I have pretty mixed feelings about Greg Myer’s 1986 essay. No, actually, I find it just plain depressing. On the one hand, I too have an allergy to too much consensus-building, social learning communities, and lessons that propose to guide us toward real-world applications. I have had a lot of jobs, roles, and challenges in my life, and I am not sure anything I have learned in school has perfectly guided me toward what Myers calls “reality.” I, too, have had classes where jigsaws and other learning communities actually stifled me into silence. (I know, it is difficult to imagine me as silent.) Usually, directions and learning outcomes were not clear. A lot of these strategies fail - at least sometimes. On the other hand, we have no choice as teachers but to try. We need to try for something better, something more authentic, more meaningful, and more engaging – even if on some level it continues to uphold the powers that be and those on the winning end of capitalism. I do my best to read and show other sides of issues, but this is probably not enough. It may not even be what Myers is talking about.
I went into teaching because I wanted to make a difference in young people’s lives; I still do. I want students to get that same feeling that I do when I write, rewrite, and ultimately come up with something that I am proud of. It means a lot to me when I gain my classmates and professors’ approval, but I am working toward knowing that what I have written has meaning and power – with or without that approbation. It is a process. And there are magical moments all along the way.
Myers sets up poor Sterling Andrus Leonard to take a pretty big fall. He begins by noting the surprisingly contemporary sound and feel of Leonard’s ideas. (Mr. Leonard lived from 1888 to 1931.) Myers quotes Leonard, and I am utterly convinced: this man is a visionary (and this coming from a great- great- great- great niece of Horace Mann. Okay, now you know. I'll try not to flaunt it too often). Considering some of the teachers that I had many decades later, Leonard’s teaching philosophy is a revelation. He saw his class as a social learning community and attempted to engage students by sharing the responsibilities of reading and evaluating student work. He even knew what Erika Lindemann, and now we know: excessive adherence to correct mechanical form will only hinder the writing process. I doubt his students found a sea of hideous red markings on their papers, in the way that some of us have.
Yet, Myers wants Leonard to see the limitations of his own work. He wants Leonard to admit that his cooperative workers, his learning communities, and his consensus-building - all of this - is really a sham, a cover-up for the dominant power’s suppression of the weak. Leonard is not transforming anything, but burying these ideologies deep in the pretenses and artifices of a class that seems to invite equal discourse and equal participation but never really can. The so-called consensus, Myers believes, is just a more effective means of suppression.
Later, Elbow and Bruffee fall victim to Myers’ high standards – his almost impossible bar. Myers spends most of his essay bursting bubbles and destroying illusions (mine for starters) that teachers of writing can make a difference. It was probably not a great idea that I read this essay on a Sunday, after spending several hours kidding myself that I had some great ideas for bringing sixth and seventh grade core novels to life for students through, you guessed it, cooperative learning communities. Shit. I was feeling pretty good a couple of hours ago.
Myers finally tells us near the end of his essay that he has no great ideas for us at all: “I find I have no suggestions for assignments that are as innovative as those of the authors (Leonard, Elbow, and Bruffee) that I am criticizing” (169). I am delighted to hear that. I am feeling slightly (about 12%) better about my week. Ultimately, Myers gives me something to hold onto: We, as teachers of writing, need to lead double lives. We can go ahead with our feeble attempts at inclusion and meaning-making, but keep a questioning, what he calls “skeptical” edge. We need to know that we are operating within an imperfect system and, in some insidious way, abetting it, but continue all the same to do the best that we can. That isn’t really good enough for me. I want to examine the ideologies that I hold up in my class, but if I am indeed bolstering up ideologies that are abhorrent, hurtful, and suppressive, I want to get rid of them altogether.
The truth is that I am often too skeptical as it is: I need to relax, try things, admit to my students when I fail, as I want them to learn to do. My insecurities often get the better of me. I spend most of Sunday worrying that the engaging- mindful of the past, but hopeful about my young students-lessons will not work, or worse yet be rejected out of hand, when really my students want nothing better than permission to try – playing with roles, ideas, poems, stories, memories, words, genres, and forms – theirs and others. And how can they get those experiences when I drag around my black cloud of negativity? I am not convinced that Myers’ skepticism is healthy – at least for me. All I can bring to my classroom of any value is what poor Leonard must have brought – optimism.
No comments:
Post a Comment