Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic<\/em><\/a>, the literary critic Paul Fussell writes,<\/p>\nWhen deserted by students, classrooms are dead in a way no other public spaces are. . . . College students are so fresh, so noisy, and so beautiful that their absence from empty classrooms is unignorably melodramatic and touching. They and their charming loquacity pass, but the room is silent, and it remains, in its permanence and anonymity making its ironic comment: “You young people will grow old; your hopes and certainties alike will fade away; your vigor and beauty will vanish; you will be replaced by others like you, equally self-certain and self-concerned.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Classes are over; only finals week remains. That means a lot of sitting in my office in a suddenly quiet building, reading papers and portfolios. In his memoir Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic, the literary critic Paul Fussell writes, When deserted by students, classrooms are dead in a way no other public spaces […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[54],"class_list":["post-863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-teaching"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-dV","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":706,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=706","url_meta":{"origin":863,"position":0},"title":"Strategies for the future","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 21, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I got up this morning before the dogs (that's early) and drove to the university. The sky was blue, the grass was green, and the beds of annual flowers were at their brightest to welcome the students who return next week.My normal parking lot was almost empty, and walking to\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":935,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=935","url_meta":{"origin":863,"position":1},"title":"The Silly (Halloween) Season Has Started","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 3, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Just one of these for flavor: Cindy Kaie, self-righteous principal of Kohl Elementary School in Broomfield, Colorado, has decreed \"no Halloween party.\"In a newsletter sent home to parents, Principal Cindy Kaier wrote that the traditional Halloween party celebrated in classrooms each year will be replaced by a fall party on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2283,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2283","url_meta":{"origin":863,"position":2},"title":"‘Academically Adrift’","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"It is probably no surprise to a lot of us in higher education that \"45 percent of students show no significant improvement in the key measures of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years.\" (Lest I be accused of America-bashing, in talking with international\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"education\"","block_context":{"text":"education","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=education"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":936,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=936","url_meta":{"origin":863,"position":3},"title":"The Dream and the Job","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"In the dream last night I was at some kind of Protestant Christian youth camp, headed by the stereotypical big, extroverted, 30-something youth minister.A teenaged girl was supposed to be baptized, but the minister had to leave suddenly, so he asked me to baptize her. His request presented two problems:1.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"teaching\"","block_context":{"text":"teaching","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=teaching"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":762,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=762","url_meta":{"origin":863,"position":4},"title":"A ritual no more","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 7, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I like living where I do. I like going down to the old schoolhouse to vote in a building where time seems to have stopped about 1950 (except in two classrooms that are now a library).I like seeing the election judges whom I otherwise might meet only at the post\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":22,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=22","url_meta":{"origin":863,"position":5},"title":"Druids","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 8, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been working on a section about American Pagan Druids today. First, let me say that I am so glad that I do not have to do anything on British Druids, since in the UK there are two hundred years' worth of self-proclaimed various Druidic groups of all sorts, from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Druidry\"","block_context":{"text":"Druidry","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=druidry"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}