Future Leaders, Bad Attitudes, and Editing Blogs

Many of the journals that my theology 1120 students are keeping online say some pretty negative things about me and this whole project (this blogging project is here).

Interestingly, one student's blog received the following comment from an anonymous viewer:

"I stumbled on this site and am enjoying it. Seems spelling and grammar are kind of a problem with your students. Also seems they are very angry about having to write and think. I wish they would take both the writing and the thinking seriously. These blogs are really scaring me. Seems that many of your future “leaders” have pretty bad attitudes. I’m going to keep an eye on this. I hope in the end they will learn something from the exercise. It looks like a good idea to me. It’s very eye-opening to see how angry your students get when they are asked to do work!"

I sent the students blog and this comment to a few colleagues. One mentioned "Ouch! Are you going to talk about this with your student(s)? Not sure that I disagree with the comments--I didn't read the whole blog, but is displaying student work to the WWW a potentially bad thing?" I too agree with the comments, and feel that we should be honest about the entire enterprise. It highlights and makes public the poor writing skills of our students. The majority of my students are sophomores or freshmen. I've found the maturity level and writing ability goes way up by the time they are juniors and seniors. But, instead of focusing on the negative, check out this excellent blog from a first year freshman.