The Role of Instructors in Preparing Students for Academia

“The ability to listen, summarize, and respond” (3). So that’s what literacy is all about. If only all teachers and professors could be this clear, the world would be filled with students confident in their reading and writing. I too had difficulty with class conversations, wondering why everyone understood the text so well, or why I would end a chapter in my text book and not remember an idea from that chapter. Before entering colleges our high school teachers do inform us that college has a much larger workload than high school. The schools try to prepare us by making us sit in 90 minute sessions with only ten minute breaks from 7 AM. I went to one of those so called “star schools” – known for its excellence in academia in the state. In fact when my parents were looking for a house, their first criteria was to find a house that was close to McLean High School. On silver days I had gym, and on red days I had biology. I hated red days. I remember when I entered college I was so relieved that I had a choice to pick my own hours. Though I’m still not sure if it were the 90 minute sessions that prepared me for college. I was home schooled in the final year of high school, but was still admitted to college. I found college to be a great deal of self discipline, I did less idling, more studying, and it all paid off.

However, I suffered. I did not know how to listen to the lectures and take notes at the same time. The professors would lecture really fast. Some professors would lecture with Power Point slide shows and would go on to the next slide before I could finish writing the material from the previous slide. I eventually gave up and decided to write down whatever I saw or heard, and then try to understand them before an exam or paper. I did not learn how to summarize and respond, how to make an argument. As long as I had the format of an argumentative essay: the thesis, the body, the conclusion, I thought I would be okay. Luckily I had some professors who helped stop that cycle before I lost interest in academia. They taught me to choose topics based on how deeply I believed in them, and argue accordingly. I was able to enjoy reading again. I agree with Graff in that “students must not only read texts, but find things to say about them, and no text tells you what to say about it” (9). If instructors teach students how to talk about text, students can learn to enjoy the process of listening, summarizing and responding.

Can I Wait to Take a Stand Until I Have an Opinion?

In attempting to resolve an internal struggle the other day, a discussion with a friend boiled down my conflict to the following question: when do you stop asking questions and make a statement? As I considered this question, I came up with the answers (plural, not singular), never and when you have an opinion.

Why do we force students to make a stand, regardless of whether or not they have an opinion on a subject? Does a few weeks of lecture and the reading of a few texts provide the student with enough information to understand an issue sufficiently to decide for themselves what they think about it? Too often I have found myself doing a paper or a class presentation in which I am expected to act like I know what I am talking about on a subject that has been debated for decades if not centuries, feeling like I’ve just skimmed the surface of the issue, and am completed unprepared to take a stand. But, taking a stand is a requirement of the assignment. Is forcing students to take a stand before they know an issue well enough to really have an opinion perpetuating the idea that academic problems are fabricated opinions whose purpose is to make someone sound like they know what they are talking about for the purposes of getting a good grade/advancing their career and/or gaining tenure? Isn’t requiring students to use the third person and to omit statements like “I think,” “I believe” and “in my opinion” creating a falsehood? Do the students mean to state something as if they believe it is a fact that should be globally accepted as a truth, or are they only at the stage in which they “think” this is how it works or what it means? Is it wrong to be in a state of inquiry?

Not to become too philosophical ,but do we really “know” anything? At one time, scientists considered the Earth to be flat and had valid reasons for thinking that. If people always considered information in flux and open to new perspectives, would someone have discovered sooner that the Earth was round? If more people took stands like, I think the Earth is flat but let’s keep talking about it and as we learn more, let’s re-evaluate, would we progress faster and further in resolving conflicts and learning new things?

Is it productive to take a stand? I think it is, but let’s talk about it. I think the academic community needs to be free to put forth their ideas as their ideas and for those thoughts to be respected. I think that stunts like Sokol pulled by embarrassing a colleague by making him look stupid for not saying that he didn’t understand the ideas of his article only perpetuates an environment in which individuals are afraid to appear stupid and therefore don’t ask questions. The fear of being questioned and proven wrong contributes to the sentiment that academics think they have to write in an incomprehensible discourse in order to be respected. Does being respected mean that your ideas are not questioned?

What if, instead of teaching students about theories by presenting them with articles by experts that are written as if they are statements of fact, publishers print a textbook in which the chapters are like chat room discussions where theorists work in collaboration to debate the issues, having a limited amount of time to respond and limited ability for editing? What if, at the end, individuals who are not part of the academic community (are undergraduate or high school students perhaps) had the opportunity to ask questions to clarify the meaning or the issue or to raise new concerns based on the debate in the chat room? What if the experts were open minded enough to admit during the discussion when someone challenged a point and made them rethink their point of view? My thought is that this would allow students to see first-hand how academic discourse works and to see many sides of an issue. Hopefully it would demonstrate how academics with conflicting ideas can work together to resolve an issue, or at least come to a deeper understanding of it. It would show students that what is often presented to them as facts, as Graff’s examples of conflicting class lectures demonstrates, are not really facts but someone’s opinion. I would like to think this would allow students the freedom to voice their own ideas because they would see that academia is about having creative, well thought out ideas that can be proven wrong but still respected and that are productive in advancing an issue.

How do we know what they really know?

            Gerald Graff seems to bring up an issue that quite frankly, I never thought too much about until I read the book. At times I agree that colleges and high school classes makes education seem like it’s only attainable for those who can kiss ass or memorize the  teachers expectations. The most interesting comment I read was that, “students who flourish under the do-it-yourself curriculum are of the minority that arrives at college already socialized into the club of academia by home, church, or other prior experience (67). Graff goes on to say that those who do not have the ability to adapt and learn on their own are subjected to writing to the test, teacher or syllabus. I wholeheartedly agree that we as teachers do not always teach kids to learn. But rather, we teach them to be able to identify the correct way to analyze Shakespeare or identify Marxist theory in an essay or story.

            As a huge lover and teacher of writing in my classroom, I enjoyed the chapter, “Unlearning to Write” because I think at times we as teachers do not teach students how to write, but rather, teach them how to follow a formula. To me, writing is amazing because it should be a vehicle for people to communicate and express themselves. In my classroom, I have to teach a research paper and do a character analysis, but that’s where I draw the line with forced assignments. Right now I decided randomly that instead of doing a standard persuasive essay asking my students to argue a point in the text, I would do a more creative activity. For The Odyssey I asked my students to pretend that Odysseus and his crew just met Polyphemus, the Cyclops, and he needed to persuade Polyphemus not to eat them. They took on the persona of Odysseus and succeeded in using his voice from prior books to create really persuasive letters. Again, I avoided the whole essay thing-I simply asked them to write a letter that they would turn into a speech. I was really impressed with what they came up with. Some negotiated the crew’s lives for Odysseus and others simply pleaded to get home to their wife and son. This assignment was probably the best persuasive writing I have gotten from my students since I’ve been teaching. In the past I’ve done the letter to the parents as well, which also served as a great tool. Students get involved when trying to convince their parents to let them get a tattoo or a nose piercing. I try to make all my assignments, especially writing relevant to their lives. I like to think my class they know why we do what we do. Sometimes it’s because we have to because of POS and SOL standards, and sometimes we have to because it’s a skill all people should have.

