This week’s readings reveal the world of tensions inhabited by our student writers. While Bartholomae insists on the validity of requiring academic writing for first-year composition students, Elbow and Brooke make a case for inviting students to see themselves as writers with individual voices outside of traditional academic-writing genre constraints.
Bartholomae’s primary argument for academic writing is that it requires students—and instructors—to acknowledge the “busy, noisy, intertextual space” in which students compose: a space “defined by all the writing that has preceded them” (64). He poses that, by requiring students to participate in “a first person, narrative, or expressive genre” (69)—one that diverges distinctly from traditional academic writing—instructors are responsible for the reproduction of [the] myth” (70) that student voices can exist in an open space that is free from the history of past writers.
While such observations are worth being aware of in the defense of traditional academic discourse, I find Bartholomae’s rejection of the value of creative nonfiction in the composition classroom stale, discouraging, and almost callously dismissive of student writers’ potentials. For example, he cites a student who is writing an essay on her parents’ divorce and remarks, “We’ve all read this essay” (66). He claims that we’ve read it because the student cannot be capable of talking about the universal themes of such an essay in a way that is new or imaginative. So why let students write about their human experiences using first-person, author voices? Here, Elbow might interject that the student should write the essay so she is “able to say, ‘I’m not just writing for teachers or readers, I’m writing as much for me—sometimes even more for me’” (77).
I’m with Elbow. He maintains that our highest priority as teachers should be to “show that [we’ve] understood what they’re saying” (77), that inviting students to write something in which they are “self-absorbed and see themselves at the center of the universe” is more empowering than to require students to employ the writer-as-academic role of being “personally modest and intellectually scrupulous…to see themselves as at the periphery” (79). By asking our students to write about themselves with essays like the life-place assignment, we are living out Elbow’s confession that he invites students “to fall into the following sins: the take their own ideas too seriously, to think that they are the first person to think of their idea and be all wrapped up and possessive about it…to write as though they are a central speaker at the center of the universe—rather than feeling…that they must summarize what others have said and only make modest rejoinders from the edge of the conversation…” (80).
In my class, I have observed that the students who have improved the most are the ones who have developed confidence in themselves as writers. If it’s a sin to let students be at the center of the universe in one class of the many they take in the institution; if it’s a sin to let students claim an authentic voice about personal experiences; if it’s a sin to let them make claims independently, rather than craft responses timidly—sin, sin, sin away! Sin for confidence, and don’t repent.
Fellow teachers, what value did you discover in Bartholomae’s argument? What is the value of shifting roles, as Brooke endorses, “from student to writer, from teacher-pleaser to original thinker” (152)? Do you think it could be ever be dangerous to indulge in the sins Elbow proposes—why?
I too found Bartholomae's postulation crass and devoid of ambition and creativity. However, I think a hybridity of pedagogical practice can be ascertained in the classroom between both Elbow's and Bartholemae's ideologies. I think there are some inherent dangers in the "sins" Elbow elucidates. If students are so inherently "possessive" of their writing and under the guise that "they are a central speaker at the center of the universe" (Elbow 80), their perspectives can become overwhelmingly culture bound, limited in scope, and bathed in generalizations. In short, students theorize a stagnant outlook to be universally welcomed. Yet, I am not advocating for Bartholomae's speculations that students can't write "in an open space that is free from the history of past writers."
ReplyDeleteWhile I ardently agree that there "should" be free spaces to write in where one can rid themselves from the shackles of external criteria, I continually find my desire for this thwarted. Even when my students free write they still question what I expect from them, which leads me to believe they themselves reject the idea of a "free space" to write in, or feel so academically bound that they have been conditioned to creative oppression. As a teacher I understand this, and as a poet I am appalled by it. So, all I can do is seemingly, not wholly, side with Elbow as you did in the desire to promote creativity and confidence, while also "trying to hold myself open to correction" (Elbow 82).
