[MD] 1961 Paper - "Quality in Freshman Writing"

[ian glendinning]

As requested earlier by Michael Hamilton, here is a copy of
Pirsig's 1961 paper "Quality in Freshman Writing".

It is in the form of a letter, presented here as text within the e-mail.
(I may format as a document and ask Horse to put up on-line too ?)

Note that most of the text already appears in the ZMM passages
analyzed recently by David Granger.

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>From Robert Pirsig. Dec 5, 2006

Here is what you are looking for:

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STARTS

                                                Bozeman, Montana
                                                April 2, 1961

Professor Edith Buchanan
Department of English Language and Literature
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico


Dear Prof. Buchanan:


     Professor Grieder has given me a copy of your letter asking for
information from persons with good thoughts about teaching or persons
who are doing unregimented, unorthodox teaching of English.  I would
like to answer this request in some detail, partly because of interest
in the conference you are planning, partly because of a need to clear
in  my own mind what I have been doing, and partly to make a useful
record for future teaching and graduate work. I gather from newspapers
that there is a great amount of complaint at present about Freshman
English instruction and that many departments are looking for new
answers.

     The answer presented here is in the disguise of an old answer, so
that at first it doesn't appear very new. The problem being fought is
the old problem that is renewed each time a student brings in a
rewritten paper saying, "Is this what you want?"  The question seems
ordinary enough to the student but every time one tries to answer it
honestly it becomes a frustrating and subtly maddening question.  An
instructor often gets the feeling that he could spend the rest of his
life telling the student what he wanted and never get anywhere
precisely because the student is trying to produce what the instructor
wants rather than what is good.

     One also notices that on many of these occasions the particular
student is as frustrated and angered as the instructor.  The student
keeps trying to figure out how to please the instructor and to his way
of thinking, the instructor doesn't seem to know himself.  The student
turns in a rambling paper.  He is told he needs better organization
and should make an outline.  He goes to work, makes an outline and
writes a new story that follows the outline but is told the story is
too dull.  He goes to work, tries to brighten it with choice bits of
liveliness and brings it in.  He is then told the story sounds too
artificial.  He begins to look at the instructor with a deep feeling
of estrangement.  He decides in his own mind that from the evidence
available it is clear that he is talking to an incompetent instructor.
 He goes his separate way with little accomplished and the cause of
English composition has fallen another tiny step backward.

     I suspect that the particular problem involved in this situation
is a deep one, a fundamental problem that pervades all teaching of
English composition and perhaps all teaching.  Because instructors are
compelled to say what they want they do say what they want, and when
they do, they force the students to conform to artificial molds that
destroy ideas that students have on their own.  Students who go along
with their instructors are then condemned for their inability to be
creative and take a stand of their own or produce a piece or writing
that reflects a student's own personal standards of what is good.

     At this point an instructor's disciplinarian hackles can rise and
he can say that in the final analysis he is teaching conformity and
that the students had better learn to like it.  He can argue that
students should learn to be creative only after they have learned the
discipline, presumably when they are all through school.  When he says
this it is unlikely that he is thinking much about the fact that when
they get through school they will enter another form of
work-discipline which will carry them through until they are ready for
retirement and death.  The disciplinarian argument, carried through,
seems to lead logically to the conclusion that the purpose of a
college or university is to train willing and obedient servants, not
to encourage the growth of free individuals capable of thinking for
themselves.  But this conclusion is in such obvious violation of the
whole American way it is absurd.  We are, in fact, dedicated to the
ideal of free thought, and when we insist upon conformity to what we
say or feel is good in English composition we are not following that
ideal.  I am not interested at this point in whether this is necessary
or not, I am simply pointing out that it is wrong and will continue to
be wrong until solutions are found.  I suspect that this fundamental
wrongness is the basis for much hatred and apathy that English has
earned in the past and will continue to accrue justifiable hatred in
the future.