            I feel that students need assignments that allow them to actually think for themselves. The only advice I gave them was that they needed to convince me (Polyphemus) to release them by any means they choose. To take it a step further, the kids read their letters turned speeches and voted on the most convincing. In my 6th period class, the sweetest, most quiet boy won. He doesn’t get all A’s in my class by curriculum imposed standards, but he does an amazing job when I don’t prescribe a formula.

            I think that students have learned to study to the test or teacher and they do lack the intrinsic knowledge and self-exploration that is evident in good learners. I’m not saying that those who can kiss ass and get A’s by following strict standards are less smart than those who can adapt and explore topics that are not scripted for them, but I am saying that they are less prepared for the real world. The real world wants you to think for yourself, at least most of the time. Reading this book reminded me of a friend of mine in high school. He was valedictorian and went to Duke. I do believe he scored a 1580 on his SAT’s-big stuff, I know. Well, to me he was dumb as rocks. I mean he couldn’t formulate and original idea to save his life. He quoted scholars and knew tons of facts about the earth’s crust and the branches of government, but I can’t ever remember him having an original thought. I suppose I’d be really smart too if I could memorize books and facts and regurgitate them to impress my teachers and their individual preferences.

            Schools should make students feel empowered and ready to face the world and all its elements, not make students feel less of themselves because they have never heard of Marlow or Wordsworth. Too many students go to college or their jobs unprepared and unfortunately there are few times when someone is willing to step in and help. Assumed knowledge and educational hierarchies can be dangerous if no one is helping those kids who fall through the cracks and haven’t learned how to handle new education environments and situations.

Hey, That’s Just Like Me!

High school was pretty much a breeze for me. My classes challenged me, but I never had to put forth much more than just the minimum amount of effort to stay ahead, and I still ended up graduating with honors. This is not to say that I did poorly in undergrad – I didn’t, but I did struggle a lot more to keep up with the discourse. It was my sophomore year when it really hit me, sitting in my Study of Lit class (criticism/theory), that I had no idea what the hell was going on. As soon as I realized it in one class, I started realizing it in others too. I would do all the reading, but most of it was done on cruise control. I couldn’t remember what I’d read because it was so convoluted with terms I didn’t understand and concepts that were totally unfamiliar to me. I looked around at my friends. I looked at my classmates. I looked at my roommate –  the salutatorian of her high school class. They all seemed to have it under control. I started feeling like it was just me. I started getting so antsy when I read because all I could think about was that I didn’t understand what I was reading. Convinced that I was on the brink of failing out of college and living in my parents’ basement, I actually went and had myself tested for a learning disability.

As soon as I started reading Clueless in Academe, I was so relieved to see that this problem of mine is so much more common that I’d ever thought. I didn’t have a learning disability, and I obviously didn’t fail out of college (or live in my parents’ basement), but I did struggle through my studies. It’s frustrating to me now that there are books and things that I know I’ve read, discussions I know would be beneficial, but I just can’t remember them because I couldn’t connect on that level. I spent so many years thinking that this made me stupid or unintelligent. Reading Graff for me was in some ways like reading a self-help book for education. It made me feel better about myself, being one of the students that gets distracted by the  ten-cent words and unfamiliar discourse. His ideas seem so simple (like his writing), but yet, I feel like it would take a lot to get more professors to see it his way. I KNOW that I must have students who, like me, tune out and shut down as soon as the teacher starts speaking a language they don’t understand, so to speak.  I really think this plays a large part in why some students (again, like me) are less vocal in class. In that Study of Lit class, as well as quite a few others since, I’ve not wanted to open my mouth for fear that whatever I said was going to sound stupid coming after the brilliant comment before it. It’s really hard to be overwhelmed by information overload. And life after undergrad (and sometimes even IN undergrad) doesn’t always allow the time to stop and take every piece of reading apart and figure out its meaning.

This reading gave me ideas for how to avoid unclear messages in my classroom, and, to some extent, how to deal with it when I’m the student. In any case, it’s nice to know that there are enough people like me to warrant doing the research and writing the book :-)

Just a Thought

In my classes I have often seen the confusion about which Graff writes. Students often don’t understand why they are asked to do something. Even though I try to explain the purpose of assignments to them, sometimes they don’t quite make the connection. “Why do I have to write this?” is a frequent question. Of course, my least favorite question would have to be “Is this busy work.” (Is it any wonder that at times I think all high school teachers should be shot? Of course none of you would assign busy work)

This is problem is particularly true of the assignment to “write an argument paper.” I think there are multiple reasons for this. The first one is the dreaded 5 paragraph essay. While I recognize the usefulness of this structure as a way to teach writing in the initial stages (Though I did not learn to write with this formula and I think I do okay.), like the training wheels on a bike, it must eventually be abandoned. However, like the child who refuses to attempt riding without the security of training wheels, students are reluctant to abandoned a reliable method of composing. Even though a parent can watch a child pedal away with the training wheels never touching the ground, students don’t realize their own capabilities.

Another formula that students cling to is the concept of proving something with their argument. This again may be the result of earlier teaching. (My apologies to all you high school teachers. I am not really blaming you for this.) Many freshman composition teachers assign some form of the standard argument paper. “Choose a topic. Write a paper that proves your point of view. Use sources.” I even assign this very basic essay in my freshman comp classes. The problem begins when I try to introduce students to the concept that an argument is sometimes just a debate. I want them to choose a topic and discuss it. They don’t have to come to a resounding conclusion. They can even, horror of horrors, leave the reader with a question at the end of the essay. But my students have been too well trained (by me or someone else?) to accept this easily. A paper must have a provable thesis. The thesis must state the topic ideas of each paragraph. (That is my personal pet peeve. After all, how boring is that?) Each paragraph must make a single claim that relates directly to the thesis. That is writing with training wheels. But the students are comfortable there. Removing that support might allow them to fall.

