In the first few years after I began teaching teachers, I read John Holt's "What Do I Do Monday?" From that, I learned about Ken Macrorie's "Uptaught", the story of how an English professor came to see the stilted, limited, mechanical, dutiful and boring world of college papers for what they typically are. I sometimes feel it is the single best book I have ever read.
Since I can't remember all the books I have read, I realize that there is no single best book but if there were, or a book closest to being the best, I would nominate Uptaught. It is not easy to get a copy of the book, published in 1970 by Hayden Book Co. There are still paperback copies around in the second hand market but even they are iffy. More than half seemed to be priced for collectors or a joke for figures over $100.
Macrorie died in 2009 and is well-known in some circles as the author of several other books on writing and teaching writing, often published by Heinemann.
Uptaught tells his observations and transformation into a better way of teaching composition courses. The freshman writing course is sometimes considered fundamental to all of college and higher education, since it is supposed to be about how to write papers, a fundamental part of college in most courses.
The book is really about honest, intelligent, conscious, well-crafted expression. That subject is no joke and is not limited to college classrooms. Lovers in the dark, politicians in the legislature, parishioners in the coffee hall after church, friends at a party are all people that enjoy each other and grow from contact with each other if and when there is that honest, direct and well-crafted expression. Direct statements of accurate expressions of what one has seen and how one feels are amazingly powerful and satisfying but far too much of school is automatic shuffling through the mines of required number of words, masked, stripped of seasoning and strength.
I am re-reading the worn secondhand copy I have before giving it to a friend and again it lifts me and slams me and saddens me.
--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
Since I can't remember all the books I have read, I realize that there is no single best book but if there were, or a book closest to being the best, I would nominate Uptaught. It is not easy to get a copy of the book, published in 1970 by Hayden Book Co. There are still paperback copies around in the second hand market but even they are iffy. More than half seemed to be priced for collectors or a joke for figures over $100.
Macrorie died in 2009 and is well-known in some circles as the author of several other books on writing and teaching writing, often published by Heinemann.
Uptaught tells his observations and transformation into a better way of teaching composition courses. The freshman writing course is sometimes considered fundamental to all of college and higher education, since it is supposed to be about how to write papers, a fundamental part of college in most courses.
The book is really about honest, intelligent, conscious, well-crafted expression. That subject is no joke and is not limited to college classrooms. Lovers in the dark, politicians in the legislature, parishioners in the coffee hall after church, friends at a party are all people that enjoy each other and grow from contact with each other if and when there is that honest, direct and well-crafted expression. Direct statements of accurate expressions of what one has seen and how one feels are amazingly powerful and satisfying but far too much of school is automatic shuffling through the mines of required number of words, masked, stripped of seasoning and strength.
I am re-reading the worn secondhand copy I have before giving it to a friend and again it lifts me and slams me and saddens me.
--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
