Because Marilyn went to the trouble of printing Stanley Fish's blog entry and creating an in-class exercise for us, and because we ran out of time to do it in class, I decided to make it my topic for this week's blog. Here are her questions:
1) What is the premise of Fish's blog,"What Should Colleges Teach?"?
2) Does his argument persuade you? Why?
3) Does his final sentence challenge your pedagogy?
Quite simply, Fish's blog entry says that if the title of a class is "Composition," the curriculum for that class should be composition-oriented. He was appalled when, while grading his graduate students' papers, he noticed that most couldn't construct a proper sentence to save their lives. He investigated the causes of this phenomena (because these students were composition teachers) and discovered that their classes were not true composition classes, but classes devoted instead to social studies. Rather than learning the nuts and bolts of the English language, students debated hot-button topics like politics, sexism, racism, etc. When Fish campaigned to change this painfully lacking curriculum, he was shunned and called a reactionary.
I am in Fish's camp because like him, I have been labeled closed-minded, antiquated, and reactionary, and for the exact same reason. I agree that in a composition class, students must learn composition. "Truth in advertising" as Fish put it. Anything else is irrelevant.
My reasoning, like Fish's, is largely anecdotal. I was fortunate (and now grateful) that my Composition 101 class was solely dedicated to composition. My class learned how to write different types of essays, construct proper outlines to manage our essays' organization, and conduct appropriate research. When we discussed controversial subjects, the conversations were relevant to the papers we were writing; we had to learn how to incorporate our heated ideas into our papers in a clear and fair manner. In addition, our teacher gave us a strong working knowledge of grammar and syntax. I truly feel that my teacher, Professor Lewis, expanded the quality of my writing, or at least provided the tools for me to do it myself.
But it seems to me, and perhaps I'm wrong, that my experience was unique. As an undergraduate in numerous writing workshops, I was amazed at the inability of many of my fellow students to write well. I could almost forgive the non-English majors for this, but not my comrades in literature and writing. Their problems composing encompassed more than just grammar and syntax. Coherent thoughts and arguments frequently eluded them. Organization was a four-letter word. How those students passed Comp 101 and made it to the upper 300-400 level classes - Hell, how they graduated high school - was a complete mystery to me. I know I'm not perfect, especially in grammar (I'm sure I've made some errors in this paragraph alone), but what I witnessed was flat-out ridiculous! Where was their Professor Lewis showing them the ropes?
When Fish said, "....students spent much of their time discussing novels, movies, TV shows and essays on a variety of hot-button issues....," I was reminded of my earlier blog post where I ranted about a teacher who used Spongebob to teach English fundamentals. She is still very certain that her way is the right way, and that thinkers like me and Fish are antiquated old farts who stifle education by catering to the "reigning elite" instead of to the students we (or Fish, rather) teach. Maybe this teacher's way is the new composition; among my classmates, I certainly seem to be the lone wolf in the grammar-syntax camp. But I hope that solely using pop-culture to teach budding students the basics is not what passes for scholarly work in this day and age.
I am fond of saying that English is the most important subject because it gives a voice to all the others. Here's some proof: When I was in Careers for English Majors with Dr. Sheidley, our class had to research what kinds of jobs English majors could get. To my surprise, I discovered that the American Bar Association strongly recommends that all aspiring lawyers get their undergraduate degrees in English due to the complex comprehension skills required in order to read, write, and interpret law. The American Medical Association also recommends aspiring doctors to double-major in English and some discipline of science to prepare for medical school. The reason is the same as it is for lawyers; doctors have an inordinate amount of complicated reading and writing to do. But what if these students' composition foundation is built on clay?
My dad always taught me that it is prudent to know at least the fundamentals of every subject imaginable, if for no other reason than to be a well-rounded person. But in composition's case, I think it takes a position of the utmost importance. All students, not just English majors, have to write papers for different schools of study (history, philosophy, psychology, etc.), and I'm certain that if undergraduates don't learn how to write well, they have no chance of succeeding in their chosen disciplines.