Another area that causes difficulty for students is that they don’t value their own opinion. The first argument based paper that I assign has the stipulation of “no research allowed.” This frequently elicits the response of “then how do I know what to write.” In addition to not valuing their own opinion, students think that teachers also won’t value their opinions. In one class discussion, I kept asking questions in an attempt to get students to pay more attention to the literature we were reading. One student, in frustration, finally blurted, “Why don’t you just tell us what you want us to say.” I’m not sure I ever fully convinced that student that I was not looking for a specific answer, only an answer.

So what does all this have to do with Graff and teaching literature? I, of course, believe that I FULLY and COMPLETELY explain all rationales, purposes, and reasons to my students. So imagine my surprise when I read Graff’s section about a Comparative Curriculum and thought to myself that we do have a comparative curriculum. By exposing students to opposing views in the classroom, we are allowing them to compare philosophies and beliefs, to compare and evaluate these in order to form their own beliefs. After all, isn’t this what we are really doing? Then I realized that I know this, and probably some of the A students know this, but it is one of the “fogged areas” for most students. They probably don’t realize the comparative opportunity we are offering them. Maybe (just maybe) I am more a part of the problem than I would like to admit.

So on to relating this to literature. We have talked a lot this semester about helping students to connect to literature, about allowing them to perform their own interpretations. That is all wonderful. But how do we let students know why they are doing this? How do we keep literature from becoming a “fogged area?” One of the first things we need to do is decide for ourselves why reading literature is important. This may sound banal, but it is a long debated and hotly contested issue. And I have no answer. At this point I really don’t even have much discussion (not because I couldn’t, but because am already 818 words). If reading “The Cask of Amontillado” is to be anything more than just another assignment, we need to answer that question for ourselves, and we need to be willing to discuss it with our students, even in all its incompleteness.

Clueless

I read for this class with an open mind every week.  Sometimes I am annoyed, sometimes enthralled.  This week I read Clueless in Academe, and I have to shake my head.  I have looked at the dates on many of our readings, and I see many dated in the ’80s.  This book is dated 2003.  So here we sit in a progressively modeled class, blogging of all things, and we read a book by someone who supports the simplification of English instruction in our universities.  But it has been more than 20 years since this movement started, and we are still reading about it as if it is new and needed.  I see that it is applied in this class, but I have to wonder how many others employ these new techniques.  I wonder how long it will take for these techniques to trickle down through the ranks.  I wonder how long it will take for those who are being taught by these methods now to become the leadership that will grow the movement until it becomes commonplace.  And isn’t ths sort of education ancient?  How is it rejected by the very people who study the ancient?

If we look at any technical manual, any software documentation, we see the same problem with difficult language there.  I think that all professions maintain a sort of corporate culture that requires certain verbiage and subtleties.  I think that English in academe is no different, but the fact is that the very nature of English instruction is to teach clarity.  It is a language, and to teach it in such a manner as to promote obscurity is ridiculous.  In fact, every time I read for this class, even those authors who are promoting a more simple approach, I have to pause and rethink at times.  It is fascinating and amusing.  It is ironic, I think.

In general, the message has been driven home, to teach and promote clarity.  What makes me smile at times is that those espousing such clarity fail to achieve it.  Many of these pieces could have been written in plain language or more simply than they have been.  But somehow, the deciphering does exercise the brain and make it a bit more fun to read.  I wonder though, if these authors could have written to amuse and pass along their thoughts without pretension, how many more interested students would have perused their writings, settled in for a good read, and perhaps adopted their theories in classrooms of their own.  If the reading is burdensome, who will tackle it except those members of the authors’ own club?  I guess if the audience is comprised of the offenders, and they read the new ideas and make changes, great.  But how many potential converts are missed because the writing caters to only a few.

In reading the blogs today, I see that one student left American University in part because of issues caused by the standard academic writing, and good for her.   Another mentions spending time planning a curriculum and having it 86’d by her county.  It seems that the ideas are out there, they have been proven to work and that they do not preclude academic writing, but the establishment in collegiate English departments is just as unyielding as the establishment in so many industries to include government and medicine.  What baffles me is that the people who are resistant are the people who stand for education, who see these methods work, and fail to implement them.   

lchinn

Redundancy as a Good Thing

  “A disconnected curriculum tends to be low in redundancy, the reinforcement of convergent messages that enables us to map our environment and gain confidence in our ability to negotiate it.”  Graff, Gerald.  Clueless in Academe.  London:  Yale University Press, 2003.  p. 70.Though his claim is made in the dense, academic language he criticizes, Graff makes a good point.  I understand him to mean that students need stuff to be repeated, not just in consecutive content courses, but throughout the curriculum as a whole.  And students can apply this repeated stuff more easily to their world if they’re not getting mixed messages the whole time.  Though I wish I had a solution that would allow students to experience this effective redundancy, instead I have a story about more mixed messages.

Two summers ago I spent two weeks working with a  dozen other teachers to revise the K-12 curriculum for teaching research.  Our group discovered and debated several models of research and considered which would be the most effective for teaching our students.  We spent hours dividing up the skill sets between the thirteen grades, each year building upon those mastered in the previous years.  We even made charts and checklists demonstrating for teachers what their students should have learned before coming to their classrooms, and what new skills needed to be introduced in any particular grade level.  We assumed that by repeating the process of introduction, practice, and finally mastery of skills throughout the grades, by the twelfth grade, students would be research experts. 

We were wrong.  We were not necessarily wrong in our thinking, but unfortunately, after all of our hard work that summer, the county decided to discard our plan in favor of. . . no plan at all.  Needless to say, that was a little disheartening.  But what is more disheartening is that many of our students, even at the twelfth grade level, lack basic skills in finding information and applying it to their own lives.  Our plan, though catered specifically to the language arts curriculum,  still would have been a stepping stone toward that “redundancy…of convergent messages” that Graff mentions.  Instead of research building blocks designed reinforce methods of finding and applying knowledge, systematically adding complexity through the grade levels, we now (still) have a hodge-podge of methods that are effective, but also contradictory, in various degrees.  Just as one illustration, some teachers swear by formal notecards as a starting point for serious research, while others (myself included) have never authentically used notecards in their own research processes and can’t justify teaching students a fake methodology.

Despite the curriculum team’s best efforts that summer, our students are still going from class to class, trying to find out what exactly their new teacher wants.  Because our school system was unable (unwilling) to make available a tool for teachers, the students are learning, unlearning, and relearning research methods, depending on who’s receiving their final products.  To their credit though, most students seem impressively able to adapt.          

It’s Not Dumbing it Down! It’s … what?

