To v. through

From the New York Times, a story about words and parking signs.

Lights out in the Piazza

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on Pooja Sankar’s Piazza, a website that allows students to ask questions about their coursework and allows both students and their professor to post answers:

At first blush, the service seems unnecessary. Students can already e-mail questions to professors or fellow students, and most colleges already own course-management systems like Blackboard that include discussion features. But Ms. Sankar feels that such options are clunky. She says professors are finding that Piazza can save them hours each week by allowing them to post answers to a single online forum rather than handle a scattershot of student e-mails.

Says the Chronicle, “Pooja Sankar may eliminate the need for professors to hold office hours, or to endlessly respond to student questions by e-mail.”

Perhaps. But would that necessarily be a good thing? I’ll invoke my mantra about technology: Technology makes it possible to do things, not necessary to do them. And its converse: Technology makes it possible not to do things, not necessary not to do them. That it might be possible to eliminate office hours and e-mail responses doesn’t mean that it’s necessary to eliminate them. Piazza holds no appeal for me, for exactly five reasons:

1. The Chronicle, paraphrasing Sankar: “students typically keep Piazza open on their screens as they work on homework, often staying on the site for hours at a time.”¹ That habit of work hardly fosters the sustained attention to a text appropriate to English studies.

2. Working with Piazza would also seem to do little to encourage self-reliance. As one mostly enthusiastic professor quoted in the article says, “I got the feeling that students were asking the questions because that was easier than thinking.” Imagine doing a crossword puzzle as answers (perhaps correct ones) are revealed in bits and pieces. How do you look away? And if doing work in an online study hall (Sankar’s metaphor) is anything like doing work in the study halls of my high school days, it’s an exercise in gleeful communism: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Whadja get for no. 3?

3. Piazza is also touted as a means by which “shy students” can “ask questions anonymously.” With a small class, the identity of an anonymous Piazza poster might be awkwardly apparent. But even if true anonymity were attainable, the inability to ask a question of a professor or fellow student (even by e-mail) suggests a crippling social deficit that might be better addressed with therapy.

4. And speaking of e-mail: it’s a Good Thing for students to have at least some practice in communicating with their professors by e-mail. Getting the hang of such communication — informal yet professional — is good preparation for the world beyond college. And speaking of communication: many professors (though hardly all) like talking with students during office hours. Talking to professors during office hours is another Good Thing, even better: a way to engage in genuine intellectual dialogue. I think that students need all the experience they can get in such dialogue, which is less about getting answers and more about exchanging ideas and trying to solve problems.

5. And anyway, must every question have an answer? Education often involves grappling with questions for which there are no clear, immediate answers. The point is to do the thinking, the exploring, exactly the work that Piazza would seem to cut short. I’m reminded of an observation from Richard Mitchell in The Graves of Academe (1981):

The acts that are at once the means and ends of education, knowing, thinking, understanding, judging, are all committed in solitude. It is only in a mind that the work of the mind can be done.

Two related posts
How to answer a question in class (guest-post by Stefan Hagemann)
How to talk to a professor

¹ What’s with “homework”? That’s a word better left in high school.

[Post title with apologies to Elizabeth Spencer. My five reasons is sardonic: on the Internets, five is a magic number.]

Van Dyke Parks at the Kennedy Center

Van Dyke Parks performs tomorrow at the Kennedy Center, a free concert that will stream online. Watch from the comfort of your Internet-ready device at 6:00 p.m. Eastern.

Recently updated

David Schubert, TR5-3718 Now with David and Judith Schubert’s 1940 census listing.

Technology, not always progess

Here’s a good post by Marco Arment on what it’s like to deposit checks — or is it “deposit” “checks”? — by iPhone. His conclusion: “Sometimes, new technology is not progress.” Which reminds me of something I’ve written in previous posts: Technology makes it possible to do things, not necessary to do them.

