A student in my Freshman English class has been absent from the last few class meetings. After class tonight, as I was getting him up to speed, for summation, he offered, "so what we've been doing lately is basically common sense, right?"
Let me back up a second so as to explain why I was not at all insulted by this remark.
Over the last couple days in the course, I have been guiding my students in the process of visual analysis in the hopes that the techniques used to dissect a largely visual medium will smoothly translate for them to analysis of written works. Last class meeting, we looked at advertisements, picking apart the elements that appeal to ethos, logos, and/or pathos and determining whether or not each example was truly effective or not.
So, when I summed all this up for my previously-absent student in a brief rundown, he responded with the above question. My response? "Right!"
I have to say that I was thrilled that this guy sees what we are doing as "common sense." If more people could feel that way about reasonably complex rhetorical concepts, what an easy job I would have. Well, let's be honest, what a pointless job I would have!
I see the necessity of my job when it comes to guiding students toward writing better, more coherent, more focused, more effective papers; but, often I feel a certain level of rage at the concept that our college students need to be taught how to look at something in a critical manner. The worst part is, of course, when even after an extensive explanation and comp check as to how to conduct the steps of critical/logical thinking, groups of students (varying significantly in size and number depending on the particular level of the class) stare at me as if I am some kind of alien who has just asked them to watch random acts of sodomy.
So, when a student informs me that what I'm teaching him makes perfect sense, I'm practically beside myself. I wanted to give him a gold star for already knowing what basically everyone should be able to figure out all by their little selves.
But, before I ruined this little moment for myself with negative thoughts, I decided to do something uncharacteristically humble and compare myself to my students. I have a bit of a checked academic past. As I have confessed to you, our reader, before, I was not the greatest of students, and I only really got my act together as a result of being bullied into doing so. Even when I did get my act together and started doing well in school, I really only put true heart and concern into my English and literature classes, which is why I became a totally badass student by the time grad school came around.
All of this is to say that I know how it feels to not get (and not care all that much about getting) certain academic subjects. Subjects I was less than enthusiastic for included biology (101), anthropology, and statistics. The subject I just happened to kick ass at and truly enjoy was English. I get that every student has his/her true interests and then the subjects that he/she couldn't care less about.
While I can explain away the rhetorical appeals, employ Stasis Theory to dazzle any freshman, and identify the audience for a particular advertisement down to a T, I don't know shit about chemistry. And I have to remember before I get all high and mighty and annoyed with the majority of my students for not getting rhetoric, that a hell of a lot of them know more about chemistry (and math and sign language and various elements of life in general) than I do.
The whole reason I personally find literature and art to be fascinating is because I see them as THE ways for answering the questions of the universe and what it means to be human; I love to dwell in the struggle for meaning and art is all about that and these are the realms that make sense to me.
Some people will agree with me, like my student earlier tonight did, and say that seeing the world through a lens of argument and writing is "common sense," as I'm sure most of us here agree as this is a blog site for a literary magazine. But let's not get so caught up in the way we view the world, in the beauty that we've found, to forget that many people happen to be wearing an entirely different set of prescriptions.
First, you're just awesome. Second, it's true that we have different approaches to the world, but it's also true that we all can benefit from trying on other people's glasses, to use your metaphor. Chemists can get some good out of English classes (I know--I married one), and English majors can benefit from looking at the world through mathematical glasses to see if they can draw from that viewpoint. This is why GE programs exist, why I beat my VFOGI drum, and why we call them universe-ities--they're supposed to give you a broad picture. And then you're supposed to see the light and become a liberal-minded English major. ;)
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