Every so often educators and reformers think, if we’re educating kids for the future, we need to do a better job of adapting our education system to meet the needs of tomorrow. That our education systems needs to, in some sense, “get with the times” so that we can better serve our students today.
The latest argument to that effect comes from a book (Now You See It) written by Cathy N. Davidson and related blog post from Virginia Heffernan of the New York Times. In her piece, Heffernan argues:
“…fully 65 percent of today’s grade-school kids may end up doing work that hasn’t been invented yet…For those two-thirds of grade-school kids, if for no one else, it’s high time we redesigned American education.”
And so, because today’s students will be doing things that we can’t imagine, we need to rethink the kinds of work we’re assigning today. Including research papers, which Heffernan argues have outlived their usefulness:
Teachers and professors regularly ask students to write papers. Semester after semester, year after year, “papers” are styled as the highest form of writing. And semester after semester, teachers and professors are freshly appalled when they turn up terrible.
Ms. Davidson herself was appalled not long ago when her students at Duke, who produced witty and incisive blogs for their peers, turned in disgraceful, unpublishable term papers. But instead of simply carping about students with colleagues in the great faculty-lounge tradition, Ms. Davidson questioned the whole form of the research paper. “What if bad writing is a product of the form of writing required in school — the term paper — and not necessarily intrinsic to a student’s natural writing style or thought process?” She adds: “What if ‘research paper’ is a category that invites, even requires, linguistic and syntactic gobbledygook?”
Unfortunately, Heffernan seems to have missed her own point. As she implies, we are no better at predicting what today’s elementary students will be doing in twenty years than Hanna-Barbera were at painting what 21st century life would look like in the Jetsons. And so, our job as educators is not hitch our wagons to the latest education fad in response to changing—and often fleeting—technology, but rather to identify the timeless knowledge and skills that all students must master to succeed in any environment.
To that end, abandoning research papers in favor of blog posts or other multimedia presentations would be a grave mistake. After all, that students can produce “witty and incisive” blog posts for their peers on topics of their choosing says nothing about their ability to write and speak to multiple audiences or about a variety of topics. (Most multimedia products are necessarily limited and we need to ask more of our students.) And the ability to synthesize complicated information in a persuasive way—grounded in facts, research and reading—is critical and timeless.
Of course, there’s nothing to stop students from producing a blog post or multimedia presentation, but those shouldn’t be the starting point. In fact, the most interesting and influential bloggers and thinkers—across disciplines and times—have a body of work that goes well beyond their own observations and conclusions and is grounded in real work, research, and thoughtful writing and analysis.
Regardless of what is the hip new medium, we do our students a grave disservice by pretending that pithy diatribes or observational blog posts are on the same level as more thoughtful, well-developed arguments, grounded in evidence derived from texts, with clear theses that come from something other than their personal feelings.
And, I’m willing to bet that that even Davidson’s students’ blog posts would be far wittier and more insightful if they were better able to develop a thoughtful argument in a paper first.
–Kathleen Porter-Magee
I was somewhat amused as I read your post, thinking how I was pretty sure had you authored a research paper I more than likely would not have had the opportunity to read it. It seems foolish to assume that form (blog post, research paper, article) alone is an indicator of anything, let alone to equate a particular format with quality thinking. The architecture of thought that undergirds argument can be found in a multitude of forms, visual, written, audio, and hybrid remixes of these. Isn’t this what Robert Creeley was getting at when he told us form is never more than an extension of conten (as recorded by Olson).
I too was disappointed by Heffernan’s post, but for reasons that differ from what you author and offer here. What makes these times different is the connectivity with others in ways quite simply, we have not had before. We write to be understood. Coming into contact with other people pushes me to express myself in ways that are different than when I am authoring a text for a known juried journal. The audience in the latter is often known via the profession. What I so enjoy about blogging are the responses from people whose lives may be quite different from my own. These encounters help me to consider other perspectives and to come to know in ways that are unexpected.
A critical disposition we do know that is essential is empathy. Accessing Web 2.0 is one way learners can come into contact with other. Coming to know, even appreciate ‘other’ may well be the critical disposition of this century. The choice is not about form, but about connecting and networking via our expressed ideas. The technology allows us for new ways of expressing. It allows us the opportunity for invention.
Blog post? Research report? It’s like Annie Dillard said at the end of Teaching a Stone to Talk:
“What’s the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are they both not saying: Hello?”
We are in agreement that our students still need to learn how to develop a thoughtful argument, however I am not sure it matters much whether it is in a research paper form or on a blog. I think we need to embrace the fact that we now have other options for writers to write, discuss, and receive feedback. The educators I know also agree in the fact that their are timeless skills that all students must learn. They also agree that flexibility and adaptability are also timeless skills. Quality writing is quality writing whether it is done in blog form or in a research paper.
Student papers are appalling for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that they have no natural audience, so students are writing to no one. Blogging has an audience (though sometimes a small one), but suffers from rather low standards of citation and scholarship.
Students would benefit from being required to write in a number of different formats, rather than always in the same rather limited one. They would also benefit from having real readers who provided pushback when they were sloppy in their reasoning or their grammar. So I think that student blogging does have a place in the curriculum.
In the twenty years when little Johnny or Alice have grown up, I don’t doubt that they will still flush a toilet, depend on electrical wires, live in a house and do other things that are done almost the same way as their 19th cent. predecessors did.
While we worry about the “digital age” we are losing skilled, technical workers-the plumbers, pipe fitters, electricians, carpenters, etc. etc. In our rush to “change education” we are leaving behind the one student that keeps that digital machine running behind the scenes.
Little Johnny will still need a doctor-despite digital advances-and probably a nurse to change his depends when he is ninety.
I wrote paper after paper on a manual typewriter, then an electric typewriter and now on a computer. The medium of the message is not what is important, it is how you write and communicate the content.
Video is fine, but reading allows you to ponder the message and think about what you have read.
The writing may be digital, pen and ink or on a stone tablet! It just better be well done!