Hairston's New Paradigm

Fulkerson’s article nicely revisited the four instructional models we’ve been discussing for a couple weeks, pointing out their origin in lit crit. It was Hairston, however, who to me most clearly offered a way ahead. The problems with FYC, according to Hairston and others, seems to be that we don’t know the point of the course, and (perhaps partly as a consequence) we are using an ineffective and outdated method (current/traditional) that, as defined by Hairston, has the following characteristics:
• Stresses expository writing
• Posits an unchanging reality independent of writer (ignores rhetorical situation)
• Makes style central
• Believes writers know what they’re going to say before they write
• Believes composing process is linear
• Believes teaching editing is teaching writing

The use of this model, Hairston suggests, arises in part from a belief that writing is a skill, not a theory (belief in FYC as a service course), and from the fact that very few teachers of college-level writing have any academic training in the subject. Amen to this.

Hairston clearly advocates primarily the cognitive approach (writing as process), suggesting this is the new Kuhnian paradigm currently replacing the current/traditional approach. And I think she’s correct; I find this model—in conjunction with the rhetorical model—very appealing. I did, however, have some questions and a few concerns about how this would work in practice.

1. What is the place, if any, of formal structures and of proofreading/style in this model? Perhaps I’m clinging to the old paradigm (likely) but I think there are common structures of writing for various forms. In fact, she calls for writing to be “a disciplined creative activity that can be analyzed and described” (448). Presumably she means the process, rather than the product, can be analyzed, but is this certain? What I wonder is if the professional writers being observed have already internalized the common structures of their writing, and so if beginners might benefit from some feedback on structure. Also, while I agree that teaching grammar is worse than useless (even if improving grammar is your only goal!), I also agree with Shaughnessy that errors are undesirable intrusions on the intended communicative goal, and I think having a grammatically and stylistically clean final document helps authors succeed. And, I would add, that proofreading is one step of the professional writing process—not a central step, but it is there. So how do these two elements of the current/traditional mode fit with the process model?


2. Can this method work with 125 students/semester? My college has a 5/5 load, and among colleges of the type this is pretty common. Clearly this would require a lot of student-run review and feedback. In my experience students need a lot of work learning to offer any review that goes beyond grammar. Perhaps their lack of confidence in their own abilities could be overcome by making them the audience for other students’ writing. In other words, they could offer feedback not based on their writing expertise, but on their audience expertise. So perhaps I’ve addressed my own point here (writing really is an idea-generating process!).


3. Are the instructional types as distinct as people are making them out to be? Joseph’s blog this week points to substantial overlap, and I wonder if Hairston overstates her case when she suggests, for example, that current/traditionalists believe that teaching editing is teaching writing, or that they believe the writing process is linear. I have in the past taught structure, but like Joseph I’ve been careful to tell students that this is a suggestion and not a rule, and better writers can stray extremely far from the standard. I also have never taught grammar, have spent a lot of time on process, have insisted that ideas are formed or substantially refined through the process, have as a consequence always emphasized the recursive nature of process, and have worked hard to make revisions about content rather than style (though I do ask for a final revision that is proofreading and style). But I’ve also taught structure (I rely heavily on Toulmin). So what am I?
   

On a final note, I would add that Kuhn was basically a fan of paradigms and not merely of paradigm shifts, which I think is sometimes lost when people apply his ideas. He argued that the reason science progresses so quickly is precisely because of paradigms; they tell scientists what problems need to be solved and they prevent people from wasting time studying things that have already been settled. Frankly, the humanities haven’t ever really had paradigms and so there is little sense of progress; the basic assumptions seem to be argued again with every generation. In any case, if the cognitive/rhetorical model is the new paradigm, what problems does it suggest? How can we use it to move on rather than just to revisit the past?

A Quick(?) Review

In light of the statement that we aren’t thinking deeply enough or sufficiently considering the readings, I thought I’d try to do a quick review of what we’ve covered and see if I can’t synthesize the major points. I’ll try to add a second post this week on the new readings.

1. FYC is largely accidental and as a consequence is poorly defined, both in methods and in goals.

• Parker calls it, and English departments in general, the accidental and undefined child of speech and linguistics. Horner discusses the religious and political forces driving this accidental birth, and raises the point that the discipline, such as it is, was designed for the upper class. Schank makes a similar point, suggesting universities are really in the business of training professors, and ultimately arguing that this focus on being “academic” is an impediment to the more fundamental goal of being well-educated.


