Building Better English Majors: A Tangental Blog

So, if you've been following the blogs then you know that I've been hitting up the rhetoric books lately (most of which pertain to pedagogy). I also find it good practice to skim through the blogs of my fellow editors. So this week I found a bit of an overlap between an article I read and Jack's last post, so if you haven't read it then get on it. Jack exposed the major holes in the Cal Poly English dept and raged on about how it's producing sub par English Majors. The sad part was that his argument made a lot of sense. I like to think that people who have decided to be English majors have a good chance at gaining competence by picking up a book on their own time. But what about the fledglings?

I'd like to begin the real meat of this post with an anecdote from my ever exciting life. While talking with a friend who I hadn't seen in awhile the subject of school came up. "What classes are you taking next quarter?" I was asked, "Mostly English classes" I responded. Her next comment may just offend you. "Ugh! That sucks! Why!?" she snapped sympathetically. "Because I'm an English major..." So yeah, this isn't the first time I've gotten comments like that. The fact is that most college students hate making it through freshman comp. Why? Because it's a chore.

Today, freshman comp grading standards are based more on the form of the essay than the strength and relevance of the argument (and no, strong form does not equate to a strong argument). Students are asked to jump through hoops instead of actually forming a cogent thought. The problem here is the subjectivity that arises when grading something as open ended as writing, so teachers came up with a style of standardized writing which opened itself up to scrutiny. But how much has the five paragraph essay really taught us about writing?

This is a question that Donald Stewart takes very seriously in his essay "The Continuing Relevance of Plato's Phaedrus." He writes: "The perception students have been given is of parts of a discourse hooked to each other like railroad cars with some appropriate transitions between them. Few are introduced to the idea of a concept generating and creating its own structure, something aesthetically far more pleasing and sound than the wooden, lock-step, mechanical forms they have been taught." In short, students are being taught faulty rhetoric. This type of formulaic writing is not moving in the least and, quite frankly, isn't even applicable to the commonplace task of writing an email. In the end students only need to learn to write a five paragraph essay in order to pass freshman comp, after that... well, who cares?

So what really peeves me about the situation is that students can do everything right and still come out just as inept at writing as when they were introduced into freshman comp. Furthermore, good writers can have their skills degraded because they can't fit into the rigid form of the "academic essay." The common thought among many students is "Writing essays is pointless skill." The sad thing is that I, along with many professors share this sentiment.

Since I moved beyond freshman comp and into the real guts of the English program I have found that many professors have a "forget everything you know about writing essays" attitude. I've often been instructed "A five paragraph essay won't be accepted here" or, even worse, "Don't write a five paragraph essay on the GWT, it's not what we want to see and we will mark you off for it." So, why do we continue to teach students skills that won't even prepare them to convincingly pass an elementary writing test? I'd like to think that it's some conspiracy to keep students in school longer, but the reality is that I just have no idea. I would think that standardized writing would at least be accepted by the establishment that perpetuates it.

A major dynamic shift needs to happen in the classroom. The focus of composition needs to be based more on synthesis rather than form. The writing process needs to be seen as "the growing seed which contains the potentialities of the adult plant. The separate parts of an oak tree, developed from an acorn, are easily distinguished, but never separated from the concept of the entire living tree" (Stewart again with my italics). The key words here are living and growing. The oak tree cannot be quantified until it is fully grown, it may just take up more or less space than five paragraphs can provide. The point is that students to to learn to create because that will allow them to excel in diverse styles of writing.

Well, this concludes my rant. A problem with freshman comp is a problem with the stepping stone into the English program. If things don't change then Jack just might not have any English majors to worry about. But for now we'll just wait for his next post.

Here's for waiting,

-Rainamoinen