Interpreting Interpretations

by Jennifer Peyser

The square root of 144 is twelve. There are 6.022 x 10²³ atoms in one mole. Pressure is inversely related to volume. In mathematics, chemistry, physics, and other related scientific fields, students learn unviolable laws of numerals a nd nature that are assumed to be true. In math class, we are judged on right or wrong, the presence or absence of the correct answer. Math is not subjective, not open to teacher and especially not student interpretation. In 1,000 mathematics classrooms , there will be 1,000 teachers who attest to the fact that two times two equals four. In 1,000 English classrooms, however, we could quite possibly find 1,000 different interpretations of Hamlet's famous soliloquy, Hawthorne's themes in The Scarlet Le tter, and Sophocles' message in Oedipus Rex. For every grammar rule, there may be several opinions about its application or relevance to the language; and for every stylistic device, there may be several style books with different guidelines a bout how and when to use it. We learn early on in our career as students that the writing process of an English class works very differently than number crunching in math and science. English does not have universal constants but is constantly evolving. English is a "liberal" art with few or no boundaries. English allows bending "The Rules," but this permission is often seen as the righ tof the teacher rather than the student.

Due to the ever-changing, ever-growing image of English, teachers, professors, and academics have a great power to influence the perceptions of their audience, the students. Like the Protestant minister responsible for interpreting the Bible and t hen sharing his thoughts with the congregation, the English professor has the opportunity to teach personal observations of writing, picking concepts from generally accepted models and choosing which should be emphasized. Using their power to individuall y interpret what models should be followed and which concepts should be taught, David Bartholomae and Peter Elbow each formed a different theory about the role of academic writing in the classroom.

Bartholomae concluded that academic writing is a necessity that must be acknowledged in the classroom. To him, teachers are the agents of academic writing, responsible for identifying and explaining it to students. Teachers are a major influence, and their inherent power cannot be eliminated by simply rearranging classroom desks in a circular formation. According to Bartholomae, history is another strong force affecting students. He further believes that students should openly recognize that wh ich influences their lives and writing; "students should be able to work closely with the ways their writing constructs a relationship with tradition, power, and authority." He stresses that students should look for their own small place in that history. To Bartholomae, situatedness, or where writing occurs and where students find their place in history and among other writers is key.

Bartholomae is confident of his stance that students must see "the big picture." However, though his debate opponent Peter Elbow agrees that students must find their place, he sees instructing students on their situatedness as "a large area of con flict." He seems to be caught between Bartholomaeís concept that the student is a dust speck among centuries of writing and the idea that students should be allowed to roam through a type of no-manís land in a first-year course, free of all the pressures and prejudices of being compared to established writers.

Even though Elbow often is unable to settle on a single positions of how to teach, he is careful to explain his belief that writing and learning can take place without teachers. An example he cites is that of the toddler who begins to speak and co nstruct sentences while he is too young even for preschool. He contends that most language skills are learned outside of the classroom; teachers may only cultivate, not create, raw knowledge and talent. Here we find a major discrepancy when compared to Bartholomaeís beliefs that teachers are a necessary part of the writing and learning process.

Considering the fact that Elbow and Bartholomae cannot even agree on whether a writing teacher can really teach writing, following their arguments of what should be in the curriculum of a first-year English class is rather difficult and confusing. In fact, after struggling through pages and pages of professionally polite bickering, I found it hard enough to climb out of their rhetorical swamp, let alone wipe the mud out of my eyes to form my own opinion about ìacademic writing.î Bartholomae and Elbow have now added their own dropts to the swamp and are an illustration of the infinite ways that English can be interpreted and taught, whether reading or writing, ìacademicî or ìfree.î

These two well-respected men were given a national forum and audience for adding their interpretations to the many before them, but, from my point of view, people who are truly responsible for implementing one strategy or the other are more relevant to the English student. It is the teacher of each class that must finally decide to whether to instruct on ìcreative writing,î assign research papers, lecture on stylistic sentences, etc. There are endless options. No matter what the genre or instructional vehicle for teaching writing, what I believe is most important is the end result: allowing students to interpret what theyíve learned.

Helping students learn to gather their own conclusions involves more than Elbowís or Bartholomaeís individual suggestions. Teachers should give perspective to students by giving them samples of the vast expanse of past literature, but they must al so be careful not to lose students in the annals of history. I disagree with Bartholomae that we cannot write on a clean slate; student writing is influenced, but not determined by the past or by teachers. Students should be, in a way, hu mbled by past talent and creativity, but they must then be taught to take ownership for the present and their own ideas.

With styles and interests being subjective from teacher to teacher, it is often easy to get lost while trying to keep up. From year to year throughout my high school career, I ended up modifying my writing style to fit each teacherís instructions. One year it was enough to finish a paper by its due date. The second year, I was told to write with the word ìterseî in mind, and in another I wrote three papers over twenty pages long. I learned subjects ranging from Shakespeare to short stories to H omer to modern poetry to the Bible. Each class was unique and stressed different aspects of writing and literature. I do believe that teachers have the right to drag their class through the very dregs of English theater, grammar, American literat ure, rhetoric, or Greek tragedy. However, teachers must simultaneously make sure their students emerge with a struggle, pick themselves up, shake themselves off, and live to tell about what theyíve learned from their work. The most important thing is th at students ìlive to tell about it,î that along the way, they sucked in what was taught, let external influences churn around with personal experience, and spit out a unique combination of learned and deduced knowledge.

Unfortunately, Bartholomae and Elbow only analyzed half of the situation--the teacherís job. They did not recognize that the best classrooms are those in which students and teachers share responsibility, not one in which the roles are as definitiv ely established as a mathematical theorem. Like Bartholomae and Elbow, I agree that it is the challenge of the first-year teacher to design the curriculum. However, I would additionally challenge the first-year English student to keep with the in terpretive tradition of writing by forming independent ideas about the teacherís material. Students should begin by learning what the teacher has to say but end by learning something that the teacher never taught.