I’ve been talking about this with friends who teach comp, about how to motivate students who don’t want to "learn to write" to engage. I think the best ideas are about connecting with students where they *are* motivated, demonstrating that learning to write will enable them to best get to where they *want* to be. But the reason that’s true is that learning to write is learning to *think well* and doing so on paper.
Learning to write is learning to initiate the kind of structured thought that enables an individual to wield agency, will, to *get* the things they want. You touch on this in this essay, Claire, in talking about the lack of need for many students to WRITE, which is what they perceive they’re learning in a comp class. They're, first and foremost, learning structured thought.
Perhaps re-configuring the required courses, like comp, to overtly name the skill they’re learning more directly and what it does for those who learn it and wield it well. A class called STRUCTURED THOUGHT or CRITICAL THOUGHT that's required would still teach those foundational skills. A STRUCTURED THINKING class that’s well described and executed is one that teaches a student to think well so they can formulate and implement a plan that gets them what they want (a hot chick, a better price, the lead part, a law degree, etc.).
A part of such a course could be writing, but what other ways can these pivotal skills be taught, explained, pitched to students that will motivate them to learn these skills? How else can a required Structured Thinking course teach new, young humans how to think autonomously, be the driver of their own lives, and steer them away from being easily manipulable puppets for any passerby?
x R
PS. I think I'm subscribed on a different email address, but now I'm subscribed here.
One of the things I thought about a lot as I discussed these ideas with people is that college curricula, with rare exceptions, have given up reading without a whimper. As recently as 2012, I could ask students at Wesleyan University to read 150-250 pages per week. I am now quite sure that probably only the best students completed the work, but I also *taught* reading--what was hte difference between reading for pleasure and reading for information, and trying to thread that needle by assigning work that was written in ways that I admired. In seminar, students read a book a week: I probably taught Eichmann in Jerusalem 25 times over the course of my career. Colleagues at the best schools now tell me that they have lowered the amount of reading dramatically because students either can't or won't do it. So, we look for other ways to convey information: podcasts, videos, Instagram, for crying out loud. But I think that by abandoning reading, we severed the connection to writing. Here's the thing: most of us who became writers did so because we were readers first. If students don't read, then writing really does become senseless product.
I read O'Rouke's essay and resonated with her regret over AI's veiling actual encountering the world and our own personal encounters with it. An analogy came to my mind, that AI is a kind of hyper-processed food product for the mind, delivering impressions of being in the world9 without the actual thing.
100%. And I also wondered which undergraduate programs will be able to respond to it. I worked at one university where we discussed curriculum constantly, and then went to another university where talking about curriculum only happened when we were being nagged by the university and hte state to make some sense of a collection of courses that wasn't, in fact, a curriculum.
I sometimes wonder if we should start be steering students back to reading long form prose, which strikes me as a prior project to rethinking what writing is, but also more important than students churning out papers.
reading this made me think that grades are sort of pointless in the college context. it's not as if employers will look at them, and even people in charge of admissions for graduate programs seem annoyed by the GPA arms race. sometimes when I ask students what their writing goals are, they say very earnestly that they are hoping to get an A in the writing class. and they aren't being cheeky: that really is their goal! I wonder what would happen if we made all classes pass/fail.
Again, I COMPLETELY agree--I have thought this for some time. I once proposed a new system of Excellent, Satisfactory, Unsatisfactory, and Fail, but I also think schools like Hampshire and Sarah Lawrence know what they are doing (and I wonder how many of those faculty will start with a draft created by AI.)
I’ve been talking about this with friends who teach comp, about how to motivate students who don’t want to "learn to write" to engage. I think the best ideas are about connecting with students where they *are* motivated, demonstrating that learning to write will enable them to best get to where they *want* to be. But the reason that’s true is that learning to write is learning to *think well* and doing so on paper.
Learning to write is learning to initiate the kind of structured thought that enables an individual to wield agency, will, to *get* the things they want. You touch on this in this essay, Claire, in talking about the lack of need for many students to WRITE, which is what they perceive they’re learning in a comp class. They're, first and foremost, learning structured thought.
Perhaps re-configuring the required courses, like comp, to overtly name the skill they’re learning more directly and what it does for those who learn it and wield it well. A class called STRUCTURED THOUGHT or CRITICAL THOUGHT that's required would still teach those foundational skills. A STRUCTURED THINKING class that’s well described and executed is one that teaches a student to think well so they can formulate and implement a plan that gets them what they want (a hot chick, a better price, the lead part, a law degree, etc.).
A part of such a course could be writing, but what other ways can these pivotal skills be taught, explained, pitched to students that will motivate them to learn these skills? How else can a required Structured Thinking course teach new, young humans how to think autonomously, be the driver of their own lives, and steer them away from being easily manipulable puppets for any passerby?
x R
PS. I think I'm subscribed on a different email address, but now I'm subscribed here.
One of the things I thought about a lot as I discussed these ideas with people is that college curricula, with rare exceptions, have given up reading without a whimper. As recently as 2012, I could ask students at Wesleyan University to read 150-250 pages per week. I am now quite sure that probably only the best students completed the work, but I also *taught* reading--what was hte difference between reading for pleasure and reading for information, and trying to thread that needle by assigning work that was written in ways that I admired. In seminar, students read a book a week: I probably taught Eichmann in Jerusalem 25 times over the course of my career. Colleagues at the best schools now tell me that they have lowered the amount of reading dramatically because students either can't or won't do it. So, we look for other ways to convey information: podcasts, videos, Instagram, for crying out loud. But I think that by abandoning reading, we severed the connection to writing. Here's the thing: most of us who became writers did so because we were readers first. If students don't read, then writing really does become senseless product.
Also, lmk if you want me to zap your other account so I am not spamming you :-)
I read O'Rouke's essay and resonated with her regret over AI's veiling actual encountering the world and our own personal encounters with it. An analogy came to my mind, that AI is a kind of hyper-processed food product for the mind, delivering impressions of being in the world9 without the actual thing.
100%. And I also wondered which undergraduate programs will be able to respond to it. I worked at one university where we discussed curriculum constantly, and then went to another university where talking about curriculum only happened when we were being nagged by the university and hte state to make some sense of a collection of courses that wasn't, in fact, a curriculum.
I sometimes wonder if we should start be steering students back to reading long form prose, which strikes me as a prior project to rethinking what writing is, but also more important than students churning out papers.
reading this made me think that grades are sort of pointless in the college context. it's not as if employers will look at them, and even people in charge of admissions for graduate programs seem annoyed by the GPA arms race. sometimes when I ask students what their writing goals are, they say very earnestly that they are hoping to get an A in the writing class. and they aren't being cheeky: that really is their goal! I wonder what would happen if we made all classes pass/fail.
Again, I COMPLETELY agree--I have thought this for some time. I once proposed a new system of Excellent, Satisfactory, Unsatisfactory, and Fail, but I also think schools like Hampshire and Sarah Lawrence know what they are doing (and I wonder how many of those faculty will start with a draft created by AI.)