Too Little, Too Late?

Back in the day, when I taught English 101 (poorly, I might add), I would make a list at the beginning of the semester with 4 words on it: good, bad, interesting, and different. I told my students that I never wanted to see any of these words in their papers, and that if they encountered one of these terms while proofreading their work, they had to replace it with something else. "Why?" you might ask - because I don’t know what any of those words mean. Rather, I know what those words mean to me, but I have no idea what they mean to you. Your mom might be a "good" parent because she takes care of you by doing your laundry, cooking your meals, and picking up your towels off the bathroom floor. Or, she might be a good mom because she made you do certain chores for yourself and thereby taught you self-reliance. Just based on the word "good," I have no idea. Similarly, Mr. Johnson who lives across the street could be a "bad" neighbor because he constantly has parties and takes up all the parking on the street. Or, you could think he’s a bad neighbor because he killed your cat. There’s a world of difference there - not to mention a gross disparity in how much sympathy you’re going to get from me. So, when my students stumbled on one of those terribly vague and awfully subjective little words, they were supposed to get much more specific and use clear examples to illustrate and explain the ideas and concepts in their writing. As most of us who have been in an English class know, you can’t just tell me you’ve got a great best friend and expect me to fully back your argument - you’ve got to show me. Of course, I was largely ineffective at getting this idea across. More so than anything else, I just seemed to develop an ever-expanding list of words that were not concrete and much too open to interpretation, especially without the teacher-begged-for examples - words like things, cool, neat, fun, likable, enjoyable, evil, likely to change, etc. Much to my continuing frustration, when I said "replace these vague terms with specific illustrations," my students heard, "go to the thesaurus function in Microsoft Word." For the most part, I try to block out my teaching days. After all, that year of my life tended to involve way too much crying and yelling. (The yelling occurred on the part of the students by the way. I certainly never worried about the extent of swear words in their vocabulary, although sometimes their verbal abuse did lack for proper conjugation. "No, Jenny, I suck, and she sucks - not you sucks.") But, yesterday on the train, I became overwhelmed with the desire to give my little lesson on specificity and word choice to a stranger. In a conversation sparked by none other than ever-present Dan Brown and his "Deception Point," random girl on the train started in (at a very high volume) on how she wouldn’t read anything that wasn’t "good," and in a shocking corollary to that statement, how much she hated "bad" books. This went on for most of my commute. I almost wish is was possible to elaborate on her conversation, but considering that mainly the words "good" and "bad" were repeated over and over again, it would be hard. (From here on out, I’ll try to ignore the fact that it hurts me to hear "The Da Vinci Code" referred to as a "good" book. "The Da Vinci Code" is entertaining. It’s suspenseful. It keeps the reader’s attention. But, is it full of beautiful language? Does it create thought-provoking and multi-dimensional characters? Does it offer profound commentary on human nature or a particular world view? I give those questions a "no," and so "The Da Vinci Code" doesn’t make the "good" designation in my book. Yes, I am a book snob. But, just because I won’t go with "good," doesn’t mean that I don’t recognize it as an "entertaining" read. Otherwise, let’s agree to disagree.) Anyway, my point is this - as girl on the train was going on, and on, and on, I wished that I had a tape recorder so that I could get her ranting down and play it for all of those former students. Behind my constant harping on nebulous language and poor word choice is simply this lesson - if you’re going to talk or write or use your unique voice, you ought to say something. While this stranger was rambling on and on with only words like "good" and "bad," she wasn’t really getting any sort of point or opinion across. (Do I know what she has read? Do I know why she picks up a book? Do I even know a title of one of these supposed "good" books? No.) Sure, she was talking, but she wasn’t saying anything. Without illustrative and thoughtful language, it is nearly impossible to communicate our thoughts and perspectives. This is why I love literature and language. Unfortunately, discovering teaching techniques a year after the fact is probably why I didn’t make a very good educator.