Finally! The Week's Last Post! (My Teaching Philosophy Week 2)

At any given point on any theoretical plane a specific point is at a crossroads with an infinite number of lines going in an infinite number of directions that might pass through the point on which you are standing.  Thus I think one of the most tired ways of describing the present in any context is to say that we are at a crossroads.  Of course we are at a crossroads.  We are all, at any point at which we pause in our continuous frenzied motion, at a crossroads.  While our possible paths may not be infinite in variation and number there are always choices about where to go from any point at which we stop.  

Hence it is no surprise to find that, studying the history of composition briefly and (for all the reading done) superficially over the past week, to find that the current state of compositional theory is at a crossroads.  Sometimes things become cliches because they're true.  Having moved from a focus on rhetoric and oral composition to applying the elements of rhetoric to the composition of written text, and then to limiting the applications of rhetoric to a bizarre emphasis on style alone in the relatively recent past before returning to a fuller consideration of all of the elements of the composition as process, and then suddenly finding ourselves in theory and practice post-process.  We are at a crossroads where opinion and practice are diverging rather than converging around a dominant or even unifying idea of what it is we are about.

As the gyre has perned, returning us (perhaps at a higher level of our spiraling journey) to a point where process is beside the point for many of us in courses that emphasize some other single chosen aspect of rhetoric than style, we find the center, a focus on the process of actually creating written texts cannot hold under the various splintering influences.  We stand, multiple hypotheses waiting for a new synthesis to occur so that we can move forward instead of playing tug of war.  The key elements that stood out to me as I read the history texts is the continued splintering of any dominant or unifying culture into smaller and smaller self-identifying groups and how that is reflected in the split movements of compositional theory and their primarily individualistic bents.  

The other texts allowed me to place myself in terms of these compositional theories.  I am definitely most favorably disposed to the rhetorical approach and have tried to move in that direction while pursuing the essentially current/traditionalist state of Colorado writing standards for public schools.  The public schools are pushed by the assessments which have become the be all and end all of our existence toward a formalist teaching writing not because theory, research or best practice support it, but because it is easy to mark and has a clear format the test makers can grade.  

The test perpetuates the five paragraph essays and other Screwtape size demons.  These little boogers fail to promote true writing in the freedom of composition, or thought, and instead promote the teaching of rule bound formulaic hack work.  I do not think the state intended that, (I hope they didn't), but it's what they are getting because they chose to specify five paragraphs as the minimum for an extended writing piece which, intended or not, reinforces the generic painfully formulaic five paragraph essay strait jacket.  

I have tried to get my students to think beyond this strait jacket but it is hard.  A key component that I am trying to communicate is that of providing evidence for your arguments.  I am trying to move them towards evidentiary argument, and especially toward text based argument.  I believe that this best perpetuates both the practice of closely reading texts to allow for inference and implication, and critical consideration of and response to the stated and implied ideas and values of said text. Thus, with my focus on the ability to think critically and to argue clearly from textual or experiential evidence for one's own ideas or understanding of a given piece of text.  In the practice of lecture and active reading in class I try to engage the class in dialectic with each other, with the text, and with me in order to force them to think through varying ideas in the text, their implications and applications, and what they think.  

In this sense, through the attempt to engage the class through dialectic as a group, and using writing as a means of furthering class discussion and debate I hope to engage the students as thinkers.  My job as a teacher is not to teach the students what is and what isn't great literature.  My job isn't to make them life long lovers of Shakespeare.  I am not a sculptor who shapes them into what they should be or "can" be.  They are certainly not empty vessels that I fill.  Each student comes to me with everything they need to succeed if they will.  My job is to give them the critical thinking and communication skills to shape themselves into the people they want to be.  It is not my job to direct what that should be, rather it is my job to enable them to think as clearly as possible, to engage their minds by providing them with challenging texts of variety and merit, and to teach them to be critical consumers and producers of communication in any form: commercials, television, film, novels, magazines, newspapers...All these are texts of one kind or another written or not.  My job is to give them the tools they will need to decide things for themselves.  They do the shaping.  

