Book Review: Misunderstanding the Assignment

Hunt, Doug. Misunderstanding the Assignment: Teenage Students, College Writing, and the Pains of Growth. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2002.

This is a 160 page ethnography about a first year writing course at a Missouri university. A team of researchers followed a class of 19 students throughout their writing class one semester. They videotaped all class meetings and did many interviews with the students and the teacher. The book excerpts portions of those class meetings and interviews in order to study 6 students and the class more intensely.

Two main observations about the observations made in this book: 1) Commitment to the class is not entirely dependant on either the teacher or the student; background issues and current struggles mix with whatever level of motivation is present or lacking to determine the student's readiness for the material, and 2) writing assignments that are meant to teach critical thinking are intentionally ambiguous and open-ended, but this creates definite problems for the students who are not yet ready for them.

Ok, first observation. The study followed 6 students who all came from different backgrounds. One student who really struggled with the semester seemed to be having a major identity crisis, perhaps even learning that she was bi-polar. A couple of students needed to get good grades in the class or risk leaving school because of financial difficulty. Some of these students used that fact to motivate them to do whatever it would take to pass, while others used it as an excuse to opt out of the semester, as in "it doesn't matter because whatever I do won't be good enough and I won't be back next semester." Some students were very mature, working difficult jobs to get through school and dealing with the time management issues that arise from that, while others were at school to avoid starting their adult lives. This is all over-simplifying these students into these neat little dichotomies, but what I'm trying to say here is that the students all had multiple mitigating factors in their success or failure. There is no typical 18 year old freshman student. They all come with differing amounts of baggage and even the baggage itself does not determine success or failure because for some it will make them work harder while others will sink under the same pressure.

I know that the same tenet applies to the students I have in class each and every semester. The ones who really worry me I'll recommend to Project Success so someone can get them help if they want it. But what became obvious from reading this is that I have had students who have hidden their worries successfully. I don't know if this is a blessing or a curse. I do know that it can ultimately affect the writing assignments and their quality. What I sometimes take as a lack of experience with a topic could be a reluctance to deal with the topic in a way that is uncomfortable to the student. What looks like naivety or laziness could be a personal reluctance. Of course, it could also be naivety or laziness. Who's to say? The book doesn't construct any kind of answer for this question that lies beneath the surface. I don't necessarily think that looking for these personal motives will help me to help the student any better; I'm no psychoanalyist or therapist after all. But I don't think the student completely ignoring them is any better. And what makes the whole thing worse is to really avoid this complication, I would have to come up with the safest, lamest topics ever made, and I am unwilling to do so.

Alrighty, on to observation #2. This is one that I've known for years now and have seen every single semester in my teaching. There is a fine, squiggly line between a writing assignment that is challenging enough to yield great thinking from the student while also being clearly defined enough for the student to believe he has a reasonable shot at succeeding at "what the teacher wants." Of course, what the teacher really wants is a paper that relates to the assigned topic, is clearly defined and strongly supported and shows real evidence of life behind the mind of the student who wrote it. This is what I want from each and every assignment, which means I also want for students to come up with their ideas on their own and do not want to force the assignment on them too much. Then we get into the problem of how every assignment is forced on the student by the very nature of its being an assignment. I cannot change that factor no matter what I do. Even if it was completely a free choice, the student could still ask, "But what kind of free choice paper do you want?" whether out loud or subconciously. I get into the problem of I want students to think for themselves and I want it to be about such and such and what we've discussed in class in some way and then I also want it to be strong writing. I realized by reading this book that I intentionally try to give off a vibe that I'll be pleased with whatever they choose to write about on the topic while also giving off a second vibe of having high standards and wanting the writing to look like something substantial. These two vibes are like one and the same to me, but they are two distinct vibes to the students, I think. Then, what often happens is the students pick one or the other vibe to go with, and honestly they can find success in either one or be doomed in either one, so it is all really very confusing. This now leads me full circle to my main point with this observation. I do have a picture of the assignment I would like while also having many hazy images of the assignment that I would also like if they were well done. All the while, I do not want to spell out too clearly what they could do because I do not want students to merely copy the ideal assignment, but I want them to discover it on their own. You see, if they did copy it, it would hardly be real learning. It would be mimickry. While some learning can occur through mimickry, it usually does not transfer over to other learning. The learning I want needs to come from within the student and be attached to their schema and made real to them to be accessed later in a different writing assignment in my class or one of their other classes. And that I why I refuse to spell things out super clearly. But where or where is that fine, squiggly line and how do I find it? How do I create assignments that are clear but complicated enough? And then when I do find a magic assignment, how to I create another one down the road that does the same thing without just repeating the same formula? The irony of all of this is that in asking these questions I am modelling what I want students to do with each writing assignment. It is not enough for them to merely spew out one essay without thinking, but they should question their motives for writing it that way and also think of the affect it will have on their audience, and then, even if that paper earns an A, they will still have to do similar but different thinking for the next writing assignment and not just repeat some formula that once worked.

And this is why each and every semester at some point, I throw my hands up in the air and say that I should not be a writing teacher anymore. I then swear that I am going to teach something more quantifiable until I hear the sound of the scantron machine.