Introduction
A Different Kind of Composition Class
I wanted to get to know the campus better. I wanted to get to know the students better. I wanted to give them a little practice in practical research while at the same time thinking about paragraph-making and how, done well, it can give an essay more amplitude than it otherwise might possess.
Meanwhile, I kept reading articles like this and this about students whipping themselves into a frenzy over perceived historical slights based on campus building names. Amherst wants to change its mascot because Lord Jeffrey allegedly used in the 1700’s some military tactics upon which we, in our more enlightened age, would frown. Princeton students want Woodrow Wilson, a former president of the United States (!) removed from buildings because his social views were, according to our modern standards, imperfect.
Such demonstrations bother me for three reasons. First, such instances reek to me of what C.S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery:” the belief that everything before you is primitive simply because it is past. Second, whitewashing history seems unwise. The Romans keep artifacts erected by Nero and Mussolini, among other unsavory characters because for them history is most useful when we attempt to learn from it, rather than eradicate it. Third, the whole approach strikes of biting the feeding hand. In all these cases, the angry are students at Ivy League colleges. That makes them the most privileged people (whatever their backgrounds) American society can produce. Many, if not most, are there on scholarships, welcomed into august institutions that other people built, esteemed, and gave generously toward. And yet, they’re using the education they’ve been given — research skills, libraries, theoretical underpinnings, and email servers to attack the institution that nurtured them. I think that’s awful.
There had to be a better way. Maybe instead of using our research acumen to attack the legacies of our benefactors, we should use it to find out to whom we owe debts of gratitude. My office building has a name on it, which means someone did something remarkable befitting such a memorial. Perhaps if I’m going to sit here, I should find out who that is and say thanks.
The essays in this publication were written by freshmen at Seattle Pacific University, where I teach, in the Fall of 2016. They were given little direction — find something with a name on it and say thanks — basically, but they’d been practicing various skills involved including descriptions, critical inquiry, and philanthropic appreciation all quarter long.
The class for which they were composed I called On Generosity and Almsgiving. Rather than thinking about writing as an expression of ego, or as a mode to power, I thought we might better approach it as a way of being generous. Our central question was: “Readers are giving us their attention; what do we owe them in return?” We read excerpts from Florence Nightengale on nursing, Andrew Carnegie on philanthropy, Peter Marin on the homeless, and Harry Belafonte on “We Are the World,” among many others thinking about selflessness.
From such instruction, the students made these essays. They might have just turned them in with all their other papers, but these are some pretty interesting histories; to keep them for ourselves seemed, well, ungenerous. I’m proud of them. More to the point, I’m thankful for them.
For more about the sorts of classes I teach, click here.
For more about the SPU Writing Program, click here.
Special thanks to the University Archivist, Adrienne Meier, for guidance through the special collections at Ames Library, thanks to the students for thinking through these things with me, and thanks to SPU for having us.
