How I Feel About Being Uptaught

The more I listened to my classmates about this book, the more I started to hate it. And that kind of made me sad. It sort of seems like all the effort that Macrorie puts into changing the system and to teaching in a new way and trying to defend the idea of "live" writing, it all seems for naught. Or at least it only seems crucial to English professors, who are English professors because they didn't know what else they wanted to do; who hate grading assignments because they give bad assignments; who hate teaching because they are poor teachers.

It's no question, when we talk about writing, we're definitely talking about something that the teaching of English has been required to do, when professors complain about poor writing, its because the children weren't ever taught correctly. One of my favorite parts of the second half of the book centers on the idea that we learn English at a very young age, we learn all the basics of grammar and a ton of vocabulary by kindergarten, yet we still teach it in schools. Of course, there are reasons why other than conforming everyone to the same language in order to communicate ideas more easily - but that in itself seems to kill language. Let's everyone say the same thing in the same way = dead language. It's sort of a paradox, though, because we are still using that language. But maybe true use is when we use those old words to create new meanings, which is what I think Macrorie truly wants. But that's not efficient. That's word play.

I don't know exactly how this book is going to affect me. I certainly do think that if someone is going to become a teacher, they should read this book. They should anticipate what is asked of them, and ask more of themselves and more of their students, instead of simply following the rules and meeting the requirements. But of course, that can bring more trouble.

Whether or not I start writing differently, that probably won't happen. Most likely I will complete my final semester the same way I've done the previous semesters, meeting the assignments to make the grade, all the while speculating about how my paper could have been better.

Side note-ish: I wonder, do any of my classmates really care what the teacher thinks of their paper? (For some I truly do, but others, not so much) Or do we really care about the grade? I think that's part of the flaw of schooling - which Macrorie fights by eliminating grades almost completely, but are we just paying for A's, or are we actually getting something out of all this? And I think it's what you make out of it for yourself that matters - but the world turns on those marks that we can't stop thinking about them. Validation from A to F.