let go. just let go.

I think I've spent probably 12 years studying the English language. I've done a million grammar exercises, conjugations and sentence diagrams. Every kid does. And yet I don't think all that studying helped me at all. How can I be sure? Well, I was a slacker: I didn't ever pay attention to grammar. So how do I know what to hang my prepositions on? How do I know where to use semicolons instead of colons? I know because I've read literature and essays that moved me and I saw how they formed their sentences. I absorbed the meaning of their words. I heard how certain syllables slid softly off my lips. I understood. But I didn't learn the specific rules... I didn't need to (don't start with contractions; don't hang that preposition :P).

I was thinking about how people who have a teaching mentality usually break topics into bullet points. It makes it easier to teach. And I was thinking how I usually do this too, even with really complicated topics that can't really be generalized in lists. I wondered what it would be like to teach a history class and never mention a bullet-pointed fact. I wondered if your students would learn better if you just told them stories. All I remember from my history lessons is the stories. The dates came later, when I looked at timelines and recognized famous battles and epic explorations. I wonder now, why don't history teachers -- the teacher with access to an endless amount of stories illustrating all sorts of amazing concepts and theories and New Deals and Chinghis Khan (who wasn't actually much more cruel than Joshua son of Nun) and British aristocracy (Charles is a generous landlord) and French Revolutions (do we really need dates when we have Les Mis and the Scarlett Pimpernel?) and Chinese poetry? Do we really need bullet points when we have the source materials? When we have the actual experiences expressed in language like rain on flowers?

And I wonder if a teacher could, after telling a story, avoid the tempation to break it down into bullet points to somehow make it "easier to remember"... As if anything is easier to remember than a story.

In my life I want to let go of the details and the bullet points. The story... My story has meaning.