What I always come back to is how much more cynical I would like to be, if only my students will let me.
As a graduate student, I teach undergrads at a large public research university. Precisely because of my outsized desires for what education could be, I try to stay ruthlessly realistic about what students expect from my classes. I try to think about them as practical beings, who are indeed eager to learn but who are mostly motivated by pragmatic issues like credits, graduation, and eventual employment. I remind myself that the more my ambition grows for how much I can teach them, and, more to the point, how deeply I can reach them, the less I am dealing with them on the level I assume they want to be dealt with.
But they just don’t permit me this kind of cynicism. I know how darkly our culture tends to reflect on our youth, and again, to protect myself from getting disappointed, I would much prefer to see them the same way. And, yes, of course, there are some kids where all they need are some tasty waves, a cool buzz, and they’re fine. (Who’s judging?) There are the athletes, who are usually the opposite of stupid but who know precisely what they are motivated to do there. There are kids who will smile and nod and be totally sweet and funny and then do everything they can to undermine the course. There are the plagiarists, and there are the kids who just lack the prerequisite skills. But here, so early in my teaching career, I am consistently, wonderfully surprised by the degree of their interest, as a whole. I don’t know, maybe I’m just operating from lower standards than most people. But it’s satisfying, and I think that the joys of college aren’t just the four years plus of partying and leisure but also that many people genuinely love to learn.
Here’s the thing in particular: I find that they love to be regarded as ethical beings. All I mean by that is that many students are genuinely charmed to be asked “what do you feel about this?” in a way that assures them that their moral choices matter. I mean, look, I’m a dork for this stuff. But I really sense a hunger there, for them to consider what they think is right and wrong with the world and for that consideration to be taken seriously. There’s just so little in the way of an outlet for that in their lives.
I tell you all of this just to point out a central problem with the constant conservative complaints about liberal bias in the university: it reflects such an insulting and wrong vision of students, that they are this amoral jelly upon which anyone with authority can project their political positions. Trust me: these kids will tell you what they think, if you just prompt them a little and show them that they are in a safe space. Whenever I read someone like David Horowitz talking about this generation of innocent youth being indoctrinated into radical politics, all I can think is “you’ve never tried to sneak a line of bullshit by a college class.” Because they will call you on that. Forcefully.
I recognize the danger that could come from instructors or professors who allow their political convictions to color their grading. But it’s worth pointing out that, for all of the millions of students in hundreds of thousands of classes, conservative critics of the academy have demonstrated almost no examples of this sort of thing whatsoever. (Michael Berube has written about this well in the past.) Of course, coercion and influence can be more subtle than that. I can only say that my own ethic is not merely to do everything I can to avoid bias against students based on their political convictions but to make my classroom, to whatever degree I can, a radically non-normative space. I can quote you chapter and verse from the theory that underlies that, but at the end of the day, it’s for them.
You never get to perfect neutrality, of course. Personally, I believe in being open about my political beliefs to the degree that the are relevant to the issues of the class, under the theory that pretending to be a man from nowhere would never really work, and that hiding my politics would be a sure signal to the students that political discussion is dangerous and that they should watch what they say. I never wedge my politics into a discussion where they don’t come up naturally, but neither do I run from that kind of discussion. It’s a fine line to walk, I know, and I’m sure I don’t walk it perfectly. But what I come back to is the simple belief that the first part of respecting their political convictions is recognizing the strength with which they hold them. I may not teach them perfectly, but I will not insult them by treating them as ciphers or simps, in the vulgar attempt to use them for partisan politics. In my short experience, I’ve had no reason to regret that stance.
Now, here, I’m on thin ice, and probably should know better than to try to voice this. You’ll have to forgive me my pretensions. But there’s another thing: they’re always leaving you behind.
