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to be that we don’t know the point of the course, and (perhaps partly as a consequence) we are using an ineffective and outdated method (current/traditional) that, as defined by Hairston, has the following characteristics: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.