Yesterday, The Atlantic posted an article by Robert Pondiscio entitled, “How Self-Expression Damaged My Students.” Pondiscio offers an interesting, if ultimately flawed, thesis: In early childhood writing education, the deliberate cultivation of creative or imaginative expression will ultimately impede scholarly success. Accordingly, in the development of writing curricula, the majority of focus and attention must be placed on instruction in formal mechanics.
Mr. Pondiscio formerly worked as a fifth-grade teacher at P.S.277 in the South Bronx; currently, he is the vice president of the Core Knowledge Foundation, a company specializing in the production of mechanics-focused curricula for young students.
“I used to damage students for a living with…idealism,” Mr. Pondiscio writes. He argues that we have “exactly two options: The first is to de-emphasize spelling and grammar. The other is to teach spelling and grammar. But at too many schools, it’s more important for a child to unburden her 10-year-old soul writing personal essays about the day she went to the hospital, dropped an ice cream cone on a sidewalk, or shopped for new sneakers.”
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When I was younger, I attended two of the worst-rated public high schools in New York City. I have the police reports, the hospital records and the photographs to prove it. Violence was commonplace—both schools had metal detectors installed at the exits and entrances, often manned by NYPD officers.
The first was Brooklyn Tech, a prison-like complex that occupied a full city block and served some 5,200 students. Among the staff, corruption was endemic. Investigative articles in The New York Times chronicled the administrative malfeasance (starting with the principal of 14 years, Dr. Lee McCaskill), but barely touched upon what was happening within the classroom walls. After all, a reporter couldn’t get in: the doors were guarded by armed police—or security, depending on the current state of things.
In 2000, the special commissioner of investigation for the New York City School District, released a 33-page, 68-footnote laden report titled, “Dangerous Consequences: Officials at Brooklyn Technical High School Fail to Report Armed Robberies to the Police.” The report was accurate, in some respects, but did not get to the heart of the matter, let alone the truth of it. At times, the school was like a war zone. Security was endless; I was twice in classrooms that were set on fire. Again, a report alluded to these incidents, but resisted a deep examination of root causes.
I left and transferred to the now defunct Bayard Rustin High School for the Humanities, on 18th Street in Manhattan. It too was a prison-like complex, occupying almost a full city block. The graduation rate was below 50 percent, and the school had over 1,500 students. The location was different, but the violence was the same. I saw the same metal detectors, the same police uniforms I saw at Brooklyn Tech, now with different faces. Humanities was shut down in 2009—well after I graduated, with under half of my class, in June of 2004.
But for all of the issues at Brooklyn Tech, I am extremely grateful for their rigorous English curriculum. The teachers emphasized, almost obsessively, the mechanics of writing, punctuation, grammar, expansion of vocabulary—even penmanship. These exercises in mechanics are what eventually allowed me to become a writer. It was no different than a professional basketball player, who once upon a time hated the practices and drills that forced him to execute a thousand free throws with correct form (both feet on the ground and from the elbow) rather than his way (off one foot, with no follow through). Instruction in formal mechanics, accumulatively, and over a number of years, leads to mastery. And this applies to any profession: writing, basketball—anything.
With this in mind, it seems clear that Robert Pondiscio is correct in arguing that mechanics, instead of “freedom writing”, should be emphasized heavily at a young age. And yet, I enjoyed “freedom writing”—in crayon, no less—immensely as a young boy, and without a single thought to spelling or grammar. To a certain extent, I think it helped hone my voice. And that same pre-professional basketball player—the one who hated the endless drills, the exercises emphasizing correct footwork, shooting from the elbow, and the reasons for implementing a screen—also enjoyed the occasional playground game, where he was free to employ the crossover dribble he adored, and which the coach had all but prohibited.
In a certain sense, we all need time away from direct instruction, and one kid’s crossover dribble is another’s florid, fever dream of a short story. Skill is nothing without the passion to implement it in practice. Against Mr. Pondiscio, I would argue that it isn’t an issue of mechanics or creativity—and that to force a false choice between the two is not only unnecessary and harmful, but also downright peculiar.
In the article, Mr. Pondiscio quotes David Coleman, the owner of a curriculum-development business: “As you grow up in this world,” declared Mr. Coleman, “you realize that people really don’t give a shit about what you feel or what you think.” “[Coleman’s] bluntness made me wince,” writes Mr. Pondascio, “but his impulse is correct.”
This, I would argue, is a telling moment, and goes some way towards explaining why Mr. Pondiscio blames some small portion of the calamitous state of the New York public school system on so strange and innocuous a culprit as “creativity” and its overemphasis (especially when other, far more formidable culprits are such conspicuous presences on the scene). In fact, Mr. Coleman’s statement does not make me wince—and I wholeheartedly disagree that “his impulse is correct.” People do “give a shit” about the thoughts and feelings of others, and we should give a serious shit about cultivating in children a capacity for imaginatively placing themselves in the plights and situations of others.