Contemporary Rhetoric

I really enjoyed this practical look at teaching writing, and found myself comparing my "teaching style" to each style of teaching writing that Williams explored. His thoughts about teaching the way you were taught is certainly valid and sound, but I think that the more we talk about that issue, the less likely it is to happen. I feel like I've heard that over and over and, as a result, am going to be extremely cautious of that phenomenon and critical of my reasoning.

The section I found myself putting the most notes in the margin of was the section on current-traditional rhetoric. I liked where this school of thought was coming from: the idea of "writing as thinking", hence, teaching students to think will produce good writers. However, I don't understand why so many teachers view the study of literature as a way to cultivate critical thinking. Where did that come from? What is the reasoning behind that ... or do teachers simply teach that way without thinking? Is this an example of teachers teaching as they were taught, or do people truly believe that literature fosters creative thinking? I, like Williams, have noticed the shift in instruction from essay to letter writing because I was a product of a letter-writing curriculum! I know how to write business letters, friendly letters, personal letters, memos ... the list goes on. Is that a signal of low standards, or do teachers actually think letter-writing develops critical thinking skills. I cannot imagine many people believe the latter, so I consider the former: haven't most (if not all) teachers learned that student performance is a function of expectation? Low expectation leads to low performance, and high expectations lead to higher performance. If all a teacher expects of a student is for him/her to be able to write a letter, of course they won't be able to interpret literature or think critically!

A quote that really got to me was on page 45, when Williams said "instruction includes little, if any, attention to audience and the reasons for writing but instead focuses on the form of writing, as though composition somehow exists outside a social context. That's impossible, not to mention completely ineffective. I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who would write a note to his/her boss in the same way he/she would write a note to his/her child. Yes, maybe the person would use the same simple form: greeting, body, closing, but would the language, grammar, or content be similar in the two? Probably not. I love that Williams spoke to the importance of parts in a whole -- how each "type of writing" (compare/contrast, description, exposition) can be found in the same piece. These types are not mutually exclusive. Instead, they are all intertwined. Williams sums it up concisely when he says "by focusing on bits and pieces of writing ... the current-traditional approach ignores most of what writing is about". I absolutely agree!

My favorite part of this section was when Williams explained the complete ineffectiveness of this model by saying that writing is not an ordered process and cannot be sequenced: that it's too complex for that. He scorns the idea that "writing is like baking a cake" -- the precise way writing was taught to me! Williams adds that a specific, certain-number-of-steps writing process produces shallow, unreflective writing, and no one wants that! While I might have been offended by Williams "attacks" on the way I learned before reading this section, I now understand the uselessness of the cake analogy, and hope to change my writing instruction as a teacher. I don't want to fall into the "teach as you were taught" trap!