¶ How I Amaze My Students

Today my students were assigned to read a 2004 article by Steven Johnson, “Watching TV Makes You Smarter”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/magazine/24TV.html. We spent the whole class period (just under two hours) discussing the article, sometimes in small groups and otherwise as a whole class.

My part in the discussion was highly directed: I wanted the students to learn from how Johnson write, not really about what he writes. Whether or not TV makes you smarter is immaterial; that he writes with an easily identifiable structure is very, very useful for teaching a course in writing. And so I assigned them the article and asked them to identify some basic parts: where does he identify his argument? Where does he identify his critics? Where does he identify the structure for the body of his argument and how does he go about fulfilling what he describes? How does he use the key words he has provided his readers?

This is basic stuff for grad students, and I suspect not too difficult for most other readers as well. All it takes is to pay attention as you read and the stuff just pops out at you. Where Johnson says, “This growing complexity involves three primary elements: multiple threading, flashing arrows and social networks” you know to pay attention that he’s providing a legend for the structure for the rest of his article. All you need to do then is to pick out where he talks about multiple threading, where his discussion on flashing arrows begins and ends, and where he does his bit about social networks. Take that away, and then you can decide what to do with the rest: is it a second argument/structure? Is it just transitional crap? Is it unnecessary?

I don’t mean to recreate my lesson, sorry about that. I think this kind of analysis is fun: close reading is satisfying on its own terms. For my students, however, it is some kind of voodoo.

After class, three students came up to me and asked, “How do you do that?”
Me: ?
Them: How do you talk for two hours just about one article? How do you find all this stuff?
Me: ?
Them: Do you analyze everything you read? Do you pick apart every paragraph and, I dunno, like study it?
Me: No.

I was perplexed for a minute, and then I realized that they were honestly impressed. They read the article and thought they understood it, but I forced them to close read and were surprised that the structure — apart from the content — could be interesting. They don’t (yet) know how to evaluate a piece from scratch, but they’re starting to see that it could be, perhaps, cool.

I’m willing to accept their admiration. I’m happy to be the object of amazement and to be held up as a model for my students. If I’m lucky, it will carry over to their course evaluations at the end of the term: hallway compliments are nice, but compliments submitted to the department chair are so much nicer.

8 November 2007

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