A Miniature, Compact, Prescient, Formative, Prophetic, Forerunner, and Prototype Of => What Was To Be, 14 Years Later => The Book Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

From Bozeman, MT: A letter by Robert M Pirsig Sent To => The Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association.

...Considering Mr. Pirsig’s Own Words In This Letter, We Can Conclude =>

This Letter Is Very Likely The Basis For Mr. Pirsig’s =>
… “Quality in Freshman Composition”, An oral presentation at The Rocky Mountain Modern Language Regional Convention, October 13, 1961. (<= As stated (1990) in The Guidebook to ZMM p356) we learn => Mr. Pirsig had asked Professor John Parker (Bozeman English Faculty Member), to oral deliver the paper, while Pirsig was at U. Chicago Graduate School. There appears to be no record of what Prof. Parker said there, but since the time allowed would have been less then say 15 minutes, the oral presentation would have been only a small part of Mr. Pirsig’s letter below.

Mr Pirsig’s Letter Re => “Unorthodox Teaching of English” To College Freshmen '''

Bozeman, Montana
April 2, 1961

Professor Edith Buchanan
Department of English Language and Literature
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico

Dear Prof. Buchanan:

Professor Grieder has given me a copy of your letter asking for information from persons with good thoughts about teaching or persons who are doing unregimented, unorthodox teaching of English. I would like to answer this request in some detail, partly because of interest in the conference you are planning, partly because of a need to clear in my own mind what I have been doing, and partly to make a useful record for future teaching and graduate work. I gather from newspapers that there is a great amount of complaint at present about Freshman English instruction and that many departments are looking for new answers.
The answer presented here is in the disguise of an old answer, so that at first it doesn't appear very new. The problem being fought is the old problem that is renewed each time a student brings in a rewritten paper saying, "Is this what you want?" The question seems ordinary enough to the student but every time one tries to answer it honestly it becomes a frustrating and subtly maddening question. An instructor often gets the feeling that he could spend the rest of his life telling the student what he wanted and never get anywhere precisely because the student is trying to produce what the instructor wants rather than what is good.
One also notices that on many of these occasions the particular student is as frustrated and angered as the instructor. The student keeps trying to figure out how to please the instructor and to his way of thinking, the instructor doesn't seem to know himself. The student turns in a rambling paper. He is told he needs better organization and should make an outline. He goes to work, makes an outline and writes a new story that follows the outline but is told the story is too dull. He goes to work, tries to brighten it with choice bits of liveliness and brings it in. He is then told the story sounds too artificial. He begins to look at the instructor with a deep feeling of estrangement. He decides in his own mind that from the evidence available it is clear that he is talking to an incompetent instructor. He goes his separate way with little accomplished and the cause of English composition has fallen another tiny step backward.
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I suspect that the particular problem involved in this situation is a deep one, a fundamental problem that pervades all teaching of English composition and perhaps all teaching. Because instructors are compelled to say what they want they do say what they want, and when they do, they force the students to conform to artificial molds that destroy ideas that students have on their own. Students who go along with their instructors are then condemned for their inability to be creative and take a stand of their own or produce a piece or writing that reflects a student's own personal standards of what is good.
At this point an instructor's disciplinarian hackles can rise and he can say that in the final analysis he is teaching conformity and that the students had better learn to like it. He can argue that students should learn to be creative only after they have learned the discipline, presumably when they are all through school. When he says this it is unlikely that he is thinking much about the fact that when they get through school they will enter another form of work-discipline which will carry them through until they are ready for retirement and death. The disciplinarian argument, carried through, seems to lead logically to the conclusion that the purpose of a college or university is to train willing and obedient servants, not to encourage the growth of free individuals capable of thinking for themselves. But this conclusion is in such obvious violation of the whole American way it is absurd. We are, in fact, dedicated to the ideal of free thought, and when we insist upon conformity to what we say or feel is good in English composition we are not following that ideal. I am not interested at this point in whether this is necessary or not, I am simply pointing out that it is wrong and will continue to be wrong until solutions are found. I suspect that this fundamental wrongness is the basis for much hatred and apathy that English has earned in the past and will continue to accrue justifiable hatred in the future.
The classroom dilemma of saying what you want without producing conformity is a dilemma that, I believe, has a solution. The solution lies in a common word which on first analysis seems as simple as the word, "time," and which, on further inspection, turns out to be fully as complex as that word, "time." The word is quality. When a student asks what is wanted in English composition he should be told that what is wanted is quality. This seems ridiculously simple at first but it is an often overlooked primitive concept that is absolutely necessary to put across before a student can learn to write.
And it is astounding how many students arrive at the college level with no understanding that there is such a thing as quality in writing -- students who honestly and conscientiously believe that good writing is a matter of pleasing different instructors, students who believe it is a matter of being flowery, being grammatical, being profound, being obedient -- being anything, except just plain good.
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It is even more astounding how many instructors are of the same opinion. All the texts I have read and almost all the teachers I have listened to are teaching methods of obtaining quality without much regard for the fact that they are nothing but methods. A majority of students seem to regard good composition as that which follows a certain method, or that which avoids error, rather than t}lat which is excellent. Many (who have perhaps been influenced by a sort of intellectually shapeless scientism, believe that quality does not really exist.
At this point one could turn sophist and wander off into an interminable philosophic discussion of what quality really is. For the purposes of teaching, however, it is necessary to know only that (1) Every instructor of English composition knows what Quality is. (Any instructor who does not should keep this fact carefully concealed, for this would certainly constitute proof of incompetency.) (2) Any instructor who thinks quality of writing can and should be defined before teaching it can and should go ahead and define it. (3) All those who feel that quality of writing does exist, but cannot be defined, but that quality should be taught anyway, can benefit by the the following method of teaching pure quality in writing without defining it. It should be noted that this method does not conflict with existing methods, it simply shows what the methods are for.