Over the summer, I taught a couple of workshops on writing to my colleagues (communicators in a science agency). These workshops are the major, most tangible reason I am in this program. I want to help scientists and communicators write better about science. One of the constant struggles of the communications people is battling the poor souls who have heard what Laura heard and bought into the notion that “you compromise your career if you write in ways that nonacademics [or in this case nonscientists] can understand” (Graff 115). They fret that to write more simply is to “dumb it down.” I hate that description with a passion.

In one of my sessions, the question came up on how to show scientists the value of dumbing it down. In that moment, I had an unusual clarity of how to explain to scientists that it’s not dumbing it down in a way that might reach them. I remember the epiphany feeling. The “Ah, ha! That’s it!” And I saw from their faces, that they felt the same way. But as is often the case when I speak in front of people, I couldn’t remember anything I had actually said after I had finished. A couple of students asked me at lunch a few days later how I had described it. I gave them my normal answers. They said, “No, what was it you said in class?” I couldn’t remember. I still can’t.

I’m glad that, as Graff affirms in Chapter 6, that things are changing in the academic world, that the “pretentious style” is being traded for a “more colloquial academic idiom” (124), but my colleagues and I need a better argument to fight those still entrenched in believing that “reaching a wider audience means dumbing yourself down and compromising your intellectual standards” (129).

So how do you respond? (And that’s not a rhetorical question.)

Graff says

  • “As I see it, having to explain myself to freshmen or high school students forces me not to dumb my ideas down, but to formulate them more pointedly than I do when I address only my colleagues and graduate students” (10).
  • “general accessibility is fully compatible with intellectual integrity. As I see it, the better I get at addressing nonacademics the better I become as an academic writer” (129).

But I’m still looking for my “elevator speech” on why IT’S NOT DUMBING IT DOWN (sorry to shout, but I needed to vent). I need that nugget that will resonate with the stodgiest of the stodgy.

My general arguments are

It’s not dumbing it down; it’s

  • being clear and concise
  • putting your ideas in language that makes it easier and faster for your stressed, harried, impatient audience (people who in our case are often making very important potentially life-saving or planet-dooming decisions) to process those ideas

It’s

  • not that people can’t understand what you wrote (if the ideas are at least in there)—it’s that they won’t take the time to
  • not that the ideas themselves need to be reduced or simplified—they just need to be stated more simply
  • not about intelligence—it’s about style

Oh, and by the way, people don’t think you’re smart—

  • they think you’re not smart enough (or don’t understand it well enough) to put it in their language; or
  • they think you’re too arrogant or too lazy to put it in their language—and if you don’t respect their time, why should they respect what you have to say?

But What’s the Reality?

In reading Gerald Graff’s book, I’m able to put into perspective the past actions of professors as an undergraduate in the mid-eighties.  I started college at American University in D.C.. An initial shocker was the large number of students, my classmates, that had graduated from a private high school.  Already, I felt less qualified to be there.

Having always been a reader and writer and therefore comfortable in my skills, imagine my shock, when at the beginning of my first semester in English Comp., the professor told me my writing was backwards!  I figured her being British had something to do with her not appreciating my abilities.  Yet she never defined, nor aided to correct my backwardness, just continued with the criticism.  

If that wasn’t bad enough, during my first biology class, the professor- a PHD- concluded his lecture on the human body with the words, “Do you believe me?” After momentary silence, most of us agreed with the data he had given us and what we had diligently taken notes on, only to discover that most of it was not accurate. He ended class ranting about our need to Question Authority!

So, feeling pumped-up from that lecture, I tried this ‘questioning’ with the British instructor and guess what?  She would have none of it. She felt I was being rude. (Little did she know how much courage it required of me to speak, never mind ask questions).

During my second semester, when I asked my American English teacher if she found my writing to be backwards, she said, “no-just wordy.”  Was that all?

After two years,  I transferred to Univ. of Md at College Park.  Many people questioned my rationale for leaving ‘prestigious’ AU for a state school.   

Although many people fondly recall their undergrad years, I don’t. I followed the rules and degree outlines and graduated almost as clueless as the day I arrived. The irony is that I had graduated both high school and college with honors, yet felt so totally unprepared for t he world.

I find Graff’s idea of restructuring higher education invigorating, but daunting because already I have run into the attitude supporting the more traditional way simply because that’s the way it has always been. 

Susan

And the award for “least sexy description of sex” goes to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick…

Ok, ok. So this post title has little to do with the actual contents of my post. That being said, I had to point out the passage (p.143, paragraph 2) because in terms of unnecessarily obfuscated academic writing, Sedgwick really gives Frederic “The dialectic of desire is thus…something like a negation of a negation” Jameson a run for his money. Just reading the excerpts from Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet brought me back to some of the denser texts I “read” during the course of my undergraduate education.

I think at some point, most high achieving students have tried to mimic this “style,” and to varying degrees of success. They do it for several overlapping reasons: they think they have to, teachers expect it, and they want to sound “smart.” As I admitted last week, I have certainly turned in my fair share of papers steeped in words like “problematize,” “orientate,” and perhaps most embarassingly, “phenomenological.” It took me most of my college education to figure out that throwing around such words does not in fact make you sound “smart.” It just makes you sound like a show-off, and a boring one at that.

Graff’s assessment of the inaccessibility of academic writing is spot-on. He does a superb job of articulating the “so what” portion of his main thesis. The first several chapters of Clueless in Academe demonstrate in varied ways how disconnection within academia and needlessly arcane texts work to both alienate students and further confine academics to their ivory tower. My issue with Graff’s assessment is not in his articulation of the problem. As with with most academic writing, troubles crop up during the “now what?” portion of the work.

To be fair, I’ve only read half of this book. Perhaps his practical solutions to these problems appear in chapters 8 through 14. I’m only working with what I’ve read so far; but frankly, nothing I’ve read so far has even remotely convinced me that a grand restructuring of academia is either a good idea, or even possible. In fact, the very idea of “the gist business” (138) appalls me. That isn’t to say that academics shouldn’t do a better job of communicating their ideas to their students and non-scholars. Of course they should. But reducing academic discourse to reductive summarization seems to me a step backwards, rather than a step forward.

The other issue I take with Graff’s proposed solutions to “curricular disconnection” relates to his call for a more comparative curriculum. In Graff’s ideal world, scholars would still argue, but respectfully. Teacher swapping would help students form links between competing ideologies and create synergistic “learning communities” (79-80). Having attended a university where certain members of the same department could barely contain their mutual detest for one other (never mind their ambivalence towards students), I just don’t see how this Graff’s dream-world would have any chance of becoming a reality—at least not without a massive restructuring in the tenure system in most large universities.