I mean this in the obvious sense that semesters end and students go off on their college careers and their lives. But I also mean it in the sense that you are constantly being reminded of the temporary nature of your instruction. They come to you, looking for skills, and hopefully you teach them, and then they’ve assimilated those skills, and they’ve left your instruction behind. The better you are at your job, the less they need you. To chart the growth in a particular student’s work over the course of a semester can often be frustrating, but it can also be encouraging, and to project that growth out over the course of the next few years, inspiring. They take what they need and they leave, and by the time you get around to thinking you understand them, they’ve grown away again. And this too is my point: even if I felt sure that I had, in whatever subtle way, projected my politics onto the mind of a student, they would take that and turn it into something truly their own. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to try and deliberately manipulate a student. The target never stops moving, and that’s the beauty of it.
I’ll tell you, I worry too much about grading. It’s not that they don’t care about their work– very often they do– but that in evaluating the finished page, I’m evaluating what they no longer are. At the end of the semester, while I fret over their final portfolios, still worrying about being non-normative, they’re out living their lives and deciding the way they think the world should be. Like a child holding a cicada shell, I am delicate and tentative with what’s been left behind by a living creature that couldn’t care less about my worry.
arguingwithsignposts
What is your subject matter, FDB?
Freddie deBoer
Rhetoric and composition.
arguingwithsignposts
@Freddie deBoer: Cool. You teach freshmen, then, right? Do you find a lot of students who are incurious about the world around them/their immediate circle of friends?
And an aside, you might want to tuck these really long entries into an “extended entry” like Levenson does, so the FP doesn’t get consumed by your post.
Maude
@Freddie deBoer:
And what do they do with this when they are finished school?
I am asking because I don’t know.
Freddie deBoer
@arguingwithsignposts: I am currently teaching both freshman and upperclassmen. And, yeah, sorry, I will edit and do that now.
@Maude: the simpler way to say it is “writing.”
MikeJ
@Maude: Similar things to what kids did when Aristotle taught it.
beergoggles
A fitting post for 420.
isildur
That’s a really well-crafted metaphor in the final line. Just sayin’.
Maude
@Freddie deBoer:
Oh. I don’t inderstand that type of course.
I would be a real pain in your class.
I did learn to diagram sentences, grammer, how to use a dictionary and so on. The mechanics. THat was in high school.
I don’t believe that anyone can be taught to write.
Learning to write is using paper, pencil and a large eraser.
Freddie deBoer
@Maude: I understand that perspective. But I keep trying.
blondie
I personally thought it was lovely – heartfelt, true, careful (in the old fashioned sense). As for your subject matter, that’s cool!
Loneoak
@beergoggles:
Oh, man. You can say that again. Where I teach is arguably the origin of big public smokeouts on 420. You can see the cloud of smoke over the meadow as if it were a forest fire on a clear year. It’s right across the street from my office. Leaving work today at 5:00 there were about a thousand bleary eyed 19-year-olds on their way to the dining hall.
And I say more power to them. I wish I could join them without losing my job.
MikeJ
@Freddie deBoer: When I took rhetoric it was reading Aristotle (and a dumbed down modern gloss of the same subject) and watching Triumph of the Will and the LBJ daisy ad and identifying techniques. Composition, where they beat us up about sentence structure, was something else again.
The Thin Black Duke
I salute you, sir. Seriously.
Loneoak
@Maude:
I’ve taught people to write. It is a heavy, slow, painful job, but it is deeply satisfying when they finally construct a cogent sentence, then a coherent paragraph, and then a delightful paper.
Omnes Omnibus
I found through, both undergrad and law school, that we knew our professors’ political inclinations in any course where those inclinations may have anything to do with the content of the course. We knew this even if the professor tried to keep the inclinations a secret. I always preferred for the professor to come out and say where he or see stood and then try to teach as fairly as possible. In courses where politics had no bearing (calculus, French literature, medieval history), I never had any inkling of the professor’s politics.
Freddie deBoer
Somebody accused me in my first post of playing to the audience, so I figured I’d write something very earnest for a (pleasantly) sarcastic crew.
Walker
I used to work at a Catholic university. One of the faculty members once took off points from a student essay because the essay referred to the early Middle Ages as the “Dark Ages”. Because this was a slur on a time in which the church had some of its greatest influence.
