Response to Hillocks and Durst

Response to Hillocks

I really admired Hillocks attempt to define the steps that make up the frame study. We talked in class about how intuitive the practice seems, but I agree with what was said: that it is often a good idea to clearly define and thoroughly investigate what the majority of us would call an “intuitive” practice so its steps can become more accessible to those for whom it is not intuitive. I think there is value in explanations of this sort, provided the explanations are concise.

I do understand the value of the argument that was made in class on Monday against the sort of positive reinforcement that Hillocks argues in favor of. This kind of practice would, as it did in McCampbell’s case, encourage students to simply write more, and not necessarily of a higher quality. As graduate students, we have all become so used to the notion that considerations about the quality of writing should always trump a drive for quantity, but if we are being honest, I think we can all agree that we have not always operated on these assumptions. I think McCampbell’s example is meant to give us insight into the early stages of the writing process, at the very beginning of students’ lives as writers. If we are to teach students composition at the postsecondary level, I think it is important that we understand what came before, before our instruction, before this stage of our students’ writing.

Hillocks’ article raises what (in my limited experience) I believe to be a very important issue in teaching: claiming that students are not learning because there are incapable of learning, and not because the instruction is not conducive to the learning process. Learning is a mutual process, one through which teachers and students can learn from each other. When, as a teacher, you begin to assume that your students will never learn what you are trying to teach them, and that this inability is due to some sort of incapacity of theirs, it is probably time for you to stop teaching, take a break, and reevaluate the direction of your professional life. It is not our job as teachers to attach moral judgments to a student’s capability to learn, it is our job to find a way to reach them with the knowledge we wish to impart to them. I believe it is for us, as teachers, to adapt our teaching practices to suit the particular learning tendencies of our students. The day we stop believing that we can somehow reach our students is the day we lose the right to call ourselves teachers.

Response to Durst

My response to the Durst reading began with negative feelings about the socially oriented goals of the composition curriculum, and really only went on from there. I think in many cases, education should be thought of as an end in itself, a pursuit of knowledge for the improvement of one’s own mind. So call me crazy, but I really cannot help bristling when I read about a curriculum that includes in its list of goals a wish to turn out students who are more active participants in a democratic society. This sentiment reeks of western ethnocentrism in such a way that I think can be problematic, especially in light of the fact that not all of the students pursuing study in this, or any other, program are necessarily from the United States.

Moving on… I agree with Jessica’s assessment of Durst’s abysmal findings concerning the attitudes of incoming freshman writing students. I think the firmness of their self-doubt and the negativity of their self-assessments is a very wide chasm to cross, but I think, if the appropriate tools and teaching methods are used, teachers can build a bridge between these negative attitudes and more positive ones.

Also, the following line of reason occurred to me while reading Durst’s reflection on students’ feelings concerning their abilities in math versus their feelings concerning their abilities as writers: Math is a subject in which one is either right or wrong, there is no middle ground, but where effort does count. Composition, not even of the sort that takes place in public high schools, has never been assessed in such a “black or white” way. People associate writing with self-expression, the ability to mentally organize, and inherent intelligence. Writing is almost always judged on a sliding scale (good grasp of the promt, straying from the prompt, where is the prompt?, etc.), and so there is a full range of assessments from which students can draw opinions of themselves as writers. If a student does not do well at math, it is shrugged off as not being their “thing” and they are patted on the back for trying. But people expect students to be able to write simply because they can speak, and this unfair expectation is what makes student writers feel pressured and unconfident. As teachers, I think it is important that we understand that this is the sort of emotional baggage students will bring to our composition classes.

I agree with Durst’s assessment that, in order to make the most of the learning opportunities afforded by the first-year composition class, teachers must first assess the particular attitudes held by their students toward the subject of the writing process. It is not enough for us to have humanist beliefs about teaching and students’ abilities to learn. We must also take their attitudes into account, lest we run the risk of being blocked by their prejudices and baggage.

I think it is very revealing that Durst found that most of the students he observed desired “correctness, clarity, and conciseness” in their writing, and seemingly nothing else (59). This desire to follow the lead of canonized literature, to write without a personality, is depressing in the extreme. Where are the mavericks who seek to buck the system and write expository essays on topics that oppose the agenda of the administration? Where are the writers who want to blaze a path through the English department? It is my belief that there is a writing maverick inside of each of those dismal case-study students, and it is only for want of a more personally demanding curriculum that they are not to be seen.