Are we English scholars really so proud that we think we don't have to learn the basics first? I would never waltz into the math department and expect to whip out theories like I was Pythagoras or Archimedes without first having a solid foundation to build on. Even now, as someone who is not mathematically inclined, I may not be able to invent new formulas, but I've got Please-Excuse-My-Dear-Aunt-Sally branded onto my heart for all eternity. And believe it or not, the Pythagorean Theorem has proven useful to me on more than one occasion, as has the biochemical structure of DNA, the Spanish alphabet, and the fall of the Roman Empire, okay? My point is that students need to learn the basics first, and then they can sit around and play at being armchair scholars talking about social issues until the cows come home. And Spongebob, as funny as he may be, is not a good English teacher.
Fish finally concludes his blog entry by saying, "Please let it (a curriculum) include a writing course that teaches writing and not everything under the sun. That should be the real core of any curriculum." I, like Fish, don't believe students can have a good education without learning how to write well first. So I say to Fish: "Amen, brother. Preach on."
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
On Writing
In "The Topoi Revisited," Edward P.J. Corbett says, "The most frequently asked question of novelists on talk shows is 'Where do you get your ideas for your stories?'....They (writers) talk all around the question....but they never really get down to tell you how they create their stories." Later in his essay, he continues: "Teachers have made deliberate efforts to observe their students in the act of writing, to question them about their writing habits, and to speculate about their cognitive processes from analyzing the revisions that they make from draft to draft."
This quote leads me back to a recurring thought I've had since the beginning of the semester: why the hell do these people want to know so bad how a writer writes? In most of the essays we've read to this point, prominent scholars try to figure out the answer to this question to no avail. But they keep trying, and I think it's because they want to standardize the teaching of composition. It's as if they think that if they find that one magic formula, then all students can be trained to write like The Great Ones (James Joyce, Jane Austen, Ernest Hemingway, etc.). But I don't know that there is a formula for good writing. The Great Ones are great not because they stood on someone's shoulders (which they frequently did, let's be honest), but because they revolutionized some aspect of their craft. Geoffrey Chaucer, for example, developed iambic pentameter and in so doing, shifted the English language from the harsh guttural tones of the Anglo-Saxons towards something more melodic and pleasing to the ear. Dante Alighieri pioneered the use of allegory to reflect the political instability, corruption, and moral bankruptcy in his native Florence. The point is that good writing is characterized by original thought.
I think Richard Leo Enos would agree with me. In his Introduction in Recovering the Lost Art of Researching the History of Rhetoric, he criticized scholars in his field for standing on the rhetoric sidelines like football commentators rather than actually participating in the game. These scholars spend their entire careers saying, "Oh, he should have done this" and "It would have been so much better if he'd have done that," but they make no contributions of their own. And I believe that it's much easier to sit in the stands and heckle the team rather than being the quarterback making the plays. Enos says, and I agree, that there's very little, if any, original thought. And it's making the playing field static.
Even though Enos was talking about rhetorical scholarship, not creative writing, I believe it's pertinent to us creative writers as well. My biggest frustration as an undergraduate was that my classmates and I were taught to pick apart the work of The Great Ones, but not to create anything of substance ourselves. I frequently thought, "Who are we to criticize the masters? We're just a bunch of unimportant little undergraduates!" Oftentimes, our criticisms just parroted our professors opinions. Now, in English 501, I am agitated with our assigned readings because the authors seem to be mimicking each other; they all say, "We've conducted so-and-so experiment to find out how a writer writes, but our results are inconclusive." I want an answer - ANY answer - just so long as I don't have to read yet another wishy-washy opinion on the matter.
But truthfully, I don't think scholars will ever find that magic formula they're so desperately searching for. There's no philosopher's stone to turn lead writers into gold. And I'm okay with that. I don't want a magic formula. I don't want a sea of writers just regurgitating what each other says. If we all could do it, why would we do it at all?
Perhaps you find my opposition to investigating the writing process a bit short-sighted, and you could be right. As a creative writer, I'm protective of my process. This is not because I have some secret to hide, but rather because I believe part of the magic of writing is the mystery. I don't want some cold scientist to rationalize that feeling of divine inspiration I get when I suddenly feel possessed to create something. In our all-too reasonable Age of Reason, much of the magic in our world has fled because people have dissected it to death rather than create it anew. I don't want to understand how I do what I do, I just want to do it. I suppose I'm like the American Romantics in this aspect.