Linda Featheringill
Very nice, Freddie.
It sounds like you have found your calling. Lucky man.
Maude
@Loneoak:
If you’re talking about the mechanics, fine. The ability to tell a story, non fiction or fiction can’t be taught.
I always love to argue this with because it is so much fun.
@MikeJ:
Now, that would have been a great course.
@Freddie deBoer:
What do the students do with the the knowledge when they are out of school?
Phoebe
Maybe maybe not. I think of some profs I use to have quite a bit. Like what they would think about this or that. If they worried or thought about me, ever, I’d be amazed and very interested in what the worry/thought was. Or did I take this too literally?
But this is definitely true even for the kids I teach, who are much much younger:
The only time they freeze up is if they think there’s a right and wrong answer. Which would be true, unfortunately, in some classes, with some teachers.
Omnes Omnibus
@Freddie deBoer: Sure, try to make us like you in the hope that we will be decent to you. Nice try, but I doubt it will work. Everyone seems to like Cole and look how he gets treated.
Freddie deBoer
@Linda Featheringill: It’s a blessing, it really is.
@Maude: Whatever they need the written word for. White papers are a big thing. There’s a lot of focus in the field on digital literacy right now, which makes sense. Technical and business writing attract a lot of students.
Francis
The liberal bias is that you’re teaching them to think.
stuckinred
I work in Faculty Development at a “large southern university system” and we are trying desperately to support our faculty in what they face. Hang tough.
Loneoak
@Maude:
Maude, my personal experience tells me that you are wrong. I have taught people who were just awful writers—and I mean smart but functionally illiterate— to become passable college essay writers. Can they be taught to write like Oliver Sacks or David Foster Wallace? No, but neither can I.
jwb
@Loneoak: Yes, writing can be taught, but Maude is also correct that there is no substitute for practicing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Maude: The ability, like any ability, varies from person to person, but, like any ability, it can be improved with practice and guidance. Learning formal technique can strengthen a good writer and make a bad writer get to mediocre. The good writer can later decide to jettison the rules, or bend them, or play with them while, at the same time, the lesser writers can rely on the rules to ensure that they communicate effectively.
arguingwithsignposts
@Maude:
I disagree. It happens all the time – often in terms of journalism – constructing a coherent narrative, answering the 5Ws and the H, etc.
I always go back to my personal experience in high school. I wrote my first story in journalism class and the teacher turned it back with an F, explained what I’d done wrong, and I turned it back in for an A. A light clicked on.
You can learn to tell a story – whether through an instructor, or through reading other writers. There are no tabula rasa.
jl
I liked this part:
“And this too is my point: even if I felt sure that I had, in whatever subtle way, projected my politics onto the mind of a student, they would take that and turn it into something truly their own. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to try and deliberately manipulate a student. The target never stops moving, and that’s the beauty of it.”
The thing about teaching that intrigues me is the difficulty of determining exactly what students think they understand. I teach economics and statistics in an interdisciplinary professional grad school setting, where you would think it would be clear whether the student got the point.
It easy to write tests and devise grading curves that will show that they did, or did not understand the material, as desired.
The acid test is when the students try to apply the material to a new problem or new data. Then the most surprising things happen. To some extent, those who did well on homework and tests will do well in the applied setting. But it surprises me how often there is a major disconnect between what you thought they learned and what they really learned when they try to apply it, even if that is immediately after class is over.
Then there are a few who you thought were clueless and wonder how you can tighten up the grading to force them to do enough to understand, but they understand it very well when doing a practical project, and explain to you what they are doing.
So, I identify with the idea that the student is a very moving target, very imperfectly observed.
From my point of view, in economics, dealing with political bias is easy. There is these economic theories, see, and they are to learn them. I do not care whether they believe or not believe them, or use them to reach liberal or conservative ends, as long as they use the theory correctly.
Sometimes, in economics, I do think students have tried to game me to some extent by mentioning that they agree with my political beliefs, or something similar.