• Brereton and Kitzhaber look more specifically at what departments are doing. Brereton examines three major departments and finds a largely ineffective (according to the depts’ own reports) mixture of literature, linguistics, rhetoric, and speech that varies substantially by school. Interestingly, most folks from these departments (100 years ago!) complained about the quality of student writing and lack of time for grading. Kitzhaber, in one of my favorite critiques, suggests that the three key problems with the discipline are (1) it lacks clear aims and so there is no sense of progression (this prefigures Hairston’s suggestions to some extent), (2) there is little confidence in the expertise of the instructors, and (3) the texts are less rigorous. In all key problems include the “cult of literature” largely driven by class elitism, the focus on teaching math/science in the post-Sputnik time (though I would point out that math teaching has been, if anything, even less effective than FYC), and confusion about whether FYC is the first step in a lit major or a service course.

2. One key instructional mistake is focusing on style (and an unreal style at that) and structure over content. Plus some hints of solutions.

• Macrorie, though included in the second week of readings, begins to point the way forward with his discussion of “Engfish”—the pretentious style into which students are forced. Real writing, he suggests, is about telling truths and writing freely. Essentially he seems to be adopting the romantic/expressive position, in large part as a rejection of the older formalist approach. Crowly makes a similar point, suggesting that the push toward prescriptive instruction has minimized or eliminated invention and artificially elevated style and arrangement. D’Angelo obliquely references a similar trend toward prescription with his (welcome) attack on teaching the “modes.”


• Finally, Shaughnessy takes on the most fundamentally prescriptive methods, teaching grammar, by pointing out that this approach actively undermines writing instruction by enhancing the obstacles that prevent students both from writing and from having anything to write about. However, she does not suggest simply ignoring errors, stating that they “are unintentional and unprofitable intrusions upon the consciousness of the reader,” adding that “errors carry messages which writers can’t afford to send” (395). Instead, she argues that errors are more symptomatic than problematic, arising from the underlying logic of the writer and thus offering the opportunity for instruction. As such, she seems to reject both the formalist and the expressive approaches, leaning toward a rhetorical (and perhaps cognitive) approach instead.

So, to sum up, despite addressing a fundamentally different group of students than a century ago, FYC is clinging to methods that are not only ineffective, but destructive. In particular, the readings suggest the current traditional/formalist approach is the wrong way to teach, and instead we should move toward the cognitive and rhetorical models. They also suggest we need to settle, once and for all (or at least for a while) what FYC is actually trying to achieve.

Secondary Creep (post 2)

Kitzhaber’s three problems in FYC (confusion about aim of course, lack of confidence in faculty, less rigorous texts) made me nod vigorously. I would add that the problems we see in FYC are magnified in the secondary setting (though one might argue standardized tests have provided a clear—but wrongheaded, destructive, and pleasure-destroying—aim). I recognize the secondary and postsecondary environment to be different, but I think it can be instructive to consider some of the issues in high school English instruction not only because the same problems occur in college, but because there is a strong governmental movement in favor of applying the secondary model to the college setting (secondary creep, a friend of mine calls it).

First, the lack of aim in high school Engish is obvious. High schools claim to be preparing students for college, but they’re really preparing them for exit exams. In Texas this currently means teaching students little more than narration and description (what I think are the “lesser” of D’Angelo’s four pseudo-modes). This means student pass the exit exam but can't write at the college level. In college, however, there is also considerable debate over whether FYC should be preparing students to be English majors (generally lit focus), preparing them to write in other college courses of various majors, or preparing them for the “real world,” and the focus changes accordingly.

Likewise, secondary teachers get extremely little respect (both socially and financially) despite doing what is actually much more work than college instructors. And this is actually getting worse; witness the manufactured rage against teachers (aka-public sector employees) in Wisconsin. Let me add that there really are a lot of terrible teachers out there (there are great ones, of course, but here in the RGV, where pay and education are especially weak, there are five bad for every good one). However, iunions aren't to blame; it’s the lack of respect and low pay (and frankly, I’m suspicious of education degrees as well, with some good statistical backing, I think), which taken together means something like half our teachers scored, as students, in the bottom 25% of the SAT or ACT. There’s no competition to be a teacher, either in education or in the job market; almost anyone who wants to be a teacher can be.