This is why I disagree with the critical/cultural studies approach to composition theory.  It is about liberating the students from a certain manner of discourse and thinking.  Who says that's my job?  Who says they want to be "liberated"?  Isn't it just as arrogant for me to decide that by teaching this I'm liberating them as it is for some one of the "dominant culture/narrative" to tell them that that is the only way to view things?  I put forward ideas and force them to think and then let them decide.  

It might seem with such a focus on letting the students shape themselves that I would lean more toward expressivist compositional theory.  I do not.  I don't believe that emphasis encompasses all the elements needed to master effective communication.  If I were to focus on simply expressive communication, I would be failing to equip my students with all of the tools I feel they will need to be able to critically face their options and decide for themselves.  They will be well equipped to express whatever is floating through their heads, but I've done nothing to help them critically assess what's there and determine its validity and value.  

The other aspects addressed by this week's readings, the workload and professional development are the final target here I guess.  I do pursue professional development.  And, for all my embittered response, I conceded Bishop's point.  We do need to be engaged.  My frustration is with an inability to do that on top of everything else.  Of course part of that inability to pursue professional development in the manner she suggests is due to my decision to pursue it through direct formal coursework.  The time commitment makes conferences and journal reading prohibitive, as does the cost.  Were I not enrolled in a Masters program I admit I would probably still not feel I had the time or money (my grandparents are paying my tuition) for conferences and journals, but I have gone out of my way every year to study the content I'm teaching more thoroughly, to search my education texts, and look for new ones pertaining to the subjects I'm teaching, and above all to spend time evaluating my performance based on both subjective and objective criteria as much as possible  so that I can improve both myself and courses so that I am better able to offer the students what they need.  I also have made efforts to move toward a more interdisciplinary approach, corroborating with the other teachers in the building where possible.  I even was part of a team that sat down at my suggestion to align our world history literature course curriculum with the world history social studies course .  Having been given tools by my teachers, and discovering new ones through personal effort and the kindness of colleagues shaping myself is a continual process as well, as a teacher, a scholar, a professional, a writer, and above all as a man.  

Ed Hopkins' Quest, or Why Life Sucks for Writing Teachers

After my last post, I am sure that you, gentle reader will be unsurprised that I was able to give Randall Popkins' paper on the work of Ed Hopkins and Bruce Horner a much more sympathetic reading than the previous article calling for professional involvement.  

This response will be in part a continuance of the previous post (okay the previous rant) as I feel the successful prosecution of the work of Dr.'s Horner and Hopkins is a prerequisite to any serious pursuit of the type of involvement in the professional community beyond required activities such as faculty meetings and teacher workdays.  

Popken's recounting of Dr. Hopkins' work recounts in a fullness that mirrors everyday life for any teacher of English (at the secondary level where the course is in all aspects) and especially any composition teacher the horrors of the workload our profession presents.  The students can be wonderfully energizing, but there is nothing more draining than confronting that huge pile of papers without any of the kids you love working with around to remind you why the effort is worth it.  

Finding out from Dr. D that research shows comments on student papers are next to worthless as a teaching tool was not a great comfort.  

I admit that every year I hit a low point where the work drives me to consider leaving the field for some job that actually ends at some point.  Because Teaching doesn't.  If you're not teaching, you're planning or doing some other grunt work in preparation for the next class or the next day's class.  If you're not doing that you're grading.  If you're not doing that you're involved in some extra curricular or a second job to make ends meet.  Or perhaps, you've given up your family in another way by shipping the kids out so both parents can work.  

Popken notes that Dr. Horner is equally concerned with other aspects of the commercial social aspects of being an English teacher than the workload, but I knew coming to the profession that I would be, by the standards of the world very, very poor.  I am not interested in getting rich.  It would be nice, but honestly, if I chose to be teacher I did not choose to pursue wealth.  I do agree with Dr. Hopkins that I feel teaching to be a calling, and I really wonder how I would hold up doing something else.  I love the feeling of purpose and duty that arrises with the importance of the work I do.  I place a lot of value on feeling that the work I do has intrinsic value beyond making me and someone else richer.  After that I get to continue working with the literature I love, in a setting that I love, and in a way that I hope touches others as I was touched as a student.  However, as young as I am in the field, the workload (not the nature of the work but the sheer amount of time required) drags at me more every year.  

