This is completely off the subject of baking, pastry and even triathlons, but I had the most disturbing conversation today with Witless. We'd finished our work for the day, had set up mignardises for the night and cleaned our area, when we sat down in Chef's office (he was in a meeting).
Witless and I were mulling over ideas she has for her "dessert of the day" (every intern who does a rotation with me, lucky devils, has to present Chef and me with a plated dessert to serve as a special the last day of their time under my thumb... I mean, under my tutelage.). She actually has some good ideas and is thinking about seasonality and food cost, something none of the other interns did. She's still trying to use warm butter to make flaky pie crust, but that's another matter. I'm proud of the thought process she's got going on for her dessert.
Anyway...
She mentioned she was having a terrible time completing her extern manual because she's never done "freewriting."
Wha-huh?
"I learned to write using the Jane Schaffer Method."
The wha'?
"Haven't you heard of it? They're using it in schools all across the country."
Witless proceeds to enlighten me about this "method." Every paragraph has eight sentences. The first is a topic sentence. Then the next sentence provides a concrete detail. Then the next two sentences are comments, followed by another concrete detail...
She went on, in frightening detail that took me back to reading "Animal Farm," when the residents list the rules to the newcomer.
"So, what if you wanted a paragraph to be just one sentence, emphasizing a point or creating dramatic tension?" I asked.
Witless looked at me blankly. "You can't do that."
Oh. Sweet. Baby. Jesus.
She was struggling with her extern manual because no topic sentence was provided for her.
Let me explain, because she's got the same damn extern manual I had a year ago. Each week of your externship you're supposed to do a different module in your manual. The modules are numbered, titled "Food Cost Analysis," "Marketing Strategies" and so on, and at the top of each module is, dare I say, something of a topic sentence, such as "Discuss your extern site's marketing strategies, both internally and externally."
Answering these all-but-handed-to-her questions was apparently too much for the youngling.
Wow.
Wow.
I felt so sorry for Witless then. At some point, early in her young life, it was clear that some no doubt well-intentioned teacher had embraced the Jane Schaffer method like the Taleban embraced fundamentalism, and had beaten out of her any spark of creativity or independent thought.
I was so upset by her comments that after work I went online and did some research on this method. Thank the gods I went to school in the 20th century. Thank the gods I don't have kids. I swear I'd homeschool them. I may kidnap my friends' kids and homeschool them. Just a warning, guys.
I shudder to think about the millions of students out there learning to "write" based on a formula that demands mind-numbing conformity for conformity's sake. I weep for the millions who apparently will never know the pleasure of constructing a water-tight argument with a rhythm and pace of their own design.
I mourn those who will never dare to write a single-sentence paragraph for fear of being misconstrued.
On a related note, a couple weeks ago when Lumpy was still working for me (I haven't killed him... he's on garde manger at night now, switching spots with Witless), I told him to double a recipe. I can't remember which it was, but I know it was frightfully easy, no more than five ingredients, all of them in grams for gods' sakes. He reached immediately for my calculator.
"You don't need that. Just double it."
"Okay," he said, punching numbers into my calculator.
"Do it in your head. Just double it."
"Uh-huh," he said, still using the keypad.
I took the calculator away from him and said he wasn't allowed to use it to double a simple recipe, and as punishment he had to go do something tedious (I can't remember what... it might have been dipping petit fours in pate a glacer for a couple hours) and I would make the damn recipe. I mean, honestly.
I understand better now -- and I don't think I'm stretching too far on this -- how most of the country accepted the Bush administration's rationale for going into Iraq, why people seem content to have the media cover Paris Hilton's latest exploits and why, when I made what I thought was a brilliant reference to Djibouti while rapping for Keanu the line cook, I received a roomful of blank stares.
People, at least most of the people around me, especially the younger ones, seem to have lost or never developed the capacity to think. I'm not talking about intelligence, about people being smart or stupid, or having curiosity about the world. I'm talking about cognitive organizational and reasoning skills. You know, like "the burners shoot fire. Fire hot. I should not touch the burners." They've achieved that level, most of them, but moved no further on.
It's disheartening, to say the least.
