Fall 2023 Post 04: Complex Learning, Reading, and Writing

Many of you may find my classes different from what you are accustomed to, especially if you are just out of high school, and thus, you may be confused. In this post, then, I will try to explain to you why I conduct my classes the way I do and how they work. I assume that if you understand how and why the class works, then you will do better in the class, and I want you to succeed.

Let's pause here for a writing lesson (after all, I am supposed to be teaching writing): note that I just introduced my topic for this post (the structure of my college classes) and told you my thesis, or the main point I will make about the topic (to explain why and how my classes are structured as they are). I've also identified my audience right up front: you, a student in my class. I've also identified why I want to write to you, my purpose (to help you understand the class you're in) and what response I'm hoping to get from you (better writing and a better grade). Finally, I've identified the genre of text I'm using to communicate to you: a blog post, an informal essay. Thus, I've given you the necessary framework or context to understand my writing: you now know the writer, reader, subject, and text. All readers need that context to understand any piece of writing (and you need to learn the terms in bold as they are key concepts in this class). Now, you have it. You should do something similar in your own writing: write an introduction that quickly establishes the context for the reader. And finally, again, note that my introductory paragraph is concise and to the point — much shorter than this longish explanation of it. Okay, back to my post.

My approach to teaching and learning how to read and write (and that's all I teach now that I no longer work in educational technology) is based on the idea that writing is complex. In fact, I think that all of life is complex. I agree with Ton Jörg of Utrecht University that, "We need to take the complexity of reality as reflecting the real" ("Thinking in Complexity" 2). Reality is really complex, so let me explain what I mean by complexity, and then I'll explain why I think writing is a complex activity that is best taught and learned in a complex environment.

I believe that all of life and its activities are the interactions of complex systems trying to make their way through whatever environment they find themselves. As they are making their way, they are changed by their environments and, in turn, change their environments in multiple, continuous feedback loops that pull energy, matter, information, and organization from an environment into an entity that processes that stuff, and then feeds energy, matter, information, and organization back out into the environment. Both the entity (you, for instance) and the environment (a town, a pond, or a solar system, for instance) are changed by this exchange. It's why nothing remains the same forever. All things are dancing in new patterns. It's also why you can't think about the entity (yourself) without considering its environments (your family, friends, job, school, church, community, state, nation, etc).

This dynamism works at the macro level of stars and galaxies down through the micro level of quarks and protons. It certainly works through you and me. I, for instance, started as a complex system some 70 plus years ago as the union of a particular egg and particular sperm, and I've been unfolding in particular environments ever since: a certain family, schools, church, states, nation, socio-economic class, gender, race — you name it. I had to find my way through all these different environments, and the interactions between me and and my various environments are unbelievably complex and have made me who I am in large part and have made my environments what they are in small part. (As an aside, because environments are bigger than we are, they tend to affect us more than we affect them, but we still affect them.) I'm now in a class with you, and again I have to find my way through all these new relationships just as you do. Our interactions through the term will change me and change you and change the class as a whole. I hope we'll all change for the better, but we'll see.

Now to the point: reading and writing are also complex systems that we use to cope with our interactions with our social, political, economic, religious, and educational environments. Reading and writing concern the flows of information in and out of us, how those flows of information shape us and how they modify our environments in return. 

You already know this intuitively because all of you use reading and writing to connect to and interact with your social networks: you text. And you text all day, every day. You text to connect to and interact with people who are important to you — mostly friends, family, and lovers, but also coworkers and big organizations such as your cell carrier or your university. You read to bring all that information in and to clarify or modify what you know about your world. Then you process all that information — you think. Sometimes you are rational in your thinking, sometimes emotional, but either way, you think, or process, the text messages you receive. 

Why do you do this much writing, this much texting? To influence your people and your worlds. You are working hard to cultivate relationships, to prune relationships (your exes), and to make other interactions work to your benefit or at least not harm you. You are keeping your feedback loops humming with information that flows into you, gets processed, and then flows back out to your various environments. This is a hell of a lot of work, and most of you are very diligent about it, texting hundreds of times a day.

My point? You are already writers and readers, and you intuitively understand why you do it: to connect to and learn about your world and to influence your world in return. You write to perturb in some way the behavior and beliefs of others, and you read to be perturbed by them in turn. You know this intuitively, but what you may not know is that academic writing is just a variation of texting to your peeps.

Now you've joined a new, more academic network: a university and this class, and you have to find your way through it. You have to learn how to keep the feedback loops humming as you let the information flow into you, process it, and then let it flow back out filtered through your own understanding. Does this sound a lot like conversation? Good. It should. Conversation is a loop, back and forth. A conversation is never one way. A one way conversation is basically just shouting, a lecture, a sermon, a performance. Most of us don't tolerate that sort of thing for very long. Even the most die-hard Swifty wants the concert to end sooner or later.

