Writing—So You Want to be a Writer, Cattle Car Education


  1. The initial scene
  2. The rising action scenes
  3. The climax scene
  4. The falling action scene(s)
  5. The dénouement scene(s)




Short digression:  Back in Wichita

Here are my rules of writing:

  1. Entertain your readers.
  2. Don’t confuse your readers.
  3. Ground your readers in the writing.
  4. Don’t show (or tell) everything.


  1. Immerse yourself in the world of your writing.



Scene development:



  5. Write the release
  6. Write the kicker




The current subject is how cultures and societies affect human thought and human actions.  Here is a list of potential issues.  We’ll look at them in detail:


  1. Vocabulary
  2. Ideas
  3. Social construction
  4. Culture
  5. Politics
  6. History
  7. Language
  8. Common knowledge
  9. Common sense
  10. Reflected culture
  11. Reflected history
  12. Reflected society
  13. Truth
  14. Food
  15. Money
  16. Weapons
  17. Transportation
  18. Communication
  19. Writing
  20. Education


Education may be the most important characteristic for writers.  Without education of some kind, you won’t have literacy.  Without literacy, you won’t have readers.  Perhaps, historically, I might be more accurate to write without literacy, you won’t have education or readers.  Really, education is a critical aspect of civilization, but it really isn’t what we think.  Education today is nothing like education in the past.


After education moved from memorization to read to reading to memorize, the focus of education likewise changed.


Not all that long ago, when mothers and fathers gave a basic literary and figure based (math) education to their children and then sent them to local scholars for books and supervised study, there was no cattle car education.  The parental education was direct individual and effective.  When the child was sent to a local scholar who owed a few books, the scholar assigned a book to read and study and they orally or with papers and essays tested the student.  Again, this type of study was individual, direct, and effective.  Then came universal education.


The idea of universal education isn’t necessarily a bad one—the original point was to find effectivity as well as efficiency in education.  This was such a new idea that the universities didn’t accept it for a long time.  The idea was that if teaching one child at a time was a good idea, why not many children at once.  Boarding schools and larger schools likely found this efficient.  With more students a classroom approach is.  Notice, this still isn’t very effective for small schools and for one room schools.  In any case, the idea of the schoolroom where a teacher only has to teach a single lesson to a group of students caught on.  It is indeed efficient—about effectivity.  Well, it is obviously not nearly as efficient as individual and one on one teaching.  Everyone knew this and as long as the curriculum and educational standards were high, a few loses and losers where the natural consequence.  This is cattle car learning.  Teach a class of five, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty, or more, some fall in the winners ranks and some fall into the failing ranks.  With universal education, you expect some losses.  Likewise, with individual education, you get some losses, but obviously much less.


Then universal education came into its own.  As long as education is about education, it is education.  When education became propaganda and the control of what citizens knew, it was something else entirely.  Now a cattle car approach is even better—for propaganda and control.  When education isn’t about education anymore, the knowledge and skills sets of those education begin to slip.  The answer isn’t more cattle car or government controlled education, but I hope you can see that.  The schools clamber for smaller classroom size (in terms of students) to provide better education, but education isn’t the point and all the king’s horses and men can’t solve this problem.


If you notice, true individual based education requires not more money, but more attention, high standards, and a focus on education.  These are things a government in the modern era can’t abide and will not abide.  The answer is a market in education where the student or parents have a say in the control and the education.


I’ll write more tomorrow.












About L.D. Alford


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