I often lecture my classes on the effect of advertisements. I tell them that ads are bad for America. Ads promise instant change, instant pleasure, instant weight loss. The fact that I lecture them does not mean I am immune. Like everyone else who lives in America, my world view is affected by advertisements.
All semester long I've been depressed because my students don't seem to get it. I tell them over & over & over that they must organize their paragraphs, that they must use devices--repetition, description, alliteration--if the reader is going to understand & remember what they say. I say it & say it and they don't seem to get it.
I expect instant change, instant gratification, instant improvement. Can't I see that learning takes time? Can't I understand that improvement is not instant?
The semester -- fifteen weeks of teaching -- is almost over and by gum, they are finally getting it. Paper after paper reveals to me that those who were paying attention, those students who are trying, are writing wonderful metaphors, using repetition brilliantly. I am amused, entertained, pleased by some of the sentences I read. Why can't I remember, from year to year, that change takes time? That improvement does not occur overnight.
Because I am a part of American society. Because I live in the midst of an instant gratification society. If you can't get it for me today, I'm not interested. If improvement is not instant I'm impatient and I think that something is wrong -- either you are not trying or I am not teaching well.
In England a student stays with a teacher for two whole years. They don't expect learning to take place in fifteen weeks, or thirty weeks or even fifty two weeks. A great many of their classes take two years to complete -- and then, and only then, are they examined to find out what it is that they learned. In America we test them every ten days. We want to see marked & immediate improvement. We think a semester, 15 weeks, is all we need to transform you into a learned human being. One year is the longest we will tolerate. Two years? That's too long. That's an eternity.
Yes, there are benefits to our hurry up style of life. We find the rest of the world does not accomplish as much as we do. We do accomplish a great deal. But periodically we ought to slow down and realize that improvement is not instant: things that are worth doing take time & effort--and change is slow, gradual--if the change is a change worth making.
America is the land of hurry-up, and that is, in many ways good. Still, I'm glad I realized that not all change is instant--and I'm glad I saw that my students did change, did learn, did become better writers.
Copyright © 2004 Henry Morgenstein