Then I pull a trick I saw in a grad seminar, when a student presented a very technically accomplished statement of a conclusion but had no supporting argument.
Student: ‘Well, Prof. X, I know you think that way.”
Prof: “Well, I changed my mind last night”
MikeJ
@stuckinred:
… and I never believed that your letters were true, until one day…
Maude
@Freddie deBoer:
That is great. It is needed. That’s different from what I meant. The skills are what you are talking about and the ability to use those skills is what you hope your students can use well.
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s the mechanics. I mean teaching someone how to write, to tell a story, be it real or not.
scav
First off people need to clear up whether they’re talking about what is usually called “creative” writing and then all the other forms of writing (persuasive, argumentative, . . . ) no, I don’t know the terms because I alas do come of that generation where we didn’t learn how to write explanatory or persuasive, etc. essays. Wasn’t even aware they existed as separate beasts until a teacher expected me to do one if French on an exchange program.
Hann1bal
I have to agree. Whenever I hear conservatives talking about liberal professors influencing our impressionable youth, I wonder which youth they’re talking about. There was a book I was reading once that leaned heavily on that notion of commie professors and their sheeple students. If I hadn’t been reading it as an ebook on my computer, I would have thrown it across the room…with great force, of course.
Great post, Freddie.
Samnell
@Omnes Omnibus:
I was the same. My anecdotal experience was that the more liberal teachers would lay it out in front of you honestly, make an effort to acknowledge the other side and be fair, and generally were. The more conservative teachers seemed bent on hiding it but were almost always extremely obvious.
Maude
@arguingwithsignposts:
You had the ability to do that. I’m not against learning how to put together a sentence, so to speak.
Dickens didn’t take a writing course. That’s the type of thing I mean.
arguingwithsignposts
@Maude: Are you arguing nature vs. nurture here? Are you saying Dickens didn’t have influences?
FWIW, I AP’d out of freshman comp and rhetoric, thank FSM.
Omnes Omnibus
@Maude: Okay, you are right. I will never be as good a storyteller as my Uncle Glen was. But I am better at it than he is now, being as he passed away in 1997.
jwb
@arguingwithsignposts: I take Maude’s big eraser to be a sign that she recognizes that writing takes extensive work and practice. I take it that what she’s saying is that you can’t really teach students how to discover a good idea and that the primary way to succeed at writing is to practice the craft a lot, and you don’t need a teacher to do that. I do think that the practice area is where teachers can be immensely helpful (like learning how to play a musical instrument) because a teach can help you practice more efficiently and ensure that you do not develop poor technical habits. Teaching students how to discover a good idea is difficult; but few students are incapable of coming up with at least a mediocre idea, and command of the craft of writing can turn a mediocre idea into a good paper.
NaveenM
As someone who has spent roughly 2/3 of his life as student (and have not been one for almost 9 years now), I can say that I was always most engaged and interested when the teacher/professor was engaging and interesting.
In normal circumstances, the quality of a class comes from it’s instructor far more than it’s students. If you’re students are interested, it’s a reflection on you.
jl
Added thought: the ‘moving target’ and ‘imperfectly observed understanding’ part, is why I think personal face time in a class room or lab is essential for any effective teaching, even at an intro principles level.
I am all for using new technologies and computers, and guided computer tutorials for teaching. I would dearly love greatly increased R and D funding, and program funding, to get more of that in the classroom. But a minimum amount of personal face time is needed for a good education.
Freddie deBoer
@Maude: I’m not qualified to talk about whether creative writing can be taught, but I can say that I don’t teach it, and wouldn’t try. There’s a lot of facets to what we do– my public writing course, for example, is really a course in deliberative democracy– but at the end of the day, we try and help students achieve success with their writing tasks that aren’t primarily artistic or aesthetic. I’d be useless teaching the short story.
Omnes Omnibus
@Maude: Dickens had editors and teachers.
Elia Isquire
@Loneoak: You don’t happen to teach where a certain messers Fagen and Becker once went, do you?
