Hillocks Response

I'd like to echo Garth in his recognition of Brittany's excellent analysis of Hillocks methodology as an aggrandized version of the scientific method. This is a superb and critical observation that really impressed me. In turn, I think Garth was incredibly perceptive in his critical take that "eager young graduate assistants are rarely the intended audience for teaching theory authors like the ones we're reading." This rings incredibly true with me, in that I find it implausible that any composition studies graduate student would gravitate in any real way to a more traditional-grammatical-static pedagogical stance.
What truly interested me about the Hillocks piece and which I feel wasn't highlighted in the previous two posts is the subtle insistence that the author places on the necessity of practical results on any application of reflective practice. I really do appreciate what Hillocks is asserting here, in that any noble or novel implementation of theory within a classroom setting must be efficacious. It is this self analysis by the teacher of his-or-her own methodology which allows the frame experiment to be used correctly.

My question and perhaps, objection to the article has to do with some of the specifics detailed by Hillocks. While I will certainly agree with him that facilitating a rapid and florid blossoming of written communication is a positive development in any classroom, let alone a remedial example, such as he mentioned. However, there must be a limit to identifying sea shells. And again, I wish to reiterate that I think this application of innovative theory is quite positive for a remedial group which refuses to open the well of thought and language that can be transmitted through the movement of a pen or computer keys; its just that, at what point does the theory of having the class write about anything, as long as its making them write more and write more actively, start to demean the students and the written word itself? I certainly don't know the answer to this question...maybe it doesn't at all...maybe writing anything at all is an innately positive thing for a student to partake in...the flip side of this argument is that writing just for the sake of putting down descriptive words on paper lessens the import of written words and their meaning, and in turn, makes text but window dressing and garnish on a world filled with quantity over quality.