Let me just first apologize to Chris. I had every intention of blogging last night, but, alas, Murphy’s Law reared its ugly head and it didn’t happen. I had it all planned out so I would not be trying to create knowledge (i.e. understand) with little time to spare. Everything from dense readings needing a substantial dictionary (no pocket size here, folks!) to an emotional daughter who is still dealing with the deaths of her friends needing someone to lash out at fell into place according to the evil plan. It was not a pretty night, to say the least. So anyway, here I am posting a blog and trying to make sense of my world in a social-epistemic way, or so I think I am.
Berlin fulfills every expectation of a sophomoric reader like me—I dare say he even surpassed my expectations in that I could not make it through the first paragraph without consulting a dictionary and taking copious notes. His statement that “a rhetoric can never be innocent” certainly seems to reiterate what Julie has declared time and time again: composition is always persuasive, no matter the intended purpose. Ideology seeps forth, even from what appears to be a simple compilation of analyses and syntheses. Berlin does make his position perfectly clear: he is not a fan of Flower and Hayes and their pursuit of a scientific explanation for a writer’s purpose—his unquestioned goals—as we discussed last week. But, aren’t there unquestioned goals inherent in any type of rhetoric? Can we really ascertain all of our goals when we compose and weigh them to determine whether they are self-serving? And, there seems to be no love between Berlin and die hard expressionistic proponents. His description certainly fits nicely into modernism. Curiously, I wonder: Did modernism influence expressionistic rhetoric or vice versa? Or, were they created from the same mold? And you know how it can be when you come across a word you have never seen before and then all of a sudden it is everywhere? I came upon the word bowdlerized and, of course, I had to look it up. I decided it was a very cool word to know. Then, lo and behold, I check my email this morning and my word of the day is—you guessed it—bowdlerize. Interestingly, Dr. Thomas Bowdler edited not only Shakespeare because the original wasn’t suitable for the delicate sensibilities of women and children.” He also found it necessary to edit the Old Testament. What a guy. Anyway, apparently social-epistemic rhetoric is where it’s at. Is this partly because the followers have accepted the fact that text is ideological in and of itself? Ever since I was introduced to social constructivism, I am a devout believer. Berlin makes some great points about rhetoric having an historicist orientation. What else can it be? His forms of false consciousness ring so true for today’s students. As a matter of fact, my daughter and I just had a conversation the other day specifically about the “absence of democratic practices in all areas of experience.” Not that we were discussing Berlin’s essay, of course. She was on her soapbox about the fact that today’s education system (for lack of a better term) does not force (allow?)students to learn from their mistakes and accomplishments; in other words, they are denied opportunities to practice self-discipline and self-organization and instead structure is forced upon them so that they are not really ready for the real world and the consequences of their actions. I’m not sure I have explained myself well here, so I can explain later if necessary. And, it seems to me that these forms of false consciousness have fed the consumerism that has made a shambles of our economy. But I digress…
In a previous reading, there was discussion of the fact that society is not static and neither should writing instruction. Maybe it was Berlin, but I just cannot put my finger on it now. Anyway, our approach to teaching writing must fit the times in which we live and I agree with Berlin and Shor that social-epistemic allows for social changes.
In confusion, we pretty much covered Emig last week, but her theory seems to fit with Berlin. I’m not sure where Burnham lies, but I must say that some of bell hooks ideology rubs me the wrong way, which has pushed me away from expressivist views. Although it has tried to run the opposite direction of current-traditional, there seems to be the message that we must stay far away from current-traditional, but in essence it becomes just as "bad" as what it is running away from.

Looking forward to our class discussion tonight!

Tobin is the man! Okay, so is Murray.