This is especially true as I try to move closer to what I feel is best practice.  Those things, differentiation within the general education classroom, meaningful, close reading of texts, varied writing and project based assessments that avoid bubble memory testing as much as possible, all contribute to greater workload as the years go by.  I feel I am a better teacher in many ways than when I started teaching, but I find myself continually wanting and feeling guilty about all the things I could and should do if I didn't have to compromise from simply not having the time to do it.  

Are my students getting the best education I could possibly give them?  Yes, under these circumstances given who and what I am as a teacher I feel they are.  Is it what they could get from me under better circumstances?  No.  Is it everything I want to be able to give them?  A thousand times no!  And that drags at me.  I want to be a difference maker.  Not to be remembered and recognized, forget that.  I don't care.  But to feel that what I am doing is truly what is best for the kids and is best suited to prepare them for college and life, to help them to think for themselvs and master the art of written communication as receivers adn producers of text, and, hopefully, to open their eyes and enrich their thinking and their lives.  Why do I teach English?  Because I'm a romantic and I firmly believe that words and ideas can change the world.  Because I believe that understanding things, broadening your knowledge of culture, history, literature, science, math, art etc. and especially broadening your knowledge of their interconnections literally makes your life richer.  That is the real life benefit I want to pass onto my students not the preparation to make more money.  More is only more money.  "Superfluous dollars can only buy superfluities...money cannot purchase one necessary of the soul."  I can't give these students the necessaries of the soul either but I can show them how to find them, how to recognize the necessaries of their own souls and help them recognize the tools and equipment for the search.  Wanting so badly to do that, being a perfectionist, the workload is the most depressing thing because it is a constant reminder that I am not the teacher could be with the classes I could have because I simply cannot get it all done.  Unfortunately, while my angry bitter head knows this is true, I cannot convince my perfectionist, romantic idealist heart.  

When Professional Development/Collegiality? (Wendy Bishop's "Against the Odds in Composition and Rhetoric")

Sometimes I hate the mechanics of blogging.  The stupid thing shouldn't post before I tell it to, but I digress.  

Wendy Bishop's chair's address is an interesting read.  A plea for active involvement as a part of a community of educators.  I am not very good about this.  I participate well enough as a member of an academic community when I am a student in a class, but otherwise, I tend to hole up in my classroom and hunker down trying to survive the workload.  

I have brought a great deal on myself, and I know we're all busy in our different ways, but I have to wonder about my sanity when I consider that this school year, in addition to my full time teaching, I have accepted a position as head of the school literacy program, made the requisite entry into one of the school's RTI teams (gifted and talented in my case), continued to coach matchwits and establish a drama program (this will be the first year ever that the drama "club" at PHS does more than one production), began this Masters program because I will be capped at under $32K for life in this district if I don't get more education, and took on a second job as a weekend cash manager at a local Carmike Cinemas location in order to pay for school, save for a second car so my poor housebound wife can leave the house during the day, and gather funds to pay for the expenses associated with the coming of our third child, Miriam Isolde, now on her way.  

Why bring all of this up?  Because as nice as it would be, and as appropriate as it would be, theoretically and professionally to attend conferences in my discipline, conferences in general educational practices, subscribe to and read educational journals, and engage in more meaningful interactions with the faculty and community of Peyton High School, if I do anything else I think my head may explode.  The idea of participating in professional conferences is wonderful, and I find the Masters classes as intellectually stimulating as the work is physically draining, but I honestly believe that it is a near miracle that in my sleep deprived state last year I survived driving an hour to and from work each day and an additional three hours a week making back and forth trips to Pueblo for class.  I found myself nearly asleep and literally drifting around on the road far too many times for comfort.  

Given that all of this is confronting me, what benefit of increased collegiality/professional involvement could possibly make up for a few hours of sleep or a few guilt riddled moments of physically, mentally, and spiritually exhausted relaxation, normally grabbed while eating or taking care of other primal necessities before launching oneself at the next mountain of papers or reading?  

