Bright Line Rules in SCUBA and Writing Instruction

A Scuba Diving Analogy

Over the last few years, my wife and I have started learning scuba diving.

One thing that I love about diving is that it has taught me again what it means to be someone who is very much a beginner at something. I have about fifty logged dives at this point, and am amazed by divers who have been at it for decades and have thousands of logged dives all over the world.

It reminds me of the importance of a supportive environment in which mistakes are opportunities to improve, of the skill involved in creating clear explanations, and the significance of checking for understanding.

One thing that my wife noticed as she began to dive in different locations was how different scuba diving practices were in different places, and how insistent each dive center was that their way was the “best way” or the “only way.”

For instance, most dive centers that we worked with use a type of valve on the oxygen tank that is a yoke-style valve, so when we encountered one dive center that used what’s called a DIN-style valve that requires a different set up method, we asked our divemaster to advise us how to set up the different type of valve. “You’re used to the international style valve,” he replied somewhat disdainfully, “but the DINs are way better; good dive centers always use DIN.”

At the dive center in which my wife was PADI certified, she was told to “always put the snorkel on the right side,” whereas at other dive centers no such rules were in place or no snorkels were used at all.

At some dive centers, it’s insisted that the ending of the weight belt is tucked in whereas others do not insist. Some dive centers insist “always put your flippers on just before jumping,” whereas others insist “always put your flippers on before walking to the jump.” Some insist that, when opening an oxygen tank, the tank valve should be turned all the way back, while others insist that it should be turned a quarter the way back at the end.

Some dive centers insist that one should not fly for 18 hours after a dive to avoid decompression sickness, while others put the number at 24 hours.

All of these dive centers had the safety of their divers at the top of their mind. But for a beginner - especially a curious, engaged beginner - the inconsistency coupled with the “never” and “always” language of bright line rules can become confusing and intimidating.

This experience was very helpful for me as a teacher. It reminded me that:

-Bright line rules and procedures can be a temporary fix, but ultimately students must be taught to understand the why and how of principles in order for them to stick and for students to apply the rules effectively in practice

-Being dogmatic about technical issues can be very off-putting for a beginner who does not have the expert’s understanding of their relevance. While it's clear that there must be a good reason for the difference, that reason isn't always explained.

-Telling a student that what a previous teacher taught them is wrong - rather than building on what a student has previously learned - actually undermines a teacher’s credibility rather than reinforcing it.

Bright Line Rules in Academic Writing

From a writing teacher’s perspective, I can see how some of these inconsistent, bright line rules develop in the teaching of scuba.

Writing instruction is full of examples of such bright line rules that may reflect a grain of truth, but which in reality are far more complex.

There may be a few different reasons for bright line rules, in writing as in SCUBA:

-Bright line rules may be a rhetorical device used to convey an important principle without fully explaining the full complexity of the principle. Classic examples in writing instruction are the rules that “topic sentences should always start at the beginning of the paragraph” and “a thesis statement should always be one sentence only.” Of course, plenty of examples of outstanding writing exist that place topic sentences at the end of a paragraph or elsewhere, or have no identifiable topic sentence in every paragraph.

Many examples of outstanding writing exist that do not have a discernible thesis statement per se, or have no thesis statement that can be defined in a single sentence. And in many types of writing that are not persuasive, argumentative, or expository, the use of a thesis statement or topic sentence is not advisable at all.?

But these maxims do reflect a series of credible principles of writing whose exceptions only prove the rule: that, in expository writing, having a focus or intent in each unit of writing is important, that being consistent and conventional in the location of summarizing that focus can make writing easier to understand, that being concise in summarizing our argument tends to make the argument clearer.

When teaching say, 9th graders, how to write an essay, such broad, abstract principles may be difficult to put into practice for students without specific, “bright line” rules, and so teachers may strategically simplify those principles for the sake of clarity.

-Bright line rules may reflect a shift in thinking or practice that is now outdated. In writing instruction, these types of bright line rules most often happen in the field of grammar and mechanics, rules like “Never start a sentence with a conjunction or end it with a preposition,” or “Never use the passive voice,” or “Always use ‘he or she’ rather than they.”

Such rules either represent principles that were commonly espoused by popular grammar or writing textbooks decades ago and continue to be preached by writing teachers who were taught these rules during their schooling.

