I have a simple statement that woke me up this morning that I'd like to state to educators and expound upon. That statement simply is this.

You are not making cookies...

Your students are not dough waiting for you to force them into this...

or this...

or this...

or as is common in a lot of higher education these days this...

In fact the only thing a cookie cutter should have to do with your job is the fact they are a tool that was created for mass production of a shape. The value to learn from cookie cutters is that people can fashion tools to more rapidly produce replicas. We are a tool making species and this is largely what has made us capable of what we see around us.

We are not ourselves cookie dough to be forced into a shape and made into replicas.

This began when along the lines of my two Cranky Old Goat posts [1,2] I found myself having a debate with some English (In the United States this is Reading and Writing with formal rules) instructor. Yes, as usual I was having a lively debate where in my mind I was performing both roles. In this case though it was not from the cranky old goat perspective, but like those it was almost like a mental fencing match. I will attempt to replicate something of that (though it has been an hour or more so I'm kind of out of the "zone") at the end of this post.

I first want to speak about my past. I've mentioned some of this in past posts. Going through the education system in the 1970s, 1980s, and then early 1990s I will state that the education system was not as cookie cutter as it is today. It has become even more obsessed with forcing children and adults ("higher" education) into molds. Yet my problems really began at a very early age.

Prior to my senior year in high school (12th grade) I really struggled in all English classes. It was my worst subject. I commonly received Ds and I received one or two Fs as my FINAL grade for the courses. According to my work and my grades I truly sucked at the subject. It was not for lack of trying. I'd try and fail.

The infuriating part is when we would end up taking some aptitude test at the end of it TWICE I was told I had the aptitude to be an English Teacher. Keep in mind this was when I was getting Ds and Fs in English. It likely came to that conclusion because I did have a large vocabulary and I was a voracious reader. My grades did not reflect that. I even loved writing my own short stories, and I played a lot of dungeons and dragons back then where I was often the Dungeon Master. This meant I was often writing up backstories, plot lines, mysterious notes the players would find, etc. Yet I still could not manage to get good grades in English.

My senior year they actually were having a couple of new classes that students voted to add to the curriculum. One of those classes I voted on was Creative Writing. I loved to write. My grades just didn't reflect that. I was in the first creative writing class that ever existed at that high school. I was in it with a bunch of other students that were all excited about the class and had voted on it. There was passion. It was also fortunately taught by an older woman who was a little eccentric, but she ended up being magical for me.

The assignments we had rarely involved structure. They did not focus on the grammatical arrangement of sentences, or whether a comma belonged where we placed it. At least at first. It really depended upon the type of assignment. One moment it could be writing poems totally free form, followed by lymrics, haiku, and many other forms. Sometimes it would simply be writing character sketches.

She would focus on what imagery and ideas we presented. She would praise us for the content of what we wrote rather than the structure of what we wrote. I loved it. I truly loved the assignments and I looked forward to them with an eagerness I'd never had in any English class.

This does not mean she did not teach the structure. That was eased into it. "This is a truly great sentence, but if you put your comma here as a pause it flows better." There was a rational reason that made sense that was provided for each of the rules. This made me internalize them as a tools. It was not a case of looking at me, seeing dough, and shoving a cookie cutter at it.

How I viewed commas (and I still relapse into this a bit) is as a point of pause. That is what they are. As I wrote things I'd put pauses in what I was writing in the shape of how those pauses occurred in my mind. This means I could have sentences with pauses in some very odd places from the traditional perspective. I had to learn that my readers are not dough that I can force the cookie cutter that is my mind onto them. I still have not learned that completely, but I always work on it.

I do want to state that the way that class was taught without a cookie cutter approach opened the floodgates for me. I loved it so much I took a second semester of it as an Advanced Independent Study class. I wrote short stories, poems, essays, and even short plays during that time.

After that class I don't believe I ever received less than an A in any paper I wrote, even in college. It is worse than that though. I sat through many college courses with the instructor stating "Don't wait until the last minute to write your papers, and don't try to B.S. me, I can see through the B.S." In virtually every case if I had a week to write a paper I wrote it an hour and a half before it was due. I'd receive an A. As I would hear a similarly crafted speech from instructors on their "syllabus" day I would be inwardly chuckling.

I think at this point I would like to TRY to resurrect something like that internal dialog that I was having in my mind between myself and some English instructor. I can sense that a lot of that "in the zone" moment has passed, so I don't know if I can impart what was feeling magical into this or not, but I'll give it a shot.

The Dialog

INSTRUCTOR: "This is all wrong."

ME: "How so?"

INSTRUCTOR: "You must use 10 sentences here with the last being a transition sentence into the next paragraph."

ME: "Why?"

