Tuesday, September 2, 2008
9/2 What should we teach?
Despite the step-by-step process of writing that has been ingrained in our psyche as teachers, I do not believe we teach composition in order for students to learn a procedure. This causes the students to believe if they follow a strict set of guidelines (brainstorming, outline, prewriting, rough draft, etc.), they will be able to write. Perhaps this is why so many first-year composition students emerge from the program and find themselves unable to meet the demands of composition in other disciplines. Rather, I believe we should teach 1301-02 students ways of perceiving and thinking about the world. Then we give them the tools they need to learn how to shape their individual perspective. I tend to fit into Berlin’s assessment of the New Rhetorician. Through writing, we can learn about our own realities, and the truth about those realities is always changing. Instead of focusing on teaching students how to think about topics in categories of writing, we should try to teach them how to perceive and interpret the world through composition. In my experience, this also allows them to care about their work. It is their interpretation, not a set of blanks they have filled in with correct answers. When the students begin to develop a connection to the words on the page, they are more interested in learning how to make those words better, that is, how to make the text reflect their own individual truth.
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3 comments:
Your main thesis is similar to mine in that I believe that students need to learn how to think, organize thoughts, and communicate more than concepts about writing methods.
Certainly we need to give them tools as starting points. But each student needs to figure out what fosters his or her own creativity.
I don't know if you read the Northrop Frye article for Brief 2, but he makes a point of explaining that most of us are good at faking intelligence. Most of this probably stems from the conventions we were all taught from our earliest educational experiences. Maybe teaching First-Year composition can help shatter the "writing mold" in which students have unknowingly found themselves trapped.
Again, I see the "step by step" process as a model...one that really doesn't represent reality, but that helps us understand the process.
I think writing is recursive, reflective, and MESSY! (I think empirical research is the same--we try to follow procedures for say, a case study, but we're dealing with contexts and humans, and each experience will be different).
Is it better to simply immerse people in writing? Or to give them a model? It's sort of like the 5 paragraph essay: it can be an end unto itself, or a model of something more complex, that helps ease the writer into it.
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