“To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.”
—Anatole France
Creativity is the metaphoric power of a nine-year-old who calls her unkempt Shih Tzu a “dirty ol’ dust mop.” It’s the vision of a photographer who sees Easter Island sculptures in a series of back-alley shadows. And it is the inventiveness of a gardener who feels the stirrings of a story after digging up an arrowhead.
As the person who usually answers questions (both in-house and out) regarding documenting research reports, let me second Dave Kemper’s most recent post about breathing life into the research process. Dave summarized Ken Macrorie’s I-Search approach to research writing. I’d like to parallel that with a digital-era view of what research is really all about.
Today I finally got a chance to read Liz O’Neill’s Teaching Beowulf to Vikings Fans essay at www.TheWritingTeacher.org. Mrs. O’Neill obviously has had both quite a bit of experience in the classroom and at least one great teacher to inspire her. I’m happy she took the opportunity to pass that inspiration along in this essay.
“For many decades high schools and colleges have fostered the ‘research paper,’ which has become an exercise in badly done bibliography, often an introduction to the art of plagiarism, and a triumph of meaninglessness—for both writer and reader.”
In the January 2009 edition of Esquire, the great American composer Philip Glass offers the following pithy observations:
In a posting about two weeks ago, I mentioned that my daughter recommended Of Human Bondage. At this point, both of us have finished reading, and tough as it was to bear with the protagonist through it all, the book was well worth the time. Elements still come to mind at odd moments, shaping the way I perceive human behavior and civilization.
“I love the taste of words. They have a taste and a weight and a colour as well as a sound and a shape.”
—Philip Pullman
The November 24 Washington Post included an article entitled “Students Dig Deep for Words’ Origins.” The article noted that Phil Rosenthal was one of the few high-school instructors in the United States teaching an etymology course. According to Rosenthal, students take the class because they want to brush up on their vocabulary skills before taking the ACT or SAT, and/or because they have a genuine interest in the history of words. (It was also reported that a few students sign up for the course thinking they will be studying insects.)
My oldest daughter called the other day to say that she is reading Of Human Bondage. She picked up a copy at a sale because her best friend in high school had said it was her favorite book, and my daughter figured any novel that could so impress a 17-year-old girl must be worth reading. Upon hearing this, I started reading the ebook copy which has resided on my pda ever since the title caught my attention on a Gutenberg.org search for something else some years ago.
Recently one of my novelist friends and I were out to dinner, discussing writing. He happened to mention being stuck at a spot in his most recent story and having called another novelist to talk it through. My first reaction was surprise, to think that one professional novel writer needed to confer with another. It jarred with my image of both these people as masters of their craft, each sitting in a solitary tower, quietly capturing words on paper.
“The universe of discourse is broad indeed and ranges from utilitarian and scientific uses of language to the most artful and playful literature. Likewise, it extends from public communication to private self-communication. Students need to learn how to compose and comprehend the spectrum.”
—James Moffett, co-author of Student-Centered Language Arts, K-12
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