You Can Lead a Horse to Water but You Can’t Make Them Drink

When I think of the idealistic outcomes of the course, my mind immediate goes to the objectives I list in my syllabus:

  • Learning to think about writing in terms of discourse
  • Learning to see revision as the cornerstone of good writing
  • Becoming self-motivated and self-directed learners
  • Learning to identify the impact of and to effectively employ writing tools such as genre, medium, and audience 
  • Learning to collaboration large-scale, long-term projects

However, if I’m being completely honest, I’m not sure that even in an idealized scenario it would be reasonable or practical to expect to succeed with all of these objectives. While I recognize the value in pursuing these ideals, could I measure any of these as outcomes? Even as I pursue these very objectives in my own student experience, I must admit that they’re all processes, not destinations. Collaboration, for instance, will never be something I perfect—it will always and only be something I can hope to continuously improve. Trying to achieve these objectives with a group of students who I don’t know, who don’t know me, who have varying degrees of familiarity with these ideas and varying degrees of interest in achieving them—it feels a little like throwing a whole lot of spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.

So what’s the use of these objectives? And if I can’t realistically expect to achieve them, do they have any use? How do they inform my ideal impact I’d like to have on my students?

I would love simply to agree to terms. I would love for my students to leave my class with a common vernacular around composition and communication. What I really outline in my syllabus’ objectives is the core vocabulary I hope all of my students leave with: “discourse,” “revision,” “good writing,” “self-motivated,” “self-directed,” “impact,” “effectively,” “writing tools,” “genre,” “medium,” “audience,” and “collaborate.” While I believe whole-heartedly in what I feel is the objective value in each of these terms—especially for an academic environment—I can’t make my students agree with me (and I’m not sure to what degree I should try). If I’m doing my job “right”—if I’m achieving the idealistic aims of the course as I see them—I am ultimately presenting a persuasive, well-supported, and lucid argument to my students for what these terms really are and why engaging with them and putting them to use matters. It’s up to them to decide for themselves whether they agree and whether they’ll engage, but I’d like to do justice to the utility of our subject and to introduce my students to new levels of access to tools for their ongoing success as both academic and individual communicators through understanding of our core concepts.

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