The Classroom is Not a Democracy

I love these paragraphs in a new Poets & Writers article billed as "A Rant Against Creative Writing Classes":

This is a good time to mention a criticism that I’ve received not once, not twice, but several times on teaching evaluations: “The problem with Professor Barden is that he acts like he knows so much more about writing than we do.”

That could be the whole essay right there, don’t you think?

Part of the problem is a populist idea of democracy, a sacred cow in the academy, as elsewhere: We are all equals in our pursuit of literature; everyone has something to offer. One teacher friend of mine whose opinion I solicited on this topic said of his students, “They still teach me as much as I teach them.” What do they teach you, exactly? How to fall in love stupidly or that you should drink a lot of water during a rave?

In one memorable workshop, I spent a fair amount of time teasing out from my students the difference between a “master,” which was the degree that I had, and a “bachelor,” which was the degree that they didn’t yet have. Oddly enough, several students have expressed gratitude for that particular rant.

I'm grateful, too. It validates my own feelings too often in my own experience as a college-level teacher (not just in writing classes). But yes, it affirms some feelings I've had about writing workshops, too.

Read the entire article here.

--Prunella