Parents Advisory
(Dear Jeff-not-Holmes: this is a story more
despicable than my plagiarism remarks, so
maybe read no further, or prepare to be
dismayed, disgusted and appropriately
offended. I don’t blame you any. Maybe
we can argue about it.)
I once told a class long ago that they didn’t
HAVE to do anything. It was an 8:00 class,
a required first year semester composition
course topping off their previous 4 years
of daily English classes throughout high
school, and they eventually quit coming,
except for one female who would arrive
about ½ hour late and we’d have a pretty
decent conversation.
(When I started teaching 7th grade in a
Quaker School in Bucks County, someone
told me: “Sam, if you can just reach one,
consider yourself successful.” I said,
no, I won’t be satisfied if I don’t get
to all of them—leave no child a behind..)
My required comp students that session
all graded themselves. Mostly “A’s” as
I recall. Might have been a B or C but
I can’t remember.
I came to class every day and busied my self
writing, flooded with notions and ideas some
how instigated by the lack of a student body:
you know—the kind of presence which is
present by virtue of its absence.
Thoughts about education, teaching, motivation,
authority—mostly authority: authors authorizing
authority authoritatively—flooded my mind
during those early hours: a self-seminar. . . .
I realized what I somewhat knew but never fully:
that I had no authority of my own, whatever
charisma or expertise I might think I had (look
at their industrialism, heads bowed, scribbling in
note books every word I uttered) was all ex officio
authority by virtue of the institution and its
grade-gun compliance-or-else reinforcement.
I proved it to myself.
Students aren’t here pursue knowledge & intellectual
freedom like we say. Take away the force (vios), and
they are naturally gone, taking care of business where
it counts and makes good sense: your course, for
example, where attendance is mandatory or else.
Human nature hates a vacuum.
You probably already suspect this (about the
knowledge and intellectual freedom deal) and
rightly declare me fool for not knowing any
better and I did know better but now I KNOW
that I know that I know., know what I mean?
Not just theoretically, but experientially I know
why we have grade-control-it controlled reinforcement
regulating and governing the whole structure which
would not survive without it.
I reinvented the wheels of hire education to see for
myself and that’s a difference that makes a
difference.
Handicapped by my laissez-faire indifference, the
students still all managed to graduate and do well,
ones that didn’t drop out or transfer, despite my
domestic violation committed against required
composition and it’s institutional immorality.
A couple told me later: “that was the best course
ever, Sam” but I know the value of comments like that.
I knew I was committing crime against the state and
quo, murder, really—sitting in Jensen 206 alone each
morning: my notebook at hand, loaded with ideas and
bromides on composing
In Writing:
War is better than Peace
Push Past Ought
Write First, Think Later
Show it, Don’t tell It
Be Prodigal, then Puritanical
Shoot the Sheriff, but not the Deputies…
—but no dillar-a-dollar 8:00 scholars.
Let my experience stand for what ever inclination you
might have to dabble in Upside Down Flamingo
resource full—potentially innovative if not rigorous
in the usual sense. But there’s got to be an Environment
for it. It’s an Environmental Issue.
It changed my teaching life for good and for ill. I
wouldn’t be the teacher I am today if it hadn’t
of been for that experiential experience &
I’m grateful for it, but confess it was like
illegal immigration going on; outlaw
border-crossing toward frontiers
yet unknown.
Does that make me a bad person
or stalwart pioneer?
statues of limitation
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