The Death of the English Degree, Brought on by Critical Analysis

[knitter4democracy]

41. My replies to your retorts. ;)

1. I did that assignment at an alternative high school with students who had already done English 9's R&J three times and needed to be taught a different play in a small pull-out group. Not sure why you thought it was only an AP or honors level assignment, since it's often done on the middle school and high school levels. Then again, that group's final test for the unit was fairly stunning (they had to write up how they'd produce the play with a $500 grant at our school from casting to costumes to sets--they blew that one out of the water).

2. If I understand correctly, creative writing majors don't have to take that class, and some kinds of English majors don't, either. It was optional for English majors in education, if I remember right, at my college. At least, the elementary ed people didn't have to take it. I don't think it makes sense to say that students will master a skill in just one class and so don't have to do it ever again in other classes.

3. Most states do have some sort of standard curricula amongst college degree programs, but that does not mean that they are the same from state to state.

4. Personal taste is easy to deal with when a good rubric is used, and frankly, even given I went to a conservative Christian college, I never have had a professor ever say that I couldn't tackle a paper in a more creative way. The only place I've found that is very against the idea of writing anything other than exactly what is delineated is my graduate program in education; every English prof I have had, from my college to grad classes at a state school, has always said that creative options were not only allowed but encouraged. I don't think they like reading the same dreck over and over again, just like I don't. Just because students go with the safe, boring option doesn't mean other options don't exist. Heck, I wrote an essay in my Am. Lit. class in college that was in the epistolary style that my prof helped me edit into something better, taking time to meet with me one-on-one a few times to work through the writing process with me--all that, just because I asked if I could.

College is what we make of it. It's easy to blame the system or to blame the parts of the system we interact with the most, professors, but in reality, it's not their fault if we don't learn to stretch our wings, ask for the chance to try something different, or look at the assignment and see a different way to do it that still meets the requirements. They set up the right conditions, and if we're too scared for our GPA to take the risk, that's on us, not them.