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February 10, 2009

That is Personal

When English teachers ask students to write personal journals and then turn them in for the teacher to read, the teachers have a chance to learn about the students' hopes, wishes, dreams, fantasies, family life, anxieties, ambitions, fears, and so on.

There are several problems with this practice. The first is, of course, that none of this information is any of the teachers' business. It is personal. The second problem is that asking students to spend time thinking about and writing about themselves for schoolwork is essentially anti-academic.

Teachers and students have real academic tasks. Teachers of literature should bring students to an understanding and appreciation of great writing that is not about the students themselves. Teachers of history have an obligation to introduce their students to historical events and persons well beyond the lives and experiences of the students. Math, science, foreign languages and other disciplines have little interest in the personal lives of the students. Teachers of those subjects have academic material they want students to learn as soon as they can.

However, in the English departments, there seems to be an irresistible attraction to probing the personal lives of the students. For some, the excuse is relevance. It seems hard to get students interested in anything besides themselves, they complain, so why not have students write, if they write about anything, about their own lives. This is seen as reaching out to where the students are, when what they should be doing is encouraging students to reach outside themselves to the grand and wide worlds of knowledge to be found in academic tasks and pursuits.

For some teachers, the excuse is perhaps curiosity. It can be amusing and diverting to read what students reveal about their personal lives, and some teachers may tell themselves that they will be better teachers if they can invade students' privacy in this way, and perhaps tailor their instruction and counsel to each student's personal fears and concerns. But this is not their job, nor is it a job for which they have been trained, educational psychology classes notwithstanding.

Parents, counselors, psychiatrists and others may have a need to know what is going on in a child's personal life, if they are depressed or otherwise having trouble making their way in life and in school, but teachers have an academic job to do.

Not that teachers should be impersonal. If a young student confides in a teacher, it is fine for that teacher to show an interest and feel compassion for the youngster. But it is not the teacher's job to "treat" the student or to persuade them to reveal more of their personal lives than perhaps the student had intended to share.

I am convinced that teachers who are well educated in academic subject matter themselves have a very strong desire to share the contents and the benefits of that knowledge with their students. The enthusiasm of a teacher for their academic subject has, on innumerable occasions, inspired students to take up further study of that subject themselves as they grow through their educational and even their professional lives.

It seems likely that teachers who are not well educated in academic subject matter, which includes far too many who prepare for teaching at graduate schools of education, do not have a strong desire to communicate the knowledge of literature, history, science, math, languages, and the like, which they do not possess. For these teachers, there is an enormous temptation to indulge a curiosity into the personal lives of students, through reading their personal journals and other techniques.

On the one hand, this is an unconscionable violation of the student's right to privacy, and on the other hand, such a focus on personal matters is a clear obstruction which helps to prevent students from acquiring the academic knowledge and skill they need and for which purpose we spend many many billions of taxpayer dollars.

Above and beyond the waste of money and academic opportunity for students, we should just ask teachers to stop assigning personal journals to students. Of course, young people can feel free to write diaries, journals, or whatever they want. But teachers should not demand the right to read them.

Students are already retarded in learning to write competently in school, by the widespread commitment of English teachers to creative writing and the five-paragraph essay. But when it comes to personal writing, teachers must learn to accept the fact that such writing is personal, and truly none of their business.


"Teach by Example"
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
Consortium for Varsity AcademicsĀ® [2007]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity AcademicsĀ®

Posted by Will Fitzhugh at February 10, 2009 7:59 AM
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