[Newspoetry] online writing workshop

[Dirk Stratton]

WmQ, Rob, Bill, Scott, Newspoets--

Re: Wm's recent proposal for an on-line writing workshop and the 
other issues that have arisen thereof--

I'd like to respond from perhaps a unique (so far) perspective, as 
someone who has not only been a student in several academic 
workshops, but has also taught a couple of academic workshops (I'm 
also currently teaching workshops in high school).

First, I agree with Bill wholeheartedly: the crux of the problem in 
the academy is "evaluation." What a student learns becomes bound to 
the academy's need to reduce learning to, or represent it by, a 
single alphabetic character or some set of numerals. And then those 
grades, perversely, take precedence over what they supposedly 
represent. This can easily be proven by a simple "test" (irony 
alert). In many of my classes, I spend a great deal of time railing 
against grades, explaining to students why I believe that they 
actually inhibit the process they supposedly support. I ask my 
students to remember past classes they've taken, both the best and 
the worst. I ask them what they learned in the former and what they 
were supposed to learn in the latter. And then I ask them what grades 
they earned in both. Inevitably, the grades they received are crystal 
clear: they can answer the question immediately. The content they 
received or failed to receive is much more difficult, if not 
impossible, for them to remember. See? I tell them, all you got out 
of either experience was one damn letter (or number). But that's the 
nature of the system: the reward is the grade, not the learning that 
grade purports to represent. Every teacher has the experience of 
students desperately asking them, "What can I do to get a 'A'?" If 
they ask, "What do I need to know?" the unspoken subtext is always, 
"What do I need to know to get such and such a grade?" Or they ask, 
"Is this going to be on the final exam?" which means, if it isn't, it 
must not be worth much. If the knowledge doesn't translate directly 
into the desired grade, there is no desire for that knowledge. I get 
frustrated by such requests, but I can't blame the students: they've 
learned well, just not what we claim to be teaching them. They've 
learned that the grade is the most important thing, therefore that's 
what they're going to focus their energies on: getting the grade.

When I can, I take grades off the table. In the last workshop I 
taught at the University of Cincinnati, I began the class by giving 
my usual jeremiad against grades and then said, "I know you're 
worried about grades. And you're right to be so: that's the way the 
system is set up. However, in this class, I want to eliminate what I 
see as an impediment to your learning. If you come to class, do what 
I ask you do, you'll get an 'A.' In fact, right now I'm declaring 
that all of you already have an 'A.' All you can do is lose it. 
Unless you hear from me directly, there's nothing to worry about 
anymore. You've already got what you want. Now, let's see what we can 
learn together." In that class, I didn't have to speak to anyone, 
pull them aside and say, "You know, you really haven't been doing 
much and I'm a little worried . . . etc." Freed from grade anxiety, 
the students were able to concentrate on their writing, without 
worrying whether "it was good enough" or whether "it was what the 
teacher wanted." Did some students do more than others? Of course. 
Did some students coast? Sure. But those were the ones that were less 
interested in writing, and more concerned about just getting a 
humanities requirement out of the way. But even those students, I'm 
convinced, learned more, did more, experimented more, took more 
risks, than they would have in a grade-infested environment. And, 
frankly, what do I care if they coast? That's their loss, not mine. 
I'm more interested in those students who respond to the "freedom" I 
offer, anyway. All learning involves risks, but grades make 
risk-taking a very risky proposition. If the student tries something 
difficult and they fail, their grade could suffer. But how can we 
learn anything unless we attempt to go beyond our current capacities? 
That's what's so terribly perverse about the current system: we don't 
provide the opportunity for students to fail more often, without 
penalty. Edison failed how many hundreds of times to find the right 
substance that could serve as a filament for the light bulb? What if 
he had been in a situation where every failure meant some permanent 
blot on his record? What motivation would he have had to keep trying 
until he succeeded? And that's the cruel double-bind we put students 
in: we claim we want them to learn something, but then take away one 
of the most valuable tools necessary for learning: failure. I like to 
ask my students how long it would have taken them to learn to walk 
when they were toddlers if they received a bad grade for every time 
they fell down or stumbled. They are inevitably amused by the 
example, but I think they get the point.

The phrase "competitive academic model" is redundant: the academy is 
intrinsically competitive. Sometimes you compete against other 
students (when grading curves are employed); sometimes you compete 
against yourself and your own strengths and weaknesses--but you're 
always competing, striving to be rewarded at the end of the 
competition by that ephemeral little mark on a report card. And even 
when you win the competition, you lose, because too often the true 
purpose of being in school has been subsumed by the pursuit of the 
grade.