Twice this week I sat down to read for class, only covering a bit of ground, when my husband somehow assumed it was an invitation to chat. I tried to ignore his conversational advances, but eventually I had to move to another room. He didn’t get the hint and followed me. Grrr! (This is my best attempt at a written growl.) Last night, I again sat down to make my way through some readings, and he wants to play a guessing game. Even when I asked to be left alone, he would only do it if I answered one more question! I don’t know about everyone who reads these essays, but it really takes all of my concentration for some of these essays. And, I mistakenly read Tobin and Murray first and found myself facing the prospect of whether to read Ede and Lunsford or Flower and Hayes. I started with Ede and Lunsford, but I just could not comprehend the whole audience addressed and audience invoked thing and gave up at the third page. I mean, I get the idea that audience is important and that as writers we must sometimes fictionalize our audience, but that’s where it ended. So, it was Flower and Hayes by default.
First, let me just say I love Tobin’s candidness, honesty, and forthright writing style. Like Tobin, one of my criticisms has been the idealization of the results of many of the theorists who have written about how process writing has dramatically changed their composition instruction and results. They make it seem so easy and my attempts at the same have not been as fruitful. But Tobin has allowed me to realize I have to find my own style of teaching composition, incorporating some Atwell, Murray, and Elbow, but also staying within my comfort zone—far away from the strict formats of yesteryear, of course. Tobin brought back some of those (painful?) memories from junior high and high school when everything we did had to follow a very strict format, from the specified number and color of notecards to the number of words required for each assigned paper. Although I only remember writing about four “big” papers during all four years of high school, I do remember those tedious grammar lessons and the insistence that we submit an outline for our paper along with the paper, which I always did after I completed the paper. Oh, I would pretend to have one, but it always changed before I handed it in. It all seems so silly now when I look back on it. And, as Tobin reminisces, we never peer reviewed or workshopped or read our essays during class, let alone discuss how writers find their ideas or that writer’s block was a normal thing. We had to know what we were writing before we wrote it. We were not encouraged to let our writing take us to another place or to generate new meaning. I struggled to write, struggled to put my thoughts on paper. The grammar lessons and strict procedures provided nothing to help me become a proficient writer and confident writer. Because I have some relative freedom this semester with one class I am teaching, I am trying to guide my students down a different path from whence I came. I am having my students share their writing in class, some reluctantly. I want to provide them opportunities to generate meaning as they write. I want them to take ownership. So far, I am really excited about what is taking place. A few whom I had dismissed as only basic writers are stepping up to the challenge, producing some interesting and engaging pieces. And, I would like to think that the effort I make to respond to my students' writing and the respect I show them at what they are trying to do is beginning to pay off.
Okay, now onto Linda Flower—who I know can be excruciatingly dense—and John Hayes and their essay, “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing.” I am a little annoyed that they misstated Britton’s answer to the question of what guides a writer’s decisions as he writes. I don’t see where he says that syntactic and lexical choices guide the process—he actually says, “It is tempting to think of writing as a process of making linguistic choices form one’s repertoire of syntactic structures and lexical items.” He uses the word tempting and then asks how it happens. Am I missing something here? Anyway, Flower and Hayes do provide some logical answers when it comes to answering this question. Interestingly, they discuss how children “possess the skills necessary to generate ideas, but lack the kind of monitor which tells them to “keep using” that skill and generate a little more. Couldn’t this be related to brain development itself? I’m thinking of an article I read in TIME magazine wherein a study was conducted on the brains of three or four brothers as they reached the age of 25 or so. The scientists involved in the study concluded that full brain development doesn’t happen till we hit 25, which explains the stupid decisions kids make and the stupid things they do. Could this fact also contribute to the composition process? Maybe this explains why my own writing and love of writing did not develop till later. I must admit, I laughed at the idea of using thinking aloud protocols to study the process of writing. First, reality is lacking. There is no way we can honestly verbalize all the things we are thinking about as we write. And, even though the tape recorder would be “unobtrusive,” we would still be aware we are being recorded. That’s like writing a “real” letter to someone knowing that others would be reading and analyzing it. It just isn’t the real world.
Although I would agree with their answers to the question posed, I firmly believe that a writer’s relationship with the text is a huge factor in the writing process and the decisions we make. Is it a love affair or are we simply tolerating a co-worker or family member? Think about it. If we are sincerely interested and passionate about our subject, then we will likely approach it in a loving way. We will nurture and caress it. If it is something we must do, whether it is a school assignment or something we are to generate in the workplace, then our approach will likely be standoffish and cold. We will invest less of ourselves in it, thus changing our process and the decisions we make.