Oh and Freddie, that final line was absolutely beautiful.
arguingwithsignposts
@jwb:
That’s a fair point. But I’d disagree. Sometimes, it takes a teacher to prod students to come up with good ideas that they didn’t know they had. I sort of imagine it like the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail about the witch, in a way. :)
suzanne
I finished graduate school and three years of teaching/assisting last May. I miss the teaching part.
I took a different tack, though. I was always, 100% of the time, upfront about my politics and views. But I always told my students not to enroll in my class twice and to expose themselves to different viewpoints.
jl
Final added thought: as some commenters mentioned above, it is pretty psychologically naive to think that any bias allowed in teaching, whether conscious or uncounscious, will produce similar bias in the students.
Even the most idealistic teacher should have enough self awareness that there is a tendency among students to view academic subject matter as so much BS they have to plow through in order to get their documents, and that is all.
We can only teach anything successfully because that attitude does not affect all the students all of the time. But it does effect some of the students all the time, and all of the students some of the time.
Too much bias will feed the cynicism, leaving our poor idealistic and biased teacher weeping with frustration (if s/he is the model modern sensitive weakling lib, according to Fox News) or boiling with rage and desire to social engineer the masses who do not appreciate higher things (if s/he is the model modern communfascistalinstIslamomilitant, a la Fox News).
Maude
@Omnes Omnibus:
But they didn’t tell the stories. It is the spark of imagination that tells a story. It isn’t what goes on in the noggin before a word is put to paper.
For example: It was the best of times…
He wasn’t taught that. He thought it.
Saying someone can be taught ‘creative’ writing would be like me taking a painting course and then being able to paint the Mona Lisa.
btw, I can’t draw. When I draw something, I have to lable it.
Miss Kitkas's Comrade Wayne
Emo waste-o-time.
Come back after history has whipped you round the block couple of times.
jwb
@arguingwithsignposts: I do in fact teach discovering ideas, but I’ve found it a difficult task outside of tutorials.
PanurgeATL
@Samnell:
I guess liberals and conservatives have different conceptions of how to be fair, then. Conservatives may not think of it so much in terms of “hiding” as “making things transparent”.
Omnes Omnibus
@Maude: I understand that. Just off hand, are you in favor of shuttering the creative writing departments at universities? Canceling the legal writing programs at law schools?
Maude
@Maude:
I’m tired. That should have been is, not isn’t.
@arguingwithsignposts:
Talent. That’s what it takes. And knowing what to do with it.
How many people could write Gone With The Wind?
Maude
@Omnes Omnibus:
Creative writing courses are stupid. Yes, get rid of them.
Technical writing requires the skills to communicate the information that is needed. Not at all the same.
Homer didn’t need a creative writing course.
I can’t write non fiction to save my life, except for tech notes on computers.
Elia Isquire
ETA II: actually I don’t really want in on this one.
Loneoak
@Elia Isquire:
I had to Google Fagen and Becker, which I guess means Steely Dan? And they went to Bard? No, not there. Wrong coast. Not claiming that we invented pot smoking, rather we arguably ‘invented the 10,000 people smoke pot in the open at the same time on 4/20.’
I teach where Ezra Klein, Andy Samberg, Dana Priest, Jello Biafra, Marti Noxon, Huey P. Newton and bell hooks went to school.
Walker
The complaints that Maude is making about writing could be made about mathematics. How do you teach students to come up with their own mathematical ideas (instead of just reproducing the ideas of others)? And we do know how to do teach this. Indeed, emphasis on this type of education is one of the reasons why you have seen the rise of discovery and inquiry-based education in STEM fields over the past decade.
kdaug
Know this, Freddie. When I look back, some of the most memorable adults in my life were teachers.
My two favorites – a computer science teacher in 9th grade who looked like John Denver and made learning assembly language and binary code fun and funny. Probably helped that I was a geek, anyway, but the guy was hilarious.