Step One

Assign the question to the students. Have them write 500 words about what quality is in thought and statement. For many students the assignment has a shocking effect that makes them more responsive to the word later on in the course. Instructors should try the assignment themselves first to know what the shock is like.

Step Two

Prove to the classes that although they cannot define quality adequately, they nevertheless know what it is. Read two papers, one extremely good one and one extremely bad one. (Two are appended to this letter.) Let students decide by ballot which one is best. The overwhelming majority will always come up with the same answer as the instructor. (Or if they do not, the instructor will now have something to think about.)

Step Three

Read four papers in class. Have each student get out a piece of paper and rank
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the papers according to estimated quality. Place rankings on the board as each member of the class gives them. The following is typical:

First Paper 2 3 1 2 3 1 3 1 2 1 2 1 1 3 2 3
Second Paper 1 1 2 1 1 2 1 3 1 2 1 3 2 1 1 1
Third Paper 3 2 3 4 2 3 2 2 3 4 3 4 3 2 3 2
Fourth Paper 4 4 4 3 4 4 4 4 4 3 4 2 4 4 4 4

One can see from the distribution that although there are some individual variations, the class as a whole has agreed that the second paper is best, and that the last paper is worst. The first paper seems to be running second and the third paper third. At this point, and not until this point, the class is ready for discussion about why one paper has higher quality than another. I personally am reluctant to give my own opinion during these ratings, although sometimes when I disagree with the class the temptation is strong. During one assignment I included a paper of my own so that I could discuss its superior points. To my chagrin three different sections rated it second. I showed the four papers to a reader and discovered that she also rated it second and I have now come to that conclusion myself. I gathered from this incident and others that it is excellent discipline for instructors to let classes come to their own conclusions.

Step Four

Arrange student papers into groups of four, put each group in a folder and have all folders put on shelves at the library. Have the students in each folder rank, in order of quality, the students in the numerically subsequent folder (with the exception of those in the last folder, who rate the first). Have them write 75 words of criticism on each paper, making the total of 300 words of criticism per student. When they bring their critiques and rankings to the next class, staple the four critiques for each folder together and later return them to the folder in the library. All students can then return to the library to see what others have though of their writing. Repeat this with many in-class and out-of-class assignments during the course.

Step Five

Many students will have trouble at first with what could be called "Squareness." They will be unable to trust their own judgment enough to what is good and bad in different papers. They will tend to judge on the basis of
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principles of good writing they have learned in previous courses rather than what they see in the papers themselves. A good way to help them break this habit of squareness is to assign a subject so limited they are forced to do some original and direct seeing. Have them write all hour about one side of a coin or the back of their thumb or a similarly limited topic. They will discover that they could write endlessly. Point out that they can do the same with folders in the library, once they start seeing for the first time.

