further clarification of real question

[Shannon Stoney]

Here's my real question about what to do when the essay that the
student is writing ABOUT is not very coherent.

Sometimes students have to read an essay that really does not make a
lot of sense. It is not well argued, and there is no evidence adduced
for the opinions in the essay, and it is not really clear what the
author is arguing. She may seem to be making several points that are
mutually exclusive logically. This is very confusing to students. They
often have a sense that there is something wrong with the essay that
they are analyzing, but they can't put their finger on it.
So they end up writing something rather cautious and tepid about how
the author is very persuasive, when they don't really believe that she
is. Scratch the surface a little, and you find that the student has no
idea what the author is saying, and I have to admit that neither do I.

So I've started saying to the student, "YOu know, it's ok to say that
this essay you are analyzing doesn't make a lot of sense. You don't
have to always say that it's a good essay." This seems to be a new and
rather scary idea to a student: that she can actually argue with a
published text! Sometimes texts seem almost sacred and authoritative
just by virtue of being published in a book or magazine. Also the
student may worry that the teacher assigned the essay because she
"agrees with" the text, and for the student to argue against the
validity of the argument in the text would "make the teacher mad." I
assume that all the teachers at HCC want students to think critically,
and so regardless of how the teacher feels about the validity of the
arguments in the texts that they assign, they want students to feel
free to argue with the texts themselves. But this is hard sometimes to
communicate to students. It feels too heretical to them; but at the
same time, I can feel their excitement about being free to disagree
with a text that they know, on some level, is not making sense.

But sometimes I feel a little afraid myself to say, "This essay makes
no sense to me," when it's an essay by a famous person.

--shannon