However, as much as I agree with Bill's mini-treatise, it is a 
somewhat beside the point when discussing writing workshops, since 
very few workshops rely on exams. This just makes things worse, 
though, because now the path to the grade is even more difficult to 
follow. At least in the more "objective" disciplines, like math, it's 
easier to figure out what you have to know, and agreement about what 
constitutes "the right answer" is more widespread (which makes things 
easier for the teachers, as well). If you answer that 2+2=4 you can 
be pretty confident that your teacher will agree that you have 
learned what you need to know, and there's no gray area to trip you 
up. If you answer that 2+2 is 5, then you are e. e. cummings and 
you've entered the horribly subjective world of poetry where 
certainty is much more difficult to come by. A student who asks a 
physics professor what they need to know to get an 'A' will be told 
to memorize this formula, be able to work this equation, etc. And if 
the student can manage to do that and, as Bill notes, regurgitate it 
properly, an 'A' will be theirs. But when a student comes up to me 
and asks the same question, am I supposed to answer, "Write better 
poems"? Theoretically, yes, I guess. But then the inevitable next 
question will arise, "How can I make this poem an 'A' poem?" or some 
variation of that query. And then what do I say? Richard Hugo, in his 
book of essays "The Triggering Town," writes about poetry workshops 
and admits openly that grading poetry is virtually impossible. "If 
anyone can tell me how to grade a poem, please let me know," he 
writes, "because I haven't a clue." (paraphrase) I agree completely. 
Sure, some of the writing I get from students is better than writing 
I get from other students, but if I'm asked to explain why, or asked 
how the bad writing can be made better, I can offer all sorts of 
mumbo jumbo, but I can't provide a recipe that will guarantee a 
certain grade. Would the "Waste Land" earn an 'A'? When it first 
appeared, definitely not (except among the few cognoscenti). But now 
it's a classic. Does this mean that if a student writes like Eliot, 
an 'A' is guaranteed? What does it even mean "to write like Eliot"? 
We're seeking original writing, aren't we? But if it's truly 
original, meaning we've never seen the like of it before, how can we 
apply established evaluation systems to such writing?

The problem with workshop grading, then, is that the student becomes 
even more in thrall to the professor, a victim of that individual's 
personal taste. I like my taste, but I have no illusions that it is 
any where near infallible. Besides, I don't want students to write 
like me; I want them to write like themselves. And it's difficult to 
encourage that in an atmosphere where students must do their best to 
scope out what the teacher wants, where they spend too much time 
looking in the wrong direction, as it were, at the instructor, rather 
than within.

In the workshops I've been a student in, the competition for grades 
was mostly a battle between each individual student and the 
professor. There were no grading curves, so students weren't pitted 
against each other directly. Wm's experience sounds like it was a 
little different. And I have heard of some cutthroat workshops where 
students were pitted against each other, though for what prize (the 
teacher's favor?) I've never been exactly certain. Maybe I've been 
lucky, but my experience is that most workshop students try to be 
helpful, because if another student writes a better poem, it won't 
affect their grades directly. Besides, one way to impress the teacher 
is to demonstrate how well you can comment on someone else's work. In 
the best workshops I've been in, students were glad when someone did 
something really great, and used that as a challenge to try to do the 
same. Not to win a competition, but rather to climb to the same 
exalted spot in the esteem of the class. William's right that it all 
depends on the teacher. An insecure control-freak, with rigid 
personal aesthetic standards, can make a workshop a miserable 
experience: in such an atmosphere, evaluation criteria can be so 
mysterious as to be unknowable (the teacher basically uses the 
classic porn i.d. standard: "I can't really define it, but I know it 
when I see it" type of thing). Students gather together after the 
term is over, compare their marks, and attempt to divine what the 
teacher "really" wanted (even though, by then, it's too late for 
those who "came up short"). Or, such a teacher makes it clear that 
good writing is just like what the teacher writes. The "winners" in 
such a class are those who are the best imitators. Such teachers are 
more interested in recruiting disciples that will validate their own 
methods by aping them, than anything else.

In the workshops I teach, my goal is to use the community of writers 
in the workshop to act as the first sounding board. That is, a writer 
releases their work into a swarm of differing aesthetic beliefs and 
sees how their work fares in the encounter. As the teacher, I provide 
just one viewpoint among many. Well, ideally, that's what would 
happen, but unfortunately I have to work within a system that allows 
me to delay evaluation, but not eliminate it. I know that and the 
students definitely know that: at grading time, some opinions are 
more equal than others. Of course, my opinion is informed by years of 
reading and writing and studying that my students can't match, so 
maybe it should hold a little more weight, if only because I can 
maybe help them avoid common mistakes, or inform them how the rest of 
the writing world might respond to their work, things like that: I 
employ a larger context, which can be useful, though admittedly not 
definitive. The problem is that too often, mine becomes the only 
opinion (though high schoolers are devout relativists sometimes in 
such matters: "That's just your opinion; I still think my poem is 
finished. And wonderful.")

Given all this, you can imagine that my "reflexive defensiveness" (to 
sort of quote Wm) was engaged when I read that his on-line workshop 
would be "based on a classroom model in which everybody is graded on 
giving feedback to the writer." Obviously, I didn't think Wm was 
suggesting that participants would receive weekly grades from the 
moderator (if there was one), but the very mention of grading in 
relation to writing made me instantly wary, since I spend so much of 
my job trying to avoid that very thing.

Aside from graded workshops or workshops in which I'm responsible for 
the grades, I've also participated in informal writing groups that 
work just like workshops, but there are no teachers and no 
evaluations: just friends offering commentary. That's what I imagine 
Wm's on-line workshop would be like: an opportunity to share work 
with like-minded souls who can provide useful feedback. I've found 
such groups to be invaluable, particularly as a way to regain the 
"momentum" Wm mentions can get lost once classroom deadlines 
disappear. My desire to have something to read at the next group, 
becomes the motivation to keep writing. But I am worried about the 
"obligation" to respond every week that Wm suggests. I recognize the 
need for consistent response, but I already have way too many 
obligations I'm failing to meet. I'm not sure I want to be saddled 
with another one.

Well, I've rambled on long enough. More specific responses to Wm's 
proposal in another e-mail . . .

Hope I've answered some of your questions, Rob. I'd be happy to 
clarify any unintelligible portions.

--Dirk