Step Six

Read two papers in class, one of which violates a certain principle of good writing, such as unity, and one paper which does not. Let the class discover for itself what causes the differences between the two papers. Mimeograph the poor paper and let everyone rewrite it for greater unity. Read four revisions of the bad paper and have them rated for quality. I have found it is good to do this with subordinate aspects of quality: clarity, authority, unity, vividness and depth. Clarity can be reproduced by teaching grammar, but only if it is noted at all times that grammar is simply a method of achieving clarity. Without the goal of clarity and ultimately quality in mind, a student who learns grammar is simply performing a stupid and useless memorization.

Similarly, an authoritative manner of writing can be produced by extensive library research, but library research not intended to produce a sense of authority and ultimately of quality is futile. If the feeling of unity can be understood by a student and recognized as a goal, then statements of pur pose, theses sentences and outlines become valuable. If he does not have this feeling, they are worthless. An endless variety of principles can be brought in if their qualitative effect is first noted and taught, and the principle taught secondarily as as a mere method by which the qualitative effect is produced.

Step Seven

Keep a record of each student's grades but do not disclose them to the student until the end of the term. Students can find out where they stand by reading the papers in the library. Point out that the grades are relative, and that in the end a student's grade depends purely upon the quality of his writing compared with other students. Indicate whatever grade distribution you have been using over the years. Many students who are used to a normal grading system complain loudly about having their grades withheld because it makes them worry about where they stand. Point out that one does not improve if one is
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not worried about where one stands. At Montana State College the majority of entering freshmen do not like to have their grades withheld, but because of open entrance to the school, the majority of students at the freshman level are not expected to graduate. A survey of students who had been without grades for a quarter revealed that those who were about to receive A's were 2:1 in favor of withholding grades; those who were about to receive D's and F's were all but unanimously opposed. A study of predicted achievements showed that the grades were not out of line with expectations. One can only conclude that those students who yell when their grades are withheld are the same students who would be yelling if their grades were not withheld. Withholding grades improves class performance throughout the quarter and enforces the idea of discovery rather than conformity as a method of learning English.

Things can be worked around, different materials can be switched in and out of the sequence, but this general approach seems superior to me as a method of educating freshman composition students. Quality has been taught and made real without being defined.

It also seemed that by the end of one quarter of this system, the quality of writing had shot up in all sections with incredible speed. Students, seeing their papers in a folder with others of inferior and superior quality, were able to discover for themselves why their writing seemed bad or good. They were able to correct faults without personal supervision because they sere seeing what was bad rather than simply hearing a secondhand version from an instructor about what was bad.

Many also appeared to enjoy and even demand the large degree of individual freedom which this approach permits. They appeared to enjoy it for the same mature reasons the teaching profession enjoys academic freedom; not as a casual privilege but as a necessary prerequisite for an atmosphere in which new ideas are generated and in which individuals grow. This freedom has been abused and injured at times, and it has its practical limits. But it continues to exist at good schools by the very nature of the fact that the good schools cannot be good without it. When academic freedom is gone the school becomes dead and boring. It is no longer a good school.

An identical situation exists within an individual classroom. Academic freedom is as necessary to a good student as it is to a good instructor. Obviously is can be abused and injured. Obviously it has practical limits, but a classroom
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without it tends to be as dull and dead and lifeless as a college without it. Any system of presentation of English which extends academic freedom at the student level is, by virtue of this fact, going to be a superior system. The approach to freshman composition presented here is such a system.

Part II -- Critical Questions

Suppose an essay by John Donne is thrown in for ranking. Will the students regard it as having a high degree of quality?

Probably not. Any composition student who writes today in the manner of John Donne is writing falsely and should be ranked down for it. I cannot agree that one learns to write effectively by imitating John Donne. One learns to write effectively by discovering for one's self what is good. Mimicry has never been good writing or good scholarship. If we try to force it on students we will simply alienate the best and win the syrupy mimicking affection of the worst.

Would you say that John Donne has no quality?

