One of the disadvantages of the standard elementary curriculum, according to author and teacher John Holt, is that the entire class moves along—step by step—with the majority of the class failing to understand each step. For example, how can a child be expected to add fractions when, in counting by tens, he says, "...eighty, ninety, a hundred, two hundred, three hundred..."? To decrease this problem of elementary undrstanding of numbers, Holt abandoned the traditionally designatd approach; he had his students write all the numbers from one to one thousand on rolls of bathroom tissue, marking off equal small sections for each consecutive number written. Rolls of the tissues were attached end-to-end until the task was completed; then the whole project was spread out on the recreation field. Only then could the children notice that there was much more distance between one hundred and two hundred than between one hundred and ninety. Hold was interested in establishing what he felt to be a proper fundation of understanding. And, similarly, Dr. Rockwood of EH 301 took his class back to the foundation of composition and critical writing.
Composition cannot, and should not, be taught as separate and apart from creative writing. Creative writing is the foundation, just as, for John Holts' pupils, the rolls of bathroom tissue served to establish a foundation for the understanding of mathematical realtionships. Creativiity is a much more universal phenomenon. It is much easier to create effectively than to criticize someone else's creation. One of Dr. Rockwood's basic beliefs is that the development of a critical style of writing must proceed from, and continue to encampass, the creative. More specifically, he expounded on the nature of the Jungian collective unsconscious, and used this as a basis for the "creation" of an effective creative style. As the weeks passed, the compositions of the students became decreasingly concerned, at least overtly, with this creative element. If the foundation of creativity is firm enough, it will never disappear as the student moves into the critical style.
An understanding of Dr. Rockwood's approach can better be seen in the path taken by the writing assignments. The first two compositions were extremely personally oriented: writing about a childhood memory and speculation about its meaning; and then contemplating the nature of an abstraction—beauty, love,or truth, for example—based upon our past experiences and present feelings. The latter can be seen as a combination of the procedures used in the first paper; in this case, the various speculations about the nature of those things we consider to be beautiful, or truthful, carries us to a level of abstraction where the common elements of speculation form the nature of the abstraction.
From this foundation, Dr. Rockwood has us move outward, examining an editorial and then an article on education. How well this reflects Dr. Rockwood's philosophy can be seen when it is uderstood that the editorial is more personally creative and less "objectively" critical than the essay on education. After this, the subjects of our compositions were more external, and the approach was not as specifically designated. For example, "the purposes of art," and "the nature of dreams." The effect of this direction was that it allowed the students to approach the external subject in a way that was personally relevant. Also, the students each had to develop a critical approach to the problem. In this way, they were discovering and creating their own particular critical style.
It is true that EH 301 was a college course taken primarily by prospective English teachers. But this basic approach can be applied to the learning of the nature of expository writing if one important fact is remembered: the child, or student, if being guided, need not know the destination to get there. Indeed, many of the students in the class did not. Dr. Rockwood, himself, said that the structure of the class could be compared to a mosaic, created and examined closely bit by bit. Only later would we be able to step back from the mosaic and observe the pattern. As another analogy, we can look at the impressionistic style of painting: one does not learn it by trying to paint entire pictures, copying others. The right approach is first to examine the paintings closely to discover the type of brush strokes and the blending of colors. One might then hazard a few tentative strokes of one's own. Only then does one begin to create effectively.
There are two basic problems to this approach, and they relate directly to the students. The first is because of the characteristic just previously mentioned: if the child does not know the direction, then the child must deal with the problem of uncertainty. And this becomes a problem for the teacher. It is then necessary to decrease the threat and worry the student feels. Small children can tolerate this uncertainty, but the educational system and classroom situation tend to decrease its existence—and, thereby, the ability of students to work and learn when it is present. When the teacher "spoon feeds" and the student simply regurgitates the information, it is necessary for the student to know, and understand completely what is desired, and then to remember it long enough to give it back to the teacher.
The second problem the teacher has to deal with results, also, from the student's experiences with the educational system. If the student has been on "level four" and expects to go on to "level five," it is difficult to move with back to "level one" (or below!), in order to acquire and understand the foundation upon which the following levels rest.
Of course, the problems of the approach are unavoidable because they are pre-existing, and because they interfere with the basic structure of traditional, uncreative instruction by virtue of their contrary nature. The problems are more than compensated for, however, by the fact that no one can continue to grow or learn effectively without a stable foundation or without understanding. Just as Jung's collective unconscious reaches back to the beginning of mankind's past, so the teacher, using an approach similar to Dr. Rockwood's, must reach back into the student's past. The teacher must travel back with each student.
© Copyright 2002 by Robert J. R. Rockwood. All rights reserved.