A Rant on the Quality of Teaching

In "The Present State of Freshmen Composition" by Albert R. Kitzhaber, he states on pg. 257: "The deficiencies of high school English courses and textbooks and of the professional preparation of many high school teachers of English have now been made a matter of public concern, and rightly so if any large-scale improvement is to be brought about." Now, to backtrack a bit, I've observed how sometimes a person, namely me, can go through something, and then all that week other somethings that point to that first something happen. This week was one of those weeks. I read this essay the day after I saw Kitzhaber's point made reality.

In my 600 class on Monday, I was angered over a high school English teacher's stand on educating her students. She proudly and defiantly said that she had thrown out the traditional ways of teaching in lieu of using Spongebob Squarepants and Family Guy to teach the fundamental mechanics. I had two thoughts when she took her position: 1) This lady has clearly watched Dead Poet's Society one too many times, and 2) Dear God, please don't let this woman teach my children English when they're in high school. Now don't get me wrong. While I am all for finding new ways to make English interesting to naturally bored teenagers, I felt like she, and teachers like her, are the reason why American kids can't perform as well as other nationalities in academic endeavors. These teachers are the reason why our education system has become a joke to the rest of the world! Our kids can't spell, create a grammatically correct sentence, or form coherent thoughts on paper to save their lives, but by God, they can point out the underlying metaphor in The Simpsons until the cows come home.

When I was going for my Bachelor's in Creative Writing a few years ago, I was thoroughly appalled by many of my fellow students. In 300 and 400 level writing workshops, they turned in final drafts of stories that sorely lacked any technical skill or creative merit. Their stories were also full of countless spelling and grammatical errors. Workshops were torture for me because I had to read their work; I was so distracted by all the problems with the drafts that I couldn't even pay attention to the stories. But if memory serves, those stories were so lackluster and unimaginative my brain hurt just to read them. I wondered how people so thoroughly bad at English could have graduated from high school, let alone be studying English as a major. Well, now I know.

Later on, the offending teacher touted how the more traditional teachers needed to retire because they were stuck in their antiquated ways; meanwhile, she was teaching them "the skills they needed to survive in the real world by teaching them tricks to get through their ACTs or SATs so they could get into college." Then she bragged about how she threw out the required textbook and had the kids trained to pull it out whenever the principal came into the room. I felt like asking her how exactly school admissions boards would be impressed with a kid who cited Spongebob as a major inspiration to his/her schooling. I also felt like shouting at her that she was not teaching them real-world skills like she was boasting, but merely teaching them how to cheat the system. I honestly can't believe how she thought she was a good teacher.

My high school experience was not full of cartoons.

In Senior English, the work was hard and deliberately so. My teacher, Ms. Bierbaum, said she was getting us ready to deal with college, and gave us a syllabus. Then a grueling year of Latin roots, Descartes, and Shakespeare followed. We studied the great Renaissance artists like Michelangelo, DaVinci, and Bernini and did presentations on their work. We didn't have PowerPoint back then, but it was fun using the overhead projector to show off La Pieta and David. I loved Edgar Allan Poe, only liked Ernest Hemingway, and absolutely hated The Grapes of Wrath. We studied Truth with a capital T and read Plato's "The Allegory of the Cave". Let's not forget how we also read and discussed the psychology of "Oedipus" and "Electra". If studying the classics and philosophy weren't enough, we also learned about different religions of the world - Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism - and how their belief systems benefited humanity. It was a very challenging year, to be sure, but our teacher somehow found ways to make it entertaining at the same time she made it enlightening. By the time I graduated, I was a much more well-rounded person than when I began 12th grade. Ms. Bierbaum was energetic and passionate and just this side of crazy, and a damn fine teacher. When I become a teacher, that's what I'd aspire to be.

I know not all teachers are created equal. This moronic woman in my 600 class is not indicative of all teachers in the United States. When Dave told our class how he had his students on their desks to act out the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet, I thought that was brilliant. I'm of the notion that Shakespeare is better watched than read. But it proves my point that you can still teach the classics and make it fun too. And he didn't have to throw out the whole curriculum to do it either. It just frightened me that she did.

