Draft: How To Manifest A Happening

The main idea of the author’s article, English Composition as a Happening, is that there is segregation between teacher and student within English Composition, resulting in low quality education for the students, and the remedy to the issue is a happening. The distance is caused by the teacher and the students not participating as a whole in the learning experience. A happening can occur in many forms. But the happening always occurs within this system of function. This system of function is, the teacher and the student should be answering and asking questions. The teacher shouldn’t be seeking to only give knowledge, but to attain it. Desiring to absorb all of the student’s wealth of knowledge, and vice versa, being generous in providing all of his/her own; this is a balanced teaching. But never, as a teacher, give the inclination that your answer is omniscient; for the thinking process will cease, the students will reside with that one answer and not attempt to think further. The teacher should help the students take his/her answer only into consideration. When a student lands on an idea, the teacher should help them to become doubtful, and thus move into a state of consideration instead of conclusion. There is merely a game of catch between teacher and student. There needs to be definitive characteristics of a teacher to be able to create a happening. The teacher needs to be spontaneous, positive (enthusiastic) in achieving his objective, clever (able to improvise), and teach everything as a metaphor in comparison to a scientific abstraction; to perceive everything in truth, which, as Norman Brown states it to be, to perceive everything as a metaphor, instead of a scientific abstraction. These qualities of a teacher are needed to manifest a happening, and a happening can only occur within a balanced teaching. This, I believe, is the main idea of the author’s article.