I had a brief conversation with an English teacher today. When I told him how much I liked sitting in on the tail end of his International baccalaureate (IB) English course and how it made me want to teach my memoir writing workshop to them he said, "There is no place in the IB curriculum for creative writing." He, sadly, does not have the luxury of teaching creative writing because of the overwhelming expectations of the curriculum.
I thought back to my University English course as well and realized that there was no place for creative writing there either.
And then I thought back to all the years I took Greek (Classical and Hellenistic ... 800BC to 200AD) and how we really could only focus on reading because dead languages are exceedingly difficult to do composition with.
And then it hit me: we teach "advanced" English as though it were a dead language. We have divided the world into three kinds of people (as far as the English language composition goes): writers, readers, and those who do neither.
And I realized that culturally we have lost something, although I do not know how long ago it was lost. We have lost the ability to write stories and we have failed to foster that ability. We treat stories as though they are to be created either by children, coloured in with crayons in elementary school, or by professionals, the ones to whom we look to fulfill the writing task.
But if we are going to be a literate people, a people who think and feel and express themselves, we must not only read but we must write.
I have oft looked down on the bloggers, especially those whose vapid opinions are not worthy of expression, at least in my arrogant mind. But they are, perhaps, the germ of a writing culture, one that all of us need to embrace. For at that moment that we put pen to paper or fingers to keyboards we are transformed, transformed into writers, if only for a short while. And that benefits us all.
I thought back to my University English course as well and realized that there was no place for creative writing there either.
And then I thought back to all the years I took Greek (Classical and Hellenistic ... 800BC to 200AD) and how we really could only focus on reading because dead languages are exceedingly difficult to do composition with.
And then it hit me: we teach "advanced" English as though it were a dead language. We have divided the world into three kinds of people (as far as the English language composition goes): writers, readers, and those who do neither.
And I realized that culturally we have lost something, although I do not know how long ago it was lost. We have lost the ability to write stories and we have failed to foster that ability. We treat stories as though they are to be created either by children, coloured in with crayons in elementary school, or by professionals, the ones to whom we look to fulfill the writing task.
But if we are going to be a literate people, a people who think and feel and express themselves, we must not only read but we must write.
I have oft looked down on the bloggers, especially those whose vapid opinions are not worthy of expression, at least in my arrogant mind. But they are, perhaps, the germ of a writing culture, one that all of us need to embrace. For at that moment that we put pen to paper or fingers to keyboards we are transformed, transformed into writers, if only for a short while. And that benefits us all.
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