I hear you, David Bartholomae, loud and clear, and in many ways I agree. But if both you and Peter Elbow were teaching a composition class in one of my son’s schools, I would steer them toward Peter.
I agree with you. Students need to learn the language and the dynamics of writing for the academy – and, as you remind us, writing for teachers who know the subject better than they do. But, if I thought about this too much, I don’t think that I could write at all. Both you and Peter Elbow had to start somewhere. Both of you had to write for professors who knew the subject better than you did, and who recognized all your structural flaws, botched word choice, awkward phrasing, bungled analogies, and mangled metaphors.
Both you and Peter see the problems of audience and relate it to “power” (You 407). Peter says in “Reflections on Academic Discourse” that he loves what’s in academic discourse: learning, intelligence, sophistication, even mere facts and naked summaries of articles and books…but hate[s] academic discourse” The reason for this visceral reaction, he says, is that “discourse carries power” (Peter 55).
In the interests of time (I know my audience, and they are busy right now with final papers), I will say this about your essay “Inventing the University”: Perhaps one of the major flaws of all the essays you analyze for us could be summed up as student-writers trying too hard to write for the academy – to give the English department at this school, professors judging their work, the definitions and examples of creativity that they are expecting. I don’t know if I am right. Perhaps not, but when I get papers from my students like these, I don’t ask students to learn and emulate the language of the academy and to “show an awareness of the codes” (You 413), but to reveal more of how they really feel. Your writers are playing it too safe.
Locating oneself in a discourse sounds complicated – and painful. I think with time we learn how to write for our audience and yet remain true to what we want to say – need to say – for ourselves. I don’t think Flowers’ writer-based prose must be wrenched from the writer; it must be gently guided and transformed toward prose that meets the needs of both the writer and the reader.
Like Peter Elbow, “I love to explore and communicate with others through writing” (72), and when exploration and communication are allowed in a classroom, I believe with all my heart, writing grows and writers emerge. I don’t need anyone to remind me of all the people that write a personal narrative better than I do. All I need to do is pick up Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings to know that I have a long way to go. I read good authors and hope it makes a difference. But when I am writing, I need to forget about everything but what I want to communicate. And at that moment anything is possible. My ideas take flight and I feel like an author. Take that away from me, and I am lost.
Where I think we agree, David, is in sensing what is wrong with essays like the “white socks” piece. For me, it is not that the writer did not acknowledge the others who have done similar acts of creation, but that he didn’t enjoy revealing more of himself, showing his journey, exposing his vulnerability. The student who wrote about copying music does this – to some degree – making her piece more engaging. This is what I ask my students to do. Take down the guard just a little. Allow yourself to look imperfect – even foolish. Show how you learned something and are a work in process. I know that I am. Even as I am about to get a Master’s degree (I still don’t believe it can be possible), I realize how little I know. It is in this admission that I have any chance of writing something – or teaching anything – of value.
Therefore, I agree with a lot of what you say, David, but I’d rather have Peter teach my sons – and guide me as I teach others.
No comments:
Post a Comment