Final: How To Manifest A Happening

The main idea of the author Charles Deemer’s article, English Composition as a Happening, is that distance between teacher and student within English composition courses results in low quality education for the students, and the remedy to the issue is a “happening.” The distance is caused by teacher and students not participating as a whole in the learning experience. A happening can occur in many forms. But the happening always occurs within a system in which teacher and student are asking and answering questions. The teacher shouldn’t be seeking to only give knowledge, but to attain it. Desiring to absorb the student’s wealth of knowledge, as well as being generous in providing all of his/her own; this is a balanced teaching. But never, as a teacher, giving the inclination that the 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 students always reside with some amount of consideration about his answer. When a student lands on any idea, and suppresses any amount of consideration, the teacher should help her to become doubtful, and help acknowledge her doubt. Balanced teaching is merely a game of catch between teacher and student. A happening requires definitive characteristics from a teacher: to be spontaneous, positive (enthusiastic) in achieving his objective, clever (able to improvise), able to teach everything as a metaphor in comparison to a scientific abstraction (i.e. 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 balanced teaching where the teacher is also the student, the student also the teacher. This, I believe, is Deemer’s main idea.