Make Them a Part of the Learning

The main thing I took away from the Research in Composition excerpt - besides the fact that I never, ever want to do formal scientific research - is the overwhelming number of variables that have to be considered in the teaching and learning of composition: the writer variable, the assignment variable, the rater variable, the colleague variable, the rating method variable, and in general controlling all those variables. So why is this relevant if I never plan to research this subject? Because these are factors that we as teachers will have to deal with every day in and out of the classroom. (And I write this as a future teacher.) However, I'm primarily interested in the writer and assignment variables for the purposes of this little blog here.

"Often referred to as measures of writing ability, composition examinations are always measures of writing performance..." We don't evaluate what composition and rhetoric skills the student contains, as if they were a jar that we fill up, but rather what skills they allow consciously or unconsciously to pour out. We have to fill them up first, but we must also teach them how to give back what they've been taught in the most effective and successful manner.

The topics we choose as assignments should be chosen carefully, as they will affect the performance of the student. Disinterest and unfamiliarity could produce poor writing, consistently if the topics are not varied and some attempt made to connect them to students' lives. The diverse population also affects these topics, as everything from maturity level to socioeconomic backgrounds may need to determine at least in part which topics are rejected and which are assigned.

But this topic selection for maximum interest and writer performance seems easier said than done. How do you get students to care about the assignment if they're fundamentally disinterested anyway? For that I turn to the excerpt from Pre-Writing: The Construction and Application of Models for Concept Formation in Writing. The authors' conclusion is mainly that what the student is asked to do in many composition classes consists of regurgitating rules and vocabulary for the edification of the teacher, which doesn't involve the student and is therefore a pointless exercise. "He is not essentially engaged as a human being in what he is doing because the only motivation he is made aware of is extrinsic: he must write correctly and effectively because the teacher and society commands him to."

Most students in composition classes today, I'm guessing, are not planning to become English teachers. They are checking off a box on their transcripts in order to move on to what they are truly interested in, whatever that may be. So maybe we start off a composition class by discovering what those interests are and then demonstrating how writing is used in those other disciplines, how it is crucial for communication and advancement, and how the student can use the class to advance their chosen interests. Already you've involved the student in their own learning process.

I agree wholeheartedly with Pre-Writing's promotion of writing as a self-actualizing experience and that finding methods to encourage that process will only increase students' willingness to engage in it. I do, pragmatically, acknowledge that it's easy to lose sight of that goal when demonstrations of calculable gains in knowledge and expertise are necessary, when students are unwilling to learn, and when the teacher is fatigued by endless composition classes. But we have to seek that balance if we're to provide students with the communication tools necessary to successfully embrace their place in society.

A part of the Academic Tradition

The great academic tradition begins 2700 years ago. A teacher begins with an idea, the student expounds on and expands that idea, and passes it on to yet another student. So we start with Corax, who teaches Tisias, who may have taught Isocrates, a contemporary of Socrates, who teaches Plato about reaching the truth, who teaches his ideal of Truth to Aristotle, who strikes the balance between lofty Truth and inherent truth. It's astounding and intimidating, this chain of knowledge and evolution. These giants of academia and scholarship seem to tower over what we know as education and cast a mighty shadow. It seems impossible to reach the heights they achieved in philosophy and thought. And yet, it's all there for us. Their work is available at every public library and every Barnes and Noble. We can know what they knew.

But I can read every work ever written by (or transcribed for) them and never be them. This world is so different, it's demands and distractions so much greater. The majority of us can never dedicate our lives to scholarship as they seem to have done. So what can we do with this knowledge? Aristotle wasn't working off of original thought. He expanded on what his teachers before him had already built. And that's what we as student's are expected to do. But there is a great distinction, in what I've observed, between education and scholarship. I never noticed the difference in undergrad, but perhaps I might have at a more prestigious school. In simple terms: Education seems to mean learning facts and figures, but also less tangible ideas, and seeking to make sense of them by means of critical analysis. Scholarship, however, seems to require the application of such knowledge to the world around you for purposes of imposing change upon it. This is my definition only, of course. An increasingly larger percentage of the population are educated. But are there more scholars? And can you become a scholar if you don't attend a prestigious university or college?

I have great respect for what I perceive to be, and am still understanding to be, the scholarly tradition. But I don't know that I yet feel a part of it. I feel kinship to Aristotle and Plato and Isocrates only in seeking to learn. But as a 21st century American, having grown up on the A-Team and the Real World and then being nurtured by Friends and American Idol, I don't know if I believe in my ability to truly take the information I've been given and perceive from it some application that will shed light on and alter some aspect of our society.

I'm eager to tackle the Rhetorical Family Tree project for this reason. The idea that present day scholars share the kind of connection shared by the Giants gives me hope that I might one day be invited in to this private club. Or that I might fight my way in to it regardless.

And gives me hope that I will one day become yet another teacher of bright minds in this long chain, this rich tradition.