INSTRUCTOR: "That is how it is done. Those are the rules."

ME: "That isn't how I wanted to say it."

INSTRUCTOR: "I am trying to teach you how it is supposed to be done."

ME: "Who decides that is how it should be done?"

INSTRUCTOR: "That is how it has always been done. It is what is expected."

ME: "So, because people in the past decided it must be done this way, it is expected that I too must do things that way?"

INSTRUCTOR: "Yes."

ME: "There are two logical fallacies that immediately jump out to me in that."

INSTRUCTOR: "What are you talking about, this is not a logic or philosophy class?"

ME: "The first is an Appeal To Tradition Fallacy. It presumes that something is correct or the best course simply due to that being how it has been done before. The second is an Appeal to Authority Fallacy also sometimes called an Argument From Authority which presumes because someone in a perceived "authority" position says a thing is true, it must be."

INSTRUCTOR: "This is an English class."

ME: "Correct, and what is English?"

INSTRUCTOR: "It is a language, it is writing, and it is communication."

ME: "In other words it is a tool. Your job then is to show me how to use the tool correct?"

INSTRUCTOR: "Well, yes, that is a crude way of putting it."

ME: "As with most tools typically showing someone what it can do, and some of the things that can cause problems is typically what is done. How can I wield this tool better? What techniques make this tool most effective?"

INSTRUCTOR: "Yes, but as I stated I am an English teacher."

ME: "I viewed English as a tool of communication."

INSTRUCTOR: "It is that."

ME: "Wouldn't that make the words and the way we arrange them the most important thing?"

INSTRUCTOR: "Yes, that is it exactly."

ME: "So in a sense you are trying to paint an image that is in your mind into the minds of other people by using words?"

INSTRUCTOR: "I like that. Yes, that is a good way to look at it."

ME: "Do you think everyone has the same mind? Do we all think of problems exactly the same way?"

INSTRUCTOR: "No, of course not."

ME: "Then why would the tradition be to treat people as though they all think the same way?"

INSTRUCTOR: "If you are going to write formal letters, essays, and things of that nature they must be done a certain way?"

ME: "If the purpose is communication then why is that a requirement?"

INSTRUCTOR: "As I said formal."

ME: "So to fit into formal circles I must pretend I am the same as them and think the same way they do?"

INSTRUCTOR: "Who is this they you are talking about?"

ME: "Most assuredly it must be whomever decided these rules must be followed by everyone."

INSTRUCTOR: "It's my job to make sure you can do that."

ME: "I am paying you for your job. I was fairly certain your job is to teach me new tools to help me navigate the future."

INSTRUCTOR: "I am. You must know these formal structures or they will not give you the time of day."

ME: "I get it. These structures are much like entering a club that they won't let you enter unless you are wearing a tie."

INSTRUCTOR: "Yes!!! That is it."

ME: "I don't care about that. I only care about improving my facility in communication. I have zero interest of having my communication molded into a format that some nebulous authority has dictated from the past."

INSTRUCTOR: "But, that is the way things are done."

ME: "Appeal to Tradition as I pointed out. The goal should be communication, my mind revealed to yours, my ideas conveyed to you in some meaningful way. If I can do that then it should be viewed as success. If I cannot then it is failure. I would actually assume failure occurs fairly frequently even when it is draped in this dictated format."

INSTRUCTOR: "That is simply absurd!"

ME: "Why?"

INSTRUCTOR: "It just is, that is not how it is done."

ME: "Okay that is again two fallacies. You are still clinging to the appeal to tradition and have not seemed to understand that simply saying this is how it is always done is not a reason to continue it. Furthermore, you calling it absurd without any evidence to back up why it is absurd. That is called an Appeal To The Stone."

INSTRUCTOR: "I'm the teacher, you are the student, so why are you trying to lecture me about logic and philosophy?"

ME: "This is an English class correct? The goal being to teach communication. So if a person is falling back on formulaic responses rather than truly thinking it through and providing their own reasons wouldn't one part of communication be to try to remove such barriers?"

INSTRUCTOR: "I'm confused, my head hurts, and I did not understand that."

ME: "In communication wouldn't one of the first things to acknowledge be that we are two different people? Then that should lead to the idea that we both think in different ways. Often the way we think can be quite alien to the other. Our goal is to try to communicate in a way that the person can understand that different perspective."

INSTRUCTOR: "Why are you even in this class?"

ME: "First, there are other appeals to authority and appeals to tradition that dictate I must have this class to get the piece of paper that certifies I have completed the course. That leads me to suspect that conformity, indoctrination, and making sure I act like a good herd animal are a big part of the certification process. Less so about individuality and what unique insights and approaches a person might have to offer. This is no fault of yours here. You are simply a puppet, or actor dancing to the scripted play from these mysterious authority figures you keep alluding to."

