Craig,
I don't have much time before I run, but I do wish to reply
quickly. I agree about form. Without a doubt, the best poetry I
receive from my students is in response to fixed forms: their lyrics
are often banal, while their attempts to write metrical verse usually
produce genuinely original replies. As I tell them, if they're
surprised as they wrote it, their readers will probably be delighted
and surprised by what they've written. The analogy I usually recall at
such moments is Frost's description of poetic form in terms of the net
in tennis--you don't have much of a game without it.
Voice might be the topic where matters of form and freedom
collide. I make it very clear to my students that I would like them to
use grammatical terms in order to distinguish between different
qualities of voice and to use grammatical forms to modify their own
voices. As I stress to them, I don't subscribe to the romantic notion
of the one true voice, immanent with the glory of paradise lost--the
conception of voice which might run counter to grammatical
rigor.
Michael
Michael,
I can remember students like that--correct, but weak--
from when I first started teaching in the 70's. My current students
tend to write lively prose that is fairly far from correct. But I like
your exercise and have used variations on it myself over the years.
There's room for a great deal of creativity in punctuation, and that
is hard to teach.
I think form can constrain, and the popular view of
grammar is probably that--a list of acceptable forms that we are
limited to. But form also enables. Meaning doesn't happen without it.
So an attention to form can also be a means toward empowerment,
toward making more explicit the nature of good writing, well beyond
the target of correctness. Correctness doesn't make for much of a
goal.
My initial exposure to that view of language was through
the English romantic poet Coleridge. He made the distinction between
mechanical and organic form. If meaning and form are dynamically
linked, then an attention to form is an attention to meaning.
Of course, this can be a rigorous approach, not merely
licensing freedom. I think that may be what Edmond is objecting to,
the notion that freedom is the goal. We think that students should be
free to be themselves, when in fact that may doom them to failure.
Craig
Michael Dee wrote:
Re: The 'progressive view'
Yes, I believe I do agree with Dr.
Wright's critique. I just wish it was aimed at something like
Emile rather than progressives. In regard to your final question,
I suppose the presentation I gave for ATEG at the most recent NCTE
conference might provide an answer. I described my use of the
descriptive vocabulary provided by grammar to define voice and
rhetorical style. Most of my students are law-fearing writers:
they write grammatically sound prose which no one I know would wish to
read. So, for example, I might distribute a passage written by Orwell
from which I have removed all the punctuation. They must then
punctuate it and explain their choices. Inevitably, they produce a
range of solutions, most of which would pass editorial scrutiny. We
then compare their solutions to Orwell's own. The exercise usually
produces an interesting discussion about the artistic deployment of
punctuation, one which they can only understand and articulate by
using grammatical terms. At this point they now understand my
definition for an A grade on writing mechanics: "no errors of
grammar, spelling, capitalization; transgressions artistically
defensible." In order to bend or break the rules of standard
grammar as they write their own papers, in other words, they need to
identify the rules they are bending or breaking and identify an
explicitly rhetorical intention for doing so. Our classroom exercises
inform their practice and their defense of their practice. I suppose
the encouragement to bend rules would conform to a definition of a
progressive approach; it certainly feels different and progressive to
them. And, as I think you'd agree, it is not a romantic
approach.
Michael Dee
Michael,
I think the fact that Edmond is writing us from England ought
to get him at least mildly off the hook.
The progressive movement in American politics has a very proud
history, especially in the early twentieth century. I'm not sure many
Americans understand that, let alone someone from another country.
Am I right that you agree with Edmond in other ways?
Can you give us a description of what a true progressive would
say in relation to things like "craft,"
"discipline", and "grammar"?
Craig
Michael Dee wrote:
In my lifetime, progressive causes have
been routinely disparaged by the logic evident in Dr. Wright's
definition: renounce the general term (and its proponents) by
identifying it with an obviously flawed subcategory or remote
relative. If you doubt the efficacy of this rhetorical strategy,
consider the fate of "liberal." Believe me, my rage at
the predominance of conservative politics in this country can easily
match Dr. Wright's passionate criticism of romantic idealism. Not only
that: I would agree with the criticism, particularly as it applies to
educational principles and practices. And for that very reason I
object to casting progressives as childish idealists.
More passion available upon request.
Michael Dee
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