The lost art of Writing
"This summer College Summit will have 75 workshop nation-wide, 4 of which will be held in the Boston area at Amherst College. Volunteers play a critical role at the workshop because they help the students develop their personal statements. (We have a very specific method that guides volunteers and students through this process.) The workshops are incredibly moving and powerful experiences for both the students and the volunteers. Over the last 10 years, 79% of workshop participants enrolled in college and 80% retain."
I have bolded the important statement and italicized the statement that makes me cringe.
As a writing teacher at the college level in this country, I am consistently asked to defend myself for the rate of adult near-illiteracy in this country. That is people who can read and write at a seventh grade level. You learn where a comma goes in 7th grade by the way...if you were wondering.
I see it more in my literature classes. There are many people who simply cannot read a sentence and tell you what it means, much less an entire story or poem. Writing? Many people simply do not know how to write. A lot of that has to do with the fact that they don't know how to think. Which one should I think of as scarier? The person who thinks they're saying something new about the Death Penalty, or the person who doesn't know that a sentence needs a verb. Both? Good for you.
Now back to the job posting I received. This is for a job teaching inner city kids how to fill out the essay portion of their college application, and it says everything about why neither thinking nor writing are taught in this country.
Look at that bold faced line. They have a special way to teach essay writing. Good for them. I've now taught at four different institutions and all of them have a "special way." In fact, the "special way" is very hard to define. See, special aught to mean that it deviates from the "normal way" but as there isn't a "normal way" all we have is these special ways. What's today's special way? Outlining the essay in crayon? Writing programs around the country think that they're so f'ing special because of their "special ways" and yet, nobody who comes out of these programs knows how to write unless they knew how to write before the class. Perhaps someone should develop a kind of standard way of teaching writing like...oh I don't know...every other discipline has. Just a thought. Here's how I'd do it: figure out which teaching method actually works, and then DO THAT!
But of course, this misses the point, because the point of a writing class isn't to teach writing. No, of course not. It's there in the italicized portion of the job description. This will prove to be a moving experience. True. I know that when I read really really horrible essays five at a time, I cry. Perhaps the point here is to be able to summon up this pathos so that when someone asks you why you can't write a sentence, you can bring them to tears with your sad story of the writing class that never got its shit together. Meanwhile, your job goes over seas to where people know how to use a comma.
This is, of course, the goal, right? Because if our complete inability to communicate in written form forces us into a deep economic recession from which we cannot recover, then the inner city will grow, and more people will need this course. It makes perfect sense to me.
Has anyone thought that maybe reading and writing go hand in hand with thinking. That the inability to do either of those first two is a sure sign of a deficit in the latter. If you can't get your thoughts together on paper, maybe it's because you don't have any. Again, just a thought.
So, what are we left with? Numerous touchy feelie programs around the country that are trying their best to get the students to talk about their emotions, rather than getting their thoughts into some logical form, so that we can all congratulate the program itself on its novelty (though a written letter of our joys will be beyond us). As a writing teacher, I imagine some other, easier way: a writing class that concentrates on writing not tears, that thinks about what successful writing does rather than pedantic tricks, that looks at this process as having an end result of forging a reader and not a person self actualized enough to cry about their not being able to write.
Finally, when its all said and done, is it not disturbing that 80% of these kids stay in college. They're armed only with this special method designed to create moving stories. Shouldn't they have to know more than that to be successful in college.
I have bolded the important statement and italicized the statement that makes me cringe.
As a writing teacher at the college level in this country, I am consistently asked to defend myself for the rate of adult near-illiteracy in this country. That is people who can read and write at a seventh grade level. You learn where a comma goes in 7th grade by the way...if you were wondering.
I see it more in my literature classes. There are many people who simply cannot read a sentence and tell you what it means, much less an entire story or poem. Writing? Many people simply do not know how to write. A lot of that has to do with the fact that they don't know how to think. Which one should I think of as scarier? The person who thinks they're saying something new about the Death Penalty, or the person who doesn't know that a sentence needs a verb. Both? Good for you.
Now back to the job posting I received. This is for a job teaching inner city kids how to fill out the essay portion of their college application, and it says everything about why neither thinking nor writing are taught in this country.