An Educational Trip to Composition-ville

Initially I could not figure out why Britton found it necessary to discuss the differences between literary and non-literary discourse (especially in light of the quote provided at the beginning of his essay; however, I so appreciated his distinction between a love letter and love poem—I certainly had never considered the use of one or the other in court), but thankfully it all came together in the end, as I figured out (somewhat—I never really feel comfortable with my synthesis) the method to Britton’s madness in “Spectator Role and the Beginnings of Writing.” Once I got through it, I realized he really needed to dive into all those subtitles in order to fully provide the rationale behind his argument: writers cannot be taught to write—they must learn to write. Sure there are principals, guidelines, and formulas that we learn as children (centering and chaining, to name a few), but what it all comes down to the need to put our thoughts and ideas into words, to express ourselves. And once we learn to express ourselves, we can venture towards either end of the continuum that connects verbal transaction to creation of a verbal object. It all sort of came together for me as I thought about my own desires as a young child of wanting to express myself. It seems to start with one’s name, doesn't it? I remember wanting very badly to write my own name, my identity as a person, not just a child who didn’t matter. Once I could write my name, I wanted to be able to write in cursive for that seemed to be the ultimate format to express oneself. After all, that was how all the “big people” around me wrote and I very much wanted to be like them. Reading about Clare (no doubt a British girl—they always sound so much better than us Americans) reminded me of some writing I produced in kindergarten. I was not nearly as precocious as Clare, but I remember being very proud of the chocolate chip cookie recipe I produced, no matter that my required oven temperature was 5000 degrees. I knew of a formula by which I could express myself, and my writing followed that formula, that of a recipe for a very favorite food. And, as I look back on other instances where I wanted to express myself during those early formative years, no one had taught me grammar. As Hartwell points out in “Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar,” as native English speakers we already inherently know our grammar rules. The problem lies with unfamiliarity of nomenclature for purposes of discussion, word selection, sentence combining, and those details that provide the finishing touches to a text. Because I had read this essay for Dr. Wilson’s English 470 and included it in a paper discussing this very topic, within the confines of composition-ville are the grammarians who constantly rebut each others’ arguments and rationale. Hartwell’s biggest critic, Martha Kolln seemed to back off from her original stance in the grammar department, taking an important cue from the NCTE when it called for an end to formal grammar and replacing it with “instrumental grammar.” Seriously, even though I’m a certified nerd and love discussing grammar now (I know—it’s a sickness), I could not stand grammar instruction as an elementary and secondary student, especially since it almost always was out of context. I can't even say I really even learned anything but the basics.

Curiously paralleling the opposing grammar gangs who cannot agree on the inclusion of grammar instruction or the type of grammar instruction (grammars 1 through 5—who would have thought we could entertain so many variations of grammar?) within their grammar society are the composition communities wherein some members cannot accept the fact “fluent knowledge makers” can belong to more than one such community and that their society depends upon that very notion. North’s anthropological approach makes sense: Social construction comes into play here—just as our world constantly changes and shifts, so must, too, our modes of inquiry. Can we ever find a large piece of common ground that Google Earth will display as unchanged in five years?

A bit of a risk

Okay, so I have recklessly decided not to type this in Word first--only because somehow it stifles my thoughts. Hopefully I won't lose anything, or you might see me sporting some rather large bald spots.

Unfortunately I read the selection by Kinneavy, "The Basic Aims of Discourse" before "A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition." Why, you might ask? I had skimmed it, and figured I would really digest it when I had a chance to print out a hard copy (for some reason, I prefer not to read anything substantial on my computer screen). So anyway, I struggled through Kinneavy, took a break and proceeded to read Berlin's "Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories." Assuming my brain could use a break from theory and writing gurus, I stopped midway and read (not skimmed) "A Brief History." Should have started there first! The history lesson and background information provided a boon to my understanding--and I use that word loosely--of Kinneavy and Berlin. Because I teach speech, I gleaned a good deal of information I intend to share with my students this semester. And, I now understand why the "canon" has held such an esteemed place in high schools. Thank you, NCTE, for some common sense when it comes to teaching English!

Okay, now on to the dense scholarly stuff (where is Harry Potter when you need him?). So, did anyone else have some difficulty with Kinneavy's table and chart? The continuum makes sense, and I think I understand what HIS aim was, but it was a struggle. And, it didn't help that his triangle had four sides. Who does this??? If I wasn't confused before (trust me, I was--this is only for sake of conversation), then the four-sided triangle would have done me in. And, if for argument's sake I was still in the discourse game understanding every play, his comparison of language to a windowpane would have been the nails in the coffin. "I may use a chunk of it to chase away an intruder"? Is that a chunk of the brick or the windowpane? So, basically we need to eat a balanced diet, right?

Then we have Berlin. Again, some very dense stuff. It seems to me that I was taught writing mostly by teachers of the Current-Traditional school (I wonder if this somehow corresponds to the teacher lounge which emitted plumes of cigarette smoke with every entry and exit), but that I fall into the New Rhetoric realm. That is not to say, though, that Current-Traditional isn't alive and well in some corners of the universe. I see shades of it even in the 30-year-old teacher with whom I share a room. I saw a great deal of it in my co-op when I student taught not that long ago. But, to really be able to identify these different schools of writing instruction, I need examples--and plenty of them. Can anyone help? Can't wait to discuss this with my classmates!

This quote from James Michener and sent by Pat Donaldson of the Capital Area Writing Project to National Writing Project Fellows seems to fit Berlin's position: "Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go."