Thursday, March 15, 2018

Old School, Or, It's All Meta Now


At this late stage in life, you do what you can. And what you can do is what you know, or believe, works. You do, which in this case, is write. That's not what you are supposed to do, though. Now it's about "outcomes," and those outcomes are the abstractions of doing. Students are supposed to learn to read and write "rhetorically," or to focus on audience, purpose, genre, and the big "situation." All that is fine, but how do they learn genres or how to reach an audience if they don't practice writing something, the "doing?" You are supposed to emphasize the "about" rather than the "do." You don't even really know what that means. No inspiration, no enthusiasm, no engagement, no reason, no craft -- and forget the notion of even considering mastery -- just "about." Teaching writing in the abstract is like trying to live on air for food, or studying music without ever touching an instrument. You want a bit more grounding, "doing" something. Are you supposed to spend your class time ruminating on the "about," the "idea" of writing? You guess so. That's the way now. All the awards, committees, and bosses say so. So what do you do? Where do you go? The door, my friend, the door. That and the world waiting outside, beyond. You leave knowing only that you know you don't know.

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