I know I've neglected y'all. Please don't judge me. I've been very busy, and when I haven't been, all I've wanted to do is sleep or play Candy Crush, which is pretty much sleeping with my eyes open. (I also play chess pretty regularly, but I do it so badly that it doesn't count as bona fide intellectual distraction.) 

Without further ado:

I volunteered to teach summer academics this year. I get to be course director and it's high time I got the academic promotion this grants me, so I jumped at the opportunity. (I was also going to volunteer to be Air Officer Commanding for one or more of the summer cadet activities, but I never got the memo to sign up. Now I don't want to, so I suppose it's all for the best. I'll cherish the mere six weeks I'll get for my own summer vacation, in which I shall build a fire pit and do lesson prep for my fall classes.) 

As I type, I'm at the end of the course, which was 2.5 weeks long. The final lesson is this coming Wednesday. Even in this limited span of time, I covered the same amount of material and had the same amount of class "face time" as we would in a normal semester (2.5 to 3 hours daily).  

The course is the Academy's "English 411." It's a core course, required for all non-English-majors for graduation. My students must write and pass three papers (3-4 pages, 5-7 pages, and 7-8 pages, respectively), read and discuss the war literature of my choosing, and deliver three speeches (one 3-4 minutes, and two 5-7 minutes long). This is these students' sole duty for the 2.5 weeks I have them. In theory, they have no distractions. 

Required reading:

- Sebastian Junger's War, a gritty depiction of war on the ground in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan ("the Afghanistan of Afghanistan: too remote to conquer, too poor to intimidate, too autonomous to buy off"). This is a quick, riveting read, and is riddled with Army humor and thought-provoking--sometimes disturbing--observations about the nature of war. 

- Jon Krakauer's Where Men Win Glory, which is ostensibly about Pat Tillman but is really about the international and intra-national politics of Iraq and Afghanistan, how we got into those wars (I guarantee you'll be surprised), and the debacle surrounding Tillman's death by friendly fire. 

- Ben Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, a novel about ten soldiers who are being paraded around as examples of American heroes at a Thanksgiving Day Dallas Cowboy's game. This novel is fantastic for many reasons, beginning with Fountain's breathtaking prose, but its real power lies in its unflinching commentary on American "patriotism." Also? Lots of great Army humor. 

(I teach these books, by the way, because I recommend them to everyone. Hint hint.) 

I also require some war poetry reading and a paper on one war poem of the cadet's choosing from War, Literature and the Arts, the Academy's literary journal online. Oh...and I toss in a few essays about the myth of war (Chris Hedges, y'all!) and some speeches, including this USAFA Janetta Endowed Lecture by Ben Fountain last fall: "Soldiers on the Fault Line." (I'm interested in your thoughts on it, should you wish to read it.) 

Now that you have some idea of what is required of my students (and me) in a mere 17 days, understand that this is a senior-level course, and I expect senior-level work and commitment. I'm frumpy like that. 

In the course of this course (heh :) ), I've had a couple of realizations, which follow.

english gets no respect

This is an admittedly old rant for English academics, but I want to have my say.  

At the Academy, cadets think of English as a "fuzzy" subject (as opposed to a "hard" subject, like science and math). What they mean is that science and math have defined answers, while English (and other "fuzzy" subjects, such as history and psychology) does not. This seems to translate to their belief that all ideas, arguments, and answers in their English courses have more or less equal value, and that English is therefore easy--at least as compared to astroengineering and such. As a result, cadets tend to not prioritize homework for our courses (by which I mean, "They tend to half-ass it, if they bother at all"). 

This "English is easy"* attitude is exacerbated by our culture's emphasis on science and math being the end-all-be-all of education. And hey! USAFA is an engineering school (a world-class one, at that). English is just, you know, one of the required core courses. It isn't really important. 

* My own experience is that what cadets think of as "hard" subjects are far easier than composition and literature courses. Math and science, as noted, have answers--answers you can check. You can know if you have them right or not. Learn how numbers and formulas work and you've got it. English requires thought, research, clarity, and then more thought. You can never be sure you have The Answer; all you can be sure of is that you're doing your best to find it. 

The irony? English composition is probably the most important skill our cadets will study in their undergraduate careers. I'm not saying that math and sciences and history and languages and philosophy are not important. Au contraire! They are. But which skills will all of these cadets need most upon commissioning? Reading, writing, and speaking. Effective communication--oral and written, understanding and expressing--is a core leadership skill. Not to insult scientists, but let's be honest here: astroengineering--also a required course--is pretty much a throw-away in the grand scheme of things. 

But cadets and the world in general treat our subject like it is the one they have to make it through, just this once, and they'll be fine. So what do we do? We whine and complain that students aren't learning to read and write anymore, that they don't care. We talk incessantly about how painful it is to read student writing because it is riddled with stupid errors and it is uninspired, at best. I've said it myself: Grading is the part we get paid for. But what are we doing about it? 