I don't pretend to have all the answers, especially when it comes to writing, but I do know this: if you want to be a good writer, then you have to practice. That's the formula. Let me give you a dramatic example of this. Nathaniel Hawthorne locked himself in a closet for years just to practice writing, and when he finally emerged, he promptly destroyed everything he'd written because he recognized these manuscripts were no good. Their only purpose was to teach him how to be better. I am no master, but I can tell you that I'm not the same writer I was 15 years ago. My stuff from back then was good for a teenager, but nowhere good as my stuff from now. A lot of that is my education, naturally, but I think it's mostly from practice. So just think what I'll know tomorrow.
Scholars and scientists could dissect a writer clear down to his/her last atom to find out the magic formula, where ideas come from, and how ideas are executed. But in the end, I think it boils down to practice and inventiveness. And asking a writer to explain how is like asking a horse why it runs fast. It just does.
Sure, you could say, "Why bother being a teacher if you have such a passive view of teaching composition?" And I would answer that I believe all people can learn to write better, formula or no. I struggle with calculus, for example, but I could become better at it if I enlisted the aid of a tutor, practiced problems, and devoted more time to studying it. But what separates the good from the great is original thought. If this magic formula theoretically existed, then it would stand to reason that what writers churned out was formulaic. Hardly creative. In fact, I'd wager that such writers would be parroting one another. And this kind of thinking is what Enos was protesting. So to paraphrase Enos, quit talking about the whys and hows of writing, and just do it already!
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
This quote leads me back to a recurring thought I've had since the beginning of the semester: why the hell do these people want to know so bad how a writer writes? In most of the essays we've read to this point, prominent scholars try to figure out the answer to this question to no avail. But they keep trying, and I think it's because they want to standardize the teaching of composition. It's as if they think that if they find that one magic formula, then all students can be trained to write like The Great Ones (James Joyce, Jane Austen, Ernest Hemingway, etc.). But I don't know that there is a formula for good writing. The Great Ones are great not because they stood on someone's shoulders (which they frequently did, let's be honest), but because they revolutionized some aspect of their craft. Geoffrey Chaucer, for example, developed iambic pentameter and in so doing, shifted the English language from the harsh guttural tones of the Anglo-Saxons towards something more melodic and pleasing to the ear. Dante Alighieri pioneered the use of allegory to reflect the political instability, corruption, and moral bankruptcy in his native Florence. The point is that good writing is characterized by original thought.
I think Richard Leo Enos would agree with me. In his Introduction in Recovering the Lost Art of Researching the History of Rhetoric, he criticized scholars in his field for standing on the rhetoric sidelines like football commentators rather than actually participating in the game. These scholars spend their entire careers saying, "Oh, he should have done this" and "It would have been so much better if he'd have done that," but they make no contributions of their own. And I believe that it's much easier to sit in the stands and heckle the team rather than being the quarterback making the plays. Enos says, and I agree, that there's very little, if any, original thought. And it's making the playing field static.
Even though Enos was talking about rhetorical scholarship, not creative writing, I believe it's pertinent to us creative writers as well. My biggest frustration as an undergraduate was that my classmates and I were taught to pick apart the work of The Great Ones, but not to create anything of substance ourselves. I frequently thought, "Who are we to criticize the masters? We're just a bunch of unimportant little undergraduates!" Oftentimes, our criticisms just parroted our professors opinions. Now, in English 501, I am agitated with our assigned readings because the authors seem to be mimicking each other; they all say, "We've conducted so-and-so experiment to find out how a writer writes, but our results are inconclusive." I want an answer - ANY answer - just so long as I don't have to read yet another wishy-washy opinion on the matter.
But truthfully, I don't think scholars will ever find that magic formula they're so desperately searching for. There's no philosopher's stone to turn lead writers into gold. And I'm okay with that. I don't want a magic formula. I don't want a sea of writers just regurgitating what each other says. If we all could do it, why would we do it at all?
Perhaps you find my opposition to investigating the writing process a bit short-sighted, and you could be right. As a creative writer, I'm protective of my process. This is not because I have some secret to hide, but rather because I believe part of the magic of writing is the mystery. I don't want some cold scientist to rationalize that feeling of divine inspiration I get when I suddenly feel possessed to create something. In our all-too reasonable Age of Reason, much of the magic in our world has fled because people have dissected it to death rather than create it anew. I don't want to understand how I do what I do, I just want to do it. I suppose I'm like the American Romantics in this aspect.