But my most favorite – a young Asian guy who taught Rhetoric and Composition at UT. Small class, maybe twenty of us, and we would challenge and parry and argue the received wisdom on various canonical texts. Sometimes the other students would join in, but mostly they just hung back and watched the two of us go after each other.
I think I changed his mind as often as he did mine, but I remember a notation he left on one of my papers – “Having a student like you is what teaching is all about.”
Don’t doubt your impact Freddy. That was nearly 25 years ago, and those guys won’t ever be forgotten.
Omnes Omnibus
@Maude: Of course, there is some doubt as to whether Homer “wrote” anything. There is even some doubt as to whether Homer existed. Of course, that is another thing. Fundamentally, I agree that talent can’t be taught, but it can be spotted, nurtured, and encouraged.
Elia Isquire
@Loneoak: Cool. For some reason I feel like that would’ve been slightly awkward.
jl
No, don’t get rid of creative writing courses. People learn better when they can work on something they are interested in. I teach practical stuff, so I should be biased towards practical stuff courses, I suppose.
But if someone has difficulty with stats, but they like sports, and you can teach them some stuff with sports statistics, that is fine.
If some one is an awful writer, but they want to take a creative writing course, let them take one.
I saw an internet clip of John Cleese teaching comedy writing. One of his points was that, unless you are writing a short lyric poem, or a limerick, you have to create an internally logical world, and communicate it to the audience. Then he went through the first draft of the script and asked the students to spot impossible situations, internal inconsistencies, etc.
I liked the piece and a few pieces of it would be useful when I teach causal modelling for stats.
kdaug
@Maude:
They come post on Balloon Juice.
jl
@kdaug: I was looking for ‘useless’ in there. Didn’t see it.
Martin
@Maude: Boy, I disagree with that. I agree that teaching someone to be ‘creative’ is effectively doomed to fail, teaching them to turn their creativity into compelling prose is a very teachable thing. It’s not unlike teaching someone how to act. What does natural dialogue look like? How do you convey a creative idea without falling back on excessive similes and metaphors? How do you learn to break out of established norms of writing? One of the hardest things for writers to learn is how to write about taboo subjects and use taboo and hateful words, but a creative piece might require it. So how do you use hateful words without being hateful?
These are hard things to do without instruction.
Ken Pidcock
Welcome to the Monkey House.
kdaug
@kdaug: Actually, that may have been English Lit, not Rhetoric and Composition, but the point holds.
Omnes Omnibus
@kdaug: There are a couple of other answers to that question that I think would work well. First, they use their improved skills to communicate more effectively. Second, what do you do with your knowledge of Francophone West African literature once you are our of school? You simply are a more educated person than you were before. There is value in that.
jwb
@Maude: I disagree with this as well. You may as well tell musicians not to bother with lessons because real musicality can’t be taught.
schrodinger's cat
I think as a teacher the most rewarding thing for me to come across a student who was better than I was at the same stage of development. It is rare, but a great joy to find someone truly gifted.
Stillwater
OT – For those interested in Benton Harbor and/or the Cole vs. Libertarian flameout, Jason has a great post up at the League on the happenings.
protected static
Gotta add to the chorus – that was a magnificently-crafted final scentence.
MaximusNYC
Maude: You seem to be saying that because some exceptional writers didn’t (presumably) receive instruction in writing, then all instruction in writing is useless for all students. I think that’s an overly broad generalization.
There is certainly quite a lot to writing besides grammar and sentence mechanics. Good writing has a structure beyond the sentence level, whether it’s an essay, a journalistic piece, or fiction… and that structure can be studied and analyzed and critiqued, and sometimes improved.
One of the types of writing exercises that I found useful in my school days was taking a piece of writing and “modeling” it. This made me sensitive to the flow of the piece — how the author deployed language and arguments at different points, to lead the reader in a particular direction. This is something that it’s easy to be oblivious to — I often don’t see how a writer is leading me until a second or third read — but it’s there, and it’s learnable (and, to a significant extent, I think, teachable).
taylormattd
You forgot to explicitly mention that the oh-so-intelligent college freshmen in your anecdote are “leaving us behind” by refusing to vote for Obama, and are instead wisely (oh so wisely, in an almost shamanistic sort wise) selecting the green party candidate, for morals and values and shit.
