Done (a non-bicycle related post)

Thought I would talk about school for a bit this morning. This is what I get up to when I'm not on a bike. The two things, studying literature and education along with bike racing, actually overlap to a great extent for me. But that is a post for another day.

I just saw the final grade of my MA coursework. It was an (questionably deserved) A!
So now I'm done with classes, and it's on to a large stack of books for my thesis. I should post about that some time soon, and will. Basically what I'm up to is looking at the figure of the teacher as an intersection between individual and institution, trying to get at the nature of how society shapes educational institutions, institutions shape teachers, and students are burped out the other end, which seems largely incidental.

So I'll be starting with John Dewey, and working my way up to current quasi-radical rhetoric and composition texts. The interesting bit, I hope, is that I'll be using the poetry and essays of Charles Olson as one of my sources. Olson wrote on teaching quite a lot, both in the concrete and the abstract, and his Maximus figure functions in much the same way as does the trope of teacher I describe above. Plus he was influenced by Dewey and taught at Black Mountain College.

All of this is quite the catharsis for me, the Angry Young Man who refused to stay in high school.

Next time, an end of 'cross season recap, and a hearty and detailed thank you to my sponsors.

Cheers,

-n