Rough Draft Day

Well, I have not been able to keep up with my classes as I had hoped.  Life got in the way.

Yesterday was rough draft day.  It rained.  Natch.  And attendance was not so hot.

But I did something I had done before.  I had them blog the first page of their rough drafts.  Then I culled them, and pulled out three for each class and rewrote the first paragraphs.

Then in class I pulled up the rewrites over the web and we discussed them.

I know it’s too easy to hurt feelings doing something like this.  But I pitched it a bit differently because I meant it.  We were not, I said, engaged in correcting grammar or punctuation or anything like that.  I didn’t think what I had written was better than what they had written; rather I had been trying by my rewrite to dig out what I thought to be the core of their meaning.  And that possibly—and they should say so—I had missed the core of what they had intended.

In any case, I think it went well.  I was able to demonstrate my real interest in what they are trying to say and I seemed to do so in a way that didn’t hurt feels too much.

Here’s one student paragraph:

From the moment we enter into this world until the time we leave it, the term “obey” is engraved in our minds. We are taught to obey our authority figures, laws, and so on. Yet, it seems ridiculous that one must comply, without question, to whatever someone of power instructs. Should we not formulate our own beliefs and act upon our own thoughts? Do we not have a say in what we do or do not do? According to Fromm, “Obedience to a person, institution, or power (heteronomous obedience) is submission; it implies the abdication of my autonomy and the acceptance of a foreign will or judgment in place of my own. Obedience to my own reason or conviction (autonomous obedience) is not an act of submission but one of affirmation. My conviction and my judgment, if authentically mine, are part of me. If I follow them rather than the judgment of others, I am being myself.” Sadly, though, many of us do not defy authority. May be it I because we are too scared? Maybe it is because we do not trust our own opinions, or possibly that we do not want to be alone in our beliefs, so we sit and wait, allowing for injustice to occur around us.

And here’s how I rewrote it:

Eric Fromm argues that we are all taught to obey. In fact, he says obediance is seen as a virtue. People are good people if they obey. But Fromm says we may pay a heavy price if all we do is obey. He writes, "My conviction and my judgment, if authentically mine, are part of me. If I follow them rather than the judgment of others, I am being myself." If we follow our own beliefs and judgements we are being ourselves. But if we only obey, if we submit to the judgement of others, we stop being ourselves. Losing the sense of who we are as individual people, is a heavy price to pay. But we do it every day.