     The classroom dilemma of saying what you want without producing
conformity is a dilemma that, I believe, has a solution.  The solution
lies in a common word which on first analysis seems as simple as the
word, "time," and which, on further inspection, turns out to be fully
as complex as that word, "time."  The word is quality.  When a student
asks what is wanted in English composition he should be told that what
is wanted is quality.  This seems ridiculously simple at first but it
is an often overlooked primitive concept that is absolutely necessary
to put across before a student can learn to write.

     And it is astounding how many students arrive at the college
level with no understanding that there is such a thing as quality in
writing -- students who honestly and conscientiously believe that good
writing is a matter of pleasing different instructors, students who
believe it is a matter of being flowery, being grammatical, being
profound, being obedient -- being anything, except just plain good.

     It is even more astounding how many instructors are of the same
opinion.  All the texts I have read and almost all the teachers I have
listened to are teaching methods of obtaining quality without much
regard for the fact that they are nothing but methods.  A majority of
students seem to regard good composition as that which follows a
certain method, or that which avoids error, rather than that which is
excellent.  Many (who have perhaps been influenced by a sort of
intellectually shapeless scientism,) believe that quality does not
really exist.

     At this point one could turn sophist and wander off into an
interminable philosophic discussion of what quality really is.  For
the purposes of teaching, however, it is necessary to know only that
(1) Every instructor of English composition knows what Quality is.
(Any instructor who does not should keep this fact carefully
concealed, for this would certainly constitute proof of incompetency.)
 (2) Any instructor who thinks quality of writing can and should be
defined before teaching it can and should go ahead and define it.  (3)
All those who feel that quality of writing does exist, but cannot be
defined, but that quality should be taught anyway, can benefit by the
the following method of teaching pure quality in writing without
defining it.  It should be noted that this method does not conflict
with existing methods, it simply shows what the methods are for.



Step One



     Assign the question to the students.  Have them write 500 words
about what quality is in thought and statement. For many students the
assignment has a shocking effect that makes them more responsive to
the word later on in the course.  Instructors should try the
assignment themselves first to know what the shock is like.



Step Two



     Prove to the classes that although they cannot define quality
adequately, they nevertheless know what it is.  Read two papers, one
extremely good one and one extremely bad one.  (Two are appended to
this letter.)  Let students decide by ballot which one is best.  The
overwhelming majority will always come up with the same answer as the
instructor.  (Or if they do not, the instructor will now have
something to think about.)



Step Three



     Read four papers in class.  Have each student get out a piece of
paper and rank the papers according to estimated quality.  Place
rankings on the board as each member of the class gives them.  The
following is typical:



First Paper        2    3    1    2    3    1    3    1    2    1    2
   1     1    3    2    3

Second Paper  1    1    2    1    1    2    1    3    1    2    1    3
   2     1    1    1

Third Paper        3    2    3    4    2    3    2    2    3    4    3
   4     3    2    3    2

Fourth Paper  4    4    4    3    4    4    4    4    4    3    4    2
   4     4    4    4

     One can see from the distribution that although there are some
individual variations, the class as a whole has agreed that the second
paper is best, and that the last paper is worst.  The first paper
seems to be running second and the third paper third.  At this point,
and not until this point, the class is ready for discussion about why
one paper has higher quality than another.  I personally am reluctant
to give my own opinion during these ratings, although sometimes when I
disagree with the class the temptation is strong.  During one
assignment I included a paper of my own so that I could discuss its
superior points.  To my chagrin three different sections rated it
second.  I showed the four papers to a reader and discovered that she
also rated it second and I have now come to that conclusion myself.  I
gathered from this incident and others that it is excellent discipline
for instructors to let classes come to their own conclusions.



