How Schools Suppress Creativity in Students

How Schools Suppress Creativity in Students

Attention Getter: This is such crap! Are you seriously making us read this...*&5%*! Now that I have your attention, Lauren’s argument is too cool. Opening: Lauren makes the standard essay format so annoyingly transparent that I am begging for more creative writing instruction in schools. At the very least, I am requesting “diversity training.” The topic: Writing Formats. This course or course addendum will expand mine and other students' writing structures. Thesis: How Schools Suppress Creativity in Students makes a convincing argument where format speaks louder than words.

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I struggled reading Lauren’s work. The headings: opening, thesis, supports, were so distracting I nearly forgot the subject matter of the sentences just prior to and after them. The bold font, the loud restating of the obvious, made a straightforward and commonly used format almost impossible to navigate. Lauren’s work creates this unusual tension for the reader- this tug-o-war, if you will, between familiarity and unfamiliarity that makes me re-examine the value of teaching every student to write every essay in the same manner. Clearly, there is not one structure that maximizes the rhetorical value of every argument. Why then do students spend the bulk of their academic life learning and repeating the five paragraph essay? (However, I’m not entirely certain it stifles creativity. Look what Lauren did with it.) Most importantly, all of the opinions expressed in this response are true because somewhere there is expert who agrees with me.

Response to

“Discourse and Diversity: Experimental Writing within the Academy”

“…I have sought alternatives- a more personal voice, an expanded use of metaphor, a less rigid methodological framework, a writing process that allows me to combine hypothesizing with reporting data, to use patterns of writing that for multiple truths, what Dale Spencer has called a “multidimensional reality,” rather than a single thesis, and so on” (350).
We live in a multidimensional reality and our work should reflect it. But what does that change entail, and how much of that change is dependant upon American ideologies- of how we embrace or don’t embrace diversity? How much does reliance on a single thesis, mirror our reliance on a single truth? To write in a multidimensional reality, to have that work validated by larger society, means that society must embrace diversity. With technologies and peoples becoming so interdependent, it is seemingly unnatural for anything to remain a separate unchanged entity, so composition naturally would evolve to accommodate change in our social landscape. But just as people fight to “wall in” the country, so people fight to “wall in” composition. They fight to keep academics removed from integration of the rest of the world and of differing classes and races. What Bowels does/wants/achieves with the use of personal voice, metaphor, and uncertain truths, is present history, acknowledge change, and embrace the ever-changing/ ever-diversifying landscape of America, and consequently, “American ideology.” But is everyone ready?

“Patricia Bizzel…argues that students who are politically oppressed must master conventions of academic discourse in order to succeed, but she defines them significantly more broadly. Many students believe that academic standard language is the key to their survival, and I try not to debate this point, even though I question whether this key is sufficient for survival and success. We may agree on its necessity but not on its sufficiency I also believe that linguistic and rhetorical flexibility may help students…”(351).
Would we be doing a disservice not to prioritize traditional academic prose over other forms? If success is measured by a certain standard- and regardless of our desires, it is- than how practical is it to teach students to deviate from the standard? Could it compromise their advancement? And if those who are more likely to deviate from “Standard White English” are those who are generally marginalized groups in society, is it smart to use them as guinea pigs? Should we make sacrificial lambs out of those who are already? I would love to read and write more diverse texts, but can I? Do I know how? How would academia receive them? Am I distrusting of “diverse discourse” because I have internalized the systems of power in America?

“Geoffrey Chase…also proposes that students can resist the conventions of academic discourse, analyzing and challenging them, not for the sake of opposition, but in order to work for social change” (352).
What comes first, the chicken or the egg? And what of the voices that have powerfully affected social change by adhering to the standard, i.e. Thatcher, Kennedy, King, Clinton…

Of “feminist prose” and “diverse discourse”: If we name/categorize/define “diverse” and “feminist” discourse, than will feminist or diverse discourse remain original/innovative/ representative of the people it is to speak for? Once a discourse becomes defined than it becomes confined by conventions, so are we creating yet another discourse that will eventually have little room for diversity itself?

“One of the problems is, we for the most part are very provincial in North America, and we believe that English is the end of all languages. One of the things we need to, I think, start to do as we begin to experience our sisters, is to expose ourselves, open ourselves to learning other languages, so that we can in fact communicate, not only in translations” (359).
How is composition framed in “multilingual” countries? Do they teach “a master” convention or are the different languages and dialects of their country/students incorporated into composition? Is there any model of “diverse discourse” that American Education might use to create such a curriculum? How would we accomplish this? Would Americans be receptive to the idea? Are the academy’s fears of change rooted in a larger societal issue: the fear of a shift in power?

