A LOFTY SURGE

I complain now and again about my students' general lack of knowledge, especially when it's of the truly appalling variety, like identifying someone as the "president of Africa." And indeed I had two students on this very first quiz of the semester say that Belgium was the capital of Germany (surely one of them cheated off the other). And I had four say that the capital of Afghanistan was Baghdad (mostly spelled Bagdad). Another wrote a few authoritative paragraphs about how the Taliban ruled Iraq with an iron fist. And another identified Caroline Kennedy as the widow of JFK.

But then there was this. Use the word "borne" in a sentence. And a student wrote:

"Behold the threaden sails,
Borne with the invisible and creeping wind,
Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow'd sea,
Breasting the lofty surge."

Good grief. It's from Shakespeare's "Henry V." I nearly wept. Behold my cynical sails, borne with invisible and creeping hope.