Thinking back on my k-12 education, would I say that their teachings gave me the opportunity to fit the requirements expected of me today, to be able to think critically or thoughtfully about any given text? The answer would be, no. English class seemed so technical and stale. I was honestly bored. Of course we had to read the classic novels, which I am grateful for having to have read them…but honestly at the time, I really could have cared less. I didn’t appreciate or give them the respect that they deserve. Many times, I just read them to get through them, that's if I did even that…I had been known to read the “cliff notes”, watch the movie or ask my friends what they thought. Maybe, it was because when we were through reading these great “classics” we were not given the opportunity to relate these novels to anything in our lives or give are impressions/opinions.
What we were expected to do was regurgitate, what the story was about, who the main characters where, what the plot was, and what the theme was…who really cares? It really didn’t matter to me. Maybe that is why I never felt as though I was a good writer. I remember writing in my English classes both spontaneously and over an extended period of time, whichever style was expected of me, I always remember feeling very anxious and never really liking to write anything at all. I would get papers back from my teachers and they were always handed back to me upside down, why was that? Nonetheless, I would turn the pages over, just to see my paper littered with RED pen marks. Those red pen marks made me feel inadequate and insecure. Which reminds me of Anne Ruggles Geres article, “Kitchen Tables and Rented Room: The Extracurriculum of Composition” at one point she was referring to the harmful views a few of the participants from the writing groups in San Francisco and Iowa, had during their education. Many of them said that they “had negative experiences with schooling, [and they never thought] of themselves as writers because teachers had taught them the could not write"(Gere78). Is this really how our education system should treat its students and is this really what education is supposed to be about?
How can education be a more thoughtful and interesting learning process? I believe that educators need to incorporate more of “free form” of learning literacy into their classroom curriculums. Just as Gere’s article recommends that one should go “beyond the academy to encompass the multiple contexts in which persons seek to improve their own writing: it includes more diversity in gender, race and class among writers; and it avoids, as much as possible, a reenactment of professionalization in its narrative”(Gere 80) How can this be done? I believe the curriculum needs to include the interests and expressions of its student population. This however will take some work on the part of the educators, they will need to get to know their students in more ways then whether or not they know how to incorporate the theme of a novel correctly in an essay. This type of education will take some work on the students’ part as well. They will need to do research on topics that interest them. But, I do believe that if they were truly interested in the topic it wouldn’t seem like work at all.
Now even though I recommend a so-called “free form” of education. I do realize that there has to be some constraints’ and standards within the curriculum to have education be useful to society as a whole. Even this “blog” has constraints. We’re suppose to read a text and write a response with an educated opinion. We also should mimic the author and instructor through quotations and verbiage. We also need to be grammatically correct. Although, we can not take all constraints out of the educational systems, I do believe by incorporating both a “standard/technical” form, as well as the “extracurriculm” form of writing will not only be encouraging, but also a rewarding experience for many more students.
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