Responsible writing doesn't exist for the hell of it, so don't teach it that way.

Winsor’s essay made me pause and reconsider the nature of writing. In school, writing is often compartmentalized from other subjects, i.e. writing takes place in a different period than math, which takes place in a different period than science. This implies that each subject has nothing to do with the other subjects. While some subjects may have less in common with others, language ties them all together.
Students entering college for the first time don’t understand that language and rhetoric are the very elements that construct all their knowledge.

Winsor demonstrates that writing is often not the end process. Students are conditioned to think of turning in copy as the final step. I think good, responsible writing aims for impact, not to exist in and of itself. People spread all the great works of literature, all the great inventions, and all the great medicines through language.

When it comes to reaching a large audience with any type of information, language is indispensable. It’s really the only means we have. The symbols we use to generate meaning become the meaning. Science, mathematics, finance, business, and football all use symbols to generate meaning. Language and rhetoric will forever be inevitable, regardless of the subject a student is going to major in.

If a course were designed to teach students that, and to help them apply it in a practical context, then maybe they might understand better the importance of communicating well. Students have this idea that they’re writing a paper with the simple goal of writing a paper. Then the paper receives a grade, and that’s the end of it. It all happens in a vacuum, separate from everything else in students’ lives. This isn’t how writing should happen, so why does writing instruction happen this way? Instructors need to help students understand writing in a broader context.

Transmitting Underlife

I loved Brooke’s essay on underlife this week. Perhaps some of the things we discourage students from doing in the classroom are the very things that make them good writers. Having one’s own sense of identity and independent thought is a crucial aspect of becoming a competent writer. Once a student’s sense of identity is established through writing, teaching the mechanics of the language should not be as difficult.

Of course, students cannot just have one identity in all their work. They have to shape that identity to the writing’s audience. I’m sure underlife pops up in their writing, too. It did in mine. For my amusement, I liked to hide bizarre phrases or innuendoes in my work as an undergrad. It made me feel empowered, like I had won something. I wrote the paper, but I couldn’t be entirely controlled.

Even now, in meetings or “serious” professional situations, I find myself performing unexpected actions for the role I’m supposed to fill. But then I realize that ironically, other people are performing alternative actions too. The underlife becomes an expected phenomenon within a role someone performs.

I think this is distinctly an American/Western phenomenon. We need to perform roles, but we feel it necessary to perform them with our own sense of style. We want to stand out and be noticed above the others.

It’s really amazing how people behave when they know they’re being watched, and when they’re expected to fulfill a particular role. They both confirm to the role while rejecting the role. It’s a complicated communication process, much more complicated than writing a paper (at least a freshman-comp-level rhetorical analysis). It’s funny how students carefully construct their identity in the classroom but bomb the assignments.

Berlin's Three Categories of Rhetoric

Reading James Berlin’s essay, I wondered why Berlin ordered the categories of rhetoric they way he did. Why is cognitive first, expressionistic second, and social-epistemic third? I think his essay mirrors the evolution of composition philosophy, moving from the early idea to the modern idea. I agree with his basic reasoning, but I think the terms he defines are less clear-cut than he posits, and that an effective writing instructor can blend all three.

Perhaps I’m misinterpreting our readings for this class, but isn’t cognitive rhetoric another form of formalism? After all, it stresses linear, logical progressions, hierarchy, and an adherence to form. Cognitive rhetoric reinforces some of the dated ways of teaching composition. While cognition and adherence to form is a part of writing, it isn’t the whole thing.

Berlin names expressionistic rhetoric second. Expressionism happened further along in the development of teaching composition, but it too is inadequate to explain the whole of writing. I think Berlin named expressionistic rhetoric second to serve as a bridge between cognitive and social/epistemic rhetoric.

Social/epistemic rhetoric serves as a kind of next-level hybridization of the two previously discussed forms of rhetoric. It incorporates logic and cognition with the writer’s self to make a third other, a social environment, which includes self, others, and a logical/material foundation.

Berlin argues that social/epistemic is the most responsible route to take when teaching (okay, so I’m oversimplifying him a bit), but I feel like each rhetorical form has its place, and that they don’t need to be necessarily separate. A skilled writing instructor will use the correct type of rhetoric for the correct teaching occasion.

Instructor Commentary as Discourse

This week’s readings made me reevaluate some of my commentary on freshman work. Both Bruffee and Hartwell made excellent points about how students learn writing. After reading Bruffee, I began to take a much less authoritative stance in my commentary. Instead of handing out absolute truths from my ivory tower, I began to ask questions and frame comments, aiming to be more conversational than prescriptive. For example, I’d ask the a student “can you convince the reader that ‘specific examples’ is a rhetorical device?” Before I would write something like “your words choice is too vague to write a meaningful rhetorical analysis.” I wonder which approach is more effective. I think that leading a student to her or his own conclusions is a much gentler and more helpful way of meaning making.