QUIT POSTING HERE, YOU NADERITE MORON.
Omnes Omnibus
@taylormattd: Wow, that was unnecessary.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, lets face it – how much of what gets posted here is actually necessary?
scav
@Martin: Yeah, but if two front pagers get mad m_c-ish stalkers they’re all going to want one.
jl
How old is taylormattd, and what generation can we hang around (I assume) his neck? Give me the generation and I will give you the crime.
If memory serves, it was young adult independents who particularly loved Nader, not young Democrats.
Arundel
I’m happy to see you writing here, Freddie. Always liked your writing, points, outlook. Not always to agree, but glad you’re contributing here. A good thing.
FlipYrWhig
Then again, I’ve never had worse days of class than when I trotted out versions of “So, what did you think?” Students will–wisely, I’ve come to think–often react with silence, by which they mean to say, “I can talk about what _I_ think at home, in the middle of the night. I’m in this class because I’m supposed to know what _you_ think, because you’re the expert, and the more class becomes listening to what The Guy Next To Me thinks, the less I want to be here.”
In grad school, when I taught, I saw my mission as helping students discover their own voices, decentering authority, and all that. Once I got an actual faculty position, that ceases to be the priority. There’s material they’re supposed to know. Squaring that circle between making sure they know what they need to know for upper-level classes, on the one hand, and creating a space for them to learn about themselves, on the other, is not easy.
asiangrrlMN
@Maude: Gotta disagree with you. As someone who does write fiction, yeah, there’s an innate talent for the storytelling, but there is also a craft involved. Plus, someone may have the ideas and the stories but does not know how to put them down in a way that will draw other people into the story. Creative writing classes can do that, too.
I will say that bad creative writing classes are horrid and stifle the imagination more than they encourage it, but I would not jettison them completely.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Loneoak:
Loneoak, you teach at UCSC?
niknik
@Francis:
This. This, this this this!
niknik
@NaveenM:
Ugh, God. I’m terrible at maths. Do you mean you’re 27??
Jamey
Some students are cynical–unlike, say, a Libertarian with public-sector job.
Brian S (formerly Incertus)
Maude,
Sir Ken Robinson recently cited a longitudinal study of kids that starts with them at ages 4-6 and extends through their mid-teen years and measures their ability to think laterally, which is a necessary component to creativity, and the study found that most young kids are genius level while very young, but that by their teens, fewer than 50% are at that level. He claims that our education system is training the creativity out of our students, and I find it hard to disagree with them. I teach an undergraduate creative writing workshop most semesters, and I’m often amazed by the ways that people who think they aren’t creative find they are, simply if you convince them that they can be. Are they all genius-level writers? No, they’re beginners, and it’s likely that none of them will ever go on to become genius-level–there’s something to the idea that some people just have a feel for language that others don’t–but the fact that they can regain a touch of what was trained out of them is enough to justify the existence of creative writing classes for me.
John S.
@Maude:
I agree with the principle you are espousing, though I can’t really comment on it’s application to writing. What I can say is that in 15 years as a graphic designer, I have worked with, mentored and learned from many people. A lot of them went to school to learn their craft, a lot of them did not. By and large, the most gifted of them did not go to school for graphic design. Since correlation is not causation, I cannot draw a straight line between the two, however I do feel that graphic design is not something that can really be taught.
You can learn the mechanics of drawing, color theory, typography and the like, but it won’t give you the ability to design a great logo (as an example). I think an apprenticeship is the only way for someone to figure out whether they have the creativity it takes to be successful. That is to say, practical application and LOTS of practice are what it takes to become a good graphic designer. However, someone without the inherent talent required to be great will only be good. You cannot teach greatness.
Maude
@John S.:
I can’t do graphic design.