I hate to be a cynic, and I hate to even describe universities as “businesses,” but let’s not kid ourselves. If universities are in the “business” of anything, it’s luring academic superstars, securing research grants, funding sports programs, squeezing their students dry, and pumping wealthy alumni for cash–and not necessarily in that order. Graff’s suggestions are certainly uplifting, but they assume that professors have the time, power, and incentive to redefine the structure of the academic world.

A Good Teacher Models for his Students

        One feature of Graff’s Clueless in the Academe that I appreciated was that the book itself modeled the points he was making.  In his first chapter, Graff argues that journalistic (or popular) culture and academic culture are not worlds apart as they once were, but in fact, “the university is itself popular culture” (21).  From there, the play on movie titles (Six Degrees of Obfuscation; The Revenge of the Nerds) he uses as chapter subheadings gives the academic book a pop culture feel.

            His second chapter on The Problem Problem is, on the surface, a discussion of the kinds of problems English teachers dig up in texts that do not appear to students to be problems at all.  Of course, Graff’s deeper problem, the failure of students to recognize problems, is the real problem, and Graff has the solution.  “Give the students the help they need to conduct the search [for meaning] well, with a sense of how and why it can be useful” (52).  Their apathy for learning the art of argumentation, as well as their naiveté regarding the value of analyzing the cultural assumptions imbedded in forms of entertainment, is closely linked to their inability to recognize the kinds of problems English teachers “dig up,” and can be ameliorated by helping students see the purpose and power of argumentation. 

            In chapter 4, Graff demonstrates the technique of engaging in argumentation, ironically, in opposition to Deborah Tannen’s argument that argument should be abolished.  He does with Tannen’s book exactly what he wants students to learn to do, being careful to be polite and specific, and to identify the points on which they can agree.  His chapter on Paralysis by Analysis is another example of a carefully planned and executed argument, just to make sure we see how it is to be done, while he makes his point.

            Graff does a good job of showing by his writing style and ample us of examples that “it is possible to do justice to the complexity of academic subjects while communicating clearly to nonspecialist audiences” (134).  His sound bite conclusion to chapter 7 was in keeping with his modeling of ideas:  “It is time to rethink the view that the university in not in the gist business” (154).  As a writing instructor, I was thrilled to hear him say it was his sense of audience that prompted him to revise his writing style.  In fact, most of Graff’s book seemed more relevant to me as a teacher of writing than a teacher of literature. 

Electives and Transference Interference

In Gerald Graff’s Clueless in Academe, the author describes the cognitive and societal obstacles that interfere with students and teachers at institutions of higher education.  Graff covers a great deal of material, including the tension between scholarly jargon and the vernacular, but his discussion of compartmentalization is particularly insightful.  For reference purposes, most of this exploration takes place on page 68.

The entire credit system is a double-edged sword.  On the one hand, it theoretically affords students the freedom to choose courses of interest.  On the other hand, these mix-and-match patterns of coursework don’t often yield the general body of knowledge that an institution’s mission statement advocates.  Every student’s experience is unique, which poses some interesting issues.  Consider my background.  As an undergraduate math-major-turned-English-major, my academic transcript is rather odd.  While the number of math courses is predictably excessive, it is the overflow of non-American literature and history courses that is particularly striking.  Most of my coursework involved a study of French and Russian history.  As for literature courses, only several courses in Shakespeare would count as “traditional” literature classes.  The reason behind these choices had to do with scheduling and finding the “right” teachers.  As a result, I’ve managed to be one of the few English majors that have never read Hemingway.  What does this mean?

More importantly, this issue brings up the tendency of students, including myself, to compartmentalize knowledge in each course.  When learning physics, I did not apply it to any “real world” examples that were outside of class.  Application or transference was something that I assumed would happen later through some magical process involving experience.  This flawed assumption on my part and the inaction on the part of the education system to foster interdisciplinary thinking created a gap in my understanding.   It’s no wonder that many students score highly on tests and in course assignments but are unable to solve problems on their first applied job.  The gap between knowledge and application appears to be growing.

Measuring, or assessing, transference between courses and fields is an extremely difficult task, yet scholars and successful professionals often cite the ability to link concepts across seemingly unrelated fields as a key ingredient in innovation and progress.  It would seem that interdisciplinary studies would best be suited to accomplish this goal.  Unfortunately, institutional barriers quickly emerge to thwart such an undertaking.  For example, budgetary concerns question the rationality behind paying two teachers to teach a single class.   This doubling in the budget at a time when money is tight (when isn’t it?) has prevented team teaching from becoming a reality.  Not surprisingly, compartmentalizing has become the norm.

Graff’s discussion of the criticisms of the elective system dating back over one hundred years is particular disheartening.  After such a long period of experimentation and analysis, the need for a significant change or modification would appear obvious.  However, the credit/elective system is tied to a series of interests, laws, regulations, legal precedents, and budgetary mandates that maintain the status quo.  The only realistic opportunity for addressing transference appears to remain inside the classroom.  Perhaps reforming the curriculum to include cross-disciplinary evaluations and activities are the only short-term solution.

Ouch! Geral Graff Opened a 30-Year-Old Wound

       I’ve probably mentioned that I’ve spent the bulk of my career as a professional writer and have a few books and miles of articles under my belt. My published work is of the practical how-to variety in a field of applied business. I’ve been very successful. But that wasn’t always what I thought I’d do with my life. Way back when, I wanted to be an English professor. As I read our pal Gerald Graff this week, Chapter 6 (“Unlearning to Write”) in particular, I recalled the precise and painful moment when I decided that I had no future in academe.           

     I was a student in the elite and very competitive two-year honors English program at Rutgers College and during the spring of 1979, my senior year, I was working on my undergraduate thesis. I was interpreting the use and importance of etiquette in a couple of Henry James’ novels, contrasting European and American etiquette of the time and how James used those conventions to create tension. I worked with a very highly-regarded English professor and James scholar as my advisor for the project. He was extremely happy throughout our time together with the quality of my interpretations, my insights, my research into etiquette guides from James’ time, my ability to do magnificent close readings, and overall, the work I was doing on this project. We had many happy discussions in his office. The writing, though, troubled him. I gave him portions of my paper as I wrote them and he agreed that I had captured precisely the gist (as Graff calls it) of our discussions. But he said that my writing was too simple and easy to understand; my ideas were sensational, but my mode of expressing them – though forceful, entertaining, and grammatical — was not academic. My writing was too transparent, he said. He showed me examples of more scholarly-sounding papers. I read them but thought that that kind of writing was bad writing. It wasn’t clear. It obscured meaning by using very long and convoluted sentences, ten-dollar words most people wouldn’t know, and a high-fallutin snooty tone. We locked horns on this issue more than once. In the end, in my youthful willfulness, I wrote my thesis my way, in the straightforward, accessible, punchy language I knew in my heart was better.

