Scream of Consciousness
Below is my Scream of Consciousness blog which rambles, rants, analyses, and indicts the education system.
What writing really is: or "I can't believe we haven't told you this already." Part One
Let's be clear right from the start: the whole point of writing is to take the thoughts from our heads and put them on paper in an understandable, possibly even compelling fashion.
No thoughts -- no writing.
Fortunately, we're always thinking of something, even if it's not particularly important. We pass by a store, see something we might want to buy and we think about how the last time we bought something like this our stupid Significant Other made a nasty crack about it and what we should have said in return was… . And so on.
So we always have thoughts in your head.
Or do we? While there's a whole lot of chatter going on, very little of it seems related to actual "thinking."
This "chatter" is what's known as our "inner dialogue." In general it's so unfocussed that it is virtually unnoticeable. It drones on in the background, forming the basis for our responses, and we're seldom even aware of it. At times, however, the inner dialogue becomes focussed on something, and when it doe…
What writing really is: or "I can't believe we haven't told you this already." Part Two
The APA-modified inner dialogue
There's nothing special about the APA style book. Mostly it's a batch of rules on how to format documents and cite sources.
There are a lot of other style books which do exactly the same thing: The MLA Style Book, The Chicago Style Book, The Canadian Press Style Book, and over a dozen others.
Each is just a batch of rules on how to format documents and cite sources.
It's not much, and it sure as hell isn't elegant, but it's all we need to start gaining control of our inner dialogue.
The APA style serves to suggest a more intelligent and demanding inner audience than we're used to. The APA audience is reasonable in nature but demands to know the sources of our information. Regardless of how contentious our position may be or how complex the subject matter, it asks us to use a civil tone and understandable language.
As we get used to this audience, we begin to realise that these standards should really be applied even in our daily life. When the guy whit…
The Birth of the Rubric: Part One - Editors & English Profs
In many ways, editors and college English profs have very similar jobs.
We each analyse and judge manuscripts. We each impose draconian rules upon our writers/students. And our ultimate purpose is to help our writers produce the best material they can.
Editors and English profs also swim against an unending tide of submissions, the majority of which display an almost perfect lack of basic communicatory abilities. Theodore Sturgeon once said that 95% of everything is shit: as it pertains to writing, that figure is significantly higher.
Now, separating the wheat from the chaff isn't particularly difficult or time-consuming; normally the first couple of sentences are enough to consign the entire paper to a pit of hell that no man may witness without going mad.
What is difficult and time-consuming is analysing the pieces contextually, formally, and narratively, and then communicating the need for necessary changes to writers who are desperately trying to ignore you.
But while the editor…
The Birth of the Rubric: Part Two - The Rubric
When faced with difficult problems, science likes to measure things. By measuring, so it's believed, we can break a large problem into its various parts, and then solve for each part. In building bridges we measure stress, plasticity, torque, weight, and a thousand other things in order to build the most reliable and most beautiful bridges we can.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, it turns out that the educational field considers itself a science, and as a science it must have a system for measuring things.
For the educational sciences, this system is the rubric.
The word comes from the same root as red, and refers to the red instructional text written along the margins in medieval documents. It also refers to the more modern educational tradition of writing essay comments in red ink (a tradition that has been largely discontinued following the scientific discovery that the sight of red ink on a school report can cause unnecessary trauma to the student).
In essence, the rubric ta…
The Birth of the Rubric: Part Three - Teaching to the Rubric
Because grades are important, teachers adapt their lessons to the rubric in order to give their students the best opportunity of scoring well.
One option is to teach every student how to be an Orwell (or a Twain, or a Thurber). Sadly, this is far beyond the scope of lowly college teachers.
The other option is to train students to follow the same schematic used by the rubric. If you're short of doubloons, you can always fool it with dog turds.
What educators worked out is the Five Paragraph Essay, which has now been exclusively taught from grades four through high school for several decades. The Five Paragraph Essay consists of a set of formulae into which you essentially plug sentences. (The student's pre-existing ability to write complete sentences is assumed, but not often realised.)
The first paragraph is an introduction in which the thesis of the essay is clearly stated, followed by a brief summary of the three (not two, not four, but three) main points to be used in supporting t…
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