Teaching with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has figured prominently in my Rhet. Comp. courses ever since I first started teaching college in 2010.  Chapters 15, 16, 17, and 19 in particular, featuring the narrator's adventures teaching college freshmen English, have felt especially apropos of my students.  I delighted in demonstrating through these chapters that my students already know when their writing is good or bad, even if they can't quite yet articulate why--that imitation is a real evil, that they not only can but must learn to see for themselves, and find their own personal voice--that Quality is achieved when one actually cares about it, personally, as a part of and expression of and extension of one's self, not as a mere impersonal, alienating checklist or rubric--that a paper or book can follow a rubric to a T and still be completely boring and sterile, and therefore checklists and rubrics are useless for determining Quality--that art and science are not as separated as we think, that in fact there is no division between them at all, for intuition is as necessary for science as rationality is to art--and above all, that grades not only do not represent learning but in fact cover up a failure to learn, and that only in a truly gradeless system will students be forced to learn, to imbue their writing with real Quality, and not just doing the bare minimum to squeak by.

And in order to really drive home that final message, starting my second year of adjuncting back in Salt Lake, I started withholding paper grades from all my students; oh don't get me wrong, I still provided a final grade, I couldn't get away with that, and besides, they probably still needed that whip-and-carrot, at least until they learned to be genuinely self-motivated, to love learning for its own sake, and not just to get the piece of paper and empty line on their resumes.  But, I did find that my students put a lot more effort into their revisions, that they were actually reading my feedback for a change and following it carefully. 

Also, when students invariable asked what they got, it was all the more refreshing to throw it back at them and ask, "What do you think you got?"  Not, mind you, "tell me what grade you think you earned" (as has been trendy among many High School and College teachers over the past 20 years, as though every student ever hasn't then just quickly calculated in their heads the most plausible way to give themselves an A), but "What do you think you got?"  Because then the student is forced to answer all the more honestly, say, "Um...a B-, C+, maybe?"  To which I could then say, "Yeah, that probably sounds about right!" "So I should probably revise it then?" "Yeah, I'd encourage that!"  Oh, it was great fun--and what's more, I actually got better written papers, too!  Robert Pirsig was right!

I returned to grad school in large part because teaching college English was the one job I've ever had that I didn't hate or end up getting sick of--and I wanted to actually try out for the off-chance of getting paid a living wage to do so, and for that one needs a PhD, so back to PhD school I went.  Hence, it was with some consternation that, when I resumed teaching Rhetoric here at University of Iowa, I found it just wasn't nearly as fun as it used to be, and I'd been trying to put my finger on why, exactly. 

Was it the fact that I was going to school at the same time, taking full course loads, studying for comps, such that my classes were always an afterthought by necessity?  Or, was it the fact that University students are of a different breed from the Community College students I'd cut my teeth on--the  latter being far more diverse, ethnically, economically, age-wise, with a far wider spread of life experience and trauma survival, whilst the former were by and large middle-to-upper-class white kids fresh out of High School, either from rural Iowa, the Chicago suburbs, or the wealthy parts of China.  Good kids all, yes, but a little harder to engage with the University kids when they are mere 18 year olds so bereft of life experience, or even their own fully-formed opinions yet.

Basically, the problem was either on me for being back in grad school, or it was on my students for not being interesting enough.  But this semester I've finally come to realize it was neither--really, it was the fact that I was no longer implementing Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  Oh, I was still sure teaching it alright; but the University's heavy focus on posting all grades online meant that I was no longer practicing what I preached. 

Until this semester--it's my last time teaching Rhetoric here, so I went for broke, and returned to my old practice of withholding grades on all essays written.  And what a difference it has made!  Somehow, grading isn't the horrible chore it used to be--I'm grading as quickly as I used to at Community Colleges, because now I am giving actual feedback again, on what could improve the quality of their papers, as opposed to constantly thinking about how I can justify or rationalize the grade I'm giving.  I'm looking forward to my lessons again, I'm enjoying teaching like I used to.  I'm dealing with people again, not rubrics or checklists or institutional requirements. 

Quality, claims Pirsig, is not a thing but an event, the moment when the Object and the Subject become aware of each other; more simply, it is when the Subject (you as a person) actually has a relationship with the Object.  It comes at the moment when you actually care about the thing itself, for its own sake, rather than what it can do for you, or what meaningless rules and requirements it fulfills.  And that has been the subtle yet all-important shift for me as well--I'm caring again, for its own sake, not for what it can do for me or anything else.