"To help students develop their own point-of-view within academic writing"

Students' points-of-view? That's the first thing I wonder the moment the semester begins. Do they even know their own point-of-view or do they just fake it? We have to admit, there have been times when we've written for academia and faked a point of view. We knew we had to get the writing done. We did the research and came across an easier path. We knew there wasn't much time and we figured, I can write from this point-of-view and get the work done on time. I might not necessarily believe it, but the work gets done and everyone's happy. These have been our actual thoughts before we became so stuffy and uptight about our academic integrity. I'll never steal anyone's writing, but point-of-view is different. I don't have to believe it to get an A. Is this what it is all about? Trying to get an A? Maybe not for all of us, but I'd be willing to bet that a good portion of those who care only care for the stamp of approval. Maybe, I'm wrong. I can accept that. I know that all of the thought that swirl around in my head aren't always correct. But think of how GPA's have become such pressure for students to move beyond an undergraduate degree into a nice job or into a good graduate program. A lot of those students feel that their very future rests upon how many A's they can earn. I suffered from it. I thought that in order to get into a good graduate program, I had to have stellar grades. I thought that keeping my number close to 4.0 would impress people. Was I right?

This kind of brings into question the criteria by which we grade our students. Are we truly rewarding good product or have we been noticing the development of our young writers. Who knows the answers to these question but us. I don't wish to interrogate anyone nor assume anything. I can only say that I've been asking myself these questions lately. Sort of testing myself, if you will. In thinking about the issue I realized that I get interested in writing about something when I get emotionally charged about an issue. I am inspired to write most when I find something that really "gets my goat." So I recently figured, why not challenge them and see how they react in writing.

I found a bunch of articles on the internet that explained in various way how students are stupid today. Oh yeah, some of them made some really outlandish claims about laziness and apathy. I am going to read those printouts to my students and ask them to write about how they feel about what they just heard. I want to see if they will invest themselves into their writing. I'm going to tell them to introduce their ideas with all of the things we teachers of critical writing hate: "I feel that..."; "I believe that..."; "In my opinion..." Put it all in and tell me how you feel, I'll tell them. Then when they've written for about ten minutes, I'm going to tell them to pass their papers to the person to their left. The recipients of these papers will circle all of those phrases and pass it back to the author. Then I'm going to tell the authors that every idea that they included in their writing, every opinion, every concept is valid. But I want them to rewrite the entire essay weeding out all of the personal pronoun references for more assertive claims. Take themselves out of the essay and write as if they were writing facts....even truth. When they have finished, I am going to have them hand their essays to their person to their right and, at random, pick people to read them. I want them to see that they can insert their "opinions" about what they read, hear, or see and still sound "academic." At least, that's the plan.