Computers our Saviors

I can't wait until the time when all my student work comes to me via computer, and the moment it's graded is the moment it's entered into the gradebook and returned to the student. As an English teacher, however, I'm going to require the ability to write easily on a screen, for there is nothing at all smooth or naturalistic about the few editing systems I have tried. This observation is occasioned by my effort right now to enter a few hundred papers into the grade book, in a completely haphazard and disorganized manner. The "Final Grade" column looks like the scene of a massacre right now, with victims either dead or holding their bowels in. It'll clean up eventually, though, as I get through the sadly disordered pile. The good students' work will be in there, and will be recorded accordingly, and the poor students' work will be generally missing, with a few exceptions, and grades will come out to be what we thought they'd be all along, with, again, a few exceptions.

Of course, when it comes, if it comes, this technology will not save me. A long-ago graphic from Time Magazine survives in my brain, of a soldier laden with modern weaponry. Bullets and guns are certainly more powerful and apparently much lighter than the old wood and iron monsters of ages past, but this has not decreased the soldier's load, for now that each newer and lighter bullet does the work of however many heavier and older projectiles, his superiors simply multiply the number of bullets (and other improved items) he is expected to carry, bringing him just up to the point of collapsing under the weight, where all his predecessors marched before him. In the same way, the faster I am able to dispose of my duties, whatever they may be, the faster the expectations will be loaded on my back, and on I will trudge as before.