I'm responsible for the developmental writng program here, a
program that is never mentioned by other department members or
the administration, despite its great success over the past 10
years.  I'm a great believer in the basic notion of Lev Vygotsky's
Zone of Proximal development and the absurdity of refusing to
acknowledge that most students come here needing to know many
things that "they should have learned in high school."  The
fact is that they didn't and we deal with what we have not what we
wish we had.  I would get nowhere with my 15% of each incoming
class if I refused to find out where they stand and work to
move them along.  It gets to be quite a stretch at times.
        But one of my problems now that I have approval of my
grammar course (and I will be on the phone later seeing if I
can change its title to Syntax) is the desire of colleagues to
dump into it students they perceive as remedial.  I don't want
students failing "algebra" in my "calculus" course.  I want
bright, motivated, curious students, the kinds of students who
elected to take my Latin courses when I taught high school Latin.
I want students who plan to teach secondary English, ESL/EFL,
students who might go on in linguistics.  But this is a small
college, and there is not one full-time tenured professor here
who is not a liturature professor.  My constant yammering about
majors who do not know a noun from a verb is not appreciated.
Emily W-O