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I know I am not the only one who, as a child, when asking a parent or other authority figure why I was supposed to do something was told “because.”
“Because” was often sufficient to secure compliance because the authority behind the command was not merely figurative but backed by the potential for real consequences. E.g.:
Why should I eat my brussels sprouts?
Because if you don’t, you won’t get dessert.
School is experienced by many as a long series of becauses.
Why do I have to write an essay about The Lord of the Flies?
Because you should know something about literature.
Why do I have to take algebra?
Because you have to know it to take calculus, which you have to do to get into a good college.
Why do I need to go to college?
Because otherwise you’ll be a failure.
As a longtime instructor of college writing, most of the students entering the classroom entered wondering why they had to take this particular course. I often fell back on similar constructions as the above.
You need to take first-year writing because in college, you’re going to write a bunch of stuff, and this is going to help show you how.
You need to take technical writing because you’re going to get a job where they will expect you to know how to write and communicate.
I was selling a means to an end, and for a long time—my teaching career started in 1994—most students were willing to buy in to the bargain. After all, they were already in college, so they understood the credentialing and certification aspect of the enterprise. If I was the person who was tasked with certifying them on this part of the checklist, so be it.
These were not great rationales that offered any meaningful connection or inspiration, but by and large, they proved sufficient.
Over time, however, my faith in these rationales eroded. For one, I didn’t believe them myself. The idea that a first-year writing course could expose a student to all the different forms of writing students would be expected to do over the rest of their educations is absurd. Instead, I oriented the course around helping students develop their writing practices, a way of thinking about writing and acting as writers that they could adapt to any occasion. I couldn’t tell them how to write in every genre and form that they’d encounter, but I could give them a way to solve writing problems that were novel to them.
This led to a change in how I framed the work of the first-year writing course. I was not preparing students for future scholastic challenges. I was inculcating them into a way of thinking about and interacting with the world through the building of their writing practices and participating in the “academic conversation.”
Rather than blow past the reality that my students did not know why they were taking the course or that what they might learn in it was important, I would make my case up front in my course policies document, which was structured as a FAQ and which we went over together as a class on the first day, with me handing out the questions to individual students and then answering them in turn.
After an introductory question, “Who are you?” where I shared my background and biography, I segued into this series of Q’s and A’s.
Q: Why is the university making me take this course?
A: English 110 is the course that fulfills what is known colloquially as “freshman composition.” As part of your education, you’re expected to be proficient writers across multiple contexts.
Q: I hate to interrupt, but don’t we already know how to write? We did get admitted to a rather selective university, after all.
A: Indeed, it is my understanding that you come equipped with a solid base of writing skills nurtured through the years of your primary and secondary educations. But what we’re up to at the college level is going to be a little different.
Q: Different how?
A: For the most part, while there are some exceptions, most of the learning in high school (and before) is in the service of acquiring “information.” You’ve learned facts and figures and been asked to prove your acquisition of this information. You probably know the difference between meiosis and mitosis. You’ve been told that when Hamlet starts his soliloquy with “To be or not to be,” that he’s demonstrating the duality of his nature and the conflict at the center of the play. You know what a soliloquy is. You know all kinds of things because you’ve been told them or read them, and you’ve remembered them. You’ve acquired an amazing amount of information. This was all good and necessary and is an excellent marker for your future success in college.
But it is also now largely irrelevant, or more accurately, insufficient.
Q: You still haven’t quite answered the question. What’s different between the writing we’ve done in high school and the writing we’re expected to do in this course?
A: At a higher education institution such as this one, the acquisition of information is secondary to our real goal, which is the creation of “knowledge.” Knowledge is what happens when information is filtered through a particular point of view, a unique intelligence, if you will.
Think of it this way: Apples have fallen from trees since the dawn of mankind. It took Isaac Newton to be bonked by one on the head (allegedly) for the theory of gravity to come into existence.
You all are a bunch of unique intelligences, so your role here, rather than to prove to me that you can pay attention in class and write stuff down to later regurgitate it in the form of a quiz or essay, is to pick up an oar and start helping us row the good ship CofC and the world at large towards greater enlightenment. Information is highly perishable. Knowledge is a building block upon which more knowledge can rest.
You are being asked to join in the “academic conversation” primarily by writing about it, though we will also model this process through class discussion.
Q: That sounds like it might be useful.
A: It’s beyond useful. It’s the key to ultimate happiness and fulfillment.
Q: You’re exaggerating for effect, right?
A: Not really. Think about the world we live in today, its speed, the way we’re constantly being bombarded by information and events. We are subject to an unimaginable amount of stimulus, much of it confusing and contradictory, and at times it can become overwhelming. In fact, there is significant research that shows your generation is the most anxious of all time, that the pace with which we interact with information may actually damage our mental health.
The ability to think critically, to assess and sort and digest information and formulate a response to it, is a necessary adaptation to a world that won’t sit still. The alternative is aimless drift, going about your day-to-day life not really understanding what’s going on around you, which can be very unsettling. Think about when you were little and you were scared by thunder, or the monsters under your bed or in your closet. At the time, you didn’t know that thunder is harmless (lightning is another matter), and there is no such thing as imaginary monsters. Later, once you achieved knowledge, those fears (hopefully) disappeared.
Q: How about an example closer to what we’re experiencing now?
A: Look no further than a question like “What should I major in?” Or “What am I going to do after college?” Given the once dim but brightening economic climate, the shifting nature of work and the unpredictable needs of employers, it’s difficult to figure out what the “right” path might be while you’re spending your time at College of Charleston. But through assessment and examining information, you can come to a conclusion that’s rooted in evidence while also being consistent with your own values and desires. This doesn’t guarantee a favorable outcome, but it makes one much more likely.
Rather than falling back on a general “because” tied to some indefinite future benefit, I tried to articulate the specific things we were practicing in the present that were making them both more capable in real time and better prepared for the future, whatever that future may hold.
By tasking students to bring their unique intelligences to our work, I was signaling that I valued what they had to contribute to the world. It was an invitation to do more than just check a box.
I cannot claim that sharing this perspective created instant buy-in for my students as to the importance of the course and the seriousness I meant to bring to the task of teaching them, but at the least it did provide a framework I could work with for the rest of the semester. With each experience I would explain how what we were doing fed into the building of their writing practices.
It worked well, significantly improving student attitudes and course outcomes in turn. This was all long before ChatGPT and its large language model brethren showed up.
Students now have access to technology that allows them to check a lot of boxes without doing any work, without learning anything, without developing any aspect of their unique intelligences. In many cases, the structure of our institutions and the postschooling world they’re entering into suggests this may actually be OK.
But I don’t think it’s OK, and in my interactions with students, they don’t think it’s OK, either, but without offering something better than “because,” they may not recognize the opportunities of learning.
Identifying my why was also a boon to my own spirit. It’s easy to lose sight of the roots of your work when you’re in the midst of the day-to-day grind.
Postsecondary education has an excellent case to make as to its importance and relevance in helping individuals become the version of themselves that they wish to be, but to fulfill that goal, we have to dig in and show how what we have to offer is truly meaningful.
What’s your why?