In an ideal world I would love to get involved more.  To attend conferences, to have time to pursue intellectual research and etc. of my own volition into topics that might improve my teaching/understanding of my material, but I barely keep my head above water doing just what is required to get the grading done, the assignments for class finished and the other activities functioning at an acceptable level.    While I recognize that the few and far between interactions with my colleagues are invigorating, and the professional discourse is key to improving and developing my skills as an educator, I literally don't have time in the twenty-four hour day to engage in this kind of stuff.  Not to mention the fact that membership in professional organizations, going to conferences, and subscribing to journals all require money, something else that is in short supply.  

I wish that I had an easy enough time to put such personal professional items at a high enough priority to feel other than guilty or resentful when reading this speech.  I don't.  

Confusion settles in again, and then - a connection! (Jeffery Williams "Packaging Theory")

This piece read to me like a review of the history of the various theories of literary criticism that I do specifically remember being introduced to in College.  I enjoyed the class, and the relevance of the theories was apparent as a variety of lenses or perspectives from which to read any given text. 

As is typical of post-modernism (and current thought in general) the theories were not better or worse than one another, except on the basis of personal preference.  Nor did any of them attempt to present a correct reading (although deconstruction seemed  intent on proving that a correct reading was impossible to some extent) as New Criticism/Formalism would have.  Instead they were all relative lenses, a variety of tools to be used at different times for different purposes.  

While reading this article I wondered exactly how the discussing of theory anthologies tied into our theories of composition class.  Then, applying the thickly boned "muscle" on top of my neck - which I should do more often - I realized that these must be the theories that in many cases form the basis for teaching the student to achieve "liberation from 'dominant discourse'"  (Fulkerson 660).  This allowed me to find a little more common ground with the critical/cultural studies idea, simply because I have a working knowledge of the theories in question, and how they apply to literature.  

The packaging question is an interesting one.  I met theory in a groups format, the second discussed by Williams in the essay and the one he labeled the "approaches/schools" model (288). For the purposes of the class I was taking I think this packaging approach worked very well.  It gave the beginning critic, most likely a sophomore in the English program, a basic understanding of the current ciritical lenses in use, presentations by professors who made regular use of a given theory in their own research, and practice writing in several different theoretical perspectives.  

Looking back I debate the purpose of the course, a strange hybrid of writing and literature.  It certainly was a text based course, using the Kennedy/Gioia literature anthology and reviewing genres of literature and their interpretation as well as the theories.  My wife, who took the same course has said that she thought of the course as a writing course, and remembers having a paper due every week.  I don't remember as clearly, and the literature and the focus on interpretation through various lenses rather then learning to write through a particular lense is what I remember.  Of course that may be the variance of having had different professors.  In any case, I feel I gained a basic understanding of the various theoretical lenses that has stood me in good stead throughout the rest of my academic career and taught me how to write in each theory.  It certainly was not a discussion of dominant discourse, so I'm left wondering what the department would have considered the course.  Comp theory?  kind of, sort of, almost.  A Literature course?  That's how I remember it.  Certainly a theory course....

The "approaches/schools" packaging worked very well for the goals of the course as I understand them, to focus on the theories themselves and their application without too much time on the history or people behind them.  They were nearly irrelevant details to the purposes of what was a very pragmatic course.  

A more advanced course, or a critical/cultural studies composition course would benefit far more from a historical based text like the one Williams describes (293 - 295).  Advanced students who need to understand theory in a larger scope and for its own sake rather than simply as a tool need the added historical perspective and depth of their interrelationship and development that the historical text would provide.  The critical/cultural studies comp course would seem to be a perfect setting for such a format as well, as the development of the theories is in large part a continued record of the establishment's questioning of "dominant discourse" which is one of the primary goals of such a course.  

In the end it seems to me apples and oranges.  The textbook is always a tool.  Select the proper tool for your task, the proper text for the aims of your particular course.  