Unfortunately, many of your classes have been organized old school: you show up at a certain place and time, you keep quiet while a teacher dumps some new information into your head through lectures, you demonstrate on a test that you remember some of the teacher's information, and if you remember enough, you leave the class with a good enough grade to take one more step toward your degree. The only connections that matter in those kinds of classes are between you and the teacher, and the flow is one way: from teacher to you. You bring little to no value to the class conversation, and the other students don't matter either. In fact, often, they are just in your way. (Yes, I'm being extreme here, but to clarify my point.)

This class doesn't work that way. Please read that sentence again, and believe it. I don't do old school.

This class asks you to cultivate connections and relationships with the course content, the teacher, your colleagues in the class and even outside your class, and starting with this class, an online AI called Bard. You learn to read and write only in the context of reading and writing with others, including Bard. As famous sociologist and philosopher Niklas Luhmann says in his book Problems of Reflection in the System of Education, "Learning learns itself" (98). In this class, you learn to read and write by reading and writing with others. I will ask you to read academic essayists in 1101 or literary poets and playwrights in 1102, but you will also read me and your colleagues. You can begin to think of Bard as one of your colleagues. I will ask you to write academic essays for your academic community, but I'll also ask you to write blog posts and comments in your extended class community. I'll ask you to write comments in the essays of your colleagues to help them improve their writing. You will learn to read and write by reading and writing, the same way you learned to text by texting. None of you took a Texting 101 course; rather, you learned wazzup, ur, LOL, and WTF by texting with others. And most of you are pretty good at it. If you practice, then you can be pretty good at academic writing, but practice is the ONLY way forward.

I learned this educational principle by coaching soccer for my sons' recreational teams back when they were young (they are both middle-aged men now). I learned that old school teaching doesn't work very well. It doesn't work at all in soccer. Imagine if I showed up at practice with a team of eight year olds, held up a soccer ball, and lectured them on its circumference, diameter, weight, and material composition, explained the rules of soccer, and the dimensions of the field, and then gave them a paper test. I would congratulate those who passed the test with a C or better and put them on the team. Those who failed the test would not be allowed to move forward with playing soccer. Silly, right? Yes, but that's about what we have done in traditional education where I might lecture you on the rules of writing, grammar, punctuation, formatting, spelling, and so forth, you take tests, and I congratulate those who pass and forget those who don't pass. Likely, some of my best, most promising soccer players and writers would be left off the team.

I don't do that, so don't expect any tests other than the weekly assessment, and you will get a 100 on those if you just show up and do them — on time. Eight year olds don't learn to play soccer by listening to me talk about soccer, and you don't learn academic writing by listening to me talk about that. You learn soccer by playing soccer, and you learn to write by writing. The job of the coach/teacher is to watch and to offer praise when he sees good soccer or good writing and to offer corrections when he sees weak soccer or weak writing. And he always offers his players and students the opportunity to improve a weak performance. Always.

So show up and connect (another way of saying do the work). Engage the content, me, and your colleagues, including Bard, through reading and writing, and you will sharpen your abilities to read and write. Guaranteed.

If you don't show up and engage, then I can't help you. I cannot teach you to play soccer if you ain't on the field playing. I can't teach you to read and write if you ain't reading and writing. That's impossible, and both you and I will waste our time and become frustrated. I'm too old to waste time with people who don't show up.

So here's your chance to engage, to get on the field and play. We use blog posts to connect with each other in my classes. Blog posts are more involved and sophisticated than text messages but not so formal as academic essays. Most of my students find them a more comfortable space for writing: not as trivial and silly as cat memes, LOL, and WTF, but not as stuffy as essays, either. I hope I've given you something to think about in this post, so leave a comment below. Did you have a new thought? What? Did you already know life was complex? How? Are you more confused about the class now? Why? If this post didn't make you think at all, then tell us why. However you can, engage the class and this content, and write something worth reading. Also read the comments of your colleagues and comment on their comments. Remember, you learn to read and write by reading and writing with others, just like you learn to play soccer, and like learning to play soccer, others will see you trip over your own feet. They'll also see you get back up and score the winning goal. So take the ball and run. Now.

By the way, I could have written a better post, probably a shorter one. I've tweaked and cut it a bit, but my standards for blog posts aren't quite so high as my standards for my academic essays, so I'm stopping here. As the French poet Paul Valéry said, "A poem is never finished, only abandoned." This is enough writing for one sitting.