Newmark's Door

And a righteous, kick-ass syllabus it is. For an undergraduate course, he assigned 62 readings, required 3 "major essays", and gave 11 "unannounced in-class writing assignments". Excerpts:

You are required to do every last iota of the reading and writing assigned, exactly in the format requested, and it needs to be totally done by the time class starts. There is no such thing as "falling a little behind" in the course reading; either you've done your homework or you haven't. . . .

Part of your grade for written work will have to do with your document's presentation. "Presentation" has to do with evidence of care, of adult competence in written English, and of compassion for your reader. . . . [Emphasis added; I almost stood up and cheered.]

I know that many professors say this kind of hard-ass stuff at the beginning of the term but don't actually mean it or enforce it as the course wears on. I, however, do mean it, and I will enforce it--feel free to verify this with students who've taken other classes with me. If you want to improve your academic writing and are willing to put extra time and effort into it, I am a good teacher to have. But if you're used to whipping off papers the night before they're due, running them quickly through the computer's Spellchecker, handing them in full of high-school errors and sentences that make no sense, and having the professor accept them "because the ideas are good" or something, please be informed that I draw no distinction between the quality of one's ideas and the quality of those ideas' verbal expression, and that I will not accept sloppy, rough-draftish, or semiliterate college writing. [Emphasis added again; by now, I'm giddy with admiration.]

What an enormous loss for the students at Pomona College. (A former student pays tribute to this class.)