Rethinking themes

At last month's final I asked my students (4 classes of FYC) for feedback on the theme-based class they'd just sat through: did they find a course theme confining or liberating (though liberating wasn't really the best word--I meant something more like generative). The theme of technology had seemed to me wide open with possibility. I tried to convince them that technology cuts across so many aspects of society, from politics to medicine, communication to the environment, education to commerce. Surely, I thought, they could look at technology's impact in several arenas they were already interested in, sports, say, or music (or maybe they could get curious about something unfamiliar!) But as the semester progressed, the air seemed to suck out of the room in the face of student resistance and, in some cases, downright hostility to my carefully considered theme. So at my minimal-stakes final I wanted to probe a bit to try to see how widespread was the dissatisfaction (on the theory that perhaps the most unhappy were the most vocal) and to try to classify the reasons behind it.

I tallied responses as positive, fence-sitting, or negative (admittedly not a perfectly designed way to collect data, on signed final exams) and found a roughly even split between the three camps. My next step was to try to categorize the critical comments, which not only raised a lot of questions for me about the advantages/disadvantages of this sort of course design but also made me consider what I (maybe?) should have explained to students about why I'd chosen that design (and the more general question of how transparent to make this whole process).

What they said: One very basic objection was that themes are not appropriate for an English classes. One student wrote, "Personally I think all themed writing classes are stupid. If you want to write about technology, take  science class, or even a math class." Another wrote, "To me technology has nothing to do with an English class. I see an English class being more about having to write essays on different topics and correcting the use of wrong grammar." I think this objection is rooted in the fear that if students are writing about something, then the focus in the class might shift more to the something and less to the writing itself.

What I could have/should have said: In freshman comp we write nonfiction prose (that apparently needs some emphasis and definition), whether it's exposition, argument, or essay.  Such writing is by necessity writing about something, and as writers you will be judged both on what you say and how well you say it. So if all (meaningful) writing has content, the question becomes what's the "appropriate" content for comp class assignments. If we strip away anything that fits "more properly" into another discipline, what do we have left? Personal experience alone, or as a colleague refers to it, the "me and my cupcake" essay? I do see a place for those essays, in developmental writing classes especially, where keeping the subject matter very familiar can help to focus necessary attention on mechanics. In college writing, though, we're moving on to connect the personal and the public (our subject matter may still be quite personal, but in choosing to write about it for an audience we're trying to connect our own experiences to something more universal; and as an instructor I may need to more clearly highlight those related concerns of audience and purpose, though I'm still more of the writing-to-explore rather than writing-to-show-off-what-you-already-know camp).

The open questions then: is it OK for me as instructor to decide on the theme (the old question of free vs assigned topics), and if so, how best might I do so? My crucial goal is to find a theme that allows students to make that leap from personal to public, that is, a topic with which they have some substantial prior personal experience, relatively accessible knowledge that I can supplement with related readings.

The quality of yr thought is inextricably linked to the quality of yr writing; but that does not mean you must be an expert in order to write well about a subject.

What they said: Some students said that they found theme-based classes (in principle) confining limiting their creativity and closing them out from topics that they would have preferred to write about (their own lives, said one; controversial topics such as gay marriage and illegal immigration, said another). One student writes, "I found it suffocating, and was not really passionate about any of the subject matter I was writing about," and another claims, "I feel the theme-based classes constrict yr ability to allow yr personality to expose itself in yr writing."

What I could have/should have said:  It has been my experience that  when students choose their own topics they most frequently settle on what they already know or have already written about (the car- accident/grandfather-dying brand of essay). Is this because I insufficiently inspire students' powers of invention? Perhaps. But what I hope to do is to open out yr sense of what it's possible to write about; paradoxically, so my theory goes, by providing a constrained space I can get you to more carefully consider possibilities for subject matter. (If you were locked in a well-furnished cell, you would come to know its contents more intimately than if I had allowed you free run of the mansion, though perhaps only after you had beaten yr hands raw on its studded oaken door.)