In secondary, I believe standardized testing is seen as the solution to the teacher quality issue. The idea seems to be that it’s okay to hire mediocre people because instruction will be so rigidly defined and the results evaluated outside the classroom that any warm body could manage. This is insane, of course, and as a college instructor I will fight fiercely any attempt to establish a similar system, but I think it’s already happening. First, we've decided to staff FYC with grad students. This leads to the push for standardization. For example, at my college we have to define how our instruction relates to a set of uniform goals (with more nested and specific sets of goals being added each year). In effect, the standards for a standardized test are already in place. D’Angelo’s pseudo-modes are also favorites of the standardizing set, as is the movement away from invention and toward more prescriptive instruction mentioned by Crowley, and the general push to teach grammar. A college-level national standardized test—already proposed by George W. Bush’s special commission on higher ed—creeps closer all the time.

I want to say more about Shaughnessy because I think the CUNY situation is now the average situation for most colleges (certainly for mine), but in the interest of space let me just suggest that one possible solution to many of these issues also addresses Kitzhaber’s third criticism: make the whole course much more rigorous. I suspect watered down courses aren’t engaging or sufficiently instructive for students, and simultaneously create the impression that FYC instructors aren’t really experts in the first place (and perhaps also allow those who really aren’t expert to teach what they should not be teaching). Plus, watered-down courses create the perceived need for a standardized test. This will be expensive and will lead to a higher failure rate, and so it'll likely never happen, but I think it's what should happen.

Let’s not replicate in college the system of top-down quantifiable standardization and testing that’s failing so miserably in high schools.

Fresh Comp - Doing (or not) the Impossible Each Year

The readings these past two weeks (and, I suspect, those still to come) have fed my general sense of bitterness about teaching freshman comp/rhet—a sense that was particularly strong after this past year of teaching, and also continual ideas about how to fix it all. In fact, as I wrote I took notes in three files: my standard reading outlines, ideas for blog posts, and ideas to implement in my classes. Hopefully my thoughts will become more organized in the coming weeks, but for now here’s a catch-all pile of thoughts (akin to Macrorie’s freewriting with a purpsose, perhaps).

I’ve long been unhappy about the lack of undergraduate rhetoric courses (what happened to the classes between freshman year and grad school, for example?), a question largely answered by the discussions of the origin of modern English depts. by Parker and Horner (though my dissatisfaction remains). I speculate that a return to rhetoric might move fresh-comp toward the broad applicability people desire it to have.

This leads me to take a slightly defensive position for a moment and stand up both for comps position in the English dept, as well as the ever-unpopular essay. English depts may have overreached for selfish reasons, but it’s been my experience that other departments are fiercely resistant to teaching writing, and many instructors in, for example history, simply refuse to discuss writing at all despite having essay requirements for their classes. So let’s not pin the blame on English depts. alone. Next, let me say right off that I agree the expectation that FYC can teach “writing” to all students in all disciplines is absolutely impossible. Teaching one very specific form of writing in one year may also be impossible (I’m still bitter, apparently). But, given that wildly broad requirement, is it possible that the essay actually might be a somewhat sensible form to teach? Might it be that elements of essay style and structure (clarity of purpose, organization, etc) can be applied to a range of other writing? Perhaps, accidental as it may be, the essay is not such a horrible way to try to do the impossible and teach all forms of writing to all students in two semesters.

Another thing that struck me was how little teaching comp has changed. Jardine’s order of assigned themes, as outlined in Horner, could apply to any number of comp classes today. However, I’m not sure that change is an innately good thing; math teaching is likely awfully similar to a century ago as well. I read Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions a year ago, and it’s struck me again and again since then that the humanities are decidedly not the sciences as people seem to revisit the same issues again and again rather than building from previous knowledge or even letting a paradigm guide future research. As Kitzhaber notes, changes in teaching are generally circular, with ideas discarded in one place simultaneously adopted in another. Very frustrating.

I know we were assigned 200 words, and perhaps in the future I’ll try to reduce my entries to a mere 400, but let me add one more item: one idea I’m considering for my next 1301 course.
Let students choose their own topics through the following process:
1. They freewrite a few times to develop ideas
2. They write a short proposal for their project
3. Write an outline that they “present” in a class discussion where we all discuss and banter and so forth so they have to do more than read an outline to the class)
4. Then they write the real thing (but likely a piece at a time, with lots of peer editing)

BUT… what’s the role of assigned readings in such a setup? Not sure.