Responding to legitimate concerns expressed by my first year composition students, I began giving more writing prompts this semester than I have previously done. As a result, the overall quality of their writing dropped.

Recently, while discussing his difficulty developing a clear thesis, a student told me that he had trouble coming up with a thesis based on my prompts. When I suggested that he should ignore my suggestions and develop his own topics, he was surprised he had this flexibility.

During class, I had explicitly stated that my prompts are but suggestions and that students are not obligated to follow them. Students only need to use my prompt if they cannot think of an essay topic on their own.

Because I have seen the index cards and class worksheets on which they have written down ideas for papers and have listened to them discuss potential topics during class discussions, I know that they have more than enough good ideas to last them for the rest of the semester. Yet, too many students simply adopt the topic I have given as an option as the basis for their essays.

I was initially surprised at this student’s surprise. Then I realized that he had grown up in an education system that reinforces and rewards the idea that students can only succeed by following the teacher’s lead. My surprise was replaced by compassion.

A week later, while reading a batch of essays, I realized that all of the students who ignored my prompt wrote interesting essays. Most of the students who followed my prompt did not. Their essays were not bad. However, these students forgot their own voices and lost their creativity. Instead of providing the support necessary for them to tackle tough topics brilliantly, by providing them with a safe prompt I helped foster mediocrity.

Although students might disagree, good teaching sometimes requires that we allow them to struggle with difficult tasks or concepts; that making it easier for them to write their papers or to complete other projects actually limits their accomplishments. It is time for me to admit that my attempt to make the class easier for them actually lowered their ability to be successful; that my well intentioned change did not actually help students. At best, it only brought a false comfort for those who struggle to develop their topics; a false comfort that allowed them to rise to the level of the mundane.

My students might not be happy to learn that I am returning to my old ways of simply directing them to write an “interesting essay” while neglecting to provide a more specific prompt about which they could write. But there is no compassion in asking students to waste their time settling for the mundane and then complaining that they do not write more interesting papers.

–Steven L. Berg, PhD