"Muddy writing reflects muddy thinking"

"Amo-amas-amat" is where it's at. Or was, for high schoolers educated in our day mid 20th century. ("The Birth of Venus" by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1879 Oil on canvas, Musee d'Orsay, Paris)

La Shawn jogged our memory today with her invitation to comment on "Which teacher(s), if any, had a positive impact on your life?" Her own post, a must-read that brought tears of joyous recognition to these tired old, cynical eyes, tells of the life-changing magic her high school journalism teacher worked on the self-described "slacker" she was back then by encouraging La Shawn's budding writing talent and urging her to be all that she could be:

Miss G. made us keep a weekly journal, a task designed to help us get the creative juices flowing by writing two pages in a black and white composition notebook once a week. All we had to do was fill up a page -- front and back -- to get an A. Most of the time, I went over the quota, writing several pages worth of adolescent angst over crushes on football players and going to the prom. One time, I wrote this sprawling “short story” about a dream fantasy, where the object of my affection was the singer Prince, an obsession at the time. I kept it clean, but I used my imagination to transport the reader into the fantasy, and ended the story on an enigmatic note. To my 16-year-old mind, it was cool.

Miss G. thought so, too. “You’re a good writer, La Shawn,” she wrote in the margin, the first time anyone had ever told me that. Comments like, “This would make a good column -- save it!” and “Excellent writing!” were sprinkled throughout other entries. Her encouragement gave me the confidence to experiment and open up in the entries . . .

While I barely completed other assignments for the class, that year-long, journal-writing project saved me from failing. I loved writing in that journal, but I didn’t like doing it as an assignment. Sometimes I was late turning it in, and my grade reflected it. But journaling created a “fire in the belly.” I had connected with something at last.

As we wrote in La Shawn's comments:

For me it was Miss Wood, my 10th-grade high school English teacher, who introduced us to Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style” and was forever reminding us that “Muddy writing reflects muddy thinking.”

This is a thrilling post, La Shawn, well written -- of course -- full of life and tender love for a kindred spirit. How wonderful that you were able to tell your mentor what a difference she made.

There are other great teachers we could mention along the way, from Mummy and Daddy (Goomp) and Grammy (JuJu) and Great Aunt Helen on down, all those shining stars from infanthood through first grade and high school and college and on into graduate school who -- like La Shawn's Miss G -- each in her or his own way made us believe in ourselves and believe in learning to think. Our imail correspondent reminded us of Miss Rowe, the venerable high school Latin teacher who as a young hussy had seduced the older Latin teacher, Mr. Rowe, and then as an older gal herself taught us amo-amas-amat, veni-vidi-vici and a whole lot in between. There's food for a zillion blogposts in there. We learned to love language and became a seeker of wisdom of truth under their tutelage. All the more horrifying to think of what public education has come to in this day and age. This excerpt from Bird Dog's latest at Maggie's Farm says it all:

And it’s worth noting that in Criticism and Social Change, the left-wing theorist, Frank Lentricchia, announced that the postmodern movement “seeks not to find the foundation and conditions of truth, but to exercise power for the purpose of social change.”

Seekers of ignorance and lies, unite!

Comments

[goomp]

It seems to me that those who lived in the USA from its founding through most of the 20th century experienced the greatest of all human societies. Exercising power to make changes that some believe is desirable social change is the road to serfdom.

[Gayle Miller]

For me, first there was my godmother, Miss Clara Wochele, who taught high school English in the Cleveland, Ohio public school system for over 40 years. She was my teacher only in the sense that my letters from camp came back CORRECTED, yes they did! But from her, I learned good grammar, good punctuation and good spelling at a very early age. She also encouraged me to be a writer, said encouragement only now bearing some small fruit. My late cousin Gene actually had "Aunt" Clara for English and he assured me that she was far tougher on her actual students than she ever had been on me.

Then there was my late and beloved mother, who never permitted "baby talk" around me. As a consequence, when I started to talk (and never shut up), I spoke in full sentences because I THOUGHT in full sentences. And my late father, who read to us in the evenings because in those days, there was no television widely available. My father's reading tastes were diverse. Sometimes we got Thurber, sometimes we got Shakespeare and sometimes we got the Bible.

Finally, there was Sister Mary Myles, HHM (later Sister Joan Acker) who was both my home room and chemistry teacher in high school. She refused to permit me to "coast" through chemistry, even though I detested it and, indeed, all "science" related subjects. She used fair means and foul to force me to focus and actually work to achieve a good grade and by that effort on her part, instilled in me an enjoyment of learning that has lasted into my 60s.

To all of them, my love, appreciation and gratitude can never be adequately expressed.

[hnav]

La Shawn Rocks !

so does that fine painting...

thank you.

[Teresa]

While I've had teachers whose classes I enjoyed, as far as I recall, no one ever told me "you're good at this" or "you do this well".

There was the occasional "you can do better than this". Once I was singled out, in front of a class full of kids who didn't like me because I was new, and told "you know all this stuff, so don't answer any more questions" (yeah, that went over REAL well with the other kids).

Then there were the numerous people who tried to tell me "you don't want to take that class - it's hard" or "isn't that a lot of math? You might find that too difficult, why don't you take some easier classes"...

My parents weren't into praise. I barely knew my plethora of relatives. They were nice people, but they knew nothing about me so there wasn't any praise of my abilities.

In the end, I have no teacher mentors, no relative mentors, no friend mentors. Everything I've done, I've done because someone told me either I wouldn't want to do it, or I couldn't do it. I guess one takes inspiration where it's found. I did things in spite of what I was told. Heh.

[Siberlee]

That would be my teacher Mrs. K. Why K? Because she was married to a Thai National who last name had twenty-something syllables and no one could pronounce it. I was 14, maybe 15 and a freshman at the International School of Bangkok at the time. This was at the end of the Vietnam War. So our first week Mrs. K gave us an assignment to for 500 words to describe something from a different perspective. It was just supposed to be an exercise in how to properly describe something in Writing.

I tried to get the 500 words – I really did – but that was not (and is not my style) I had always been more of story teller than a writer, so when everyone else turned in their one or two pages I turned in 14. A 4,000 word story about a man trapped inside a matchbox - complete with a flash back to an evil scientist who had shrunk him, no less! And a scene where the scientist had hundred of match boxes in an oversized brandy balloon on this desk. My first Sci-Fi short story – LOL – to be 14 again!.

I remember her reading two of the pages (the description) out loud to the class the next day and seeing puzzlement in the faces of the other students at what I was describing. Each knowing that they recognized what was being written about but… not being able to place what it was. Each pupil with a raised eyebrow or a slightly cocked head, “I know what it is, but what?” was silently screamed with their sidelong glances at me. Mrs K. then read the stories title “The Matchbox” and 16 sets of eyes (classes were smaller back then!) instantly registered, “Of course!”

I felt a rush of warmth go through my body making me shutter with pure joy. A tingling sensation that was complete ecstasy rocked through me. A feeling I still get 30 year later when I know I have written something well. It was then I knew I had to write. There was no choice. There is nothing better than that feeling.

She did mention (privately) that I do tend to run on in my writing (still working on that one teach!), much as I suppose I am doing here. She helped me with this and my mechanics (which are still horrid) and strongly encouraged me in turning regular English assignments into stories.

I have never seen her since I graduated unfortunately.

Thank you Mrs. K, where ever you are.