Look at that bold faced line. They have a special way to teach essay writing. Good for them. I've now taught at four different institutions and all of them have a "special way." In fact, the "special way" is very hard to define. See, special aught to mean that it deviates from the "normal way" but as there isn't a "normal way" all we have is these special ways. What's today's special way? Outlining the essay in crayon? Writing programs around the country think that they're so f'ing special because of their "special ways" and yet, nobody who comes out of these programs knows how to write unless they knew how to write before the class. Perhaps someone should develop a kind of standard way of teaching writing like...oh I don't know...every other discipline has. Just a thought. Here's how I'd do it: figure out which teaching method actually works, and then DO THAT!
But of course, this misses the point, because the point of a writing class isn't to teach writing. No, of course not. It's there in the italicized portion of the job description. This will prove to be a moving experience. True. I know that when I read really really horrible essays five at a time, I cry. Perhaps the point here is to be able to summon up this pathos so that when someone asks you why you can't write a sentence, you can bring them to tears with your sad story of the writing class that never got its shit together. Meanwhile, your job goes over seas to where people know how to use a comma.
This is, of course, the goal, right? Because if our complete inability to communicate in written form forces us into a deep economic recession from which we cannot recover, then the inner city will grow, and more people will need this course. It makes perfect sense to me.
Has anyone thought that maybe reading and writing go hand in hand with thinking. That the inability to do either of those first two is a sure sign of a deficit in the latter. If you can't get your thoughts together on paper, maybe it's because you don't have any. Again, just a thought.
So, what are we left with? Numerous touchy feelie programs around the country that are trying their best to get the students to talk about their emotions, rather than getting their thoughts into some logical form, so that we can all congratulate the program itself on its novelty (though a written letter of our joys will be beyond us). As a writing teacher, I imagine some other, easier way: a writing class that concentrates on writing not tears, that thinks about what successful writing does rather than pedantic tricks, that looks at this process as having an end result of forging a reader and not a person self actualized enough to cry about their not being able to write.
Finally, when its all said and done, is it not disturbing that 80% of these kids stay in college. They're armed only with this special method designed to create moving stories. Shouldn't they have to know more than that to be successful in college.
posted by Monstro D. Whale | 9:07 AM
6 Comments:
I heard a horribly scary thing the other day. Apparently the Chilean Peso is worth more than the dollar.
Absorb that. A South American country suddenly has a stronger monetary unit than the U.S.
Where will Americans go? If Americans go to Europe, where most intelligent people are heading, their money is worth less than it is at home, because the dollar is so weak. However, the opportunities there are better than here, and one could conceivably make a lot of Euros and eventually return to the U.S.
Wait, what? Americans as foreign guest workers?
Shit. We did it to ourselves. We've lowered our standards so low that a retarded squirrel could pass them, and you know what? I'm still flunking people. I collected a round of papers from my students last class. Two of them reached the minimum requirement for length (3 pages), half of them turned nothing in at all, and the other half just turned in last week's assignment a week late. You can't do anything because people expect to pass without doing a lick of work.
I found this post incredibly moving and powerful. In fact, I eventually cried so hard, my laptop shorted out -- which caused a small electrical fire. Thankfully, my economic stimulus payment arrived as a direct deposit, so I went out and bought myself a new laptop and then returned to your blog post haste to post this comment.
Seriously, though, I thought the 79% and 80% figures were pretty interesting. It may be a moving, powerful program, but it brings in 79% of participants to area schools, 80% of which stay (ca-ching!). Maybe you're cringing, in part, because the whole economic model of higher education?
It's a dynamic problem, when you think about it -- with roots in numerous causes (e.g., broader educational policies at the elementary & secondary levels, parenting problems, philosophical stances on personal responsibility, economics, societal trends, politics, etc.). You're apparently one of the few who actually gets to see the early culmination of these things within this particular context.
Lucky me.
However, people in Education have been saying these things for years. My dad, an elementary school principal, lamented many of the same things that Monstro mentions here. There were policies going into effect in the 1980's that dad said were dumbing down the system, or that would dumb down the system.
According to my grandfather, public schools used to let those who could hack the work move up to more difficult coursework, or even to the next section. Those who were better students were encouraged to be better students, and everyone understood that they were doing harder work because they were better able to.
Political Correctness killed the education ethic.
Just in passing I'd like to mention that the Chilean Peso thing is a rumor. The fact is that my wife was told by a family member who just went to Chile that the U.S. dollar is pretty much no longer accepted in Chile as a valid form of currency. The implications of that are awful. Let's hope the next president gets our economy back on track for all our sakes.
Quick edit:
The older system my grandfather mentioned required teachers to be dynamic and creative. Perhaps teachers that weren't dynamic and creative were the ones who wanted the policy change, to make their job easier. Who knows.
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