Mike Calou
Commentary Week Number Seven
4-1-09
The Rise of Composition Theory
“Yessssssssss!!!” Said with an image of Napoleon Dynamite in my mind. Finally, we are starting to read, and eventually discuss, the process of teaching writing. Don’t get me wrong, I have thoroughly enjoyed reading and discussing Isocrates, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates and Phaedrus, Quintilian, and Cicero, and Rudolph. Rudolph? The excerpt from the writing of Peter Elbow is all about teaching writing. But wait, a teacherless writing class? Hold on here. I’ll never find a job!
In “Thoughts on the Teacherless Writing Class” Peter Elbow takes a journey through the process of teaching writing. It is surprising to me that “the academy” has not adopted some of Mr. Elbow’s suggestions from the “Teacherless” text. Given a literacy process that begins with the act of listening to a language and culminates with the act of physically writing the language it is not surprising that people, for the most part, do not like to write. As educators and teachers of writing we put a lot of emphasis on form, content, grammar, and style. According to Elbow the emphasis should be on writing and responding. I think what he is saying is that writing is a process. I used to work in a factory that made corrugated boxes. We would talk about things such as: “process control” and “continuous improvement.” This is just what Peter Elbow is suggesting with the “teacherless writing class.”
Elbow is implying that teaching writing is a complex task. If it was easy then some academic would have figured out a process to teach people to write. We have been reading about what constitutes good rhetoric: good rhetoric includes analogies. Mr. Elbow makes a good analogy between learning math and learning to write. In the study of math there is a chronology of concepts that need to be learned. When we learn to divide numbers, we first have to have mastered not only multiplication, but also subtraction. Learning to write does not proceed along a similar chronological path. Elbow makes a wonderful point:
For the time being learning to write seems to mean learning contrasting but interdependent skills—double-binds: learning X and Y, but you can’t do X till you can do Y, but you can’t do Y until you can do X (135).
You can’t learn math this way. Writers may also reach a “long plateau” in the learning curve because they have to improve at several skills at once. Also, much of the progress made in learning to write is not visible: nothing budges till everything budges (135). No wonder writing is the last literacy component to be mastered!
The teacherless writing classroom sounds like it could work: because of the readers. Elbow makes a point about communication that deserves mentioning. He says that we never really listen to each other. For example, “Did you say something? I thought maybe I saw your mouth moving, but I wasn’t sure. I guess you did look sort of worked up” (122). Another analogy, only this time the comparison is made to writing. Who really reads what our students write? Teachers are too busy trying to justify a grade when they read student writing. Writing teachers are also “too good a reader” (127) to help the writing student improve their writing. Elbow contends that when a relatively “untrained” reader reads another student’s writing the writer will still make progress because of the sharing that takes place. The untrained reader knows what is “unclear” about what they are reading and the reader will convey what is unclear to the writer. This seems to me to be a concept of give and take in the writing process. When the teacher reads a student’s writing and responds there is no give and take: it’s all give (the teacher gives to the student).
In conclusion, I believe Peter Elbow sums it up by saying, “no piece of writing pleases everyone” (126). The writing process is tough. I am just now, a graduate student, learning to write: really write. The examples of the complexity and difficulty of the writing process that Mr. Elbow gives are accurate: I am experiencing the same difficulties this semester as I write, and write, and write. I have really learned about writing because of the feedback I have received from colleagues; fellow grad students. There is nothing like the first hand experience of writing and learning how to write; so we will empathize with our students as they struggle through the process.