The author begins with the blame game: college faculty blame high school teachers, high school teachers blame middle school teachers, middle school teachers blame elementary teachers and elementary teachers blame parents and parents blame each other; ok, i made the last part up, but it's probably true. anyway, he goes on to describe his experience teaching high school; students were rarely engaged unless debating polarized issues that never led to "reasoned discourse". Teaching was modal: informational, compare/contrast, persuasive, research, etc. More than anything, there was an emphasis on avoiding errors; "clean presentation trumps smart, complex argument", which led of course to simpler sentence structures and formulaic essays.
In many ways the author is middle of the road; while he acknowledges that the only reason he taught the five-paragraph essay was because it was easy to teach, he also acknowledges that "expedience and efficiency matter tremendously when facing five classes a day, which over thirty students per class" (and people wonder why i prefer teaching math). However, he reaches the conclusion that "correctness and form attain meaning only through the purposeful communicating of important, relevant ideas", suggesting that there must be an alternative, the alternative being "long-term partnerships between public school and college teachers" since "real change takes time". The reason a partnership is necessary is because "the circumstances and contexts of high school and college writing classes are very different and those circumstances and contexts strongly impact pedagogy": "the institutional context [of a public high school] privilige[s] a pedagogy of compliance, wherein students were expected (and accustomed) to simply follow directions and do thier best to meet the teacher's expectations." whereas in a college writing course "students must be able and willing to take resonsability for engaging with the course materials and discussions".
Hm. Amazing how doing this in the morning instead of at night after a full day of work changes things.
Thumbs up on the analysis, Daniel. I agree that this author is middle of the road. His solution echoes those of the highschool perspective: communication between high school and college faculty is the key. He says we should find, establish, and maintain goals, but doesn't really offer any.
ReplyDeleteHere, again, I like the emphasis placed on responsibility and maturity. A college student is one who is willing to take hold of their own education, not just sit around and wait for the teacher to tell them what to do and how to fix things. He also values critical thinking over a clean presentation, debunking a high school myth, though giving a thin but clear justification for why this occurs at the high school level.
I don't think formulaic writing has to happen at the high school level, even for efficiency. At least not on part of the teacher. In my experience, however, I do see why students cling to it. It is easy for them to organize and analyze that way, with a clear structure. A definite structure and length will always trump any other option for most of them. It is familiar and easier. Even when I tell my kids to use as many paragraphs as they see fit and even go over options with them, 90% of essays will still have five paragraphs. While I have seen the pitfalls of extreme formulaic writing (I took the TAAS test and was given a fill in the blank formula for the essay), not all 5 paragraph essays are bad. It is when the student will only use this format, for everything from creative writing to research paper, that this becomes an issue.