Thoughts on Writing

When I read Janet Emig's essay, "The Composing Process of 12th Graders", I was fascinated by what she had to say, even though she didn't really have much to say about 12th graders specifically. The interview with John Ciardi on pg. 231 was intriguing because he made an accurate correlation between the act of writing and the act of riding a bike. A writer does not stop to think about all the processes it takes to write, just as a rider does not think about all the processes it takes to maintain balance. He/she just does it. In my own experience, sometimes I look back at my work and ask "How did I do that?" There have been times when I've written things, creative and scholarly, and I was utterly amazed at how brilliant I sounded. I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, I'm just saying that I was surprised at even myself. I've even said, "Wow, did I really write that?" I couldn't fathom how such beautiful and interesting insights came from someone like me. I reflected on how this could be so and still have come to no definitive conclusions.

When Ciardi said that asking him to reveal his secret is asking him to tell lies, that's true too. It reminded me of an interview I'd read in which the interviewer was talking to Stephen King. The interviewer asked him a similar question, "Where do your ideas come from?" King replied in complete frustration, and I'll never forget this for as long as I live, "Don't ask me where my ideas come from because I DON'T KNOW!" Then later he described how sometimes, he makes up stories about where his story idea comes from just to get people to quit asking him that. Ciardi said something much like this as well. And in my experience, I find they're right. I don't know where my ideas come from. I just know they start out as vague daydreams that quickly start scratching their way through my mind like a wild animal. They don't leave me alone until I put them to paper. I don't think I've ever gone so far as to make up lies about this, but then again, I am still a fledgling writer. Maybe when I've earned world renown like Ciardi and King, I'll start exaggerating like they do.

Later, in the section titled "Antimonies" on pg. 238, she states: "Creators....are separated from the object and bored enough by creating it to put off completion until the psychologically appropriate time; and involved through their creation in 'working out of conflict and coalition within the set of identities that compose' their personality." After reading this passage, I wondered how many times I've stopped working on a project because "it just wasn't time yet"? I thought it was just my own private neurotic behavior, the product of my ADD, impatience, and immaturity. But this passage suggests it happens to many writers and I never knew that before. Could we writers know on a subconscious level that we are not capable - physically, mentally, and spiritually - of finishing a particular project until a given time, that our brains realize our work won't be as powerful if we try to force it to come at the wrong time? Do we have to be psychologically and spiritually ready to finish something? And what are the implications if the answers to these questions is yes?

The History of Rhetoric: The Sweetened Condensed Version

Tonight's lecture combined my two favorite and strongest subjects: English and History. It was largely Greek and Roman history too, which is my forte. When Dr. Souder started talking about Cicero, I was practically drooling like one of Pavlov's dogs. It's funny how I can hear the same story a million times, but it never gets old. At least when it comes to Ancient Roman history.

I appreciated the lecture because it appealed to my artistic side. I know this class is more oriented towards speaking and scholarly pursuits, but it applies to creative writing as well. I already use the 5 Canons of Classical Rhetoric. First I must invent a problem to build a story around. Then I must decide how to arrange it, i.e. should I write chronologically, or should I start in the middle of the story and work backwards? What Style should I write in? First person, third person? How would the character think and act, and how should my choice of words reflect that? Memory is trickier, I suppose. I must remember the details about each character so I can maintain a certain consistency that readers expect. That is harder than you may think. When it comes to writing, I almost think that Delivery and Arrangement are interchangeable because both really determine how powerful a work can be. How I set up my story and how I present it can pack a mean punch if I do them right. In contrast, if I do it wrong, then the same story becomes weak and meaningless. It's a tightrope walk, and sometimes I have to do it without a safety net.

Of course, the Rhetorical Triangle is something I always must consider as well, although I didn't really have a name for it until tonight. It goes back to what Dr. Souder was saying about genre: an audience of a certain genre has particular expectations, and if you fail to think about your audience, your purpose, and your occasion, and treat the situation accordingly, you're going to fail at your endeavor. Of course, there are times when it's necessary to say "To hell with what people think!" One of the best short stories I've written to date was born out of this attitude. I was so frustrated about the restrictions imposed on me in my English 316 (Creative Writing: Fiction) class that I finally said "Screw it, I'm doing this my way." And what do you know? It was everyone's favorite, including David's, who bless his heart, was impossible to impress. My favorite modern-day writer, Stephen King, suggests in his book On Writing that you pick one person to write for - he writes for his wife - and forget the rest. But even he should agree that his target audience is going to be mighty pissed off if he writes a tacky romance novel when they're expecting horror. As for me, I've yet to figure out who I should write for. Maybe that's half the battle.