14c. Constructive Discontent and Lovely, Interesting Discussions
I Hope I Die Before I Get Old
Too late. Oh, well.
(Also, tl;dr, I know, I know.)
Please Rock the Boat
With Matt in mind, I want to talk about Don Koberg and Jim Bagnall’s term “constructive discontent” which they call an essential aspect of creative thinking and which most children exhibit naturally, especially into their teen years, because, “to the young, everything needs improvement.” This quality, however, is tamped down in school. As we grow older,
we learn from our society that “fault-finders” disturb the status quo of the normal, average “others.” Squelch tactics are introduced. It becomes “good” not to “make waves” or “rock the boat” and to “let sleeping dogs lie” and “be seen and not heard.”
In English classes through the years, Matt has had all his writerly constructive discontent trained out of him. The reason Matt feels kind of dumb when writing is because he has learned too well. The reason Matt’s teacher feels kind of dumb when he tries to respond to Matt’s work is because he thinks Matt hasn’t learned enough.
If the teacher gives the usual corrective, mistake-centered responses, what will happen? Greenspan and Shanker show the effects of negative reactions from caregivers which can cause a child to
become bound up with feelings of hopelessness or even shame. These feelings may then serve to organize and give meaning to a variety of interactive experiences accompanied by frustration or discomfort.
A teacher’s comments can land like that, only adding to Matt’s sense of hopelessness about his writing and contributing to his unwillingness to take risks.
Among the things Elena Ferrante says writing “requires” are “maximum audacity and programmatic disobedience.” She adds, “My goal is to disappoint the usual expectations.” This is in keeping with what we’ve seen others say about creativity, such as Asimov’s valuing those who have “unconventional habits.” Since school and society discourage such behavior, writers and teachers of writing need to be like those obnoxious teenagers who believe everything needs improvement. After all, there is a good reason the young members of The Who sang, “I hope I die before I get old.” There is danger in losing that edge.
It takes audacity to reinvent the can opener. You must be a disobedient sort to roll up the nine dots into a cylinder or to write an essay that challenges all you’ve been taught to hold dear. Of the things I value most highly about writing or teaching, not one has anything to do with order or following rules. For writing, then, status quo-types need not apply. But often, the status quo is what gets taught.
Notice Ferrante says “requires.” If she’s right, and I suspect she is, that means teaching writing means teaching disobedience. This means that the “best” students may need the most work and the “worst” may have the most to offer.
How would teaching disobedience work? Think back to the dance example in the opening newsletter. The student had habitual patterns for how he moved his body because of cerebral palsy, and the teacher had habitual ways of thinking about dance and choreography based on her years of experience and her acquired expertise. To meet the challenges they faced took constructive discontent—a certain kind of rebelliousness and disobedience. Rules needed to be broken. It was either that or give up.
Since Matt has been burned too many times by corrective reactions to his writing, he now becomes someone he isn’t. As a writer, he’s rigid and limited in his views. He loses his sense of self and sense of purpose (both of which are essential for writing) even though he retains these in other aspects of his life. In his essays, he thinks, it’s safer not to rock the boat and to let sleeping dogs lie, so he abandons himself.
Matt, then, becomes the kind of writer who makes statements without nuance or elaboration while holding firmly to established views. There’s not an ounce of constructive discontent to be found. But the authors say all is not lost. “Interaction” can come to the rescue. Responding “reciprocally” (like when the mother turns her other ear) can remedy the situation and provide incentives for taking the initiative, re-establishing a sense of self and purpose and triggering a renaissance that reintroduces the dialogic habits of his early childhood and rekindles his earlier constructive discontent. And it’s not just Matt who benefits, say Greenspan and Shanker:
Engaging in co-regulated emotional interactions is just as important for the caregiver as for the child. Through their interactions, the caregiver gradually learns at a very intuitive level how to negotiate with the child through different types of interaction patterns . . .
Both the student and the teacher learn from each other.
Unfortunately, right now, Matt and his teacher are one and the same. They are the father on the sofa during the thunderstorm. They are the first group of can opener designers. They speak of colors and blades when they should be talking about clams and pea pods.
For his teacher, too, a renaissance is needed. He needs to learn how to read. When Nancy Sommers says, “instead of reading and responding to the meaning of the text, we correct our students’ writing,” she’s describing how teachers unconsciously fall into the pedagogy of severity trap. We read student work differently than we read other writing. With students, we read for what we think should be there, not for what is there. This is an extension of the long-held practice of hunting down grammatical errors in student writing. To counter this focus on errors as mistakes, Mina Shaughnessy argues that an error is not always what we think it is, that there is often a logic behind it. Mike Rose says error, rather than being a product of ignorance, is sometimes “rooted in other causes.” Teachers are often influenced by similar tactics when commenting about the content of student work. We can’t turn off the urge to correct. Because we have a strong mistake-detecting reflex, often we end up correcting not just grammatical errors but also student thinking. What truly needs correcting is the way we read student writing.