However, since I can’t see students' reactions to my comments, it’s difficult to know exactly what kind of impact my comments have. I worry that students don’t care enough to ponder my questions, and that they look at my commentary and become frustrated, thinking, “you’re supposed to tell me what to do.” If this is the case, then the students’ whole mental map of education is flawed. Education is ultimately about having intelligent conversations, but it isn’t modeled that way, especially throughout elementary, middle, and high school. In those models, students are supposed to shut up and listen to the teacher. This sets up a flawed power structure where students necessarily feel inferior when they might have fresh and new perspectives on things.

As a grader, I feel powerless to combat the years of faulty institutional training students may have received. I feel damned no matter what course of action I take.

Truth vs. Praxis

As I read Maxine’s article, I wondered why her winds of change haven’t blown across freshman composition classes yet. Perhaps some of the resistance to her “revolution” is rooted in larger perceptions about the role of the university in society. I read an article for foundations of technical communication this week that illuminates a possible reason why freshman writing courses have been so bastardized within the English department and within academia.

According to a book by Merrill Whitburn called “Rhetorical Scope and Performance,” the ancient Greeks conceived of a university as an institution that pursued Higher Truth. Results and utility were the concerns of the peasants, and these concepts hindered the search for Truth. Teaching something “practical” was considered lowbrow and outside the responsibility of the university. People learned practical skills by working in apprenticeships or out of sheer necessity.

This divide still exists today. Universities still require students to fulfill a certain number of general education classes so that students can graduate with some sense of Truth. If a university does not have general education requirements, then it’s a trade school, and trade schools don’t have the ethos of a university.

Within the humanities, the attitudes fostered by Platonic and Aristotelian models of the university still softly exist. Teaching freshman composition forces teachers to abandon their quest for Truth. Perhaps this is one of the reasons nobody wants to teach it, and why writing instruction has remained so stagnant over the years, and why poor, poor Maxine never saw the winds of change ruffle her crisp sails. I liked the cut of that woman’s jib, I really did.

Beholding Freshman Writing Ethically

This Thursday’s discussion about Shaughnessy reminded me of one of the fundamental principles of rhetoric: know your audience. Before reading Shaughnessy, I didn’t know my freshman audience as well as I should have. My relationship with them was weighted with assumptions. I assumed that everyone was like me and could write if they tried. Writing always came easily to me and I usually received good grades on my papers. If I didn’t do well on a paper, it was often because I didn’t try. So I assumed that these freshmen all weren’t trying. Granted, many of them aren’t trying, but I understand them better. Reading those examples on pg. 391 of the writer who tried ten times to start was like reading a poem. Somehow it explained exactly why writing was so hard for that person. That person couldn’t see past her or his own flaws to see the bigger picture. I’ve often felt that way (my entire middle school and high school social life, for example).

Furthermore, I began to examine my assumptions about how to look at writing. I look for flaws. Before reading any student’s essay, I had the mindset of “what’s wrong with this writing?” This is the approach my teachers took, so naturally I assumed it was right. But think about only looking for flaws. This tunnels your vision and you miss a lot of greatness and beauty both in life and in writing. Sometimes a better approach is to examine what’s good first, then comment and encourage the writer about her or his strengths. When you encourage the good, perhaps the bad ebbs away naturally, and the student has a much more positive learning experience.

From a practical standpoint, I began to look for original thought in freshman papers. I found that amidst all the predictability and clichés, many freshmen had something unique and original to say, or at least something they hinted at saying but felt they couldn’t through their Engfish-laden prose. When I found an original thought, I would comment on it and tell students this is a good idea, and to explore this theme more deeply. I also found that the approach of looking for the positive rather than the negative made me less grouchy when grading. I still gave the same letter grades, but I personally felt much better.

Erasing Toxic Writing Philosophies

I believe that freshmen already have their own philosophy of writing before they start 1301. However, these philosophies are often toxic. Students think writing wastes their time and they won’t need to write. It would be fascinating to read a study about freshman attitudes toward writing, but even without reading one, I can often tell a student’s writing philosophy through the way they write. When I read an assignment, I can tell whether or not a student cared about her or his work. I can tell if a student has proofread or not, for example.

In my mind, the ideal form of teaching is where the student comes to the teacher, not the other way around. As a teacher, one needs to adjust unhealthy student writing philosophies, but I think it’s important for students to think they arrived at this conclusion on their own. It’s an Inception moment. If a teacher brings students to a point where they have a healthy philosophy of writing, that teacher will produce writers.

But what is a healthy philosophy of writing? Must it lie within the four taxonomies? Within the taxonomies, I subscribe to a combination of romantic and rhetorical. Beginners should write to become self-aware, and once a writer is self-aware, she or he can make rhetorical/social contributions. I don’t think that the cognitive approach necessarily helps, because I don’t believe imitating expert writing behavior is going to help novice writers. And the formalist tradition is too formal, because it’s paralyzing to new writers. I just learned the reasons behind proper comma use last semester. Before that, I had an intuitive sense of how to use a comma and just faked it. The point is that grammar is such a complex subset of rules that it should not obscure clear thinking or idea flow.

So as a future writing instructor, I think that would be my goal: to inspire kids to become romanticists and then rhetoricians. How to practically and effectively implement that idea is something that perhaps only experience can teach.