Part III: They’ll never learn to ride the bike if we never take off the training wheels!

Consider the following writing prompts:

1. Study the following passage from chapter IV and write a coherent, well-written essay in which you argue whether or not Lord Lordly and his wife, Lady Lordly, articulate conventional attitudes toward gender roles in marriage. ***Be sure to establish a clear thesis early on and support your ideas with references from the passage.*** Do not merely summarize the passage.
2. Arthur Sname’s novel not only presents a frank account of a soldier’s experiences in combat, it also highlights the difficulty of reconciling the life of the soldier with the life the civilian life left behind and eventually returned to. Write a well-organized essay in which you describe the trauma soldiers experience when moving between their lives on the battlefield and their lives at home before or after the war. You may want to focus on one particular character, if you choose to do so. ***Considering Namuv Kairkter’s story in “This is the Title of His Story” is one possibility, but you may choose any character(s) in order to formulate your ideas.***
3. Authors frequently use irony in order to reveal their attitude toward the subject and characters and to enable readers to evaluate plot developments and characters’ actions effectively and critically. Write a well-organized essay in which you explore the central irony of the novel by ***analyzing the protagonist’s belief that his life will be better if he can only retain his youthful appearance when, in fact, the degeneration of his soul and the confusion of his sense of right and wrong drive him deeper and deeper into a state of despair and anguish.*** Additionally, you may want to consider other instances of irony in the text.

Now, they display a fairly vast array of language and organizational problems (which we can tackle on another day), but today I’m asking you to pay particular attention to the portions between the asterisks (***).

Remember, we’re talking about rigor.

See the problem?

Okay … I’ll tell you (if you’ve already discovered it, please remain in your seat and do not blurt out the answer), but before I do, let me assure you that these are all “real” prompts from “real” sources like a not-yet-published teaching guide, a twelfth-grade English final exam, and a prospective writer’s writing sample. They’re real, and they were all submitted as good and workable.

So … here’s the problem with them.

If we’re talking rigor, we have to allow the kid to do some thinking for himself. We have to be willing to let the kid be “wrong,” and we have to then help the kid learn how and why he was “wrong” in this instance so he can be “more right” the next time.

Every single one of the above prompts does some degree of the kid’s thinking for him.

Prompt #1 is the least problematic. All it does is remind the kid to “establish a clear thesis early on and support your ideas with references from the passage.” [Of course, they would be references _to_ the passage, but what’s a few grammatical errors among friends?] If this were a prompt on a large-scale assessment with lots of stress, it might be nice to remind the kid that he’s writing an essay and that an essay needs a thesis and support.

But in a rigorous classroom, to remind a kid about to write an essay that he needs a thesis and support is a little like reminding a kid about to take his road test that he’s supposed to try and not hit pedestrians or other vehicles. I mean, it pretty much comes with the territory. The prompt specifically tells the kid to “write a coherent, well-written essay.” Try to write that “well-written essay” without a thesis and support? Well, here’s your D. Next time you’ll remember.

Prompt #2 is even worse, less rigorous. Assuming part of the prompt’s intent is to assess the kid’s knowledge of the novel, the statement, “Considering Namuv Kairkter’s story in ‘This is the Title of His Story’ is one possibility” pretty much tells the kid what to write about. _Don’t think about the book, kid, just repeat what we said in class about this particular chapter, and you’ll do fine._

Prompt #3 is the worst of the bunch. “[A]nalyz[e] the protagonist’s belief that his life will be better if he can only retain his youthful appearance when, in fact, the degeneration of his soul and the confusion of his sense of right and wrong drive him deeper and deeper into a state of despair and anguish,” doesn’t leave the kid a whole lot of room to determine a central irony, formulate a thesis, and support that thesis with references to (or from) the novel. Of course, the prompt does continue, “Additionally, you may want to consider other instances of irony in the text,” just in case you know any. So there _is_ some room here for the kid to actually think.

But he doesn’t have to in order to get a decent grade for this essay.

Now … before you start blubbering your protest (but, but, but, but), let me remind you that I have been the twelfth-grade teacher reading the last-essay-of-the-year papers and the final exams less than forty-eight hours before graduation. I have read “essay” after “essay” in which kids who should have known better just string along a series of sentences—maybe even not really sentences. The “essays” have no discernable thesis, they refer neither to nor from the text, and they do choose unlikely or inappropriate aspects of the literature to discuss. They miss the point of the question.

After enough essays and enough years, the temptation to write the “foolproof” prompt is almost irresistible:

Make sure you have a clear thesis. Don’t forget to indent your paragraphs, and to quote from the story whenever possible. Be certain to discuss both language and theme and to use the word _foil_ at least once. Use the correct name of at least one rhetorical device, and make certain you underline any words or phrases of foreign origin. Mention both the protagonist and antagonist …

After all, we want our kids to do well.

But if I _never_ take my hands off the back of my daughter’s bicycle, she’s _not_ riding well. Seriously, how many pairs of training wheels do you see in bicycle rallies and races?

Yes, kids occasionally fall. Yes, they occasionally fail. (See that kind of clever play on words?) And I am not advocating watching them fall and then simply walking away. I am not removing the teacher and the role of instruction from the equation. But I _am_ reminding you that, if you want to “do rigor,” you have to change the kinds of questions you ask and how you ask them. You have to remove the training wheels and let go of the back of the bike.

Look at _these_ prompts:

1. Study the following passage from chapter IV and write a coherent, well-written essay in which you argue whether or not Lord Lordly and his wife, Lady Lordly, articulate conventional attitudes toward gender roles in marriage. Do not merely summarize the passage.
2. Arthur Sname’s novel not only presents a frank account of a soldier’s experiences in combat, it also highlights the difficulty of reconciling the life of the soldier with the life the civilian life left behind and eventually returned to. Write a well-organized essay in which you examine the anxiety the soldiers experience moving between their lives on the battlefield and their lives at home.
3. Write a well-organized essay in which you explore the central irony of the novel.

They might not be wordy enough to suit your taste—I myself have to admit that especially #3 seems to want some kind of introduction and conclusion—but they are far, far better than their originals because they at least do not do the kid’s work for him.

After all, if you have to remind the kid he needs a thesis, is he _really_ “well-educated”_?

If you have to lay out the essay for the kid, then what are you assessing when you assign the essay in the first place?

All in all, it’s not really all that difficult to “do rigor” in your classroom. Depending on the grade level you’re teaching and your school and district’s curriculum, it’s often simply a matter of changing your approach, broadening your assumptions, trusting your colleagues, and holding the kid responsible for his share of his education.

Stop introducing everything every year.

Don’t even waste your time on comprehension—except in those rare cases when comprehension might really be an issue.

And don’t do the kid’s work for him.

That’s pretty much it.

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Want to read more? Check out Part I and Part II of this article.