assignment #2 english compostion as a happening

English Composition as a Happening
Summery by: Austin Gibbs

In the article “English Composition as a Happening” Charles Deemer is passionate about how teacher and students interact with each other. He constantly criticizes the interaction of the teacher and the students and how the “English Composition” is being used wrong or how it has suffered.
The main idea or point of this article is to create a catalyst of a “happening” in the class room, which is an experience inspired by a “teacher” that will get the student to participate in the realization of his own awareness of his inadequacy.
He wants teachers to stop shoveling information and boring lectures into the students. They are “yawning for food” or on the brink of despair as he portrays it. Deemer states, “…a teacher reveals and class digests. What does a teacher know? He is merely human.”
He supports his idea by claiming, “If fragmentation and lack of mutual participation by class and “teacher” (he doesn’t like that word*) in genuine educational experience constitute the disease, then a unified, joint experience should provide the remedy.” He is saying that the relationship between teacher and pupil is pointless because of the lack of participation on the teacher’s part. Deemer wants the teacher to excite the student and move the audience (students) and make said lecture cool. He goes on to say “spontaneity is essential. Each “teacher” must inspire his own happening.” The impulsiveness of the teacher should shock and surprise the students into participating in there own education with the subtle influence of the teacher. The whole purpose of this is to reduce the distance between actor (teacher) and audience (pupil). “If the object were to make pupils think, rather than to make them accept conclusions, education would be conducted quite differently.” This is a solid quote to end this summery, rather then to just accept what the teacher says to be true, Deemer’s experiment (to create “happenings”) would cause the students to be proactive in the learning process and too feel encouraged to express them selves with out the teacher saying that their opinions are wrong. At the end of the article it says that the “happening” is the first step toward a stimulating experience to better yourself.