19th Century Theory...(Schultz's "Elaborating Our History"

This was the hardest of the writings for me to get through so far.  Honestly?  I had to change chairs to stay awake because the one I started out sitting in was too comfortable. 

I struggled to see the relevance of the discussion to what we are trying to arrive at which is a serious discussion of what we hope to accomplish as teachers/scholars of writing and what thinking underlies and give shape to that process.  I realize we have to know where we came from to know where we're going, but wow...This isn't even a discussion of where we really came from, but rather a discussion of marginal voices, largely drowned out that color where we came from with a greater complexity than is at first apparent.  

So for me, the article was a reminder of the necessity of avoiding the assumption that we know exactly how it was, or exactly what caused something to happen, because even if generally true, the whole truth is always more complex than that.

It was interesting to see how Dr. Schultz's work reflected the emphasis on marginal voices that has grown in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in all English/Literary/ Composition disciplines.  Her argument at the end of the piece for broadening our discourse to include more voices - especially those in a different key and tempo, and perhaps playing a different melody altogether from the dominant theme - has been the general trend and focus of literary studies again and again.  Where we can't find alternative voices, we can at least look at the text through the varied theoretical lenses that attempt to find these other voices or how they are silenced/treated in other texts.  

The dominant theme as reflected in reverse through the counterpoint emphasised in the texts covered here is disturbing.  I hate to think how a writing class would go with today's students if we required them to memorize what we were reading to them and then rewrite it, forbid writing from personal experience, and didn't allow them to write on their own even on abstract topics until well into the course.  

It seems so counter intuitive.  You're going to teach them to write, but they don't pick up a pencil until the second text, or the fortieth or fiftieth chapter of the first text...As Schultz points out what is taught in such a situation is much more scribal duties than writing.  Writing is thinking, and even if the  result is more organized than random thought, and even than most speeches if the speech is any good, the beginning at least should be as free to roam as we can make it.

Perhaps I am showing a certain provincialism and certainly I am judging a very different world by my standards, but how did anyone learn to write in the way most of these texts described?

A Light Comes On...(Fulkerson's "Composition at the Turn of the Twentieth Century")

Since I dived immediately into the articles - forgetting the link so kindly provided for us as an overview - reading Dr. Fulkerson's article "Composition at the Turn of the Twentieth Century" was my first over view of what we're tackling as composition theory.

Fulkerson's article certainly served as a nice introduction to the options.  I certainly found myself drawn most thoroughly to the rhetorical approach, despite having almost no training myself in the formal aspects of rhetoric.  The details of rhetoric, claims, pathos, ethos, logos, etc. are all very foggily placed in my mind.  My experience with rhetoric has never been direct.  It has always been indirect encountering the word as someone's rhetoric was discussed, or as political rhetoric was discussed, and there seemed to be two assumptions to every use.  One was that there was some agreed upon use of the word rhetoric to which generally well educated people subscribed (I finally settled on a vague persuasive communication/techniques of persuasive communication at this point), the other was that, many times, rhetoric seemed to be a dirty word, almost PC for spin doctoring.  This second attribution coming from the use of the term in statements like, "That was just political rhetoric" as if the label meant something cooked up to fill empty campaign speeches or pointless political point winning rather than serious intellectual discussion.  In this abusive usage, the word becomes a hinderance to open, honest, intellectual debate of the issues.  This week with the research into the term itself, and the pursuit of these readings I have developed a new understanding.   

Armed with this new, still shifting definition I found that the rhetorical approach described in this article seemed the one most relevant to me as a focus/theory for the teaching of composition.  The focus on claim and argumentation seemed most relevant to the experiences and assignments I've encountered in academe.  I was divided slightly between the different rhetorical approaches that Fulkerson describes, although I was most drawn to the third.  When considering which of theses rhetorical approaches I prefer I have to admit that familiarity, the third, textual based rhetorical approach, (that of introducing students to the "academic discourse community") which focuses in less detail on process even as it focusees on argument etc. seems closest to my experience.  That said I can delineate why I preferred the rhetorical approach to either of the others.  It seemed to focus most completely on the act of writing, and especially on the central act of academic writing, argument.