Kevin J. Porter talks about a “pedagogy of charity” vs a “pedagogy of severity” where he argues that when responding to student work, instructors should focus on Donald Davidson’s principle of charity where “we seek to tolerate ambiguity for the larger aim of understanding ideas.” Davidson values this over “seeking contradictions or difficulties.”
Everything Is Simple ‘til It’s Not
Things that don’t seem to make sense shouldn’t be dismissed without further examination. When writing about Davidson’s principle, Arthur C. Lee cites Richard Feynman to illustrate how it’s important to seek understanding even in the face of an apparent paradox:
Feynman writes in his Nobel Prize Lecture about struggling with the notion of backward causation in quantum electrodynamics:
“. . . all physicists know from studying Einstein and Bohr, that sometimes an idea which looks completely paradoxical at first, if analyzed to completion in all detail and in experimental situations, may, in fact, not be paradoxical.”
This means things that seem easy to categorize, label, and dismiss as paradoxical, contradictory, or just plain wrong may deserve another look. This benefit-of-the-doubt mindset is both charitable and an example of constructive discontent in action. For this reason, unsuccessful student writing is sometimes the most interesting kind. There is almost always more there than meets the eye. Gradually, I’ve learned to rebel against my former instincts as I’ve realized that the usual methods only work for those who don’t really need them and in fact do harm for those who are not as tuned in to how the English composition game works.
So what am I going to do about it? Like Porter, Sommers, Shaughnessy, Rose, and many others, I strive to read my students’ work with new eyes. I am more aware now how something that looks like a poor effort may instead be what Susan McCarthy calls, “an early stage of a journey toward grace, competence, and comprehension” or an example of what Paul Williams describes as a case of someone learning “to reach beyond his or her present abilities, beyond what he’s sure he can do and into the unknown.” (Just like I’m doing here!)
In “How to Read Like a Writer,” Mike Bunn takes these concerns about how we read student work further, saying that if you read like a writer, you are looking at “writerly choices” and trying to understand why the author made those choices. He cites David Jauss’ carpenter metaphor: “You must look at a book the way a carpenter looks at a house that someone else built, examining the details in order to see how it was made.”
This both dovetails nicely with Porter’s charitable readers concept and adds a twist to Davidson’s argument because, as Bunn says, “you’re reading to understand how the text was written—how the house was built—more than you’re trying to determine the meaning of the things you read or assess the quality of the piece.” You are not asking, as in Barry’s example, “‘Is this good?’ or ‘Does this suck?’” You are not even asking, “What does this mean?” Instead, you are seeking to understand the choices the writer made.
The Art of Saying Nothing
As you might have guessed, “Matt” was a real student and his clueless teacher? You’re looking at him. I needed to back away from the problem like the second group of can opener designers did. I already knew about Sommers and her idea that we should read student writing the way we read other writing but with Matt, some enhanced version of this was needed. That’s where Porter came in. If the focus is on understanding, not correcting, what did I need to do to understand what Matt had written?
This was a tough case. His words on the page seemed robotic, and since things were mostly grammatical, I couldn’t in desperation pounce on that. There was something else going on. It was as if he had perfected the art of using language to say nothing at all. Come to think of it, it was impressive—a work of art. His words left nothing for a teacher to grab ahold of, nothing for me to understand.
Maybe he’s hung on to some of that constructive discontent after all because it was almost as if this was his way of rebelling against the unreasonable demands of English teachers and their precious little “academic essay” genre. So what now?
I needed to understand what made Matt so reluctant to say anything in his English essays. Maybe Bunn could help. Matt and I needed to talk.
How to Answer a Prayer
As I said in the first newsletter, I often find compelling connections to composition issues in unexpected places, and the following is an example, one that also influences how I read student work. After suffering a stroke, Neurologist Jill Bolte Taylor was forced to see things from the patient’s side rather than the doctor’s side. As you might imagine, it was revealing. Often, she felt she was on the receiving end of poor, though well-meaning, treatment. She then outlined how she wished her doctors had treated her. Here are some items from her list that when I first read them, made me think about Sommers and Porter and caused me to imagine my students saying similar things to me:
I’m not stupid, I am wounded. Please respect me.
Be as patient with me the 20th time you teach me something as you were the first.
Be aware of what your body language and facial expressions are communicating to me.
Make eye contact with me. I am in here—come find me. Encourage me.
Trust that I am trying—just not with your skill level or on your schedule.
Do not assess my cognitive ability by how fast I can think.
Break all actions down into smaller steps of action.
Please don’t finish my sentences for me or fill in words I can’t find. I need to work my brain.
I may want you to think I understand more than I really do.
Focus on what I can do rather than bemoan what I cannot do.
Remember that in the absence of some functions, I have gained other abilities.
