One Final Note

We’ve talked a lot this semester about the best way to teach writing, and it seems that in the writing community there is no real consensus. Yet.

Addy brought up a question in an earlier post when she talked about the hideousness of the class who asserted that all HIV-positive people should be forced to wear an identifying mark to warn unsuspecting sex partners of their dangerous status. It was a  ludicrous proposition from so many angles, and one that horrified their teacher. Addy worried in her post that by sharing her opposition to the idea, she might be forcibly changing their opinions, and from a pedagogical standpoint, wasn’t that maybe a bad thing? Like, maybe practicing “banking education”?

Those of you in the Wednesday night class know that I developed a major teacher crush on Paulo Freire this semester. In his final book, which was published just 40 days before his death in 1997, Freire made a proposal, an “ethics of freedom”, that he thought every teacher ought to adopt.

“The fundamental task of educators is to live ethically, to practice ethics daily with young people and children. This is much more important than the subject of biology, if we happen to be biology teachers.”

I work hard to help first year writers improve their essays, but it is more important to me that my students leave me as better people than as better writers.