‘I Think’ Therefore I Am: Exploratory Writing from an “0” Level Reject Barry Fox Head of English Department , Queen Elizabeth High School, Halqax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Although throughout the world nowadays talk about language in schools almost inevitably involves using the term ‘expressive’, I prefer the term ‘exploratory’ to cover what I take to be a similar concept. Because of the specialized meaning it has acquired for those in the know, ‘expressive’ has become jargon, separating the ins from the outs, and making sure the outs know they’re out. It is a confusing term, too, since if language is truly expressive, in Britton’s sense, and directed almost entirely at the self, i t will often be unintelligible to anyone else. And if we accept Bullock’s advocacy of planned intervention from the teacher, teachers are likely to be stymied if they can’t understand what they are supposed to be intervening in. ‘Exploratory’ is a more useful term, then, since it describes the function in non-specialist terms and does not encourage the possibility of solipsistic writing which will make teacher intervention difficult.

In theory, exploratory writing is especially useful since it encourages the child to formulate emerging thoughts, so that they can be recognized, examined, and modified, without the fear of not conforming to the conventions of formal texts. In practice, the acknowledgement of these constraints and the rejection of those for formal texts can have surprising results. The purpose of this short paper is to show one instance where the constraints of exploratory writing seem to have had an important and undeniable effect.

Charles had just entered the equivalent of the fifth form (Grade 10) when he wrote the composition printed below. In its own right it is impressive, but what makes it even more so is the fact that before this was written, the only writing he had produced for English class were a few skimpy pieces written in class. This paucity was not the result of his not having been asked to write, but of his refusal to write. And orally he was no more impressive. Whenever he was asked to speak he would make a loud joke of not being able to hear, or of asking me to repeat myself, or of saying that he didn’t understand. That is, in whole class discussions, he never expressed (let alone explored) his views on any topic seriously. Whatever views he had (if he had any) he kept to himself, unformulated and undeveloped. I t is hardly surprising, based on this type of behaviour, that when he was in the third form in his English comprehensive school, he was told he would be in the C.S.E. stream the following year, despite his parents’ evidence, in the form of results of standardized testing, that he could easily cope with ‘0’ level work.

This composition was written after two weeks discussing Hughes’ A High

46 Barry Fox

Wind in Jamaica. The assignment was to write about what the students understood the novel to be about, in an exploratory way. They were told to concentrate on what was going on in their heads and on their paper, to follow up ideas as they emerged, and not to worry about the mechanics or structure of what they were writing.

A HIGH WIND INJAMAICA I think the novel is titled that because a hurricane started the children’s adventures with boats. The mother thought that the hurricane had effected the children, so had them sent back to England.

I think the novel is about the mentality or personalities of children or maybe I mean their relationships. In the novel it shows that children feel closer emotionally towards animals than they do to humans. They treat animals better than they do human beings. They grieve more over the death of their pets then their relations. I can relate to that, when I was about nine or ten years old, my dog, Sandy, got hit by a car in a blizzard. For nearly five days I cried over his death. But when my grandfather, my grandmother and uncle died I didn’t shed a tear. I felt badly about losing them but my dog must have meant more to me.

I think the novel talks a lot about this relationship. It also talks about the children’s naivete actually that relationship is their naivete.

The children in the novel didn’t care much for the feelings of the adults or even for the other children. During the hurricane, when old Sam was killed by lightning, they weren’t [the children] upset at the death, they just thought about a seeing a dead body. But on the same night, when their cat, Tabby, was chased by wild cats, the children were terribly upset.

Later on in the story, when John fell and broke his neck, the children forgot that he existed, they didn’t cry at all. And afterwards when a couple of pigs board the pirate schooner, the children take to them like replacements for John without even thinking about it. It is not even until later that Emily missed John. The subject was only mentioned once.

The children even seem to take the authority of animals over adults. Emily had an oracle- a white mouse with an elastic tail! They took its word without a doubt.

Would non-fictional children take the word of an animal over humans? If animals could talk, then I think they would [children]. I say that because of the affection for animals that children have a lot of times stronger than for adults or other children. Children trust people or things that they love. So having this stronger affection for animals, I think that chldren would accept the words of their pets as the truth. I wonder what would happen if some children had several pets that said different things about the same subject. Then who would the children believe!