Response to
"Pomo Blues: Stories From First-Year Composition"

After reading Lee Anne Caroll's piece, I question how authentic personal narratives really are, and, furthermore, I question how authentic teachers want personal narratives to be. Clearly professors outlined in this text expect that students be familiar with the spoken and unspoken rules of this discourse. They expect that students produce an essay that both fits in and challenges conventions. When making such requests, the instructor dictates to the the student what their experience is, what it should be, or how they should relate it to others. For example, they must discuss their grandfather's illness using: a, b, c, d; they must describe Christmas using: e, f, g, h. How authentic is experience when the student is told how to experience? And if there are conventions for the personal essay, when we interpret our life do we understand it in terms of those conventions? Would writing about our life using different language or form actually allow us to experience life in a new way? The real question is, are we teaching students to write personal or cultural narratives, and if we are teaching and want them to write the latter, than shouldn't we call a spade a spade- shouldn't we just call it: the cultural narrative (written with "personal" touch)? If we did so, wouldn't students have an easier time applying postmodernist theory to their work?

Response to Bartholomae and Elbow

Response to Bartholomae and Elbow

Continuing our discussion on what constitutes academic writing, I find myself more confused than ever. I suppose that is a good thing, for I have heard enough contradicting viewpoints that I am now beginning to recognize the inconsistencies in my definition of academic writing and am thus re-working how I could define it. The problem is (if I choose to see it that way) I am now at loss for words. So instead of joining the larger debate of Bartholomae and Elbow, I will offer my opinions on parts of their arguments that sparked my “re-thinking.”

Bartholomae had this to say in the section, My Position, I Think: “In fact, I want to argue that if you are teaching courses in the university, courses where students write under your supervision, they can’t not do it and you can’t not stand for it (academic writing, that is) and therefore, it is better that it be done out in the open, where questions can be asked and responsibilities assumed, than to be done in hiding using another name.” In reading this, two things immediately came to mind (though they seem to be independent of one another), Shipka’s English 324 and David’s Batholomae’s definition of academic discourse communities.

In Dr. Shipka’s 324, students produce academic texts using “un-academic” mediums. Simply because the representation of the text is often not in standard linear format, some argue the work is not academic. Yet according to Bartholomae, it is impossible for student work, regardless of the medium, not to be academic, for it is produced for the professor in an academic setting. Furthermore, because these texts subvert traditional formats, the work they do is very much “out in the open.” The students are forced to assume responsibility for what they produce and the rhetorical choices they make. In this way, I think Bartholomae’s definition of academic work is broad enough to include innovation, and yet, like Shipka, is narrow enough to understand what qualifies as academic performance.

Bartholomae, in the aforementioned quote and throughout his article, claims that student writing is a part of academia, that the work they do is academic. This may seem like a nothing point to illuminate, but I think it is really something. Many in academia have been know to view students as outsiders, as people circulating the fringes of academia but who make little to no impact on it, especially its discourse, and Bartholomae has traditionally been one of them. In his article entitled, “Inventing the University,” Bartholomae argues that in order for students to become insiders in the academic discourse community they have to become experts; they have to mimic the greats in tone, syntax, structure, etc. He further claims that students struggle to communicate in an idiom in which they are unfamiliar and untrained and this specific and desired use of language is not easily understood or cultivated in student work. Yet in this article, “Writing with Teachers: A Conversation with Peter Elbow,” Bartholomae claims that students are a part of academia; in fact, according to his definition here student work has to be academic. This seems a far cry away from his earlier stance that student work, in general, is anything but.

The next quote I would like to respond to is one of Elbow’s: “My only hope, it seems to me, of making students experience themselves as writers while they are in the academy- and a slim hope at that- means hanging on to at least one course where writing is at the center. When other courses in the university make writing as important as reading, I’ll respond with a comparable adjustment and give reading equal spotlight in my first year course.” I’m not sure that I would frame my course in the same manner. For me, reading what is published in the field is crucial to understanding how to write in the field. As a beginner in any academic community, it is important for me to understand the discourse in order for me to even attempt communicating in that discourse. How can students write if they don’t read examples of writing? Although other classes may be based in reading, those readings may pertain more specifically to one course and may not extend more broadly to composition. If in fact academia is made up of separate discourse communities, as some argue, than wouldn’t students need to read a material in each course that reflects the kinds of writing they are expected to do in that course? I’m not saying coursework doesn’t overlap, or that conventions of writing for one can’t be applied for another, I just question to what extent students can be expected to produce writing without examples.