Comments on: Iowa Thinks Writing Can’t Be Taught – Do You Agree?

By: Bill Henderson

Bill Henderson — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 15:16:49 +0000

Totally true, Werta. But since the skills you’ve described as teachable are so crucial to becoming a fully developed writer, haven’t you just made the case that writing CAN be taught?

Maybe you meant they can’t teach you to have a writer’s imagination or cultivate the place in your psyche where great ideas are hidden away. But I believe everybody has a store of great ideas (if hidden) and the challenge is access to it. If that’s true, then means of access can be taught–and my own work with students and clients is proof of that.

The only thing that can’t be taught, in my experience, is desire and dedication. It can be modeled, but not taught.

By: Werta

Werta — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:56:09 +0000

Writing can’t be taught, but they sure can teach you how to polish your writing.Teach you how to write professional manuscripts for publication, how to edit your work.This is what is holding many great writers back.They don’t know how to produce acceptable manuscripts and so therefore they get published.

By: JT

JT — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 01:34:10 +0000

I think there are fundamentals and elements of style that can be taught at every level. I also think that having an experienced instructor you can bounce ideas off of and can get recommendations in reading is invaluable.

Not everyone can be great. The Michael Jordan’s of the world, even though he worked, arguably harder than anyone, are set apart on the shelf of genius, but as for others who have a basic understanding and a will to learn–teaching is possible.

By: Bill Henderson

Bill Henderson — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 22:37:37 +0000

Hemingway had teachers. Sherwood Anderson and, most notably, Gertrude Stein, at whose feet he sat like a schoolboy. They were not part of an MFA program, but good teaching is good teaching. They did NOT teach him to be great.

“Great” writers with MFAs? Flannery O’Connor and Toni Morrison off the top of my head. Iowa claims 16 Pulizers and 3 Poet Laureates. There’s no question that these programs produce good writers, some of whom become “great.”

But once again, it’s greatness (or extreme excellence, call it what you will) that CAN’T be taught. Writing CAN.

By: Dean Rushmore

Dean Rushmore — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 20:32:39 +0000

Just for fun, let’s look at the process in reverse. Maybe some of you can answer these questions. What “teaching methods” were used to “teach” Hemingway, Faulkner, Tolstoy, and Grisham? What “learning process” did each of these authors (or any) go through to achieve their level of expertise and writing success? Is there a common thread?

Conversely, does anyone know of any teaching methods (for writing) which have already produced successful writers?…great writers?…brilliant writers?

If we could answer these questions, therein lies evidence to support whether ‘writing can be taught.’

I’m assuming (maybe incorrectly) that we’re talking about teaching people to be “great writers”. Maybe that’s where the disconnect lies.

By: Bill Henderson

Bill Henderson — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 02:57:37 +0000

@ Eric It’s a commonly voiced argument. I hear it all the time from non-writers. “But you can’t TEACH it, can you?” If you take it up, they follow with, “How can you teach someone to be a Faulker or a Hemingway?” That’s the faulty logic. As for who’s setting it up, it’s mostly people who don’t understand the writing process. These folks romanticize it, read a lot but have no conception of what goes into creating the apparent simplicity and unmediated “greatness” of what they are reading. Since they don’t perceive it, they don’t understand what’s there that could be taught. I remember hearing Terri Gross ask Drew Cary how he learned to be funny. He said he spent some time in the library reading books on how do construct a joke, how to build a standup routine. She was amazed. Learned to be funny from books? She didn’t believe it. You wonder where the bifurcation point comes from–I would bet that’s because you don’t hear it in voiced in music or the other arts. Again, that’s one of my main points: why is it WRITING that can’t be taught?

By the way, David Gessner, a wonderful author and a dedicated teacher, encapsulated the whole thing nicely in a comment on my Facebook page: “If they (Iowa) think it can’t be taught maybe it’s time for them to stop teaching it.”

By: Bill Henderson

Bill Henderson — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 02:41:24 +0000

It's the hardest thing to teach. As is "having something to say." I just came across an interesting remark by teacher/blogger Dennis Cass: "Maybe the reason why we don’t believe we can teach the whole 'having something to say' part is because we’ve never tried." I agree. More teachers should figure out that part and try to teach it.

By: Natasha Fondren

Natasha Fondren — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 01:44:45 +0000

The one thing that music conservatory taught me was that the arts can be taught. It taught me how to improve myself, how to be dogmatic about something most people view as some sort of wishy-washy thing that’s mostly to-do with luck and talent.

Many of my friends had a difficult experience. Just the need for correct notes ALL the time, and for pianists, MEMORIZING all those correct notes, is exhausting. And then there’s the comparing to each other, etc.

I loved every minute, though. Loved it. The only thing they failed to teach me, which was probably the most important, was that I was supposed to be finding my own voice. I wish they had told me! I really do!

By: Eric Hirsh

Eric Hirsh — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 01:09:56 +0000

Also, I am embarrassed to have made a grammatical error on a writer’s blog. The second half of first sentence should read “but I don’t quite know FROM where…non-greatness.”

By: Eric Hirsh

Eric Hirsh — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 01:08:16 +0000

It’s funny, I think we agree on most of the same points about the need for “teaching” (Yes, you can even induce creativity, you can’t directly identify it, but you can get people close to it and put them in an environment to mimic it and then own it for themselves. Improv comedy classes are very efficient at this) but I don’t quite know where you are grabbing this bifurcation point between greatness and non-greatness from? Yes, it is a logical contradiction, but exactly who is setting it up? I thought we were talking about “teaching writing” instead of “teaching writing to the point that others are able to identify some sort of ‘greatness’ parameter as compared to what has come before”

Maybe the mistake has something to do with the observer effect, or some esoteric epistemological concept: if we go into teaching looking directly at the end game and focusing on getting there, we have already failed. If we take a more observational route, we will one day be able to look back on our own personal success to see just how we arrived there. Harking back to my Julliard stories, it strikes me that the academic setting is too focused on form and content and not enough on process. So, perhaps there it is: “writing” cannot be taught, but “the process of writing” can be.

Some of these comments also remind me about the recent research on “the myth of talent” most recently popularized by Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” book (nope, haven’t read it, don’t really plan to).