I’m finishing up my grading at the moment (just a few finals to grade and I’m done), but I wanted to take a minute to sing the praises of my freshpeople.
Normally, I don’t let my students have much of a choice in what they’re going to write about. For their first two essays, I give them a description of what the essays should do, some parameters for how it should do it (e.g. which texts have to be in there…I’ll mandate one, but they’ll choose others). For their last essay, however, I take the reins off and let them come up with their own topic.
This semester, however, was different. We were coming off of a long arc in the class about education and, after reading a bunch of Dewey/Freire/Montaigne/Emerson/Douglass/Anyon and assorted other commentaries on education, we spent a week discussing what they would be writing about.
They all clammed up. It was bizarre. It was as if, given carte blanche, they were suddenly paralyzed. Maybe it was the tyranny of choice, but I’ve never had this happen before. Normally, they all shuffle off and come back with essays that backslide a little—topics are often weak, sources are often poor. It’s the end of the term and they’re tired, so it’s OK.
But this class. They just could. not. come. up. with. anything.
And so I turned that into their assignment. I asked them to write about why it is that they couldn’t come up with something. I asked them to tie it into discussions we’d had about education.
Lord have mercy their essays were good. They were nuanced, treating the issue as complex and multi-faceted, never once resorting to didacticism or bumper-sticker-izing the issue. They were well-written, with thorough discussions from multiple sources.
Most importantly, for me, they were a blast to read. The demographics were all over the place, so I got essays by home-schooled kids, by kids educated in British systems abroad, by kids coming from madāris in California, by kids who did chunks of their schooling in central America, by kids who went to regular old American schools, and by the parents of kids who are struggling with the local school system. Not a single one of them was dull. Not a single one of them preached at me. Not a single one of them went on a rant. Every one was a joy.
I love it when they knock my socks off.