Whining-Intensive Courses
On Wednesday of this week, I introduced the rather substantial writing component of the Music History I course I teach at Saint Mary's University. This course (and its continuation, Music History II) is coded as "writing intensive" in the university curriculum. The minimum requirement for such a course is that it contain ten pages of formal, graded writing, and that at least one assignment involve a significant mechanism for revision based on feedback. This year, a standardized grading rubric was added, to be applied to at least one assignment.
I have been teaching this course at this university since the Spring of 1998, long before the notion of coding courses as "writing intensive" was posited. I have always required a major research paper (15-25 pages) as part of the course. Unfortunately, the ten-page formal, graded writing requirement, once established, immediately served to give me the appearance of a maniac fixated on exceeding the course requirement by several hundred percent. If one writes a 15-page paper, and in the process generates a one-page topic paragraph, a three-page outline, a 15-page draft, and a 15-page final paper, the total (all fair game in calculating the "formal, graded writing" requirement) of 34 pages does give me a slightly sadistic appearance.
But writing is good for you! Seriously, I do wish my students understood just how valuable an assignment this paper truly is. Of course, I do want them to absorb at least a skeletal sense of the flow of the history of the discipline - and western music has a tremendously rich and interesting history. It is important that they are aware of the origins and context of their art, and year after year, students ask me why a large research paper is a catalyst to this overall understanding. "Can't we just memorize the dates and names and terminology?" Well, of course you could.
The real value of writing a paper of this length and focus is, quite simply, to force the student to become "expert" (the term is relative) in a specific area of music history. Whether it be a specific composer, instrument, musical work, genre, or some other facet of the discipline, the goal is for the student to delve deeply enough into a topic to command a level of knowledge beyond that which would be expected from the broad survey of the course itself. Further, the paper is supposed to hone skills of research, organization, and presentation in written form.
Returning to the perennial resistance to the assignment, one can see the consumer mentality at work: "I'm paying for this course. Why should I have to work so hard on something that somebody else has already researched?" Or, a personal favorite, "How is writing this paper going to get me a good job?" Quite simply, it won't. What it will do is develop skills and confidence and the ability to think and organize. Certainly, these are skills that many employers seek, but they aren't going to read your Music History I research paper and exclaim, "My God, this is BRILLIANT! You're hired!"
For my own part, I love language. I am especially fond of English, not only because it is my native tongue, but also because it is the largest and most unwieldy of languages, an amalgamation of Anglo-Saxon, French, Latin, and a linguistic vacuum cleaner sucking up pretty much anything else that has a potential use. It is awkward, inconsistent, eccentric, and has by far the largest vocabulary of human tongues. If one were to design a language, it would likely be the antithesis of modern English. And yet, the very quirkiness of the language lends a richness to it that is unmatched. It steals shamelessly from other languages, and this kleptomaniacal tendency ensures that no vacuum of meaning can exist for very long before it is filled with a borrowed word (or one invented for the need). And while this may be gauche, our most boorish of languages possesses an unparalleled flexibility.
With that said, I am not seriously expecting to convert all of my students, or even a majority, to an embrace of verbal virtuosity. Indeed, complete sentences and subject-verb agreement in all instances would be sufficiently miraculous. No, I am aware of the uphill struggle, and I well know that only a few students will possess the ability to write on a truly extraordinary level. What matters in this context is that each student understand that learning the craft of writing at a proficient level is a prerequisite to being an educated person. There are, it must be said, many people with diplomas who are not 'educated' in the sense that they have learned to use their minds, and are open to continued learning. Most rare is the true 'intellectual,' who hungers for knowledge, actively seeks it, and develops the mental discipline required to absorb, understand, and synthesize.
Perhaps consumerism is at the root of my greatest frustration in university teaching: the insistence that all courses and curricula be tied to a specific career path with a salary figure firmly in mind. Going to college should not be linked directly to getting a job! There are plenty of technical schools out there that teach specific skills and even work toward job placement. These are valuable institutions with a clear mission, and I do not wish to denigrate them. However, a four-year, liberal arts college degree is NOT supposed to get you a specific job. This is a fairly recent myth concocted by college recruiters and admissions officers, consumed by parents who, after paying the bills for junior, want some assurance of an eventual empty nest and the attendant bump in disposable income. They do not want junior moving back in and living in the basement.
Sadly, the college-leads-to-high-paying-job myth has become so entrenched that it threatens to completely obscure the central value of a liberal arts education. That value is in the development of a mind, provisioning it with a library of specific knowledge and training it to acquire and evaluate new knowledge, placing it in a meaningful context. With this high-order cognitive ability, an educated person may succeed in a broad range of duties, adapt to changing conditions, and present convincing arguments. An educated person will appreciate different perspectives, build consensus, and refine systems. In short, an educated person will be empowered and encouraged to lead.
Does the quality of being educated translate to a higher earning potential? One must admit that it probably does, because organizations and employers certainly value the abilities that a liberal arts education seeks to impart. However, an education, in and of itself, guarantees no financial security. It is not a quid pro quo exchange of tuition dollars for a high-paying job upon graduation. The tuition is paid as the price of admission to a community of individuals that value the development of the mind. It is up to the student to use that access wisely.
My music history students will not become 'intellectuals' on the basis of one paper, or on the basis of reading hundreds of pages or listening to dozens of recorded musical examples. In fact, the intellectuals lurking in my classes are easily spotted, and would be what they are with or without my intervention. I do, however, hope that all of my students seek to be 'educated' people. I hope that they learn to use their minds, and that they understand that it is not the discipline-specific knowledge imparted in a course that leads to "education." Rather, it is the processing of that knowledge, and the resultant ability to continue to learn, governed by one's own curiosity and the skills developed, that defines an education in the broadest sense.