I agree with Jimmy, there is a danger in students thinking that they have the only viewpoint that matters - that they are "at the center of the universe." (Elbow 80) It is true that every voice is a valid and students must feel empowered to develop their voice and personal stories. Yet must this happen in a vacuum? How do we encourage individual expression while emphasizing an acceptance of differing perspectives? I am facing these questions as I begin to teach the personal essay. In requiring my students to research the bioregions of their life place I hope to encourage them to consider other points of view. However, I would also like them to tell their own stories. How can I balance these foci? Any ideas from fellow TAs?
ReplyDeleteI did find some value in Bartholomae’s argument. It framed very real issues dealt with in the classroom in what could be construed as a realistic, or even skeptical light. I disagree that incorporating personal, creative expression in the composition classroom keeps "them from confronting the power politics of discursive practice, or to keep them from confronting the particular representations of power, tradition and authority reproduced whenever one writes" (64). I think there should be a balance, making it clear that as teachers we are aware of these things, the politics of academia and writing, and make that knowledge available to students. However, I don't think that should prevent us from having freer writing beside and within an understand of the context of academic writing.
ReplyDeleteA balance must also be found in the question that Laurel proposes, the multiple foci asked for in the life-place essay: their own stories with other points of view. I'm not sure I have an answer, but presenting the question to our students and discussing it...giving them a role in navigating the complicated path...not only helps them understand the spectrum of perspectives they need to include in their writing, but will assist them in understanding why.
As I've been reading these comments I've been thinking about the character trait of Millennials to have overly high confidence, and while I agree that having and encouraging confidence in a writer is key to good writing, I also can't help but wonder if some students wouldn't benefit from a reality check about the quality of their writing. I suppose I say this is light of having read many Op-Ed postwrites in which students claimed that overall they had done a great job, and their Op-Eds themselves were a far cry from "great."
ReplyDeleteBut I go back to the benefits of confidence, and remind myself to be realistic with them without shooting down all self-esteem entirely. I'm excited for the Life-place unit because I see it as an opportunity to do that which Bartholomae doesn't seem to condone: have students develop "a narrative that celebrates a world made up of the details of private life and whose hero is sincere" (69). While this is my favorite unit, I think this type of writing can be especially valuable in a freshman writing class when it is coupled with other academic writing assignments; this avoids the either/or binary or personal v. academic (although not necessarily presented as such by either Bartholomae or Elbow) and allows teachers to show the importance of both genres and even equip students with tools to subtly converge the two when appropriate.
It seems to me that the WRIT 101 curriculum attempts to resolve some of the tensions between "academic" and "personal" writing that both Bartholomae and Elbow describe. From the PAA on, we have been trying to breathe new life into old, stale "academic" forms. The Research Paper vs. the Personal Academic Argument, for example. So, I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that all of us already have practical experience traversing the personal/academic binary, as Nancy points out.
ReplyDeleteBartholomae is attempting to use the composition classroom as "part of the general critique of traditional humanism," and Elbow is expressing the idea that students need to "experience themselves as writers" (78) an imperative of self-development. I think that Elbow frames this discussion nicely by casting it in terms of a reader/writer debate.
I think that the "self-esteem" issue that everyone on this thread is dealing with is an interesting one. I think that if our WRIT 101 students are gaining confidence and improving as writers it is because they are escaping childish idea that they are the center of the universe, rather than just celebrating themselves. Elbow doesn't see "grandstanding" as being an issue prevalent amongst beginning writers, and I agree. However, I do think that we've all encountered students who have trouble assessing and perhaps reconsidering their viewpoints.
I also agree with the general feeling that writing need not happen "in a vacuum," as Laurel put it. And I agree with Nancy that the Life-place unit is a valuable opportunity to have students reflect on their life and their respective roles in the world. Yet, I also think that the Life-place essay will effectively (fingers-crossed) lead students to discover that they and the things they think do not exist in a vacuum, that the external world is not just so many irrelevant externalities.