the following appeared as part of a recommendation made by a faculty member to the president of a large university.
"never once in our 150-year history as a university have we clarified our objectives. how, then, can we hope to adapt as an institution to the new challenges facing higher education. as a first step in this evolutionary process, therefore, we should send out questionnaires asking faculty members why they teach, asking students what they want from this university, and asking former students what they gained from their own education here. when the replies come in, we can tabulate them and formulate an official statement of our educational mission. this will surely result in improved programs at our university."
the following appeared in the editorial section of an educational publication.
"one study at lee university found that first-semester grades of teenage students who had always attended public, tax-supported schools were slightly lower than the grades of students who had received some home schooling instruction by parents at home, although the grade differences disappeared in the second semester. these results suggest that home schooling is the best way to educate teenage children. therefore, instead of spending more money on public education, the government should provide financial incentives so that home schooling is an option for more parents. after all, children schooled at home receive more attention, since they are taught by the best possible teacher: a parent who has a high stake in educating them well."
the following report appeared in a memo from the vice president of the southside transportation authority.
"we should abandon our current five-year plan to purchase additional buses to serve the campus of southside university, because students there are unlikely to use them. consider the results of the recent campaign sponsored by the environmental club at southside university: in a program on the campus radio station, the club asked students to call in and pledge that they would commute to school by bus instead of by automobile at least one day per week. only ten percent of the students called in and pledged. in view of the campaign’s lack of success, we can assume that the bus service we currently offer will continue to be sufficient to serve the university."
the following appeared in an editorial in the mason city newspaper.
"at present, mason city residents seldom use the nearby mason river for any kind of recreational activity, even though surveys of the region’s residents consistently rank water sports (swimming, fishing, and boating) as a favorite form of recreation. since there have been complaints about the quality of the water in the river, residents must be avoiding the river because they think that it is not clean enough. but that situation is about to change: the agency responsible for rivers in our region has announced plans to clean up mason river. therefore, recreational use of the river is likely to increase, so the mason city council will need to increase its budget for improvements to the publicly owned lands along the mason river."
the following is part of a letter from the brookfree school board.
"as part of our new educational reform program, we identified ten schools most in need of immediate improvement. an advisory committee is now recommending that we hire consultants to study further the schools’ problems and to propose a plan of action. only two years ago, however, another group of consultants determined that several schools in our district had problems because their principals were inexperienced. thus, if we want to see immediate improvement in our schools and save the district the money it would spend on hiring more consultants, we should replace all the principals in the ten worst schools with ten of our most experienced principals in the district."
the following is a memorandum from the business manager of wlss television station.
"over the past year, our late-night news program has devoted increasingly more time to covering national news and less time to covering weather and local news. during the same time period, most of the complaints we received from viewers were concerned with the station’s coverage of weather and local news. in addition, several local businesses that used to run advertisements during our late-night news program have just cancelled their advertising contracts with us. therefore, in order to attract more viewers to our news programs and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should expand the coverage of weather and local news on all our news programs."
the following was taken from a guide for aspiring writers.
"new writers usually cannot convince large, prestigious publishers that their work is marketable, so they must first publish with smaller, less well-known presses to establish a sales record. but the editors of mystery writers magazine have good news for aspiring writers: the number of mystery novels published in the last two years has grown significantly, and more people read mysteries than any other type of novel. in addition, almost half of the mystery novels published last year were written by first-time novel writers. since there is apparently an expanding market for mystery novels, all publishers will want to increase the number of mystery novels they publish. therefore, new writers should write mystery novels to increase their chances for first-time publication with a larger, prestigious company."
the following is a memo from the principal of academia high school.
"academia high school should abolish its after-school performing-arts programs and replace them with computer-technology programs. when nearby techno high school did so last year, total enrollment in all of its after-school activities remained about the same. moreover, on entering college, many techno students chose a major directly related to their after-school activities. on the other hand, last year only 10 percent of academia’s graduating seniors chose performing arts as their major field of study in their first year of college, clearly indicating that most students do not have a strong interest in the performing arts."
the following appeared in an editorial in the local newspaper of workville.
