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“Learning” versus Understanding

I was listening to NPR on the way in to work today and they had a segment about Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird, which is nearing its 50th anniversary as a published work. Mockingbird is one of my favorite pieces of fiction; one I actually read (instead of skimming) in high school and is one of those rare books where the movie is just as good; Gregory Peck will forever be Atticus Finch in my eyes. Did you know Harper Lee never published another book? Talk about going out on top.

Anyway, the NPR piece started in a 10th grade classroom and got a few sound bites from the teacher, who said she first read it in college (what?) and fell in love with it. Then they interview one of the 10th graders and ask her about the book. She replied back in that way that all kids in grade through high school do, with that essay-prepared answer using part of the question in the answer. What got me was that the girl (and I'm paraphrasing here) said that she learned that people shouldn't be treated differently because of the color of their skin.

I'm sorry. You learned that? Just then?

Assuming the school was not stuck in an alternate universe stuck in 1961, I'll guess that the girl misspoke; she didn't learn that people shouldn't be treated differently because of race, but instead she discovered that in the past people were treated differently - to extremes - because of the color of their skin. To say that she learned about equal treatment for races implies that this is new information for her, which would be kind of sad some 55 years after the Rosa Parks incident and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

I blame education more than anything else for the response. From grade school on you are taught to answer questions using "complete sentences", which means you're to restate the question in your answer. For example, if you're asked:

What is your favorite color?

you answer:

My favorite color is [color].

This leads to clearer writing; however between this and essays where students have to dump almost the entire essay question into an opening paragraph in order to get proper credit, we're left with too much thought put into the structure, and not enough into the message. So by 10th grade, when this poor girl is being interviewed by the news and has a microphone or recorder put in front of her face - likely after having been prepped weeks beforehand with practice questions and with her teacher within earshot - she ends up regurgitating the answer she gave on the radio, more concerned with using a complete sentence than with giving an answer that didn't make her sound like a converted bigot.

I always hated "complete sentences", mainly because I hated writing by hand (remember - I've been a computer geek for a while) but also because I found it wasteful and impractical. People don't talk like that. I litter this blog post (and pretty much all of my writing) with contractions not to save a handful of keystrokes but because that's how I speak, and how most of the people around me speak. I'm told when I write people who read it hear it in their head in my voice, which I think is cool. I think that's how writing should be - messages that the author would tell you themselves if they met you in person.

I know teachers - especially English teachers - have a tough job. Schedules of high school students are packed so tight with classes, necessary extra-curricular activities, and time spent with friends (and sometimes even family) that the thought of being able to sit and read several hundred pages of literature - some of it hundreds of years old - is inconceivable, even if they wanted to. Between that and a constantly evolving language, English teachers can't rely on the syllabus they drew up even five years ago. It's going to be tough, but at some point, you have to meet somewhere in the middle between a paragraph and a half before answering a question and "LOL OMG ROFL KTNXBI!"

So English teachers of America, I beg of you - encourage coherent writing, not specific structure. Few things discourage a young writer more than writing a clear and coherent paper with a strong argument only to have points taken off or to have it thrown back in their face because it didn't fit into an antiquated formulaic structure.