Step Four



     Arrange student papers into groups of four, put each group in a
folder and have all folders put on shelves at the library.  Have the
students in each folder rank, in order of quality, the students in the
numerically subsequent folder (with the exception of those in the last
folder, who rate the first).  Have them write 75 words of criticism on
each paper, making the total of 300 words of criticism per student.
When they bring their critiques and rankings to the next class, staple
the four critiques for each folder together and later return them to
the folder in the library.  All students can then return to the
library to see what others have though of their writing.  Repeat this
with many in-class and out-of-class assignments during the course.



Step Five



     Many students will have trouble at first with what could be
called "Squareness."  They will be unable to trust their own judgment
enough to see what is good   and bad in different papers.  They will
tend to judge on the basis of principles of good writing they have
learned in previous courses rather than what they see in the papers
themselves.  A good way to help them break this habit of squareness is
to assign a subject so limited they are forced to do some original and
direct seeing.  Have them write all hour about one side of a coin or
the back of their thumb or a similarly limited topic.  They will
discover that they could write endlessly.  Point out that they can do
the same with folders in the library, once they start seeing  for the
first time.



Step Six



     Read two papers in class, one of which violates a certain
principle of good writing, such as unity, and one paper which does
not.   Let the class discover for itself what causes the differences
between the two papers.  Mimeograph the poor paper and let everyone
rewrite it for greater unity.  Read four revisions of the bad paper
and have them rated for quality.  I have found it is good to do this
with subordinate aspects of quality: clarity, authority, unity,
vividness and depth.  Clarity can be reproduced by teaching grammar,
but only if it is noted at all times that grammar is simply a method
of achieving clarity.  Without the goal of clarity and ultimately
quality in mind, a student who learns grammar is simply performing a
stupid and useless memorization.



     Similarly, an authoritative manner of writing can be produced by
extensive library research, but library research not intended to
produce a sense of authority and ultimately of quality is futIle.  If
the feeling of unity can be understood by a student and recognized as
a goal, then statements of purpose, theses sentences and outlines
become valuable.  If he does not have this feeling, they are
worthless.  An endless variety of principles can be brought in if
their qualitative effect is first noted and taught, and the principle
taught secondarily as as a mere method by which the qualitative effect
is produced.



Step Seven



     Keep a record of each student's grades but do not disclose them
to the student until the end of the term.  Students can find out where
they stand by reading the papers in the library.  Point out that the
grades are relative, and that in the end a student's grade depends
purely upon the quality of his writing compared with other students.
Indicate whatever grade distribution you have been using over the
years.  Many students who are used to a normal grading system complain
loudly about having their grades withheld because it makes them worry
about where they stand.  Point out that one does not improve if one is
not worried about where one stands.  At Montana State College the
majority of entering freshmen do not like to have their grades
withheld, but because of open entrance to the school, the majority of
students at the freshman level are not expected to graduate.  A survey
of students who had been without grades for a quarter revealed that
those who were about to receive A's were 2:1 in favor of withholding
grades; those who were about to receive D's and F's were all but
unanimously opposed.  A study of predicted achievements showed that
the grades were not out of line with expectations.  One can only
conclude that those students who yell when their grades are withheld
are the same students who would be yelling if their grades were not
withheld.  Withholding grades improves class performance throughout
the quarter and enforces the idea of discovery rather than conformity
as a method of learning English.



     Things can be worked around, different materials can be switched
in and out of the sequence, but this general approach seems superior
to me as a method of educating freshman composition students.  Quality
has been taught and made real without being defined.



     It also seemed that by the end of one quarter of this system, the
quality of writing had shot up in all sections with incredible speed.
Students, seeing their papers in a folder with others of inferior and
superior quality, were able to discover for themselves why their
writing seemed bad or good.  They were able to correct faults without
personal supervision because they sere seeing what was bad rather than
simply hearing a secondhand version from an instructor about what was
bad.