            Four things grew out of this experience:

            1. My thesis was assessed as With Honors. That was the lowest of three possible distinctions. (With High Honors and With Highest Honors were the two higher designators.) The remarks of the committee were the same as those of my advisor. My ideas were wonderful, the committee said, but my language was too-straightforward; my paper was well-written but didn’t sound academic.

            2.  I was crushed. I decided that I had no place in academe and no talent or appreciation for writing in academic style.

            3. I was at this same time chosen as the one and only Rutgers’ University Danforth Foundation nominee. Had I won the fellowship, I would have had a free ride to any graduate school. I turned down the nomination and told the committee to give it to another student who was more suited to academic life.

            4. I graduated and in short time embarked on a writing career in the popular mode and became very successful.

            I look back at all of this, stir it together with what Graff said about academic writing, and I can’t help but hurt. I let a few people convince me that there was only one way to write in academe and that I had no future in the academy stating great ideas simply enough so that everyone could easily understand them. What a bunch of hooey.

            There’s a P.S. to my story. The professor/advisor of my thesis is still at Rutgers. I read recently in the Chronicle of Higher Education that he is now a high-level dean.

Getting a clue – thoughts on Graff

Page 25

As educators, we take academic discourse for granted.  We expect students to care about the issues we bring up even though they are presented in an academic vacuum (for instance, Graff’s example of the views of love in the 15th century).  These ideas must be given context; students need to know why they should care.  A working knowledge of courtly love is integral to studying the Divine Comedy, but that explanation isn’t enough for the average 16 to 22 year old.  The trick is, this information must not only relate to their own lives but to the society in which they live. 

Page 39

I find troubling Graff’s implication that academia must sell itself.  Doesn’t this essentially debase the quality of higher education?  College isn’t a television show or music video, though some of the pop culture courses showing up on university campuses might lead one to believe that is the case. 

Student life offices and academic departments operate on two totally different wavelengths as it is – I will never forget the day that Mason’s “Take Back the Night” observance began right in the middle of my Literary Scholarship meeting with a local band playing outside our classroom.  Professor Owens was livid that the band’s amplifier created an impromptu (and unwanted) soundtrack for his lecture. 

Page 45

Academic problems are not seen as problems – there is a “who cares” mentality of “when will I ever need to use this?”  Honestly, I’m not sure if the counter argument of “It will help you become a better thinker/express yourself better” is a useful one to high school (and some college) students.  The current education system has become a series of hoops to jump through because courses are compartmentalized and irrelevant to one another.

Page 47

Crandus’ students see textual explication as pointless – of course they will, unless it is placed within a relevant context.  Students have to see themselves as part of the world and the texts they study as relevant to that world, not just some confusing garble of words written by dead white men.

Students compartmentalize their education and we help them.  Subjects are separated, so school is separated from life.  It has no bearing other than the expectations of their parents and the ubiquitous college degree.  Many adults still feel this way, especially when it comes to literature.  We’ve talked before about how many of us have been asked absurd questions like, “What’s the point of English class?” or “Why don’t you study something useful?” from our own peers in the real world.

Page 49

The compartmentalization of schooling leaks over into categorizing life.  The response “How would I know what the author would think?  We’re not close friends” is an example of such grouping.  Students feel so strongly about individualism that they have denied the universal experience of humanity.  We are a culture of egos – it is almost impossible to identify or even empathize with others because individuality is king. 

Page 56

Individualism has damaged students’ perception of why persuasion has value.  Relativism states that everyone is entitled to his own opinion or set of moral standards, so what is true for “me” may not necessarily be true for “you.” Therefore, it’s not acceptable (or PC) to try and persuade someone of your opinion (much less present it on the chance you might offend someone). 

Graff says this lack of interest in persuasion is a symptom not of relativism but of the collegiate generation’s lack of faith that their opinions matter in the democratic scheme of things.  He misses the point – in a relativistic society, no one’s opinions matter because they are all the same.  Without a standard against which to judge what is true and what is false, everything is true.  Thus, opinions (and votes) are meaningless. 

Page 68

Ignoring contradictions in text is another sign of relativism’s impact.  Why discuss differing opinions (or even notice them) if everyone has them and they are (again) all the same where truth is concerned?

Page 85

Civilized debate requires that those who debate respect one another.  Today’s culture dictates that anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot, and that only true intellectuals take or hold your position.  Look at politics – liberals think conservatives are close-minded bigots; republicans think democrats are bleeding-heart socialists.  Even members of the same political party slip into this (take Obama and Hilary, for example, who seem to revel in personal attacks rather than debating the issues of their campaigns). 

Page 88

Tannen’s discussion of “debate/discussion” clearly illustrates the semantics/political correctness game.  One is supposedly preferable to the other, because in a discussion you are somehow less likely to be violently affronted.  I find this ridiculous – I have been violently affronted in many “discussions.”  What it boils down to is an issue of respect for the person whom you are debating and the understanding that it is okay to present one’s own opinion even if it might be counter to someone else’s.  Disagreeing with someone doesn’t make you ignorant.

Pages 122-123

Graff’s discussion of tone brings up the sense of superiority redolent in academia.  Why must academic writing and discussion be so esoteric, so inaccessible?  To me it almost feels as though this is a way of keeping the Ivory Tower ivory, despite all of its talk about diversity. 

Page 126

Students are forced into split identities not only in courses and professorial expectations but in their writing as well.  They are expected to walk a fine line between accessible and academic, leading a great number of novice students to slip into “I don’t care” mode – the same as that caused by the isolated academic problem. 

Final thoughts:

Graff implies that closing the curriculum gap takes understanding on the part of the teachers and academic policy makers (70).  I agree.  They (we, really) are products of the same system and compartmentalize just as much as the students do, perpetuating the problem out of habit and comfort.  Everybody talks about cross-curriculum mapping, but how many of us really want to do it?  While we admit that good teaching is all about sharing and “stealing” ideas from other educators, we happily ensconce ourselves in our classrooms and go about our business, quite pleased to avoid outside interference in the realm in which we excel.  In addition, we reinforce the relativist ideology by exhibiting the very same behaviors we eschew in our students.  Like Graff points out, we don’t like to publicly disagree – we muzzle ourselves so no one individual gets their own way.  God forbid we offend somebody, because what is right for me may not be right for somebody else. 

