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One of the fringe benefits of being an English or history teacher is receiving the occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay. I have pasted together the following “history” of the world from certifiably genuine student bloopers collected by teachers throughout the United States, from eighth grade through college level. Read carefully, and you will learn a lot.
By Richard LedererJuly 1987Orson has stopped asking me to marry him, but every once in a while he says something to let me know that the offer still stands.
By Sylvia Choate WhitmanMay 1987Then he turns to me, and direct as an arrow says, “You gonna be there?” (This, I thought, is what they refer to in books as “the moment of truth.”) My heart was creeping up my esophagus like an inchworm; but my tongue would not unwind.
By David KoteenOctober 1986Not listening to my heart; believing my mother when she said, “Play dumb. Boys don’t marry smart girls.”; not dancing with Nan Zuckerman at the Sixth Grade Prom
By Our ReadersFebruary 1986If the majority of our children stopped producing twelve-year molars, we’d be in shock; yet they’ve stopped producing twelve-year mentality. Operational thinking fails to take place in seventy percent of our children, and no one pays that much attention. Instead, we do what we are doing to our children earlier and do more of it. We put them in school earlier and earlier, and keep them in school longer and longer.
By Mothering MagazineAugust 1985Self-reliance has been linked with democracy in the American mind since Thomas Jefferson extolled the small farmer as the cornerstone of a free society. Thoreau sang of similar values. In our day, Scott and Helen Nearing have epitomized the best of that tradition.
By Art SteinJuly 1984Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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