     Many also appeared to enjoy and even demand the large degree of
individual freedom which this approach permits.  They appeared to
enjoy it for the same mature reasons the teaching profession enjoys
academic freedom;  not as a casual privilege but as a necessary
prerequisite for an atmosphere in which new ideas are generated and in
which individuals grow.  This freedom has been abused and injured at
times, and it has its practical limits.   But it continues to exist at
good schools by the very nature of the fact that the good schools
cannot be good without it.  When academic freedom is gone the school
becomes dead and boring.  It is no longer a good school.



     An identical situation exists within an individual classroom.
Academic freedom is as necessary to a good student as it is to a good
instructor.  Obviously is can be abused and injured.  Obviously it has
practical limits, but a classroom without it tends to be as dull and
dead and lifeless as a college without it.  Any system of presentation
of English which extends academic freedom at the student level is, by
virtue of this fact, going to be a superior system.  The approach to
freshman composition presented here is such a system.





Part II -- Critical Questions



Suppose an essay by John Donne is thrown in for ranking.  Will the
students regard it as having a high degree of quality?



      Probably not. Any composition student who writes today in the
manner of John Donne is writing falsely and should be ranked down for
it. I cannot agree that one learns to write effectively by imitating
John Donne. One learns to write effectively by discovering for one's
self what is good. Mimicry has never been good writing or good
scholarship. If we try to force it on students we will simply alienate
the best and win the syrupy mimicking affection of the worst.



Would you say that John Donne has no quality?



       This brings us again the the philosophic question of "What has
quality?" which was skirted earlier.  It was skirted for a very good
reason.  Once one enters this philosophic jungle one is seldom heard
of again.  One can only say that after teaching students what quality
really is, this is an excellent question to present to them.  If a
class decides after learning what quality is that John Donne has no
quality, the instructor is faced with a good classroom problem.  He
can agree with the class and renounce his scholarly training and
perhaps personal feeling.  Perhaps in agreeing with the class he will
have at last discovered the truth about John Donne.  Certainly this
possibility should not be ruled out.

       Or, the instructor can become disciplinarian and point out the
reason most students do not like John Donne is that they are
uneducated, that they have an obligation to realize John Donne has
quality and that they had better try to overcome their ignorance
before it is too late.  Undoubtedly many students in this situation
will rapidly learn to like John Donne. It can be doubted however
whether this "liking" will be a very passionate liking, perhaps
because of a feeling on the part of the student that in liking John
Donne he has made some sort of compromise with his own honest sense of
what quality is.



       A third alternative would be to discover the opinion of the
class, and if it is unfavorable, to disagree as an individual.  There
is an obvious danger here, of course, that in the instructional
situation it is almost impossible to disagree as an individual.  One
disagrees as an authority.



     A fourth alternative would be to withhold one's personal ideas,
bring in conflicting literary criticism about John Donne and force the
student to back up his decision with arguments.  Probably an solution
is satisfactory which does not force the student to violate his own
personal sense of quality.



     It is generally true that as a person grows older his tastes move
from sweet, cloying foods, vibrant colors and sensational reading to
sour and bitter foods, subdued colors and deeper and more subtle
reading.  But it is wrong to force bitter foods, subdued colors and
deep reading on children, insisting that if they don't like it they
are not appreciating quality.  It only confuses them about the nature
of true quality, producing a schizophrenic separation of the things
they actually like and the things they feel they are supposed to like.



If you were forced to enter the philosophic jungle and give an
explanation of what quality is what would your philosophic explanation
be?



       Any philosophic explanation of quality is going to be both
false and true precisely because it is a philosophic explanation. The
process of philosophic explanation is an analytic process, a process
of breaking something down into words, into subjects and predicates.
What 1 mean (and everybody else means) by the word quality cannot be
broken down into subjects and predicates.  This is not because quality
is so mysterious but because quality is so simple, immediate and
direct.



     The easiest intellectual analogue of pure quality that people in
our environment can understand is that "quality is the response of an
organism to its environment."