Bolte Taylor’s bullet list is downright holy. It’s a patient praying that her doctors will listen as she teaches them how the principle of charity works. Will her caregivers hear her prayer?
I am an MS patient. Through the years, I have unintentionally been treated insensitively on occasion by some doctors who spoke to me in the ways Bolte Taylor is trying to change. It sucks when someone who is trying to help you makes you feel worse. This treatment has further awakened me to how I affect others, especially my students. When it comes down to it, I see my role in this relationship as one of a caregiver. My students are in my care, and for me, what Greenspan and Shanker say is a reality, not an analogy.
Whenever I am responding to students in any way, I strive to keep Bolte Taylor’s pleas in mind. In my commenting, I break all actions down into smaller steps of action. I do not finish sentences or fill in words. I focus on what students can do and refuse to bemoan what they cannot.
In the same way my body language in class can send unintended messages, my commenting also sends messages I may not be aware of. To counteract this, I work to be respectful and patient even for the twentieth time I teach a student something. In class, in conference, and even in my commenting on assignments, I am trying to make “eye contact,” because I know someone is in there. I know that some ray of light may be buried in that difficult essay waiting to be noticed. I remind myself that most students are trying but not always on my schedule because something that’s going on in their life or something about their history as a student may be hindering their progress. I realize now that a lack of certain skills should not blind me to that student’s other abilities and that those other abilities can be harnessed to assist them here. Taylor’s points, when combined with the other works I have mentioned, have contributed to my commenting style.
I said Matt and I needed to talk. Often, when talking with a student about a claim in their essay that I don’t understand, I’ll ask, “How did you get from there to here?” When you ask such questions about not just what but how students write, you sometimes get answers that are far more compelling than what you see on the page. When I hear something like that, I say, “Why not write down what you just said, because it’s great.” Then I ask “Why do you think you didn’t say that in your essay?” This, like when the mother turns her head revealing her other ear, leads to more responses.
I can simply ask Matt why he seems reluctant to say more. When he tells me, “I like to get to the point,” I can respond with, “What do you mean by ‘get to the point’? What point?” When he tells me what he means, I can say, “That’s good stuff; write that down.” It gets the ball rolling. Now, I can reveal my other ear.
With a student like Matt, having a back-and-forth like this begins the circle of communication Matt will need to transform his essay. This will help him develop a sense of listeners and answers and see how that can help him to shut down less. He’ll see that he has something to add to the discussion the class is having about these issues. His contributions in his essays and in class discussions will generate additional responses from classmates which will in turn change what he will write. He will be immersed in a social atmosphere which will alter his responses and change his writing further. Matt will be participating in an ongoing conversation in an ever-changing, permissive environment where constructive discontent and unconventional behavior are welcomed—where it’s not only okay to make waves, but where wave-making is the point. All of this will help his concept of what “reader” means to become more elastic.
Ultimately, I want my comments and interactions with my students to be like a walk in the woods with Feynman and his father. I want it to be “no pressure, just lovely interesting discussions.”
With Feynman and the pedagogy of charity in mind, let's take a moment to go back to where we began in this long (sorry) newsletter, to that opening scene of a father and child during a thunder storm. How could the father’s answer have been less question killer/curiosity stopper and more circles of communication?
What’s That Funny Noise, Revisited
“What’s that funny noise?” the boy asks when he hears distant thunder.
“What does it sound like to you?” the father asks.
“Scary!”
“It does sound a little scary, doesn’t it? What kind of scary?”
“Monster scary!”
“I know what you mean. What kind of monster do you think it sounds like?”
“A giant lion! Or a dinosaur!”
“Well, don’t worry, there are no lions around here. And there are no dinosaurs anywhere anymore. The noise was ‘thunder’ which is what happens sometimes when warm air way up in the clouds rubs against cold air. It’s like when you walk on the carpet and touch the doorknob and sometimes, ouch!, you get a shock.”
“Are clouds flying carpets?”
“That’s a fun way to think about them.”
As the rain continues and the thunder rolls across the sky again, the boy forgets his cars, and the father forgets his reading. Instead, he gets crayons and paper so he and his son can draw monsters and flying carpets. They tell stories, make scary noises, and laugh.
For this lucky boy, the word “thunder” now sparkles. It is a many-faceted thing, rich with subtle variations, making up a “living and unrepeatable play of colors and light.” This “social atmosphere” is now inhabited by flying as well as creeping things, by giant lions, dinosaurs, rumbling clouds, shocking doorknobs, and, most of all, by the memory of his dad and himself drawing pictures together one rainy day. All of these and more spark a vibrant yet all-too-fragile renaissance, one that only when accompanied by constant vigilance holds the power to keep those thundering Dark Ages at bay.
Notes
This concludes Newsletter 14. Whew! If you hung in there with it, I owe you one.
I’m still considering what comes next, but whatever it is, it will probably involve unleashed dogs, some chicken talk, and a memorable turning point in a student assignment that came when a classmate read her essay like a writer.