This brings us again the the philosophic question of "What has quality?" which was skirted earlier. It was skirted for a very good reason. Once one enters this philosophic jungle one is seldom heard of again. One can only say that after teaching students what quality really is, this is an excellent question to present to them. If a class decides after learning what quality is that John Donne has no quality, the instructor is faced with a good classroom problem. He can agree with the class and renounce his scholarly training and perhaps personal feeling. Perhaps in agreeing with the class he will have at last discovered the truth about John Donne. Certainly this possibility should not be ruled out.
Or, the instructor can become disciplinarian and point out the reason most students do not like John Donne is that they are uneducated, that they have an obligation to realize John Donne has quality and that they had better try to overcome their ignorance before it is too late. Undoubtedly many students in this situation will rapidly learn to like John Donne. It can be doubted however whether this "liking" will be a very passionate liking, perhaps because of a feeling on the part of the student that in liking John Donne he has made some sort of compromise with his own honest sense of what quality is.

A third alternative would be to discover the opinion of the class, and if it is unfavorable, to disagree as an individual. There is an obvious danger here, of
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course, that in the instructional situation it is almost impossible to disagree as an individual. One disagrees as an authority.

A fourth alternative would be to withhold one's personal ideas, bring in conflicting literary criticism about John Donne and force the student to back up his decision with arguments. Probably [such a] an solution is satisfactory which does not force the student to violate his own personal sense of quality y.

It is generally true that as a person grows older his tastes move from sweet, cloying foods, vibrant colors and sensational reading to sour and bitter foods, subdued colors and deeper and more subtle reading. But it is wrong to force bitter foods, subdued colors and deep reading on children, insisting that if they don't like it they are not appreciating quality. It only confuses them about the nature of true quality, producing a schizophrenic separation of the things they actually like and the things they feel they are supposed to like.

If you were forced to enter the philosophic jun le and ye an explanation of what Quality is what would your philosophic explanation be?

Any philosophic explanation of quality is going to be both false and true precisely because it is a philosophic explanation. The process of philosophic explanation is an analytic process, a process of breaking something down into words, into subjects and predicates. What 1 mean (and everybody else means) by the word quality cannot be broken down into subjects and predica tes. This is not because quality is so mysterious but because quality is so simple, immediate and direct.

The easiest intellectual analogue of pure quality that people in our environment can understand is that "quality is the response of an organism to its environment."

An amoeba, placed on a plate of water with a drop of dilute sulphuric acid placed nearby will pull away from the acid (I think). If it could speak, the amoeba, without knowing anything about sulphuric acid, would say, "This environment has poor quality." If it had a nervous system it could act in a much more complex way to overcome the poor quality of the environment. It could seek analogues, that is, images and symbols from its previous experience, to define the unpleasant nature of its new environment and thus "understand" it.
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In our highly complex organic state we advanced organisms respond to our environment with an invention of many marvelous analogues. We invent earth and heavens, trees, stones and oceans, gods, music, art s, language, philosophy, engineering, civilization and science. We call these analogues realit y. And they are reality. We mesmerize our children in the name of truth into knowing that they are reality. We throw anyone who does not accept these analogues into an ihsane asylum. But that which causes us to invent the analogues is quality. Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment puts upon us to create thee world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it.

Now, to take that which has caused us to create the world and include it within the world we have created is clearly impossible. That is why quality cannot be defined. If we do define it we are defining something less than quality itself.

To be sure, all that has just been said can never be more than an intellectual analogue either. I have written it to suggest rather than define the nature of quality. Like all other intellectual analogues of quality it is both true and false at the same time. For example, it is stated that "Quality is the response of an organism to its environment." It can be stated with equal truth that "Quality is the refusal of an organism to respond to its environment." The great artists, musicians, philosophers and scientists of history have all refused to follow the line of least resistance that their environment has imposed on them and added some mysterious personal spark that changed the environment of others in the future. One can thunder as loudly for this definition of quality as the other. It makes no difference as long as we all know what quality is.

A seeming inability to directly perceive quality is sometimes known as "squareness." Squareness results from two habits of mind- intellectualism and conservatism.

Intellectual squareness is usually found to result from a deep-seated prejudice that those things which cannot be defined do not exist. With it there is the belief that such things as beauty justice and truth are just states of mind, not actualities. There will at the same time be the belief that such things as H [H'_2_'O] and dollars are realities not states of mind. The reason a person afflicted with intellectual squareness asserts that the latter are real is that he can define them. The reason he believes the former group are unreal is that he cannot. He will feel that music is somehow unimportant because he cannot define the differences
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clearly. He will continually be seeking to find "meanings," that is, definitions, that he can impose on art. He will continually find intellectual forms for things that are without intellectual form. In his prejudiced preoccupation with forms, definitions, and "meanings" he will be unable to see the quality of the thing he is observing. Such a person once asked Louis Armstrong for his definition of Jazz. Armstrong replied, honestly enough, “Man, if you have to ask 'what is it' you’ll never get to know."