INSTRUCTOR: "I am no puppet, and I am no conspiracy theorist!"

ME: "Did you not say the reason I should do what you are demanding here with these paragraphs is because it has always been done that way?"

INSTRUCTOR: "Yes."

ME: "Who decided it had to be done that way?"

INSTRUCTOR: "I don't know, it has been done that way a long time ago."

ME: "So in the past some 'authority' figure was able to dictate that we must do things this way."

INSTRUCTOR: "Yes."

ME: "Then my statement was not theory. It was a fact. Whether it was initiated by one person or multiple people is lost in time. If it was multiple people with the intent to force conformity upon the masses then that indeed might have made it a conspiracy. If it was an individual then it doesn't meet a requirement of the label conspiracy. Either way if it was an individual or a conspiracy it was a fact, not a theory."

INSTRUCTOR: "I believe you are in the wrong class."

ME: "On this we agree. I am more angry that somehow they force me to pay for their attempts to force me into a shape of their desire. I likely won't be able to last this out and get their piece of paper. Furthermore, that piece of paper itself. Why should that dictate my worth?"

INSTRUCTOR: "So, we're good with the D I gave you on that paper?"

ME: "I'm good with it as it means I have a D in following the orders of those that would make me conform."

INSTRUCTOR: "Or it could mean you have a D in following instructions."

ME: laughs "Well said. Simply jotting down instructions does not always mean it is a good idea to follow them. This is especially true when the goal seems to be that of conformity. It also seems doubly dangerous when they are trying to force conformity of communication."

INSTRUCTOR: "You could do this. You seem way too smart not to be able to."

ME: "Call it pride, call it arrogance, call it ego, call it whatever you want. I am paying to improve the tools of my mind in ways that will help me in the future. I can understand that people might think conforming does this. I tend to see conformity as closing doors to possibility. So while YES, I could follow your instructions on this, I do not intend to."

INSTRUCTOR: "So are we done here?"

ME: "I think we are. Thank you for your patience in talking to me and hearing me out. I'd wish you the best of luck with your job, but I truly hate to see students viewed as dough with a rack of cookie cutter shapes being the only desired outcomes of the process."

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Now if you made it this far in my "little" diatribe of a post I am pleased and surprised. This is simply the thoughts I woke to this morning. This is the type of thing that sometimes explodes in my head.

I did want to part with some personal beliefs about communication.

I don't care about how you spell. If I know what your meant to say then you have achieved communication. Getting hung up on spelling is a personal decision. The person reading it and complaining about spelling clearly knew what it was you were trying to say. They know it well enough to belittle you on improper spelling. This means that person completely missed the point of WORDS and instead chose to flex their ego and superiority and belittle you on spelling.

The purpose of words is to convey thoughts. To communicate. That is it.

What makes a word a word is not whether it is spelled a certain way or whether it appears in one or more dictionaries. It is whether it can convey the thought that is intended.

You could make up a word at the beginning of a post by describing it that is not in any dictionary. You could then use that word throughout your post and because you explained the word you would be capable of conveying meaning and thoughts using your newly created word. No dictionary required.

People whack other people with the dictionary in what is an Appeal To Authority Fallacy as they truly miss the purpose of a dictionary. A dictionary is not a tool to dictate what IS and IS NOT a word. It is a tool to allow us to look up words we do not know the definition for and thus extend our vocabulary. That is it's purpose. It is not the bible of which words are and are not permitted. It is simply a way to learn new words for when you encounter them without having to ask another person to stop and explain a word.

With that said I do believe the most valuable part of language is vocabulary. The more words you know the more you can understand what is said to you, or that you read. This does not mean you'll be able to communicate better because of having a large vocabulary. There is a danger there as well.

What is the purpose of a word? To communicate thoughts.

So if you wield your vast vocabulary at everyone you encounter are you truly communicating?

You may be showing off your ego as you preen and dance about in your shapely word attire, but if the person doesn't know the words you are using are you communicating any thoughts?

So the vocabulary can also become a barrier to communication.

While I view vocabulary and the ability to know, understand words as likely the most important skill. The second skill that is needed is to recognize when certain words are not conveying the thought. At that point other approaches, phrasings, or perhaps more common vocabulary must be used to try to convey the thought.

This can be tricky. Vocabulary if known can often turn many paragraphs of thought into a single word. So if people know the words you are using you can often convey big and complex thoughts much more rapidly. If they do not then explaining the same thing can take a very long time and can prove a challenge.

So when it comes to language I believe always extending vocabulary is a positive thing, and so is learning to adapt to the vocabulary of those you seek to communicate with.

I think that is as good a stopping point as any for this post. Thank you for your time.

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