Our attitudes are the reason why good English students don’t see that the skills learned in a Literature or Comp course carry over into writing clear lab reports or research papers for other disciplines.  We are as much a part of the problem as the solution. 

-Ginny

reflections on reflections of the reflections made in the difficulty paper

Since I had originally been excited about the Difficulty Paper, but was disappointed with my experience with it, I thought I’d share with everyone some more informal reflections on my experience with it as a reader/writer.

Pros

  • Helps with difficult texts
  • Good heuristic–it provides places for further investigation (helping to get over that blank slate block)
  • Engages you with the text, makes you look closer
  • Solves problems you may otherwise gloss over
  • It is rewarding to solve difficult difficulties

Cons

  • Engages you with stumbling blocks rather than your interests
  • Some difficulties are less valuable than others
  • Solving less difficult difficulties, such as simple misreads, isn’t that rewarding
  • May be forcing a method of addressing difficulty that is more time consuming than what more advanced readers do naturally (In some ways, this is good. It forces you to slow down and look closer, but it is annoying).

Truthfully, as I was writing it, I did not really see these cons. I dove in and pressed on to see where it would take me. Even though a couple of the difficulties that I discussed were very easily solved, I found that my discussion went to why those elements of the story were important, which led to a deeper understanding of the text than merely solving the surface difficulty.

It was only in a revision of my reflection paper, when I was trying to hone in on its guiding idea, that I realized my annoyance with the Difficulty Paper. I wasn’t as excited about my paper as I normally am. I think this was because of con number 1. When you choose a topic, you generally choose something that you have a personal connection/interest in. As you develop your thesis, you naturally have to solve difficulties. However, they are difficulties related to something you are interested in and want to pursue rather than whatever random things tripped you up while you were reading.

So my conclusion is that the difficulty paper is good for helping students learn to address difficulties and for initial engagement in the text, but for final products such as this, where they are going to be putting in more concentrated time and effort, it might be best if they can pursue something they find engaging and compelling rather than “difficult.”

Reading Appreciation 101-Elbow style

I have always been a huge fan of Peter Elbow. Since I started teaching, his name has come up in nearly every seminar or workshop I’ve ever attended. As I was reading his section in When Writing Teachers Teach Literature, I couldn’t help but wonder how he shot to such popularity among English teachers. Then it came to me. Peter Elbow is so popular among teachers because he truly thinks outside of the traditional teaching scope and does a lot to ensure that his students aren’t only reading texts, but understanding it. While reading, “Breathing Life into the Text,” I found myself, yet again, loving Peter Elbow. He basically suggests four methods we should use to help students engage in text as they do in writing. I particularly liked two of his points: having students write before reading, and having student’s text-render.

As usual when I read and respond I almost always discuss either what I’m doing with my class, or how I can improve what I’m doing with my class. I was really pleased to know that I seem to be doing ok. Elbow wrote, “Before I ask students to read the text, I like to ask them to write on the theme or issue that is central to the text” (194). Just before my class started reading The Odyssey, that’s exactly what I asked them to do. The beauty of literature is that most often the central theme is so simple that it can be applied to anyone. Personally, I think if the theme isn’t relatable then perhaps we wouldn’t have so many avid readers. I digress. Before we started reading, I asked my students about their struggle to get to the United States-and even if it wasn’t a struggle, I wanted them to discuss how they got here and people they met along the way who either helped or hindered them. They gave such amazing stories of a real life struggle to get here; I guess a real struggle to get to their new home. Most of my regular (native English speakers) students have attempted this in the past, but my ESOL students by far wrote the most descriptive pieces I have ever read. Naturally they shared out loud and I think that brought them closer together as a class. Whether from Nigeria, South Korea or Ecuador, each student knew and experienced a struggle to get to the United States. After this activity, they were a lot more empathetic toward Odysseus. In the past, my students saw him as arrogant and wily, which he is, but they neglected to see him as a human who did inevitably want to get home for a better life with his wife and son. Now as we continue to read, my students are much more involved in his journey and are paying closer attention to what he takes or loses from each encounter on his way home.

Elbow’s concept to get them writing before reading really did help my students understand and empathize with Odysseus and his journey home. I just started The Odyssey about two weeks ago and I’m pleased to read that allowing my students to experience the text will also enhance their meaning. I feel that I already have them look at the words and phrases and discuss preconceived notions and embedded reactions, but I don’t think I allow them to act or render the scenes enough. We do pop corn readings to discuss language, but I didn’t start change the tone of our reading or changing character roles until this year. After our 610 class reading and reading Elbow’s suggestions, I started doing character voices when reading in my classes. They totally love it. I almost feel like I’m reading a story to my friend’s three-year-old, but it keeps my students engaged. When we split the parts and read in voices, I notice that they add a silly or serious tone to their parts. I do think this allows them to be closer to the reading. I took Elbow’s suggestion and I asked them to act out nonverbally the scene where Hermes is sent to tell Calypso she must let Odysseus go. It was totally hilarious. There was a lot of finger waving and sass from Hermes that they would have otherwise not implied if we just did a reading. The Calypso passage was also a perfect opportunity for them to do an imaginative writing after the reading. Because the description of Calypso’s paradise is so exact and full of imagery, I asked my students to write of their ideal hideaway. Again I was impressed by their demonstration of strong images and active adverbs and adjectives. They were clearly paying close attention to Homer’s style and trying to imitate it.

I find that it is much easier for my classes to appreciate reading when they approach it as a process, but not something that is already completed. It is important for them to understand that just as a writer has drafts, a reader does to. Every time a person re-reads a passage, they are essentially adding or taking out previous readings. I really enjoyed reading this book because I think there are a lot of good ideas that can be used in the classroom. I notice that some of my colleagues are stale and love the Xerox room so it’s refreshing to be reminded how good teaching doesn’t require a ten minute wait in line in a stuffy copy room.

Princeton, not so hip as us

The ideas that we read about week to week, the inclusion of writing in the reading process, the use of writing to understand, seem to be relatively new. As I peruse the citations for each our readings this week, I see references to pieces written in the ‘80s, ‘90s, but little bits and pieces from the ‘60s and ‘70s are there. I wonder if in the ‘60s, the authors of those pieces were the radical, new thinkers. Hearing how effective these techniques have been for my classmates, I wonder about how long it has taken for these ideas to become mainstream.