They are now ‘rules’ that are no longer accepted or practiced (in some cases, never were - the avoidance of the passive voice was famously idiosyncratic to E.B. White in The Elements of Style and has almost never been a universally acceped principle of writing).

It’s perfectly acceptable in written English today, for example, to use ‘they’ in place of ‘he or she,’ to end it with a preposition, and to use passive voice - with conscious attention to its effect on style and tone.

-Bright line rules may reflect inflexible rules that exist only in a very specific context. Publication and citation styles are the perfect example of such bright line rules. Style guides - like the MLA, Chicago style, Harvard style, APA style, Vancouver style - tend to be very comprehensive and clear, including many such bright line rules.

But many are never taught the differences in style and the context for such styles. For instance, in high school I had been taught (as so many students in the U.S. are) to only use MLA style. Among other points, MLA requires that punctuation such as full stops go inside of quotation marks.

Imagine my confusion when, as a History major at university, professors using Chicago style suddenly insisted that the full stops go outside the quotation marks. Similarly, some students of mine have rightfully expressed confusion when they notice that, after being told to “Always cite your sources in MLA format,” they notice that in some newspaper or magazine articles they read in class, quotations are cited in a different format, or quotations are not cited explicitly at all, even in the most reputable newspapers.

Thus, sometimes my 9th graders will overgeneralize the principle to “Always cite your sources,” arriving at the conclusion that many highly reputable sources are fake news because they do not use MLA citation style.

This observation becomes a great opportunity for students to learn that all reputable publications have their own style guides with practices for consistency in writing style and citation that may vary from publication to publication - how The Economist or The New York Times cite sources or organize paragraphs may be different from, say, the way that sources are cited in an academic journal.

The reason for those differences depends on the specific context of the publication: for instance, the use of parenthetical citations in MLA style reflects a focus on close readings of texts in literary criticism, whereas the use of footnotes in Chicago style reflects historians’ use of copious primary and secondary sources.

Similarly, the often-repeated rule to “Never use ‘I’ in formal writing” or “Use primarily the active voice” may reflect the practice in certain styles and genres of writing, but may be different in others.

In these cases, I always encourage students to place the advice of style guides in context. That it is both crucial to follow a style guide inflexibly when they apply, but it is also crucial to develop a range and repertoire of styles that may apply in varying contexts and to seek to proactively understand how task environments differ.

-Bright line rules may reflect a debate in the community about a best practice. Sometimes bright line rules reflect neither an inflexible rule that is shared in a specific context, nor an oversimplification of a broader shared principle, but are a rhetorical device used to emphasize the teacher’s insistence on a principle that may be controversial. In writing instruction, such “bright line rules” more often reflect teachers’ beliefs about the content of writing rather than the form.

One bright line rule I’ve often heard in literature education is “Never include your personal opinion in writing” and similarly, “Always justify your argument with quotation evidence.” This bright line rule often carries with it a set of related assumptions about literary criticism.

First, the only basis for understanding a text is the form of the text, to the exclusion of its context, the author’s intention, or how a reader responds to the text.?Second, that it is possible for a reader to be totally objective in interpreting a text, and that an effective interpretation strives to eliminate all opinion rather than foreground a theoretical lens or the way that a reader’s experience or context shapes the meaning of a text.?

Among contemporary literary critics, I think such bright line rules would be highly controversial, if not outright rejected. Very few contemporary literary critics identify as “formalist,” and even fewer in such a strict sense. Far more literary critics make very explicit their analytical lens. Many literary critics use a range of evidence including formal evidence from the text, context, theory, and reader response.

One can understand how such bright line rules might reflect strategic implications: for example, to discourage students from relying exclusively on personal reaction without any attention to textual support or evidence, or to prevent students from simply parroting other literary critics’ interpretations rather than engaging directly with the text.

But just as often such bright line rules prevent students from engaging with the more interesting questions in literary criticism. I’ve always found most success when I try to engage students in understanding the how and why of such principles rather than issue edicts about best practices.

Bright Line Rules. There are, of course, in scuba diving, writing, and in teaching, too, rules that are inflexible and unambiguous: don’t go diving without a buddy.? Always quote or paraphrase language that is not your own. Student safety always comes first.

But such inflexible rules probably benefit most from a robust discussion of why they matter. And they are the exceptions that prove the principle that teaching to understanding rather than teaching students didactic rules is often a better choice in writing instruction - and perhaps too, in SCUBA diving.