-PMÓS
I have been teaching this course at this university since the Spring of 1998, long before the notion of coding courses as "writing intensive" was posited. I have always required a major research paper (15-25 pages) as part of the course. Unfortunately, the ten-page formal, graded writing requirement, once established, immediately served to give me the appearance of a maniac fixated on exceeding the course requirement by several hundred percent. If one writes a 15-page paper, and in the process generates a one-page topic paragraph, a three-page outline, a 15-page draft, and a 15-page final paper, the total (all fair game in calculating the "formal, graded writing" requirement) of 34 pages does give me a slightly sadistic appearance.
But writing is good for you! Seriously, I do wish my students understood just how valuable an assignment this paper truly is. Of course, I do want them to absorb at least a skeletal sense of the flow of the history of the discipline - and western music has a tremendously rich and interesting history. It is important that they are aware of the origins and context of their art, and year after year, students ask me why a large research paper is a catalyst to this overall understanding. "Can't we just memorize the dates and names and terminology?" Well, of course you could.
The real value of writing a paper of this length and focus is, quite simply, to force the student to become "expert" (the term is relative) in a specific area of music history. Whether it be a specific composer, instrument, musical work, genre, or some other facet of the discipline, the goal is for the student to delve deeply enough into a topic to command a level of knowledge beyond that which would be expected from the broad survey of the course itself. Further, the paper is supposed to hone skills of research, organization, and presentation in written form.
Returning to the perennial resistance to the assignment, one can see the consumer mentality at work: "I'm paying for this course. Why should I have to work so hard on something that somebody else has already researched?" Or, a personal favorite, "How is writing this paper going to get me a good job?" Quite simply, it won't. What it will do is develop skills and confidence and the ability to think and organize. Certainly, these are skills that many employers seek, but they aren't going to read your Music History I research paper and exclaim, "My God, this is BRILLIANT! You're hired!"
For my own part, I love language. I am especially fond of English, not only because it is my native tongue, but also because it is the largest and most unwieldy of languages, an amalgamation of Anglo-Saxon, French, Latin, and a linguistic vacuum cleaner sucking up pretty much anything else that has a potential use. It is awkward, inconsistent, eccentric, and has by far the largest vocabulary of human tongues. If one were to design a language, it would likely be the antithesis of modern English. And yet, the very quirkiness of the language lends a richness to it that is unmatched. It steals shamelessly from other languages, and this kleptomaniacal tendency ensures that no vacuum of meaning can exist for very long before it is filled with a borrowed word (or one invented for the need). And while this may be gauche, our most boorish of languages possesses an unparalleled flexibility.
With that said, I am not seriously expecting to convert all of my students, or even a majority, to an embrace of verbal virtuosity. Indeed, complete sentences and subject-verb agreement in all instances would be sufficiently miraculous. No, I am aware of the uphill struggle, and I well know that only a few students will possess the ability to write on a truly extraordinary level. What matters in this context is that each student understand that learning the craft of writing at a proficient level is a prerequisite to being an educated person. There are, it must be said, many people with diplomas who are not 'educated' in the sense that they have learned to use their minds, and are open to continued learning. Most rare is the true 'intellectual,' who hungers for knowledge, actively seeks it, and develops the mental discipline required to absorb, understand, and synthesize.
Perhaps consumerism is at the root of my greatest frustration in university teaching: the insistence that all courses and curricula be tied to a specific career path with a salary figure firmly in mind. Going to college should not be linked directly to getting a job! There are plenty of technical schools out there that teach specific skills and even work toward job placement. These are valuable institutions with a clear mission, and I do not wish to denigrate them. However, a four-year, liberal arts college degree is NOT supposed to get you a specific job. This is a fairly recent myth concocted by college recruiters and admissions officers, consumed by parents who, after paying the bills for junior, want some assurance of an eventual empty nest and the attendant bump in disposable income. They do not want junior moving back in and living in the basement.
Sadly, the college-leads-to-high-paying-job myth has become so entrenched that it threatens to completely obscure the central value of a liberal arts education. That value is in the development of a mind, provisioning it with a library of specific knowledge and training it to acquire and evaluate new knowledge, placing it in a meaningful context. With this high-order cognitive ability, an educated person may succeed in a broad range of duties, adapt to changing conditions, and present convincing arguments. An educated person will appreciate different perspectives, build consensus, and refine systems. In short, an educated person will be empowered and encouraged to lead.
Does the quality of being educated translate to a higher earning potential? One must admit that it probably does, because organizations and employers certainly value the abilities that a liberal arts education seeks to impart. However, an education, in and of itself, guarantees no financial security. It is not a quid pro quo exchange of tuition dollars for a high-paying job upon graduation. The tuition is paid as the price of admission to a community of individuals that value the development of the mind. It is up to the student to use that access wisely.
My music history students will not become 'intellectuals' on the basis of one paper, or on the basis of reading hundreds of pages or listening to dozens of recorded musical examples. In fact, the intellectuals lurking in my classes are easily spotted, and would be what they are with or without my intervention. I do, however, hope that all of my students seek to be 'educated' people. I hope that they learn to use their minds, and that they understand that it is not the discipline-specific knowledge imparted in a course that leads to "education." Rather, it is the processing of that knowledge, and the resultant ability to continue to learn, governed by one's own curiosity and the skills developed, that defines an education in the broadest sense.
-PMÓS
posted by Patrick O'Shea | 7:36 PM
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