Van Dyke Parks in St. Louis

Van Dyke Parks played last night at the Luminary Center for the Arts in St. Louis with bassist Jim Cooper and percussionist Don Heffington. The three made beautiful music together. Here’s a set list, all compositions by Parks except as noted:

Jump! : Opportunity for Two : Come Along : Orange Crate Art : Delta Queen Waltz (John Hartford) : Danza (Louis Moreau Gottschalk) : Cowboy : Wings of a Dove : Sail Away : The All Golden

While the program is much as it was when I heard Parks in 2010 playing with members of Clare and the Reasons, a piano-bass-drums setting brings out different elements in these pieces. The 2010 performance was an elegant adventure in chamber music. Last night’s performance, while just as artful, was more driving, even swinging. What astonishes me again is that Parks is able to suggest the complex orchestrations of his recordings with relatively minimal instrumentation. My best analogy: the Modern Jazz Quartet’s For Ellington (1988), which conjured up an orchestra with piano, vibes, bass, and drums.

I know of no analogy for the mix of anecdotes, asides, one-liners, historical excursus, and plainspoken wisdom that VDP dispenses from the stage. One sample: “We live in a dark age. Now is the time to be forthright and beautiful and strong.” The audience, young and old, was listening.

Opening for Parks: The Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra, playing an original score to accompany the Buster Keaton film The Balloonatic (1923). They were a delight.

The Luminary Center for the Arts, housed in a former Roman Catholic convent, is a great space for art and music. Van Dyke invited Elaine and me up to the green room before the show, a room that looked as if it might have been a reading room or TV room in convent days. Van Dyke, Don, Elaine, and I sat at a small square table. Present at various points in the conversation: Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, Elton John, Buster and Eleanor Keaton, John Steinbeck, and Gregg Toland, all sitting on the sofa with a sister or two.

Related posts
Van Dyke Parks in Chicago (1)
Van Dyke Parks in Chicago (2)
All Van Dyke Parks posts

David Schubert, TR5-3718

This listing comes from the 1940 Brooklyn telephone directory, available at Direct Me NYC 1940. David Schubert (1913–1946) is a great modern American poet, though his work is still little known. William Carlos Williams: “To sit down for a little while and reread some of Schubert’s rare and poignant verse is like opening a window in a room that had become stuffy without one’s realizing it.” John Ashbery: “I myself value Schubert more than Pound or Eliot, and it’s a relief to have an authority of the stature of Williams to back me up.” I found my way to Schubert by chance in 1994 when I picked up a used copy of the 1983 Quarterly Review of Literature volume devoted to his work. I remembered his name from a passing reference in Ron Padgett’s Ted: A Personal Memoir of Ted Berrigan (1993): “[he] was especially pleased to see David Schubert’s work collected and reissued.”

How do I know that Schubert D is the poet? Judith Schubert Kranes, quoted in the QRL volume: “We moved to Brooklyn Heights, David found us a one-room apartment in a neighborhood where Hart Crane had lived, and where many writers and artists were finding a haven.” And John Ashbery: “During the 1930s, they lived in a picturesque garret in Brooklyn Heights overlooking New York Harbor.” Pierpont is directoryese for Pierrepont Street, a street in Brooklyn Heights, not very far from the Brooklyn Bridge. If Google Maps may be trusted, no. 6 is indeed picturesque, garret and all. You can click on the picture for a better look at the tiny window at the top of the building.

And here, as transcribed by Allison Power, are four Schubert samples.

April 8: The 1940 census confirms that David and Judith Schubert lived at 6 Pierrepont Street. He: “writer.” She: “teacher.”

[The Ashbery and Williams quotations are from Ashbery’s Charles Eliot Norton lecture on Schubert in Other Traditions (2000).]

Recently updated

Larry David’s notebook Now with a link to a new source for little brown notebooks.

Charles Reznikoff, CH3-0065

This listing for the poet Charles Reznikoff comes from the 1940 Manhattan telephone directory. Yes, it’s the poet: Selected Letters of Charles Reznikoff, 1917–1976 (1997) includes several letters from 1939 and 1940 written from this West 24th Street address. By October 1940, Reznikoff had moved to West 18th Street.

A related post
Milk bottles (with a Reznikoff poem)

[Is anyone else playing? If so, whom have you found?]

John Hammond, GR7-7967

John Hammond (John Henry Hammond Jr. or John Henry Hammond II) was a critic and music producer who played a significant role in the careers of Count Basie, Charlie Christian, Bob Dylan, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen, and many other musicians. From his 1977 autobiography John Hammond on Record: “Living on Sullivan Street I found myself in a circle of young people concerned with all sorts of causes, prepared to involve themselves at any risk.”

This listing comes from the 1940 Manhattan telephone directory, available at Direct Me NYC 1940.

A related post
Demythifying John Hammond