On the other hand the critical/cultural studies approach seemed to be focused most on political and social theory and interpretation of texts at the expense of focusing on the course of writing.  Politics aside, and, full disclosure mine don't lend to this approach, I didn't feel it was focused on the act of writing especially the act of writing in the academic setting as it was on shaking up the way students think about texts.  It seems a necessary course for the sake of forcing students to question their assumptions about texts and their political/social/cultural implications but not a writing course.  

Finally, expressive writing sounds wonderful, but seems to run the risk of teaching people to say nothing beautifully.  The best writers will always have a strong voice and show great personality in their writing, but this seems one element among many and, in my opinion, not the central one.  

Where to then, dear Dr. Stewart?

I just finished reading Donald Stewart's speech, published by the NCTE under the title "Some History Lessons for Composition Teachers."  As I read the piece I began to feel some familiar tremors of frustration and discomfort.  Here is a speech delivered by a priest of the church to the converted.  Hence, despite its eloquence and the strength of its arguments, I was left with mostly the current list of damnable sins in composition teaching and nothing with which to redress them.  Apparently, learning the historical basis for my errors and the errors of my profession will thrust us all into a new age of understanding and light.  

In reality of course there is probably no way for Dr. Stewart to address as many different issues as he left me pondering within a single speech.  In fact, as his speech made me aware of the huge gap between my knowledge of compositional theory and what is really out there in the academic discussion more than it did anything else.  He proposed problems with every method of considering the teaching of writing to which I've ever been exposed (with the possible exception of Tom Romano's multi-genre approach) and more than that, if accepted whole cloth, seems to rip the foundations out of the current standards for teaching writing in the public schools in our dear state of Colorado.  Now perhaps, if he had given a speech that included all these cool alternatives apparently already available to his in the know audience at the CCC meeting at which he spoke, I would find that the changes he advocates are not as strong as they appear.  

Certainly I have fought and am fighting the five paragraph demon in my high school.  I have juniors who have arrived in my classroom convinced that essays as a genre are defined by the five paragraph format despite the evidence of their eyes in any essay that we read in any class at any level of high school language arts instruction.  The presence of CSAP testing with its "long response" definition including a five paragraph minimum encourages teachers to instruct their students in the development of the five paragraph, "three pronged thesis," tell them what you're going to say, say it, and then tell them what you said format all of which Dr. Stewart condemns as at least unfashionable if not downright wrong.  

I am extremely frustrated by the perseverance of the five paragraph model at an age when I feel the students should be moving beyond this crutch.  When the five paragraph minimum of standardized testing should not dictate form or content, but rather be simply what it technically is, a minimum length for discussing any idea at anything that can remotely be called length even on a timed writing test.  Getting my students to realize that five paragraphs was only an arbitrary ending point and that a dependence on the style that tried to fit everything to that length was damaging to their writing is an ongoing battle.   All of this makes me sympathize with the complaints Dr. Stewart raises against what he calls the current-traditional rhetoric.  

However, he goes beyond attacking this level of formulaic writing to attack the division into narrative, descriptive, expository and persuasive, as well as delivering blows to usage and style.  Unless my understanding is far weaker than I am aware, these elements make up the entirety of the writing curriculum as demanded by the state standards for public education.  Perhaps there is an implied distinction here and he is address is directed solely to the teaching of writing at the undergraduate level or above, but I don't think so.  As such, while I was heartened to be able to say, "Yes, I think those teacher's who are the supergrammarians (those first attacked as most clueless on his scale) are thoroughly wrong to give a paper a poor grade or to refuse to accept it solely on the basis of mechanical and grammatical correctness,"  and further heartened to find myself agreeing heartily with his argument against the deplorable five paragraph essay and (one must assume by connection) the even more deplorable five sentence paragraph, I found that his critique of these old devils of writing instruction extended to all the other pillars I'd been taught to base my writing instruction on.