Uh-oh, yet another single-sentence paragraph. I'd better log off now before my WiFi signal is traced and the Jane Schaffer Police come and break down my door with their jackboots and drag me off to a cell where I am forced to read US Weekly until I am capable of no thought more complex than coveting Kate Hudson's designer hobo bag.
(And by the way, the pro-Schaffer people I found online, and they are legion, seem to take the side that students are not capable of developing on their own as writers. That smacks partly of patronizing gibberish and partly of lazy-ass teachers who don't want to invest the time and effort into, er, teaching (most of Schaffer's biggest fans appear to be teachers). I'm sure it's easier to grade a paper based on whether the second sentence of every paragraph is a concrete detail, and I can understand underpaid and overworked teachers looking for an easy way out, but there has got to be another way. I think of Dr. Virago and all the effort she puts into teaching her students. I think of a handful of teachers/quasi-mentors I had at all levels who encouraged me to think outside the box and challenge myself to be a better writer. We need to encourage logic and reasoning and independent thought, now more than ever. Do they ever the Schaffer Method in New Zealand? No? Then I'm totally emigrating.)
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5 comments:
Oh yes. Jane Schaffer and the 5 paragraph essay. Let me tell you how the first day of college freshman composition class goes: "hello, students! you know the 5 paragraph essay you've had beaten into your heads for the last 4 years? forget you ever heard about it. welcome to college!" wailing, gnashing of teeth, etc.
What you described in Witless is what we experience a great deal in teh teachin' of the freshlings. Many of them clue in by the end of the semester, but many do not...
Sorry. Touched a nerve. I made cupcakes the other day and wore my pirate shirt while doing it, and then I thought about your blog and how much I enjoy it. Seriously. Best link Dr. V ever posted. :)
Oh good, JM got here before me and said exactly what I was going to say. (Though I have to say I post *many* good links!) Thanks JM!
Never heard of Jane Schaffer (but I do know of the blasted 5-paragraph essay), but she and her method explain SO much.
Your screed against her method is very nearly an essay (with one-paragraph sentences!) on the important of a college-level liberal arts education. I wish more people other than us academics were making such arguments because, unfortunately, I think many of our administrators were trained with something like the Jane Schaffer method!
Er, the *importance.* I can too write! Uh-huh! Can too! Just can't type.
Aw, shucks, JM, thank you. Thanks for reading and for posting... and to both you and DrV, thanks for giving a crap about teaching and working so hard to right the wrongs of other, probably well-meaning but misguided educators.
When I was in Cookin' School, I was amazed at how every single student I knew hated writing. They bitched and moaned about even the simplest assignment.
Now I know why. (Uh-oh... single sentence paragraph!)
Most if not all of them probably had one of these drone-like methods beaten into them at a young age, and that breaks my heart. It really does.
I don't claim to be a great writer by any stretch, but writing has been for me, since about the age of four (really!) the single greatest joy in my life. Largely, I think, because of the challenge of facing a blank page or screen and the freedom to fill it as I see fit, to fuss over the weak bits until they're stronger, to slice off the excess like trimming extra cake until the layers are straight and even and to my liking.
I think it's sad that kind of writing is apparently going the way of the cassette tape and print media.
And I wonder (shudder) how many gifted young writers are out there having their creativity and potential shoved into an eight-sentence formula. Not to be melodramatic, but to me it's a crime as great as, say, amputating a high school-aged Lance Armstrong's leg.
You know what drives a lot of my students nuts but also ultimately liberates them? Answer: when I tell them NOT to have a thesis or an introductory paragraph. I have these short, informal assignments in a number of my classes where they're just supposed to get down to the nitty gritty of showing the reader the interesting stuff that's going on in a passage of literature. These assignments have a strict 2-page *limit*, and in the first couple of tries numerous students waste space and end up saying nothing at all by taking up about 1/4 of that space with an introductory paragraph that mostly states the obvious and says nothing ("Gawain and the Green Knight is a romance written by a now anonymous author in the 14th century. It uses imagery, sound effects, metaphors, and diction." etc. etc.) I cross the whole thing out and tell them to ditch it, but some of them are actually *scared* to do so.
It's a bit like taking the training wheels off a bike, I guess.
(As a kind of footnote... I require an introductory paragraph and a thesis in a formal essay. And then students are blown away when I tell them a thesis can be more than one sentence! Wow!)
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