Early in the essay, I stopped dead as a picture of James Comey pointed in accusation above the following text:
"Here I might mention two other lessons I learned from Henry Finder. One was Every essay, even a think piece, tells a story. The other was There are only two ways to organise material: “Like goes with like” and “This followed that” (Franzen,2017).
What if we taught these simple text structures and organizational patterns as editor, Henry Finder, guided Franzen?
When we talk to kids, what if we said:
"When you organize your ideas...
"When you organize your ideas...
"When you go back to look at your freewrite...
"Cut up and regroup your sentences and paragraphs to follow one of these two structures:
"1. Like goes with Like: What ideas go together? These can be grouped in the same paragraph or a group of paragraphs (paragraph bloc).
"2. This followed that or "This followed from that" (Franzen also): Are your ideas following a train of thought or cause and effect relationship? These ideas can be put in the sequence that match how your brain is tracing that path for the reader. What order do you want the reader to consider the ideas for your thesis?"
Franzen explained more about this second pattern:
"If you’re looking at a mass of material that doesn’t seem to lend itself to storytelling, Henry would say your only other option is to sort it into categories, grouping similar elements together: Like goes with like" (2017).
Yet, Franzen (2017) also points us to story.
"This is, at a minimum, a tidy way to write. But patterns also have a way of turning into stories."
This advice strikes me as another simple - and respectfully human - classroom approach to writing. Franzen explains:
"If you accept Henry’s premise that a successful prose piece consists of material arranged in the form of a story, and if you share my own conviction that our identities consist of the stories we tell about ourselves, it makes sense that we should get a strong hit of personal substance from the labour of writing and the pleasure of reading. When I’m alone in the woods or having dinner with a friend, I’m overwhelmed by the quantity of random sensory data coming at me. The act of writing subtracts almost everything, leaving only the alphabet and punctuation marks, and progresses toward non-randomness. Sometimes, in ordering the elements of a familiar story, you discover that it doesn’t mean what you thought it did. Sometimes, especially with an argument (“This follows from that”), a completely new narrative is called for. The discipline of fashioning a compelling story can crystallise thoughts and feelings you only dimly knew you had in you."
With each of Franzen's clauses, I could tell you a stories about a children disenfranchised from meaning by obtuse and disrespectful pedagogy that honors rules and form (five paragraph essay) over meaning and substance. With each of his clauses, I could quote lemon lipped fossils spouting dictates about personal pronouns and the horrors of using personal anecdotes in expository texts. At the end of the paragraph, I am re-seeing thousands of inane standardized assessment essays where students wrote themselves into nothingness or perhaps something they didn't know when they began. With our pedagogy, we are losing the "personal substance" of the children and divorce them from the power that comes from the "labour of writing and the pleasure of reading" (Franzen, 2017).
Of course, the staunch English academics will argue. Franzen knew that too.
"These precepts may seem self-evident, but any grader of high-school or college essays can tell you that they aren’t. To me it was especially not evident that a think piece should follow the rules of drama. And yet: doesn’t a good argument begin by positing some difficult problem? And doesn’t it then propose an escape from the problem through some bold proposition, and set up obstacles in the form of objections and counterarguments, and finally, through a series of reversals, take us to an unforeseen but satisfying conclusion?"
The headline for the article provides an apt imitation frame for my thesis here (and yes, I purposefully didn't place the thesis at the end of the first paragraph):
In the age of assessment and accountability:
Is it too late to save the world?
As student writing crumbles and the education secretary threatens to pull out of public schools, we must reflect on the role of writing pedagogy in times of crisis.
We must reflect. We must act. And again, I can imitate Franzen's language in the last paragraph of his essay.
Unlike Franzen, I do have hope that we can stop the change from coming. As authenticity and critical thought crumble and while the education secretary threatens to pull out of public schools, we must reflect on the role of writing pedagogy in times of crisis.
My hope is that we can accept and communicate the damaging effects of legislation, assessment-accountability movements, and the fossilized practices of our own instructional domain. Facing it honestly, however painful this may be, is better than denying it. As practitioners we must still give rebukes where they are deserved. But we must also remember that teachers need more hope in terms of practical solutions than the woes of a depressive pessimist. Teachers and students are the people for whom the prospect of a repressive, calamity-filled future of inept writers and thinkers is unbearably sad and frightening. In fact, it happens now. Let's revise our practices.
Franzen gives us practical ways to begin.
Franzen, J. (2017). One year of Trump: Is it too late to save the world? Jonathan Franzen on one year of Trump's America. The Guardian. Accessed 15, November, 2017 from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/04/jonathan-franzen-too-late-to-save-world-donald-trump-environment?CMP=share_btn_tw
Enjoyed both Franzen and Ms. Rose's comments. The problem with some teachers who don't want to teach writing is they don't write themselves and they don't want to sit down and grade the essays their students submit. Line by line, word by word. Too much work when there are 150 of them and you write all the time. Just thinking back to AHS and my classes.
ReplyDeleteThank you, my thought partner! You challenge me every day. Thank you for reading, line by line, and encouraging me to continue the journey.
Delete