This, at least, was my idea of the writing classroom when I
first started teaching, and I failed miserably.
Or, to be more precise, my students failed miserably. I
was just fine. I could assert and convince!
I cultivated ethos! I meted out the grades, after all, which is a
really easy and effective way to assert authority. I’d offer up a variety of models to emulate or
(even worse) templates to adhere to, and nurtured students by pointing out
their many mistakes (“Shame on you – look here at what you’ve done to your
ethos!”). Then I suggested they do
better next time. I wasn’t teaching
writers so much as teaching students that they were not writers.
I could have, at this point, joined legions of embittered
writing teachers before me by hunkering down to withstand periodic onslaughts
of grueling grading (“Your logos breaks down here!” “Watch your tone!” “Assert, but don’t assume!”), and then reward
myself with long summer vacations where I’d undergo resuscitating infusions of
reading “real” writers (and maybe pretend that I’d get around to some writing
myself).
Instead, I began thinking about what I was assigning my
students to write and why they might be having difficulty writing it. Turns out, in more ways than one I set my
students up for failure by asking them to argue, to tell the truth (and nothing
but), to convince and persuade, without giving them a chance to first convince
themselves, or even consider what the hell we (or more specifically, I, the
grade-meter-outer) mean by truth. They
certainly weren’t learning anything. I
forced them to oversimplify a messy and complicated world, and received
oversimplified messes; to speak from authority they had no chance of earning in
the three weeks before the due date, and received tepid clichés. The best I could hope for is that a few might
assert something that I at least agreed with (even if the student did not).
Using the writing classroom as a chance to prove that we know stuff wasn’t working, so what if we
used it as a space to admit that we know very little? What if, instead of setting out to prove a
thesis, we asked a question? What if our
authority didn’t arise from claiming to be the bearers of Truth but from how we go about answering questions that compel us
by weighing as many truths as we can
find? Is it okay not to know everything,
to admit that the world is vastly complicated and exceedingly messy and 5 – 8
pages will barely get us going? Learning
isn’t simply about convincingly pretending to know, right?
I began to use the writing classroom for inquiries rather
than arguments. The classroom became a
space to ask questions, and the world was where we’d look for answers. The students supply the questions, and I do
little more than help them shape those questions and offer up suggestions about
how they can further complicate their answers.
In many ways I don’t teach anything, simply facilitate a space where
biologists start rubbing elbows with philosophers, engineers consider
neuropsychology, nutritionists converse with historians, and so on. That act of writing on these terms becomes a way
to critically think through a problem.
We don’t always find sufficient answers—in fact, we seldom do—but when
we do, we’re happy to know it opens up to another question.
