I tried so hard to teach students to avoid trivialities and generalizations that I completely forgot to tell them to avoid statements that combine both. Thus, I have nobody to blame if a student hands in a paper that starts with,
Marriage is a sacred thing.
Very ugly! 😦
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Maybe I am a bit oblivious to human interactions, but why is this a generalization? It seems to me that a statement like “All human interactions are sacred things, if they are positive,” would be a generalization. But marriage is a specific institution. I agree that the sentence is a triviality, of course, but why exactly is it a generalization?
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Don’t you know any people who got married for a visa, for money, to please the parents, to separate from parents, to impress friends, and for a myriad of reasons that are the opposite of sacred?
I like my marriage but I would never call it “sacred.” This student is generalizing about others on the basis of her personal opinion.
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Clarissa, blame yourself. Twice.
Firstly, for not telling the students that. The average high school student meets Heinleins cliched description of incompetence: they need instructions not to piss into their boots.
Secondly, for assuming marriage is trivial (that is debatable) or that the experience of marriage is general (that is clearly false).
We could have a lot of fun with the word sacred, but that would be a rant. Brevity is the soul of the combox.
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LOL. Students never listen where it counts.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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