No Criticism Allowed: My High School Playwriting Instructor Shielded Students from Negative Feedback
Instead of making us better writers, she protected us from discomfort
Dear Coddling movie community,
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Now please enjoy the latest from our Gen Z contributor .
All the best,
Ted
Confidence is the greatest vice a writer can have.
In my high school playwriting course, I learned this lesson firsthand through teachers who enabled the inflation of their student’s egos. I know, it sounds counter-intuitive. Aren’t teachers supposed to give their students confidence? Perhaps, but education is not only about confidence, it’s also about growth. And growth can’t happen without recognizing one’s limitations.
So, please, allow me to tell you a story…
Let’s set the scene: I’m reviewing options for my school’s spring mini-courses — special off-campus courses where we’d spend a week studying a subject in depth. Amidst the usual sea of subjects I had little interest in, I was thrilled to find out this year my school had the perfect choice for me: A playwriting course.
Spring mini-courses cost five hundred dollars to attend, but were supposedly well worth their value. The playwriting course would be the perfect chance to push my writing to new heights. I signed up immediately.
A High School Course Meant for Elementary Schoolers
My enthusiasm faded as soon as the course began.
Each day started with an overview of writing techniques. First, we covered the basics of scriptwriting. Our instructor taught us nothing more than basic definitions of dialogue and stage directions. Something felt amiss. Shouldn’t we cover more challenging material?
Next, our instructor gave us a lesson on universal storytelling techniques. But she didn’t teach us standard storytelling wisdom such as “show, don’t tell” or how to construct character arcs.
I raised concerns to one of my high school’s teachers about the simplicity of the course. My teacher brushed off my complaints, insisting the playwriting instructor knew what she was doing. I hoped my teacher was right. I hoped, as the days went by, our lessons would eventually cover something challenging, something we didn’t already need to know to make it into high school.
But the day never came.
For the entire week, lessons remained rudimentary. Students who paid half a thousand dollars hoping for a rigorous academic challenge instead received half a thousand reminders of what a climax was.
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No Criticism Allowed
I often bristle at complaints directed at public schools, especially comments like, “They taught us nothing.”
Sure, public schools might cover information unlikely to be used in one’s adult career, such as the long-lamented pythagorean theorem, but at least that’s something. In my playwriting course, when we exchanged feedback on each other’s scripts, I witnessed what “nothing” really means.
As part of our daily schedule, students presented script excerpts to the group for feedback. The instructor expected peer critiques to aid our revision process. However, the critiques failed to live up to expectations, as the course only permitted positive feedback.
We were required to comment on the following:
What stood out to us the most
A question we had
What we wanted to see more of
And nothing else.
We received many compliments, but had no way to discern if they were genuine. Our instructor robbed us of an opportunity to improve. She worried negative critiques would hurt students’ feelings. She believed her students to be fragile.
But we are antifragile, and the removal of constructive criticism hurt our development as writers.
Let’s break down how by looking at the review process for a sci-fi story about time travel. I remember vividly how I listened to my peer’s story while churning through ideas of what to say for my feedback. I desperately wanted to provide one tiny piece of constructive criticism. The work had potential, but the complex time travel scenes needed more clarity.
How could I deliver my suggestion?
I could disguise the critique as a question, but for it to be allowed in class, my confusion had to successfully pass as curiosity. I could say I wanted to see more about time travel, but then the student might think I wanted more confusing time travel segments.
That’s very different feedback from saying the reader is confused.
Our instructor tried to justify her approach: Creative work is subjective, so rather than worry about quality, we should focus on helping a piece meet the creator’s intentions. Yet, even if we tailor our critiques towards an artist’s self-determined goals, constructive criticism can still be useful.
Let’s say an artist wants to draw an orange. For her first attempt, she draws a blue circle. How can we help the artist achieve her intentions?
Using the rules given by my playwriting course, what could we do? We could say what we wanted to see more of: More orange-like features. But comments like, “I’d like to see more of an orange color like oranges actually have” sound much more impolite than, “Hey, I wasn’t sure what this was a picture of at first. If you could make a minor change so it has an orange’s real-life color, that would help a lot!”
Our instructor did not want students to face criticism if they weren’t ready to hear it. She thought letting the class give negative critiques risked exposing budding writers to destructive comments from inexperienced or unruly students.
But we can only be shielded from the truth for so long. Eventually, someone will tell the artist oranges are not blue. Realizing she has been lied to will hurt the artist much more. We can only learn to handle criticism — both giving and receiving it — if we’re given the chance to practice.
The Benefits of Negative Feedback
My teachers at both the playwriting course and my high school believed criticism would cause students to give up. They didn’t want to set us up for failure, so they curated a curriculum where success was guaranteed. If that sounds familiar to readers of The Coddling movie substack, that’s because it’s one of the Three Great Untruths: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.
But the truth is failing, giving up, knowing your limits… That can all be beneficial.
What if my playwriting course taught us at an advanced level? Some students might have been shocked by the work that goes into playwriting. They might have realized their dream job of making Broadway musicals wasn’t a fit for them after all. Meanwhile, those with true writing skills could have gotten the rigorous challenge they needed.
If we are not told what isn’t working, what we’re missing, when we’ve failed, it is impossible for us to grow. If the purpose of the course is to improve our writing abilities, then why should we pay hundreds of dollars just to listen to people stroke our egos?
What are we here to learn?
 | A guest post by
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I remember teachers in HS who were renowned as hard graders, which they were, but they were also fair. In the beginning, getting papers returned filled with red ink was discouraging yet I learned. When you submitted a paper she liked, you knew it was for real and she wouldn't just say this is good, but went into detail what she liked about it and why it worked. Knowing how to give constructive praise is just as important as knowing how to give constructive criticism. I learned that from her.
This is so frustrating to hear about, and the polar opposite of my university journalism courses in the late 2000s, where my articles often came back covered in red ink. The instructor just assumed we could take the criticism - and, if we couldn’t, we weren’t cut out for the program.
One of the most important lessons for a budding writer is that the reader can’t read your mind. They can only read your words. There will often be a gap between your intended effect and what you achieve. Often you need feedback to see that gap, and giving feedback can help you see those gaps in your own work.
This course could have been so much better if the instructor started by teaching students how to give constructive, respectful feedback instead of assuming students were incapable of giving or taking such feedback.