Conservative squareness, on the other hand, confuses quality with familiarity. Quality is that environment which assures one that all is well. Quality is that which does not jar one too much. One who is conservatively square prefers art forms which elicit a sentimental nostalgic response rather than those which stimulate. He will go along with the best authority he can find to determine the value of anything rather than make value decisions of his own. When he listens for quality, he listens to his neighbor rather than to the world.

If students know what Quality is why is their writing so bad?

There are many reasons. Some are square. Some do not care. Some, because of poor instruction, do not know that they know what quality is. Many students have been brainwashed into believing that only instructors know what quality is. Often when a student realizes for the first time that he really does know what quality is in writing he also begins to care for the first time.

A third reason why student writing is so bad even though students know what quality is, is that an ability to recognize good writing comes much easier than an ability to produce it. Usually students can discern between good and bad writing without being able to write well. But if a student cannot discern quality in his own writing there is no hope for him -- no method in the world will ever help him learn how to write. That is why I believe pure quality should be taught before any methods of producing it are taught.

Sincerely,

Robert M. Pirsig

Explanation By ZMMQ SiteMaster Henry Gurr, 20 Sept 2018:
…Back in 1994 Mr. Robert Pirsig sent me a copy of his book LILA and a copy of The Guidebook to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance . Soon thereafter, in reading The Guidebook to ZMM, I became aware of Mr. Pirsig’s paper Quality in Freshman Composition: Ever since, sporadic attempts to find a copy, found nothing: No one and no search engine had a clue. Finally in an Aug 21 2018 email I asked Mrs. Wendy Pirsig => “Can you help us get a copy of this paper, since as yet no one seems to have a copy of this paper?”
…Above you see the result=> Mr. Pirsig’s letter, Unorthodox Teaching of Writing To College Freshman, which points to his => Miniature, Compact, Prescient, Formative, Prophetic, Forerunner, and Prototype Of => What Was To Be, 14 Years Later, The Book Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, published in 1974.

Editor’s Notes by ZMMQ SiteMaster Henry Gurr, 20 Sept 2018.
Concerning Our WebPage Recreation of Mr. Robert Pirsig’s Typed Document.
The above “Unorthodox Teaching of English ... To College Freshman.” by Robert Pirsig was sent to me by Mrs Wendy Pirsig, as 3 email attachment versions => 1) Scanned Photo Image.pdf 2) Acrobat OCR.pdf & 3) Acrobat.doc. Because I have MS Word processor, I used 3) to start my edit conversion to this pmWiki WebPage Version, and when nearing completion, checked final version against 1), since the image.pdf, is a near photographic copy.
Although the pmWiki WebPage Presentation Software, has its limitations, & introduces some deviations, I have tried my best to recreate the spacing page breaks, underlining, capitals, and general appearance of Mr. Pirsig's original typed paper letter. These include => Recreation of paragraphs, the indented first line of a paragraph, and spacing (or lack of spacing), between paragraphs, and same location on a new page within the text. However, due to the nature of WebPages, the carriage line returns, do not duplicate Mr. Pirsig’s typing.
…Finally, concerning evident typographical errors: Since typing errors (or the lack of them), carries information about Mr. Pirsig’s typing, I have attempted to leave these mostly the same as on version 1). This includes: any added space in middle of a word, omitted last letter in “thought’, two words repeated, etc. There was an omitted phrase “such a” and an incomplete “H₂O”.

For Further Reading => Internet Resources & Links.

Henry Gurr’s Letters 1994-2005 To / From ZMM Author Robert Pirsig.

Henry Gurr’s Letters 2006-2008To / From ZMM Author Robert Pirsig.

Most Interesting & Rewarding Of Dr Gurr’s Website, Are His 1550 Photographs, Arranged In Twelve Gallery Photo Albums.
…AFTER This Page Come Up, Please Scroll Down To And Read At Where You See =>

Please send an email if you have questions or need information.]

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