Blog Post #2: Gere

Ryan Popp

Throughout my academic career, I was exposed to many English classes. Most of them I experienced in high school. As students we were advised to take as many English classes as we could to further our writing skills for college and the working world. Our teachers stressed how important it was to take their English curriculum serious to succeed in further education. But as my schooling continued I didn’t understand how a lot of their curriculum pertained to us. In my classes we had to follow a strict set of rules when writing. We never got to pick our topics when writing a paper. When teachers did this, many students in the class didn’t look forward to writing. We didn’t understand how the topics we had to write about were any better than the ones we came up with. By the time the paper came due many classmates decided to just throw something together. They always would argue that they can’t write about something they don’t care about. Some of these classmates were the best writers in the school, but would get bad grades in English classes. Teachers thought they were teaching students lessons by not allowing us to write about current topics. One teacher I remember told the class that the only good writers were from the past. So the class would get stuck trying to comprehend poetry from the early to late 17th century. What teachers didn’t understand was that so many students were under achieving to make a point and both sides were too stubborn to make changes. As a student, I always did what was assigned. I did my work and received good grades from my literature teachers. But when I would compare some of my pieces to other students’ writing, that they did outside of class, it was amazing how well they wrote. Although, to my teachers I was a very good writer, they didn’t understand how many great papers they missed from other students. They stereotyped these students as “bad writers,” but these students were some of the best in the whole school. After I would read classmates’ work I felt that I was the “bad writer.” It was amazing to me how the wrong topics and stereotyping could lead students to not show their great writing skills. This situation leads me to think that Gere was correct about including the “extracurriculum” in schools.

In order to get students or anyone to write to their full potential I think they need to find a topic that interests them. Then they will feel passionate about their paper. It doesn’t make sense to have students always writing about ideas that don’t interest them. I understand that there are many important writers and poets that have great works that everyone should read and try to interpret. But teachers should allow for students to find their own ideas to write about. If my teachers would have allowed this, they could have seen how well their class could write. By allowing the “extracirriculum” to enter our schools, it will destroy the barrier between teachers and students. People will be able to write freely in all environments and not feel self conscious about being a “bad writer.”