Comments on: Putting on a Show

By: Mike Caulfield

Mike Caulfield — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 14:05:51 +0000

Great post.

Over a decade ago I taught english comp 101 to college freshmen. And my assistantship mentor said something very interesting. He said that telling kids to write from their inner self was wrong.

Why? Well, he was a rhetoric guy, and he believed the Greeks had it right: the self is a SOCIAL construction.

You can’t write FROM the self. You can only write AS yourself. Or as one of your “selfs”.

It’s in mapping out how you relate to your audience that the self comes into being. He used to say that freshmen don’t come to us with selves, they come to us as a collection of differences and similarities from their peers, and what they are looking for is a coherent frame for that. And that is why he thought above everything it was important to get them to write as different people, to defend things they didn’t believe in, to try different styles (one of his exercises was to ask them to write in Samuel Johnson style prose).

I have to say that’s stuck with me — i think it’s one point where modern social theory, greek philosophy, and education do intersect.

When we ask students to just write for the teacher, they are really mapping out their relation to to the tiniest sliver of their life. It’s much more profound I think to engage with one’s peers…much more transformational.

As far as introverts — why not use pseudonyms? it’s a great way to experience the feeling of trying on a new persona while keeping a distance…in fact, why not take my old mentors advice, and have some students blog as characters of their own creation?

By: Gardner

Gardner — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 21:01:38 +0000

I agree that choosing and crafting stages will be different for introverts and extroverts, and that those types start to collapse in on each other in the information age … so that even introverts are social, but social along different vectors.

Also, I just watched the video again and I still think it’s utterly wonderful. It blew me away the first time and did the same thing just now. The first “test of time,” and it passes for me with flying colors.
Kudos to all.

By: Chip

Chip — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 19:53:34 +0000

I think the analogy is fine, and I think your illustration of the connection by the student is wonderful testimony. Now all we have to figure out is how to invite the introverts and anti-exhibitionists in. Knowing you, I think you’ll figure out how to express this in terms much better than mine, but here’s my start: introverts love stages too, but the audience is different. For an extrovert, the audience is “all of you.” For an introvert, the audience is the “all of me,” especially the most thoughtful, reflective part or “me.” All the elements of quality in presentation are just as relevant, except that the performer is also the audience and the critic. But here’s the interesting part of the question to me: does this phenomenon (the blurring of intimate revelation with mass communication) mean that the terms introvert and extrovert actually no longer have relevance (if they ever did)? On the Internet, are “all of you” and “all of me” different, or the same?

By: Martha

Martha — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 19:01:37 +0000

Andy — only if I equated comments to applause. Which I don’t. Perhaps my analogy is breaking down. . .;)

By: Andy Rush

Andy Rush — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 18:42:00 +0000

So is no comments on a blog post the equivalent of “chirping crickets” in the audience? But seriously, nice post, and nice directing of our extravaganza!