Thoughts on "Underlife and Writing Instruction"

Since I will not be writing an article for this course, I've decided for this week's blog post to comment on Robert Brooke's article "Underlife and Writing Instruction".

Before this last week I was unfamiliar with the idea of underlife. In an abstract way, though, I have been familiar with the concept for years. I believe that anyone who has been a student has experienced underlife in the classroom. What started as occasional note passing, a prodigious amount of doodling, and sneakily reading novels under the desk in grade school (no surprise that I wound up in the field of English, I suppose) has in more recent progressed to any number of possible distractions thanks to the presence of a laptop on my desk.

Of course there is always the ever-popular witty comment to whoever happens to be sitting beside me. This type of comment usually has something to do with the material, and so is perhaps more noble and positive than simple distraction and escapism. Brooke writes about this behavior in a class he observed, saying “Their retreat from class participation was a retreat which took a class concept with it, and which applied that concept in a highly creative and accurate way.” (725) I agree with Brooke’s optimistic assessment of this type of behavior. If someone is able to joke about the material, then they clearly understand it and are processing it in some fashion. It’s kind of the same idea as that which says that taking handwritten notes helps students to remember material better. You take in the information and the put it back out into the world in a way that you can understand.

While there are any number of reasons for a student to be distracted during class, I know that at least for me my distraction has in the past been partially an attempt to preserve my individuality. In high school I was not exactly the picture of a rebellious youth, but I did have some idea of resisting what I saw as public school’s desire to indoctrinate me into their system. Everything is more dramatic when you are fourteen.

In recent years, having at last the opportunity to study more or less what interested me, I was much more likely to pay attention and seek to contribute to class discussions. Doubtless this is also due to my growth in maturity since I’ve been in high school, but I think it would be foolish to discount the fact that if a student is interested in the material they are more likely to pay attention. In my own experience the times I have paid most attention in class is when I have been actively seeking to comment on something. To a certain extent this goes back to what Brooke says about information games—we are all communicating certain information in order to be perceived in a certain way (722). If I feel I have nothing valuable to contribute, I will generally remain quiet. Abraham Lincoln famously remarked “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” So I think that it all goes back to the teaching—ideally the instructor will be able to communicate the material in such a way that it can be understood by students and lead to a fruitful class discussion.