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be that we don’t know the point of the course, and (perhaps partly as a consequence) we are using an ineffective and outdated method (current/traditional) that, as defined by Hairston, has the following characteristics: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