Shelbie Harris
Staff Writer
Learning how to forge the signatures and handwriting of novelists such as Jane Austen and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes series, isn’t something you would normally expect to encounter in today’s collegiate setting.
As a specialist in eighteenth-century British literature and professor of English at ISU, Roger Schmidt has a unique teaching style that focuses on low-tech teaching and is doing his best to preserve these methods in the classroom today.
“It started out five or six years ago when I thought it would be interesting to have my students learn how to forge Jane Austen’s handwriting,” Schmidt said.
“She wrote with a quill and I thought it would be an engaging way to have students look at her manuscripts, study her handwriting, learn how to write with a quill and try to write something in her style.”
According to Schmidt, the idea began as an experiment that, over the course of time, students have done very well with. He said that prior to the experience, some students didn’t even know how to write in cursive.
Schmidt sees writing as a sensory experience that cannot be accomplished through the newer technological mediums.
“When you’re writing, I believe you’re in a more reflective, almost meditative state and I think writing with a quill induces that meditative state,” Schmidt said. “It calms people down. It’s non-distracting; a very quiet environment just hearing this quill scratching across the paper and seeing the ink forming the words right under your fingertips.”
Taking on an experience like this not only provides students with a unique skill-set in writing with a quill and ink, an artifact that is very unlike anything else compared to college research papers or reports, but also an appreciation for Jane Austen as an author and writer.
“Learning how to handwrite is a bit of a lost art,” said Schmidt. “I don’t believe it’s the most important thing in the world, but it’s a skill and it does connect people.”
Schmidt said he knew he didn’t want to become a teacher after completing his Bachelor’s degree in English in 1980. He didn’t know what he wanted to do, but he did know teaching was not it.
He traveled to Barcelona where his wife was spent time in cafés writing, pursuing a career as novelist.
For fear of looking like a “bum” sitting in cafés writing, he applied to teach English at an institute, not thinking he would be hired.
“They called me up the day the term started and said they had three classes they wanted me to teach, starting that night,” Schmidt said. “So I went down to the institute located in downtown Barcelona and started teaching. It was then I realized how much fun it was to teach.”
An individual that at first glance appears to be shy, introverted and someone who might take his shoes off before engaging in an interview, Schmidt’s unique mannerisms add to his eccentricity.
“I love to teach and have been teaching here for 25 years. Usually being in the classroom is the highlight of my day,” Schmidt said. “I enjoy [teaching] immensely, I enjoy talking about literature and having my students engaged and confronted. I enjoy challenging them and confusing them, I like to see them thinking.”
Other than teaching Schmidt considers himself to be an outdoor enthusiast who loves to ski and mountain bike the undiscovered areas of Idaho right in his backyard.
He also spends lots of time fishing and working in his garden.
Currently, Schmidt is working on writing a book on how to forge Jane Austen’s handwriting and is facilitating some of the experiments through the classes that he’s teaching.
Schmidt is a firm believer in the value of the classroom setting and getting back to the roots of writing and literature, staying as far away from the technological sphere many of us live in today.
“Come to class. Don’t take the classroom for granted,” Schmidt said. “You may be the last generation that has the opportunity to come sit in a classroom to hear other people, students and teachers come together as part of a discussion. Don’t take face to face discussion for granted because it’s disappearing.”