       An amoeba, placed on a plate of water with a drop of dilute
sulphuric acid placed nearby will pull away from the acid (I think).
If it could speak, the amoeba, without knowing anything about
sulphuric acid, would say, "This environment has poor quality." If it
had a nervous system it could act in a much more complex way to
overcome the poor quality of the environment. It could seek analogues,
that is, images and symbols from its previous experience, to define
the unpleasant nature of its new environment and thus "understand" it.



       In our highly complex organic state we advanced organisms
respond to our environment with an invention of many marvelous
analogues.  We invent earth and heavens, trees, stones and oceans,
gods, music, arts, language, philosophy, engineering, civilization and
science. We call these analogues reality.  And they are reality.  We
mesmerize our children in the name of truth into knowing that they are
reality.  We throw anyone who does not accept these analogues into an
insane asylum.  But that which causes us to invent the analogues is
quality.  Quality  is  the continuing stimulus which our environment
puts upon us to create thee world in which we live.  All of it.  Every
last bit of it.



       Now, to take that which has caused us to create the world and
include it within the world we have created is clearly impossible.
That is why quality cannot be defined. If we do define it we are
defining something less than quality itself.



       To be sure, all that has just been said can never be more than
an intellectual analogue either. I have written it to suggest rather
than define the nature of quality.  Like all other intellectual
analogues of quality it is both true and false at the same time.  For
example, it is stated that "Quality is the response of an organism to
its environment." It can be stated with equal truth that "Quality is
the refusal of an organism to respond to its environment." The great
artists, musicians, philosophers and scientists of history have all
refused to follow the line of least resistance that their environment
has imposed on them and added some mysterious personal spark that
changed the environment of others in the future. One can thunder as
loudly for this definition of quality as the other. It makes no
difference as long as we all know what quality is.



     A seeming inability to directly perceive quality is sometimes
known as "squareness."  Squareness results from two habits of mind~
intellectualism and conservatism.



      Intellectual squareness is usually found to result from a
deep-seated prejudice that those things which cannot be defined do not
exist. With it there is the belief that such things as beauty justice
and truth are just states of mind, not actualities.  There will at the
same time be the belief that such things as H2O and dollars are
realities not states of mind.  The reason a person afflicted with
intellectual squareness asserts that the latter are real is that he
can define them.  The reason he believes the former group are unreal
is that he cannot.  He will feel that music is somehow unimportant
because he cannot define the differences clearly.  He will continually
be seeking to find "meanings," that is, definitions, that he can
impose on art.  He will continually find intellectual forms for things
that are without intellectual form. In  his prejudiced preoccupation
with forms, definitions, and "meanings" he will be unable to see the
quality of the thing he is observing.  Such a person once asked Louis
Armstrong for his definition  of Jazz.  Armstrong replied, honestly
enough, ~Man, if you have to ask 'what is it' you'll never get to
know."



      Conservative  squareness, on the other hand, confuses quality
with familiarity.  Quality is that environment which assures one that
all is well.  Quality is that which does not jar one too much.  One
who is conservatively square prefers art forms which elicit a
sentimental nostalgic response rather than those which stimulate.  He
will go along with the best authority he can find to determine the
value of anything rather than make value decisions of his own.  When
he listens for quality, he listens to his neighbor rather than to the
world.



If students know what quality is why is their writing so bad?



      There are many reasons.  Some are square. Some do not care.
Some, because of poor instruction, do not know that they know what
quality is. Many students have been brainwashed into believing that
only instructors know what quality is. Often when a student realizes
for the first time that he really does know what quality is in writing
he also begins to care for the first time.



      A third reason why student writing is so bad even though
students know what quality is, is that an ability to recognize good
writing comes much easier than an ability to produce it.  Usually
students can discern between good and bad writing without being able
to write well. But if a student cannot discern quality in his own
writing there is no hope for him -- no method in the world will ever
help him learn how to write. That is Why I believe pure quality should
be taught before any methods of producing it are taught.


              Sincerely,

              Robert  M. Pirsig

ENDS
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