Exploratory Writing from an “0” Level Reject 47

The piece starts, true to expectations, with Charles reducing the dangerous adventures in which one child is killed and another commits a murder to a game, to childish ‘adventures with boats’. It seems that he isn’t going to take the assignment seriously. But immediately following he explains why they were in the boats and this leads to a lengthy discussion of the mentality of the children as Hughes presents it. A serious and thoughtful piece of writing is underway, in which universal statements, particular personal incidents, particular details from the novel and speculation about related but hypothetical situations mingle.

Despite the exploratory context of the writing and the fact that Charles had seemed to be frightened off producing any formal writing, one point about this composition which is very apparent is how like transactional, formal composition it is. There is a brief introduction, followed by well- constructed and related paragraphs, and a full conclusion in which the writer relates the novel to real life and goes beyond this to speculate about what would happen to the characters given different circumstances.

Nevertheless, it is not a typical formal essay about literature, despite the evidence of Charles’ literary detective work- the death ‘was only mentioned once’, he observes. There is too much personal intrusion for that. There is the looseness, encouraged by the constraints of the exploratory function, of ‘I think (three times), ‘ I wonder’, ‘or maybe I mean’, ‘I can relate to that’; a lengthy stretch of personal detail at the beginning, and the speculation at the end. And, it seems, it is because exploratory writing encourages personal intrusion that Charles is eased into dealing with the novel itself and into clarifying his reactions to it.

He begins the composition and the second and third paragraphs with ‘I think, acknowledgements of the tentativeness of what he is about to utter, and such acknowledgements enable him to introduce at three points clear statements which get to what he considers to be the heart of the novel. After these markers of personal limitation (and personal assertion), he can expand with other details, and in his ‘actually that relationship is their naivete’ he feels free enough to further modify one abstract statement with another. It is a bold statement which, the use of ‘actually’ suggests, emerges as he is writing.

Further evidence that the opening three paragraphs show Charles using writing to help clarify his thoughts appears after his assertion that he thinks the novel is about the mentality of children. Here, he states ‘children feel closer emotionally towards animals than they do to humans’, restates it as (2) ‘they treat animals better than they do human beings’, and restates this as (3) ‘they grieve more over the death of their pets than their relations’. There is no hint of biblical rhetoric here.

Following the three paragraphs introduced by ‘I think’, in which thinking through writing is apparent, come three paragraphs dealing with concrete details from the novel which support the tentative views of the first three. Confidence seems strong, expression is crisp and thoughtful, and ‘I’ does not intrude at all.

By the end of the composition he is confident enough to relate the novel to real life, with a crisply worded question, ‘Would non-fictional children take the word of an animal over humans?’ And he ends with a rhetorical and speculative question, alertly punctuated as an exclamation. This is no light- ended conclusion designed to please teachers but an expansive ending, reflecting a thinking, questioning and alert mind, full of an ‘1’. aware not only of what the novel is saying about our own lives, but able to see possible problems with the novel’s statement. ‘I’ is able to think objectively about the novel and instead of lapping it up is able to question it .

Based on what Charles wrote here and his previous work, I want to argue that by removing the constraints of formal writing, an exploratory context has enabled him to produce a text better then most transactional writing for his age, although he would not produce writing in a transactional context. ‘I’ has been encouraged to speak, which has the double effect of asserting the importance of the speaker and of telling him he does not have to speak like an oracle.

Removing the constraints has enabled him to give meaning to the novel by relating it to his experiences and, presumably, has enabled him to give meaning to his experiences by relating them to the novel. It has stimulated the emergence of a striking and abstract assessment of the novel and led him to speculate and question beyond the novel while still dealing with the novel’s theme. And all this from a boy who was refused permission to enter the ‘0’ level stream.

The Newbold Report (p. 72), calling on the evidence of that forerunner of modern thinkers on language in schools, Philip Hartog, observes that writing compositions helps develop individuality and has a transforming effect on children’s judgement and sense of responsibility. Had Newbolt had knowledge of modern development he might have substituted ‘exploratory writing’ for ‘compositions’.

References Newbolt Report, The Teaching of English in England, Board of Education, HMSO, 1921.