The worst part of North American education is that there are people in the “industry” of education who think like yourself. I assure you that all of those brilliant Russian and Indian immigrants I went to school with were very concerned with their marks and outperformed their North American counterparts in all cases. Outperformed them precisely because they had a sense of accomplishment.

Certainly, we all wish to appreciate some discipline for its own value – but what does that value translate into but the much-derided accomplishment? Writers don’t just write. They write for a reason and with some mastery of their craft. Some write well, others write poorly. Unless you’re the New York Times bestseller list, you would probably choose to read the former and not the latter.

Grades – if correctly applied – measure accomplishment and students are more interested in doing those activities that have a greater impact on determining their level of accomplishment in the real world. This is even more relevant in a post-secondary education environment where work is often overwhelming and time is limited.

By the way, your example is entirely out of context. Keeping oneself in shape is a continuous process, which in the case of endurance training can be accomplished in shorter steps. Students having to do uninspiring and largely irrelevant busywork without feedback on their sense of accomplishment (something that aids rather than hinders the continuous acquisition of knowledge), are certainly bound to find it a waste of their time.

In other words, confused and rather uneducated Educators strike again.

-B.

Of course, that argues that there is no value in the “doing of the thing”. Writers write; everyone knows that. However, most students will not write unless some type of “grade” is assigned: all professors know that.

In my writing courses, the students do an incredible amount of writing, not all of which receives a grade. Does that make it a waste of time? The same way, I would argue, in which running 10 kms a day is a waste of time when preparing for a marathon (44kms); shouldn’t the runner just run the 44kms?

The worst aspect of North American education is the value placed on grades, standardized tests, and “accomplishment”, rather than the continuous striving for knowledge and better ways to apply it.

This is something that really bothered me from my own undergrad days. I would routinely have to spend several hours on assignments that were only worth a percentage point or less of my overall grade. Because of my test and term paper scores, I didn’t need the points from those minor assignments. But neither would my professor allow me to skip them (for zero points). So of course I felt I was wasting an incredible amount of time, and it angered me. I can see why so many of my classmates cheated on those assignments…

Moreover, if you believe that all writing is autobiographical in one shape or form then perhaps you have confused just one form of motivation with the actual nature of the task of writing.

Finally, separating rigor from difficulty is a problem of definitions and accuracy (an essential component of rigor, mind you). My trusty Oxford Dictionary defines rigorous as that related to logical accuracy, exactitude and a strict observance of certain rules. All of these imply mental focus and concentration – which are in fact difficult and “hard”. Ask any student if they are able to focus seriously on some subject – even one the student absolutely admires – for anything more than a few hours. What you will find is that they become mentally fatigued, not bored.

I have a distinct feeling that Mr. Passman is very much of the modernist school of education: the post-Dewey school. I can imagine just the effect on his students, if any (students, that is).

-B.

Thank you very much for your thoughtful comment. While I would not disagree that the development of a narrative voice is an equally important step towards rhetorical writing, please note that the comments regarding the “fun” factor of writing was not made by myself or the other students.

This particular class attempted to cover all areas of writing and reading development. There was a separate section that covered short stories and novels, along with points made about poetry and other styles of writing. While the quality of the content of these segments is certainly up for debate, they were not the focus of my post.

During this particular session, our teacher was specifically talking about writing nonfiction, and specifically discounting the five-paragraph (5PE) form due to her complaint that it is “boring” and that “no one writes like that” while referring to writers at completely different levels than 5th graders. Her qualm with the method had nothing to do with it being difficult or rigorous.

I whole-heartedly believe that any type of writing assignment, whether fiction or nonfiction, should be presented in a meaningful, engaging manner. If the five-paragraph form is being taught as an end in itself, then the teacher is a very poor teacher. Again, her complaint was not that teachers were pushing the 5PE ahead of other writing development, (which I agree with you, contains several stages), but simply that it was not an interesting style of writing.

The larger problem, which my post was attempting to address is that if educators eliminate a practical and proven step in the development of writing due to illogical reasons, then the impression they are giving future teachers is that it is not necessary to teach critical thinking. Hands down, writing a pretend newspaper article is not on the same level of thinking as a simple 5PE, regardless of how engaging the activity might be.

Additionally, I believe you confuse the notion of “fun” with “easy” and “rigor” with “hard.” This is a fundamental category error. There is, so far as I can tell, no direct relationship between that which is rigorous and being tough or hard. Engaging students in the task at hand is far more important than teaching an abstract form out of context. Following Frank Smith, engagement is invitational; students must be invited to join the literacy club. The literacy club has a specific discourse that attaches to membership. That discourse (rhetorical form for one) is learned as one acquires membership in the club. Rigor develops as students learn the discourse of the club and are able to ask productive questions as well as make appropriate arguments. Membership in the club, however, will not happen unless students are invited to join through engaging (fun) strategic teaching.