I remember being in high school, and we had a fresh-out-of-school teacher for Literature/English. She was so bright and shiny and eager to educate future generations. Then one day, one of my classmates raised his hand and asked her:
"Why do I even need to learn this stuff? I'm just gonna go work in my uncle's garage, so who cares if I know this Twain dude?"
I saw some of that light immediately fade, as she faced what was likely the first of many people who simply do not care about their education.
(Oh the other hand, I need to find that tumblr post I read once about the whole "Asians are better at math" stereotype. It discussed the linguistic differences between Asian languages and Western languages in terms of numbers and how this can make learning mathematics a bit easier or harder. It was really interesting.)
I'm curious as to how your teacher answered that, because I think about it now and again as I'm working on my MFA applications so I can eventually teach English 101/creative writing at a university level (I mostly want to go into English 101 so I can save students my pain of not knowing exactly how to write a proper literature analysis paper. No teacher properly showed me how to do it until my Renaissance class in my junior year of college, not even in the 180 class that was supposed to teach you had to do it but all I got were templates. TEMPLATES ARE FUCKING USELESS slka--), and while I'm sure the Literature/English people have their reasons, I know I'll be getting students there from different studies who are just there to fill in a GE.
More power to you for this! My sister is an engineer, and she didn't really learn how to write a paper until her junior technical comp class! As somebody who graded a lot of freshmen assignments as a TA/GTA in Psychology, I can say that students NEED a good grounding no matter what field they're going into. Most don't get that in high school, and being able to communicate clearly is so important! I'm glad your future profession will fill in some of this gap!
Thanks! I literally dreaded writing analysis papers for years, and I was studying English! My emphasis was creating the content to be analyzed, not the other way around, and it just infuriated me when I got to higher level literature classes and a few teachers would be all "well you should all know how to write a paper more complex than high school now."
Basically I'm going to do the same thing my Ren teacher did: pass out a copy of a painting we probably hadn't seen before, ask students what part of the painting sticks out to them, and find a way that some of these things relate to each other. From that you can move on to metaphors, themes, etc. For me it felt like teachers were so obsessed with the picking apart the themes and metaphors that they forgot the process one needs to go through to find those themes and metaphors in the first place.
I think it's like when you speak a foreign language fluently. You don't really remember the learning process that much anymore because it's automatic, so you have a hard time breaking it down for people who are just learning. A lot of professors are like that, but unfortunately with the way our primary education is set up, a lot of kids come into college having no idea how to write an outline, organize a paper, create coherent sentences, etc. The professors who get those students after you will definitely thank you!
I know when I taught Freshman Comp in college, I emphasized from day one that this was NOT an English class despite being lumped into the English dept. and that even though we were doing poetry, drama, and prose because the dept required it, that we would be focused solely on the general properties of solid writing that they could take to whatever discipline they were going into. And I made sure to stress that every major (with the possible exception of math) requires writing of some kind, so if any of them thought that because they were going into Business or Psychology that they wouldn't have to do any writing they were fooling themselves. I saw the light bulb go on with more than a few of them during the class. I just regret I only had the one semester to teach.
And yes; outlines and templates are useful at the beginning for organization, but too many teachers get literally obsessed with them and don't spend any time teaching students what they're supposed to actually DO with them.
I am so saving this, thank you! I'm so happy that your students were able to see the light too. Even in math professions I think it'd be essential to have a good grounding in writing skills so you can communicate your finding clearly and coherently from people who understand math just as good as you do to people who struggle with it, especially if you're planning on being a math teacher down the line.
Also, when I was thinking of emphasizing how to not only write well, but to read well. For example, it's so easy to get overwhelmed when you look at at a potential proposition bill, especially if you're not up to date on a lot of legal and political jargon, but if you know how to read well, you can break it down and figure out words from the context of the whole bill, making you more educated on whether or not to vote on something.
I even showed them a black and white film (Stalag 17--I wanted to show them something they weren't likely to have done in high school 8 million times, unlike my fellow grad students who all did Shakespeare or Tenneesee Williams) and none of them slept through it.
But yeah, the idea that writing classes are only for English majors is a major peeve of mine and I wanted my students to know that that just is not true at all.
And yes; outlines and templates are useful at the beginning for organization, but too many teachers get literally obsessed with them and don't spend any time teaching students what they're supposed to actually DO with them.
THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED IN MY 380 CLASS AND IT DROVE ME NUTS. My teacher did a whole assignment that required we used the goddamn templates and never bothered explaining them but basically repeated what the template said. She's a nice lady, but goddamn I couldn't take another class of hers after that. And do not get me started on how poorly most of my teachers tried to explain the thesis statement.
Like I think what I'll do is spend the first couple of days going over essay writing and give them template sheets as sort of reminders to keep them on track.
I remember I had a student come into the Writing Center one evening. She had quite literally the most beautiful and perfect outline I'd ever seen, and she had no clue how to actually start her paper. Her high school teacher had spent weeks on outlines but never actually taught her students how to write. I maintained I was NOT going to be one of those kind of teachers. (Getting an actual teaching job turned out to be impossible, so it was all moot in the end.)
ETA: I feel for that student, tho. I get so worked up over how to begin the damn thing that I just set it and the conclusion aside and just write the middle part first.
"Why do I even need to learn this stuff? I'm just gonna go work in my uncle's garage, so who cares if I know this Twain dude?"
I saw some of that light immediately fade, as she faced what was likely the first of many people who simply do not care about their education.
(Oh the other hand, I need to find that tumblr post I read once about the whole "Asians are better at math" stereotype. It discussed the linguistic differences between Asian languages and Western languages in terms of numbers and how this can make learning mathematics a bit easier or harder. It was really interesting.)
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Basically I'm going to do the same thing my Ren teacher did: pass out a copy of a painting we probably hadn't seen before, ask students what part of the painting sticks out to them, and find a way that some of these things relate to each other. From that you can move on to metaphors, themes, etc. For me it felt like teachers were so obsessed with the picking apart the themes and metaphors that they forgot the process one needs to go through to find those themes and metaphors in the first place.
Reply
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And yes; outlines and templates are useful at the beginning for organization, but too many teachers get literally obsessed with them and don't spend any time teaching students what they're supposed to actually DO with them.
Reply
Also, when I was thinking of emphasizing how to not only write well, but to read well. For example, it's so easy to get overwhelmed when you look at at a potential proposition bill, especially if you're not up to date on a lot of legal and political jargon, but if you know how to read well, you can break it down and figure out words from the context of the whole bill, making you more educated on whether or not to vote on something.
Reply
But yeah, the idea that writing classes are only for English majors is a major peeve of mine and I wanted my students to know that that just is not true at all.
Reply
THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED IN MY 380 CLASS AND IT DROVE ME NUTS. My teacher did a whole assignment that required we used the goddamn templates and never bothered explaining them but basically repeated what the template said. She's a nice lady, but goddamn I couldn't take another class of hers after that. And do not get me started on how poorly most of my teachers tried to explain the thesis statement.
Like I think what I'll do is spend the first couple of days going over essay writing and give them template sheets as sort of reminders to keep them on track.
Reply
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ETA: I feel for that student, tho. I get so worked up over how to begin the damn thing that I just set it and the conclusion aside and just write the middle part first.
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