My point seems to be missed here.
Learing English, the basics of how to read, write and speak is vital.
Once someone has that down, it doesn’t mean they can write a book, either non fiction or fiction. It doesn’t mean they can write an article.
@Brian S (formerly Incertus):
I have had this conversation for years and I still like it.
I don’t care what studies say about kids, they are all different from each other.
One thing you are saying is that people aren’t individuals and are in a way, the same. Nope. I don’t believe that. No, I do not.
Each person has something inside of them that they can do well.
You have a personal investment in creative writing as a subject to be taught.
I come along and say it’s bunk.
This makes me almost a wanker.
Brian S (formerly Incertus)
@Maude:
That’s actually not what I’m saying, though it does happen to be fairly accurate, depending on what aspect of humanity you’re looking for. We’re way more alike than we are different, which is a good thing because if we really were all as individualistic as we seem to think we are, we wouldn’t have built societies the way we have.
And I also don’t have a personal investment in creative writing as a subject to be taught. It’s a minor part of my course load–most of my courses are like the ones Freddie describes: composition and literature for first and second-year students. The poetry workshops I get are never more than one a semester, and they have to have a scholarly component built into them.
And I think you might have misunderstood what I was saying about that study. The study suggests that kids are incredibly creative when they’re young and many lose that ability as they get older. There’s nothing in there to suggest that kids are all the same or that they aren’t creative in different ways.
JohnR
Low standards make life easier. Not to mention your dating choices.
tom p
FDB: beautiful and evocative.
someofparts
Golly. I hope my nephews have teachers like you.
cyntax
@Maude:
That strikes me as a very odd interpretation of the study. You seem to be applying your own personal narrative about what a writer is (solitary, genius, essentially romantic) to just about everything that’s being written in response to you. That’s unfortunate, because I think you’re missing the opportunity to have an actual dialogue about the topic you profess to enjoy talking about.
Teaching creative writing might not be a good idea for you, but I know, and know of, many, many people who are successful writers and have gone to school to study writing. To a certain degree this is a chicken and egg dilemma in that some talent must be there to begin with, but who’s to say that the writing program wasn’t the thing those people needed? You seem on the one hand to insist that people are individuals, yet only in as much as they conform to your idea of what it means to be a writer.
The Accidental Troll
Remember, kids, uniquely talented people are uniquely talented, therefore no one should try to learn or teach anything anyone has been uniquely talented at because they won’t be as good.
Lihtox
“I recognize the danger that could come from instructors or professors who allow their political convictions to color their grading.”
Any professor who fails people with a conservative point of view is not going to indoctrinate anyone; to the contrary, any students who lean conservative coming in to his class are likely to be adamant conservatives coming out, out of hatred for the teacher. (I still despise Wagner specifically because of an opinionated music teacher I had in college, who adored his music.)
Bill
As the father of a not yet college age teen, I have to say I am constantly astounded at how amazing the upcoming generation is. In my experience they are more thoughtful, engaging and tolerant than my generation was at that age. (Gen X)
The idea that anyone is going to “indoctrinate” this group at college is just silly though. To their credit, their default position seems to be “you’re full of shit – prove it.”
So often I hear people my age complaining about how bleak the future is because kids today just don’t get it. I disagree. I think we will be in good hands.
Nic
What an incredibly beautiful analysis. I’ve mostly had professors who don’t come out and say what you’ve said, but you can tell who thinks like that and who doesn’t. Thankfully most of you DO seem to think positively about your students, or at least their potential.. despite the few who suck. Anyhow, thanks for the piece.
A.J.
Whenever I read someone like David Horowitz talking about this generation of innocent youth being indoctrinated into radical politics, all I can think is “you’ve never tried to sneak a line of bullshit by a college class.”
Horowitz has, in fact, tried to sneak a line of bullshit past a bunch of college students. He’s does this everytime he gets invited to give a lecture on campus. And he gets called on it every time. That’s why he thinks college students have been indoctrinated: they can see through his bullshit.