In Greene’s Reinventing the Literary Text,” students practice writing from a character’s perspective. This is an exercise that I intend to utilize in my final teaching project. We will read The Harlem Dancer, a poem, and then write letters from the stripper to her grandmother and a friend. After reading Greene’s piece, the idea settled as perfectly suited to this work. How better to get into the mind of a stripper in Harlem? I am sure none of us have had the experience, and yet somehow, I think that we can imagine the anguish this woman feels. I am toying with the idea of having students write a letter from her to her Southern Baptist grandma in — I don’t know — Georgia, the one she supports, and then rewriting it after they have read more about Harlem and survival in New York during the ‘40s. I wonder, what lies would she tell and why? The answers seem obvious. But if the assignment were repeated in the form of another letter to a friend, perhaps someone in the same position in another state, how would the tone change? How much would students gain in understanding from this type of writing?

From the very beginning of this course, each reading has been enlightening for me and encouraging, as I have stated before many times. I do find that they are somewhat repetitive now in theme and content, some more enjoyable than others… But they all say essentially the same thing: that we must allow our students to explore freely.

We visited Princeton this week. We do not anticipate that our son will gain admittance, but we went anyway. We went to the admissions off ice and checked the admissions stats. Twenty-six percent of freshman students had an SAT of 2300-2400 last year. Obviously, writing skill made the difference for those students that were accepted.

The most impressive aspect of the application packet was the description of freshman coursework. They said that all freshman are encouraged to explore an area of interest in a seminar style classroom. Freshman, exploring. I thought that it must be difficult for a lot of those freshman to work for a seminar class, to be free to research., but I had to laugh a little because so many of my fellow classmates are already pursuing this format, at the high school level.

These are ideas that seem to have come into mainstream acceptance in the ‘80s, but it has taken years for them to trickle down through the ranks. I wonder how many kids will be left floundering because their teachers refuse these newer, somewhat freeform ideas. And I wonder, as more colleges adopt this method of instruction, how difficult it will be for kids to adjust to the idea that they can be free to explore and research what interests them.

Finding a Happy Medium

In reading the articles in WWTTL, I found myself remembering a couple of my undergrad professors and thinking about how in the hell is this feasible in my current position. I am in agreement with Renee about wanting to do my writing in my classes, but the thought of having to read all the student work is a little too much to think about.

I has mixed feelings about Bloom’s attitude, but I do agree that having students write in the different genres gives them a taste of what it is like; however, I have never seen the intrinstic desire to revise that she writes about, nor the willingness to conference of which Glenn writes. I have and do give students the opportunity to mimic the writing of  stories that we have read in class with less than positive results. Unfortunately, many of my students do not take the time to do the assignment much the same as Lovitt’s students but instead of the night before it is due, it is the class period before it is due. The other aspect that I struggle with in these types of assignments is how do you teach studnets “the art of crafting an honest, engaging autobiography, not with confession for therapeutic purposes” (82). Even when they are not autobiographies this seems to happen. Recently, I had my students write 5 minute skits and everyone could tell who was upset with thier boyfriend, most of them played out like a scene of soap opera. On the otherhand there were some really good ones that delt with social issues like racial profiling, okay so maybe there was only 3 out of the 30 that weren’t carbon copies, but it was good for those 3 students, right?

Another gripe I had with Bloom was her statement about the students in her classes when she stated they “will become teachers of literature and, willy-nilly, of writing” (79). I’m not saying that this is a wrong assumption, but the fact that she is so matter of fact about it and does not seem to upset by this fact, nor does she seem to address this problem with a proposed solution. Again I ask, when is it assumed that writing is taught?

On a positive side of things – I found Glenn’s oral presentations to be a helpful idea. I had an undergrad professor who taught Native American Literature who required us to do this type of assignment. We were to research one topic (we signed up at the beginning of the semester with appropriate due dates) write a one page paper with enough copies for the entire class and then present our findings. Each topic tied into what we were studing/reading for that class and it really did bring the lecture aspect/responsibility to the students. In fact, I still find some of those papers that other students wrote useful for teaching certain pieces of literature.

I guess what is really important in all the reading about teaching we do in these types of classes is that we realize different things work for different people. Sometimes we might find something that will work well with our teaching style that will benefit all of our students and other times we may find a strategy that will help that one student who is lagging behind. Just with everything else in life as Swift reminds us with his “Modest Purposal” there is no one solution to all the problems that exist the same is true of teaching, and we as teachers must not get so engrossed in the dancing shadows that we forget they are only shadows.

a journey from the inside out

As a writer, in reading Bloom’s essay, “Textual Terror, Textual Power” I was delighted to see creative writing being brought into the literature classroom. But I have to admit, I was skeptical at how much mimicking literature would really help with interpreting the meaning of a text. Clearly, writing about literature helps with thinking about literature. (I like that Bloom calls it writing literature, as opposed to Scholes who seems convinced that by definition students cannot create literature, but instead create “practicings.” It’s a semantic thing, but one that probably makes a big difference when trying to empower students.) But Bloom’s examples of the results of this exercise seem to show more that the act of writing literature helped the students to develop a better understanding/empathy with the craft of writing (the rigor, the difficulties, the rewriting, etc.) than developing skills for finding meaning.

It was in reading Cheryl Glenn’s account (in “The Reading-Writing Connection – What’s Process Got to Do With It”) of trying to determine if students understood the difference between actual author and speaking voice in Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” that I saw an example where mimicking writing could help solve a specific interpretive issue. I can’t help but wonder if Glenn’s student Dan, who “thinks he doesn’t have to believe what he writes,” might either feel more invested or have a better understanding of what he “will not or cannot see” if he had actually attempted to write a satire. Would writing a satire enable him to see the text from the inside-out rather than from behind a wall that neither he nor his teacher is able to penetrate by simply discussing and writing about the text? In this particular case, mimicking the form of the satire seems a more powerful tool than rewriting from an alternate perspective (an activity both Robert Scholes and Brenda Greene suggest). However, rewriting from another perspective could certainly be used, as Green says, to analyze and evaluate how the author has used the elements of the texts to heighten conflicts and develop themes.

I find Glenn’s journaling account of her classroom model of reading, writing, and thinking to be very compelling. As Scholes pointed out, “what (students) need from us now is the kind of knowledge and skill that will enable them to make sense of their worlds, to determine their own interests, both individual and collective, to see through the manipulations of all sorts of texts in all sorts of media, and to express their views in some appropriate manner” (15-16). Merely spewing facts about a piece of literature on an exam does little to help students learn to interpret their world, and so it follows teaching these facts also does little achieve our real goals. Discussion is excellent, but I think writing has a greater power, both in terms of helping students develop their thoughts and in helping them remember the knowledge and the skills they have learned. As Francois pointed out a couple weeks ago, it is the journey not the destination.