Another thing I'd like you to discover is yr ability to carve out a personal stance, to adopt an angle of vision on a topic not necessarily of yr own choosing. That is yr job as a writer: to find that aspect, angle, twist on the subject (especially one that has been chosen with care, with an eye towards its universal relevance) that allows yr personality, and intelligence and humor, to shine through yr voice on the page.

What they said: Others claimed that the repetitive aspect of a theme-based class was the main problem; a couple essays on technology would have been all right with them, but a semester's-worth was boring, lacking in variety. Several suggested trying two or three mini-themes for the semester to remedy this (a suggestion that has some merit, I think).

What I could have/should have said: (I'm on a little shakier ground here.) My courses lately have been structured to "progress" from writing based on personal experience to observation to text-response to text-synthesis. Part of what I mean by developing critical thinking skills (as a course objective) is that students reflect on these different sources of knowledge and think about how they arrive at positions (on various matters: whether it's a good idea to genetically engineer trees, how cellphone culture is affecting social connections, whether technology can make the voting process more reliable) and think about how these positions can be supported by these various types of evidence. What I hope students understand about these ways of knowing can, I think, best be transmitted if we're looking at similar topics through these different "lenses" (an inexact metaphor, I'm afraid).

A compromise: In an attempt to address both this complaint about boredom with one theme as well as students' frustration that they were being held back from writing the essays they really wanted to write, I would consider allowing one "free substitution" for one of the later assignments in the course. I'd want to make sure that we'd thoroughly talked about curiosity as a motivating factor for writing, so that students understood that there should be some point to the writing for both writer and reader. (I'd be curious to see how many students would take me up on the offer...) 

What they said: Finally a number of students objected not necessarily to the idea of a theme-based class in theory but rather to this particular choice of theme, finding technology either an unfamiliar or a dull topic (which somewhat surprised me in light of the stereotypical view of Gen X-Y-Zers as cell-phone toting, text-messaging, videogame addicts). Lack of interest, then, and/or lack of prior knowledge they found to be a problem. A good many suggested that students be allowed to have input into the selection of theme, so that students would have a greater chance of being interested in the topics and thus be more motivated to write.

What I should have/could have said: Here I'm a little more sympathetic, as I certainly would expect students to be more successful writing about topics in which they were interested. I tried the class-vote approach last summer, with a very small class, and we ended up with sports/health/fitness as a sort of catch-all theme (the body was how I thought about it). I was a little surprised, though, to find that this apparently "user-friendly" topic still caused students problems, especially when I pushed them beyond their immediate experience to text-wrestle articles a little beyond their comfort level. On a practical level having students select a theme does pose scheduling problems, as I wouldn't be able to decide on a reading list ahead of time in the lovely lull between semesters. (The past few semesters I have relied on online sources and the library's electronic reserve system, so that bookstore-ordering delays would at least not be a factor.) It may be that 5 or 6 years down the road I'll have a collection of suitable readings for a variety of topics (and I've started to collect up reading possibilities for several of the more obvious topics, in addition to the sports, food, and technology I've already done: family, gender, education); I have fantasies of some sort of collective compilation of such a series of reading lists (sounds like an idea for a wiki to me--for now I've been collecting mine as H2O playlists).

It has also crossed my mind that it might be possible/desirable to have students self-select into one of several theme options. This, though, would  make it difficult to use whole-class discussion as a mode of sharing brainstorming and reading responses.

Question for the day (as I run rapidly out of steam): How does one measure or demonstrate growth in critical thinking skills?

 

Comments

[joanna]

Hi Holly, and Happy New Year! I've finally gotten around to editing CCE, and have updated your link on the list. I'll post a link to this posting because I think that it's a thoughtful movement through what your students told you, how you interpreted it and how you would have said or done things differently.

[timna]

I like your reflection and the questions you used to generate it. I used ecology as a theme in an online comp I class this fall and students resented it until about the midpoint. I think the research paper and finally a persuasive paper, still on the same theme, allowed some individual input.

That said, I'm back to my varied themes comp I next semester.