I don't pretend to have all the answers, especially when it comes to writing, but I do know this: if you want to be a good writer, then you have to practice. That's the formula. Let me give you a dramatic example of this. Nathaniel Hawthorne locked himself in a closet for years just to practice writing, and when he finally emerged, he promptly destroyed everything he'd written because he recognized these manuscripts were no good. Their only purpose was to teach him how to be better. I am no master, but I can tell you that I'm not the same writer I was 15 years ago. My stuff from back then was good for a teenager, but nowhere good as my stuff from now. A lot of that is my education, naturally, but I think it's mostly from practice. So just think what I'll know tomorrow.
Scholars and scientists could dissect a writer clear down to his/her last atom to find out the magic formula, where ideas come from, and how ideas are executed. But in the end, I think it boils down to practice and inventiveness. And asking a writer to explain how is like asking a horse why it runs fast. It just does.
Sure, you could say, "Why bother being a teacher if you have such a passive view of teaching composition?" And I would answer that I believe all people can learn to write better, formula or no. I struggle with calculus, for example, but I could become better at it if I enlisted the aid of a tutor, practiced problems, and devoted more time to studying it. But what separates the good from the great is original thought. If this magic formula theoretically existed, then it would stand to reason that what writers churned out was formulaic. Hardly creative. In fact, I'd wager that such writers would be parroting one another. And this kind of thinking is what Enos was protesting. So to paraphrase Enos, quit talking about the whys and hows of writing, and just do it already!
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
My Pedagogy Statement: Some I Believe Statements
In "Pre-Writing: Models for Concept Formation in Writing", Rohman and Wlecke state: "There is no one philosophy of writing; consequently there can be no one method to teach it....The most that can be done, it seems to us, is frankly to state your philosophy of writing, and within those frontiers establish whatever methodological and pedagogical laws seem appropriate."
That's easier said than done. But here is my fumbling attempt to sketch out my basic pedagogical beliefs:
1. I believe that grammar is of the utmost importance. Grammar, to me, is a broad term that blankets the mechanics of language, i.e. word choice, spelling, sentence structure, and punctuation. When I write, I am very conscious of my grammar because I know that if my work is full of little mechanical errors, those errors can detract from the more important part, the ideas and content of the piece. Too many errors distract me, so I have little patience for them.
2. I believe that people need to make coherent arguments in their compositions. Free-writing is a great activity to help someone brainstorm or express their feelings, but that kind of writing is best for a journal. In an actual paper, thoughts must be focused and clear. Creative writing also must follow some sort of logic train. Even stream-of-consciousness has a method to its madness.
3. I believe in learning how to use technology - computers, multimedia, books, etc. - to aid in composition. Now more than ever in the history of mankind do we have an abundance of resources at our disposal. We would be fools not to use these tools to our advantage.
4. I believe in allowing everyone their own opinion, even if it disagrees with my own. Everyone has had a unique life full of unique experiences that has imparted a unique point of view. All views should be respected.
5. I believe in fostering creativity, not only in the people around me, but in myself as well.
6. I believe that the teacher should run the classroom, not the other way around.
7. I believe that people learn best by doing, not seeing. Experience is the best teacher of all.
8. I believe that while some people are born with a passion and gift for writing, ALL people can be taught to write better, even if they're not naturally predisposed to it.
9. I believe that the road to Hell is paved with adverbs.
2. I believe that people need to make coherent arguments in their compositions. Free-writing is a great activity to help someone brainstorm or express their feelings, but that kind of writing is best for a journal. In an actual paper, thoughts must be focused and clear. Creative writing also must follow some sort of logic train. Even stream-of-consciousness has a method to its madness.
3. I believe in learning how to use technology - computers, multimedia, books, etc. - to aid in composition. Now more than ever in the history of mankind do we have an abundance of resources at our disposal. We would be fools not to use these tools to our advantage.
4. I believe in allowing everyone their own opinion, even if it disagrees with my own. Everyone has had a unique life full of unique experiences that has imparted a unique point of view. All views should be respected.
5. I believe in fostering creativity, not only in the people around me, but in myself as well.
6. I believe that the teacher should run the classroom, not the other way around.
7. I believe that people learn best by doing, not seeing. Experience is the best teacher of all.
8. I believe that while some people are born with a passion and gift for writing, ALL people can be taught to write better, even if they're not naturally predisposed to it.
9. I believe that the road to Hell is paved with adverbs.
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