The longer we teach, the more transparent our practices are likely to become to us and greater is the danger that we will cease to question what we do in the classroom. In order to determine what really matters to me as a teacher of writing, I decided to employ a variation on the game everyone has play in one form or another: "If I were stranded on a desert island, what one book/move/beverage/etc. I would take?" Now I asked myself, "If I could be certain at the end of a first-year composition course that I had accomplished only one goal, what would it be?" The answer came quickly since the goal has driven my teaching for as long as I can remember: I'd be satisfied with having made my students independent thinkers and writers.

          Although some would claim that these are two goals, not one, I would maintain that there is such a symbiotic relationship between thinking and writing that any distinction does not constitute a significant difference in a learning environment. Depending, as it does, on active rather than passive engagement with ideas, writing encourages the development of higher-order thinking skills; furthermore, common sense tells us that clear, logical thinking is necessary for clear, logical writing.

          The goal of producing independent thinkers and writers seems not to have informed the pedagogy of many of my teachers from grammar through graduate school. Quite often it seemed that for each subject or course there existed a defined body of knowledge that I needed to "learn"--more or less by direct transference: Teachers, as I understood the process of "getting and education," would transmit, and I would receive--knowledge being transferred like oil through a pipe line. In order to be evaluated on my mastery of this knowledge, I believed that I had to give the "right" answers on exams and in papers. I remember assuming that I would be seriously disadvantaged on exams if I did not have a complete set of class notes to regurgitate into my blue book.

          This paradigm of teaching and learning, in which knowledge is seen as being transferred from teacher to student, is, of course, an old and familiar one. Charles Dickens, in Hard Times, portrays Professor Gradgrind thinking of his students as "little pitchers before him, who [are] to be filled . . . full of facts" so they can go out into the world and pour what is in them into other vessels. Paulo Freire uses a "banking metaphor" to express the same concept: Teachers frequently see themselves as depositing knowledge into students' minds for the day when the students need it and can withdraw it and, in turn, deposit it in the minds of others.

          The problem with paradigms like these is that they are predicated on a static theory of cognition. In neither paradigm is the knowledge or the recipient (the student) essentially changed; in neither paradigm can we assume that the recipient has been enabled to apply an internalized principle to a new set of circumstances and to find the next answer on his or her own. In each paradigm, simple memorization and dependence on authority are implicitly valued; conversely, in each paradigm, analysis and independence of thought are implicitly devalued. Simply put, in neither paradigm is an educational process likely to take place because in neither are students encouraged to think critically about either the subject matter or their own learning.

          The opposite teaching strategy from Professor Gradgrind's--a strategy which I have adopted in my classes--is to help students move from being mere knowledge tellers to knowledge transformers; I want to teach students not what they need to know, but how they will produce what they need to know when relevant occasions arise. I believe that for students to become knowledge transformers, they must first become active participants in their own learning.

          This complex cognitive transformation and the tasks required to bring it about are resisted by most students. Some initially hate it. First of all, the total package (the goal and the means of getting there) violates educational principles that students have learned are "normal" and "right": Professors are supposed to teach! Students are supposed to learn! (All of them have had Professor Gradgrind as a teacher--over and over again.) Secondly, achieving the degree of critical thinking necessary to function as independent learners requires students to tolerate uncertainty and ambiguity--states of mind which are uncomfortable for all of us and even more so for young people who are at Bloom's absolutist stage in their cognitive development. Third, the transformation requires a great deal of effort. Some students, in fact, are never able to buy into this method of learning; most, however, eventually do, as they begin to feel newly empowered; and some, of course, from the beginning, revel in assuming responsibility for their own education.

          Regardless of the initial attitudes of students, however, my pedagogy and, therefore, my classroom practices are grounded in the belief that it is in their best interests for me to compel them to become active participants in their own learning and to set them on the first leg of a journey toward becoming critical thinkers and knowledge transformers.

          I am not easy in the classroom. I believe in pushing students intellectually, in unsettling them, and in undermining some of their certainties. I try not to accept as valid any argument that rests solely on unsupported opinions; I constantly point out ambiguities and present multiple or conflicting viewpoints; and I frequently play the Devil's advocate (sometimes failing to announce that I am doing so). I question everything and ask them to do the same. I demonstrate--often, I am sure, in ways that seem irrelevant to some--how seemingly disparate ideas, objects, and practices are actually interconnected and interdependent. These tactics not only demand of students their constant attention, but also puzzle and perplex them (some more than others). For example, I remember one instance in particular when I discussed how one technological innovation (the long-playing record) had had an unexpected but profound cultural influence (the extended length and concomitant increased complexity of jazz solos). "What analogous social or cultural changes," I asked, "might computers bring about, perhaps in areas that seem to be completely unconnected to computers?" I saw brows furrow and eyes glaze over.