My great frustration with Dr. Stewart's speech is that he provided no alternatives.  No answers.  Oh there were some quick tosses to those already in the know, referring to books and articles in support of these other unnamed theories he prefers and there was something tantalizingly close to the alternative I was hoping to find in the short passage on Grammar A and Grammar B, but nothing concrete on which to base writing instruction.  My frustration with this speech, and my new hope for this course is that it whet my appetite for something more, for new ideas and then failed to provide any.  Dr. Stewart kicked the props out from under me without providing me something else to stand on.  

My questions then for our class and for further articles and instruction:  1) What is an acceptable standard for correctness and from whence is it derived?  If a student cannot control spelling, mechanics and grammar with a minimum level of skill there can be no successful composition and no written or - at the extreme even verbal - communication.  While I deplore the focus on grammar and mechanics to the exclusion of all else, and feel it ought to be a capstone fitted to the community of discourse for which the author is writing, some standard must exist.  2) If we cannot break writing down into categories beyond creative and nonfiction (and even that isn't fair if any time has been spent with creative nonfiction) how are we to approach the teaching of writing?  Writing is already so broad a subject that one is forced to put false barriers and dividers in order to begin addressing it in some organized fashion, and to make chunks that the students can swallow without choking.  If these current traditional divisions (narrative, descriptive, expository and persuasive) are not acceptable what is?  3) If we throw out the teaching of so generic a thing as style, what then are we teaching our students?  

Perhaps I am so much a novice in the field of compositional theory that I am unable to comprehend the arguments that are being made.  It may be true.  I almost hope it is, because that would make some sense out of the situation in which I find myself.  However, it seems that if we throw out all the elements of writing instruction to which Dr. Stewart objects we are left with something so amorphous, so defiantly undefined and subjective, that we cannot teach it.  

Why Composition Theory?

My only experience with what I now understand to be compositional theory came as an undergraduate at BYU in a teaching writing class required for all English Education majors. Thankfully, the English Education major was run by the English department and the College of Humanities and with only the non-subject specific courses that applied to certification for all teachers being taught by the College of Education and so the people teaching the course knew, and quite thoroughly at that, what they were talking about.

I had not before, nor have I since, (shame shame) payed much attention to what other writers - academics, or otherwise - have had to say on the subject of teaching writing. I remember reading many articles by Peter Elbow in the course, agreeing with him thoroughly, and enjoying him immensely, and reading Mike Rose and Tom Romano and finding the results intriguing. I have taught my own version of Tom Romano's multi-genre approach from Writing with Style four out of the five years I've taught, and thinking back on what he actually said in the book, wish that I had incorporated the ideas more thoroughly into the general teaching of writing. As a newly trained director of our school's literacy program, Mike Rose rings in a whole new light, and I find myself wanting desperately to re-read him as well.

This all leads me far afield of where I am supposedly focused - Why Comp Theory? - but this time, as in many other cases, I find I needed desperately to begin to write in order to see what I have to say, in order to see what I think.

So, why comp theory? I think that in order to teach anything one must understand it inside and out. And while I may or may not teach the teaching of writing, I certainly am thoroughly obligated to teach writing, and my approach can only be strengthened by obtaining a well developed understanding of the different approaches and theories out there, developed and taught by those with much more experience-and probably intelligence-than me. By doing so I would, theoretically, avoid struggling through the thicket of the educational jungle trying to carve new paths that indubitably parallel those carved by teachers/scholars who who have already traveled these paths. I benefit from familiarity with the theories that are being studied/applied to find the "best practice" techniques that are supposedly used when I am in the classroom.  

A further reason for studying composition theory is that, apparently, after a little reading, I have very little idea of what is happening in this conversation.  

(Bad Scott!  Study more!  Play Less!  Give Comp its due alongside literature!)

So for me why comp theory comes back full circle to even more basic questions:  Why study English?  Why, for pete's sake when most of the world still lives without a bachelor's degree, do I need a masters?  I am hungry to learn.  I am driven to improve.  Both bring great pleasure and great satisfaction.  The further I go, and the more questions I ask as I deal with the day to day frustrations and glories of being a public educator, the more I realize that the effectiveness of my drive depends on a continual effort to stoke and fill that hunger.