All too often, little or nothing. If English gets no respect, we are largely to blame. 

yes, you can teach basic skills

I can't count the times I've heard someone say, "If students haven't figured out how to make their subjects and verbs agree by now, they're never going to learn." The implication is that they are simply incapable.

Hogwash.

To insist that students "just aren't going to learn" is to excuse yourself for not teaching them and for not holding them accountable. I hear these excuses--often expressed as a point of pride--for not requiring students to write well: "I think ideas are more important than grammar." "I'm not a stickler for grammar or punctuation." To me, quite frankly, that's like a calculus teacher excusing a student's inability to add and subtract. 

For the record, I also find ideas to be very important, but the fact remains that if I pass* a college student who refuses to apply the most basic mechanics of writing, I do them, and probably the country, a disservice. We are desperately in need of people who understand the power and importance of words. 

* I'm speaking in the starkest of terms here, but this isn't altogether true. It is possible to pass my class without good writing. I just make it extremely difficult. Anywhere from 20-35% of the grade my students receive on written work falls under mastery of style and mechanics, which includes grammar, punctuation, spelling, and elimination of deadwood/redundancy. It just so happens that, with few exceptions, students who can't put a sentence together struggle mightily with organization and content, as well. 

But see...at the college level, teaching these basic skills is remarkably easy. No really. These students are fully capable of teaching themselves, provided they are given minimum direction and adequate motivation. I've repeatedly discovered that if I hit their grades hard enough, it rearranges their priorities admirably. And? Somewhere through there, they start having ideas worth sharing, too. The second seems to build upon the first. Go figure. 

This may garner me a reputation for being a bitch, but frankly, my dear.... (You know the rest, and so be it.) 

The more I enforce my requirement for good, mechanically-sound writing, the more my struggling students make the time to sit down with me and go over their papers, word by word, idea by idea. (I read their papers aloud to them as I go, too. You'd be amazed how powerful that alone is. They visibly cringe. Most of them, I think, have never been confronted with how stupid they sound on paper.) I pause and point out every repetition of minor or unimportant details and irrelevant information. By the time we finish--which so far has happened before I get to the end of their papers--they understand, on a visceral level, that I'm not letting them slide on anything. This simple exercise invariably produces dividends far beyond the 20 to 30 minutes required to do it. 

if you do not understand or remember, you haven't read

This is my basic rule. It applies, of course, in the short term. I know from study and copious personal experience that most people retain very few details over the long term, but when you "read" something just last night and you cannot remember what happened, you may as well have been playing Call of Duty, for all I care, because the end result is the same. 

I've stopped railing at students to read slowly and closely, to read actively--ask questions of the text, underline key passages, picture what is happening and live it as they read. Instead, I hold my students accountable for the information and ideas they were assigned the night before. I give them my rule on the first day, as well as a condensed version of this quote:

“Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.”

― Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature

I also emphasize that I traffic in ideas, then I hold them accountable. I do this via quizzes, in which I ask them fill-in-the-blank questions, concept questions, and general questions about the characters and action of the story. Sometimes, I'll ask discussion questions in the quiz; that is, questions with no "right" answer, provided the answer each student provides is effectively argued for. If my students do not "get" what I expect in the beginning, they figure it out--in the words of my native dialect--right quick. 

The day before yesterday, I was discussing with a couple of colleagues how to get my students to read, and Don Anderson dropped by. He asked why I give quizzes. I told him that it makes my students read. He said, "Why do you care?"

He was serious. I was dumbfounded. 

Because...it's my job? Because because...um. Really?! Just because you've learned how to transform scribbles on paper does not mean you have learned to read--ask anyone who suffers from dyslexia. Just because you understand the rules and movements of chess doesn't mean you can play (I'm looking at myself here). Why do I care if my students read? Because it seems to me that most of them stopped developing this skill--as well as basic composition skills--around the eighth grade, and these students are suffering under the delusion that just because they can regurgitate basic events in a narrative that they have mastered the skill of reading. 

And they vote. 

Why do I even care?! I care because...you know what? That question doesn't even deserve an answer. Why the fuck don't you?

***

As of mid-term, I had one F and five D's out of fourteen students. Since then, their grades have come up considerably. Why? They realized that I will fail them if they don't do their reading and writing with the diligence and focus I require. 

"Require," I think, is the key word. 

***

I know I know. I'm preaching. What do I know about it? Maybe Don is right. Maybe I shouldn't care. Maybe I should just take my meds and shut up. Maybe I don't get the bigger picture where there are too many external forces that preclude "requirements" like mine from being enforced. I grant that may be the case elsewhere. It has been my experience that my department has my back, provided I make my expectations clear from the outset and can produce proof that I am consistent in my expectations, and that I worked with my students as necessary. Perhaps I am in a unique situation here. 

If I am in a unique situation in that regard, though, more's the pity. And if I'm not? Even more's the pity, because that means that our instructors--not just English instructors--don't care enough about writing skills to require they be mastered, even at the college level. 

Think on these things. 

d