                   I’m sorry, so sorry?)
 
Look: I am aware that my courses (in linguistics, in literature,
at least if not Dialogue & Dialectic)  are a moving violation
and crime against convention.  I wake in the middle of the
night soaked in guilt and apprehension, feeling like Bernie
Madoff—knowing  the swindle will finally catch up with me.
Paranoetic.
 
But it’s worth it to me: my Mission Impossible.
 
       Here’s my rationale & rationalization:
                       (apologia)
 
      Textual & Contextual Harassment
 
That’s what schooling is, except for the fact that  context is
generally invisible, ignored, attention-deficient, eclipsed if
not occluded by the focus on TEXT & the pretense of
objectivity.  

CONTEXT:  the group of studiers, readers, writers, players
surrounding any text (topic, content, object-matter. )
 
Need we argue?
How much of your schooling (L. schola: leisure time) has
consisted of argument?  (Remember: from I.E. arg: the shine
—building  up a shared vision: edifice, edifying)
 
Triad this:
              
                   Educating (drawing out, educing)
             Instructing   Edifying (building up
                (in-forming)           a shared vision)
 
Tell me the DIFFERENCE and the RELATIONSHIP
among these 3 in your schooling experience.
 
See where my crime originates?   A figure background
shift from text to context & factoring-in meta-context
which is the whole internal "learning" environment:
collective frame of minding, attitude. . All 3,
and the greatest of these is the "environment"--
our alma matrix and this here local amniotic fluid we
swim in togehter, so to speak.

A violence against convention?  To try and play all 3?
It feels like it.
 
Steven Pinker claims every utterance carries 2 radically different and
                       INCOMMENSURATE
                           (learn this word)
                                agenda
 
1) the obvious: taking care of business (Melissa called it “logistics”)
2) RELATIONSHIP (stoking and stroking: fitting IN, fitting OUT)
 
This is the same distinction as between text and context,
figure and background, attention efficiency and
attention deficiency..
 
Well, I’m sort of stretching it on that last one.
We can argue.  That’s the beauty of schola:
we can  asses off! How else get
better and good?

xxxooo, Sam