NPO #7: Learned Passion?

Good morning, Ticketholders!
I had other plans for what I would post for you this week, but my video conversion equipment crapped out on me, so I had to go with another option. After much consideration, that option turned out to be the following essay FROM Piece Offerings #10: Learned Passion (November 30, 2011).
I don't exactly remember what the writing prompt was for this, but it was my midterm paper from the International Cinema course I took at San Diego State University. As you can probably guess by the title, it is a commentary on whether or not passion can be learned and how the various styles of teaching it (if possible) can effect success in the students' extracurricular future. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.

Sean Wilkinson 

10/11/2005 

TFM363 

Learned Passion? 

“Those who teach artists…ought to be [artists themselves]” (22) says Jerry Farber in his Intro to Lit, MWF 9, and I agree with him for the most part; the majority of students (at least from what I have seen at San Diego State) in any art, music, or film class are artists or want to be artists in their chosen discipline. They have a drive to create something visual or aural, but they lack the skill required to make something “good,” or the knowledge of what “good” (aesthetically pleasing, emotion-evoking) art is. So they take the requisite courses in history, appreciation and recognition, theory, etc. At SDSU, even writing has the RWS department to teach the technical aspects of the art.
This is all fine and dandy, but the system goes wrong when the crossover between free expression and learned behavior becomes too thick: when art “is turned into homework” (12). Literature, which is basically a course on how to be a better reader (a pointless aim, from the angle that most literature classes are pursued), has been reassigned the name “English,” so-called because the professor can feel free to hand out busywork on grammar correction any time he wishes, require a term paper of the “Choose four of the following six…use evidence to support your thesis…demonstrate that you are aware…”(14) variety, and throw in any other elements of an RWS-type course that work to the department’s standards of what an “English” class curriculum should entail. Looking at Farber’s opening example of the Moby Dick exam, we see that the students are required to read a 700 page book full of difficult prose in a two-week period, obtain some afore-expected meaning, at least a few of them have no idea what the meaning is (that the teacher is looking for) or what they will otherwise be tested on. Therefore, they must speed-read, note everything symbolic or plot-related (but not resonant), apply their three-page list of terminology (sometimes called a “vocabulary sheet,” ha-ha, supposedly to the effect of expanding the student lexicon), and spend more time overall trying to delve into the professor’s mind than into the book (as the man in “Crows” from Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams explored van Gogh’s paintings) they are supposed to know cold by exam day. But wait a minute. Aren’t we supposed to already know how to read? We have brains of our own, with specific capacities for information, and the information we retain is unique to each individual. So what a literature class should really entail is the reading of several short books (perhaps a hundred pages a week for three weeks to a month), the homework would consist of optional note-taking (to organize the reader’s personal ideas), and the exam would be replaced by something akin to a book-discussion group or a written critiquing of each book. If you attend or submit your papers, you get credit for the course, otherwise you don’t. It doesn’t matter what you “should” learn from a book or that you know the name of the author’s cat or that on page one, he’s using the style of neoclassical-nihilistic-postcranial parallelism. All that matters is that you learned your information your way and you aided in several other students learning their information their way; the rest is just a making-of featurette that takes away from the magic of the piece.

As you can’t force a passion for reading (especially not with a 700 page classical clunker like Moby Dick), nor can you force a passion or a style in art, writing, music, or film. Passion and style are at least motivated, at most inspired, but rarely coerced out of a person who doesn’t want or have them to begin with. So grading on the 5-letter scale doesn’t really make sense here; you can’t grade generically on individual style and creative drive without compromising the students’ talent. I also agree with Farber in that art of any kind should be graded (if at all) “by…competition…in intellectual activity, within a society that values and supports this activity” (20) as with the Julius Caesar Quiz Bowl in the movie The Emperor’s Club. Yet his tone suggests that our society rejects competition. This is the same society where The Price is Right and Jeopardy have been on television for twenty years or more, where UCSD televises the Academic Decathlon, and awards shows from every artistic avenue draw huge audiences each year. This is clearly a society that values and supports competition in the real world, and since the goal of college (and, yes, lower institutions as well) is to prepare its student body for the real world, wouldn’t it be intelligent to move some courses from the ABCDF system to a 1st, 2nd, 3rd,…, nth place system? Take the concept of peer pressure and consider this: twenty-five students in an art history class are graded ABCDF based on their knowledge of the course content to date; three received A’s, five received B’s, ten received C’s, six received D’s, and one failed. The lone F (having no peers grade-wise and realizing his failure) would be motivated to better his score, but those in the other grading brackets (having others who share their assigned grade values) would be content with their position unless acted upon by pressures from their other classes or their extracurricular lives. But in a place system, each student would be given a value based on their individual knowledge of the subject (decided by a kind of academic elimination tournament, i.e.: a spelling-bee), perhaps motivating them to repeat the course or go into the next competition with the intent of bettering their score. Excessive generalizing and coercion do not encourage passion, improvement, or growth; they stagnate, degenerate, and depress.

Some of you may note here that this isn't the traditional essay format I inadequately demonstrated for you last time. It does not follow the five paragraph structure, has some unprofessional word choices, and is rather jumbled in focus and in detail/commentary pairings. That is, in part, done on purpose, because the whole point of the source material I had been given to comment on was about not strictly adhering to academic traditions, as too much structure can cripple one's creativity. You might also notice here a recurrence of theme, as I compare and contrast the academic and passionate approaches to learning and competition, again clearly advocating for the seemingly simpler, less categorical approach as I did in the Underworld essay (and that I was again venting my frustrations at the world I had been living in--an unsatisfactory world that I had given myself to live in by not applying myself wholly to my then-chosen discipline of Computer Science). Still, in the theoretical class of twenty-five mentioned above (and the actual class of much greater size), I was among those who received A's for their efforts.
Do you believe in structure or freedom? Grades or places? Competition or cooperation? Or should there be some middle ground achieved between these extremes? Let me know in the comments, like, share, and subscribe, and click some ads so I can afford to keep from stagnating, degenerating, and depressing. And stay tuned because another mythical Throwback is coming this Thursday.