COMPOSITION POLITICS: BEHIND THE WRITING PROBLEM

AT CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY NORTHRIDGE

The members of the Committee approve the masters thesis of Howard Stanley Ryan

Victor J. Vitanza ____________________________________Supervising Professor

Michael Feehan ____________________________________

Kenneth M. Roemer ____________________________________

COMPOSITION POLITICS: BEHIND THE WRITING PROBLEM

AT CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY NORTHRIDGE

by

HOWARD STANLEY RYAN

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of

The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements

for the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON

June 1990

2

Copyright © by Howard Stanley Ryan 1990All Rights Reserved

CONTENTS

ABSTRACT . . . . . . . . . 4

PREFACE . . . . . . . . . 5

PART I: THE CSUN STUDY

1. IS THERE A WRITING PROBLEM AT CSUN? . . . 8

2. WHY AREN'T CSUN STUDENTS WRITING BETTER? . . 15

3. HOW TYPICAL IS CSUN? A NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE . .

59

4. SOLVING THE WRITING PROBLEM: EDUCATING, ORGANIZING 64

PART II: CRITIQUE OF THE CSUN STUDY

5. MODERN COMPOSITION AND POLITICAL VISIONS . . 74

NOTES . . . . . . . . . 133

WORKS CITED . . . . . . . . 135

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. CSUN Faculty Opinion of Student Writing . . .

. 133

Table 2. Required Writing Preparation of Future Teachers . .

. 134

3

Table 3. WPE Failure Rates . . . . . .. 134

4

ABSTRACT

COMPOSITION POLITICS: BEHIND THE WRITING PROBLEM

AT CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY NORTHRIDGE

Publication No. _______

Howard Stanley Ryan, M.A.

The University of Texas at Arlington, 1990

Supervising Professor: Victor J. Vitanza

Outmoded "current-traditional" teaching methodologies, and the

second-class status of composition faculty and programs, may be

contributing to students' writing problems at CSUN, my 1988 study found.

Proposed reforms include the wider introduction of contemporary "process"

pedagogies, better conditions for composition faculty and administrators,

and replacement of the Upper Division Writing Proficiency Examination with

a required discipline-specific writing course.

A 1990 follow-up chapter critiques the technocratic view of pedagogy

that informed my CSUN study, and which also informs the modern composition

field generally. The search for better instructional methods must begin

with an articulation of larger educational and social purposes. In modern

composition, five general models of social purpose are observable:

utility, individual growth, individual mobility, collaborative growth,

collective empowerment. Composition theorists and practitioners should

strive to be aware of our social goals and assumptions, and seek

consistency between our values and our pedagogies.

5

6

PREFACE

I worked as a writing consultant/tutor in spring 1988 for a fledgling

writing-across-the- disciplines program at California State University

Northridge (CSUN), a 29,000-student campus in the north of Los Angeles.

The pilot program was initiated in response to a widely perceived problem

of student writing performance. In particular, many departments are

worried about the numbers of their students failing the Upper Division

Writing Proficiency Examination (WPE) , a one-hour essay test required for

graduation. The WPE failure rate has risen steadily each year, reaching

an enormous 32.5 percent in 1986-87. In view of the apparent size of the

writing problem, the writing-across-the-disciplines program seemed paltry,

even as a pilot endeavor. It involved only five teachers, who attended

workshops on teaching writing led by freshman composition director Thia

Wolf; in addition, four of us "consultants" met individually with the

participants' students, helping them with their writing assignments.

Thia Wolf told me she had asked for a much more comprehensive

program, modeled after one she had observed at the University of

California, Santa Barbara. UCSB had created a separate department

offering writing courses across a range of disciplines--legal writing,

business writing, technical writing. The program also runs writing-

intensive components attached to existing courses in various departments.

The cost of that program is $4-500,000 a year. Wolf's more modest version

would have cost $250,000. She received only $30,000, with projected

incremental increases. "What I got," says Wolf, "was a model we had

discussed over the summer and thrown out as almost completely useless.

[The administration] felt it was what they could afford."*

7

* All quoted comments from CSUN faculty, students, and administrators are taken from personal interviews listed in the works cited section.

The broad gap between what was requested and what the university felt

it could provide to expand writing instruction led me to a series of

questions: How committed is the university to teaching students to write?

What exactly would be needed for a quality writing program? What are the

obstacles to getting those needs met? Pursuing these questions led me to

many more questions. I came to see the complexities of a university

writing program, and how the requirements for writing reform were not only

pedagogical, but economic and political. In summer 1988, I wrote up my

findings as an independent study: students were being cheated, teachers

exploited, and CSUN's writing situation was but a manifestation of

national school and college trends. Writing programs needed to be geared

to the new understandings of writing and learning processes growing from

modern composition research. Composition teachers needed a democratic

voice in their departments, salaries and conditions conducive to quality

instruction, and support for in-service training and professional

involvement. The use of proficiency tests as a guarantor of student

writing achievement needed to be replaced by more and better writing

instruction across the disciplines. These and other reforms required

strong funding, and called for the political mobilization of composition

teachers--initially at the campus level, finally at state and national

levels, in concert with other teachers and other social movements,

8

demanding a shift in spending priorities away from the military and toward

education and social needs.

Since the time of my CSUN study, my more critical exposure to the

composition field at The University of Texas at Arlington has supported

many of my proposals, but helped me see how my view of writing pedagogy

reflected a technocratic perspective that was not in keeping with the

otherwise radical politics of my study. My purpose here is to present the

CSUN study as a critique of a "current-traditional" writing program that

is quite typical of American college writing programs. An additional

fifth chapter will critique this critique by placing under scrutiny the

leading modern composition trends that guided the technocratic

shortcomings of my CSUN study. I will argue that any approach to the

teaching of writing implies politics and ideology, that writing teachers

should be aware of their ideologies and develop pedagogies consistent

with their philosophical-social beliefs.

My concluding chapter, then, is a self-correcting one that embraces a

liberatory pedagogy consistent with my own politics and vision of social

change.

I wish to express my appreciation to the many staff and faculty

members and students at CSUN who made my study possible by sharing with me

their frustrations with and hopes for the university's writing programs.

I am particularly indebted to Thia Wolf for fueling my interest in

composition, for teaching me about compassionate writing instruction

through her own example, and for meeting with honesty, clarity, and

endurance my endless stream of questions about campus writing politics.

9

In UT Arlington's rhetoric program, I encountered a questioning,

theoretically "sub/versive" environment that helped me achieve a critical

distance toward the composition field. I would like to thank Victor

Vitanza, Michael Feehan, and Kenneth Roemer for helping to create that

critical environment, and for guiding my thesis to fruition. In Dr.

Vitanza, I enjoyed the aid of a consummate adviser who, even while

disagreeing with me on various fundamentals, confirmed the value of my

project and insisted on my very best work. I thank the University of

Chicago Press for permission to use illustrations from Critical Teaching and

Everyday Life, copyright © 1980 by Ira Shor.

10

CHAPTER 1

IS THERE A WRITING PROBLEM AT CSUN?

Identifying a "writing problem" is itself problematic, since any

standard we apply is to some degree arbitrary: absolute standards for good

writing do not exist. Nevertheless, for the present discussion, we will

define a writing problem along lines suggested by the National Assessment of

Education Progress, i.e., that a piece of writing is problematic or

deficient insofar as it fails to achieve the purpose intended by the writer

(Applebee, Langer, and Mullis). In a college context, students bring many

and varied purposes to their writing, but certainly one universal purpose is

to produce what the students believe is academic writing. Students want to

produce papers that their professors will certify as college-appropriate;

students want to get A's.

At CSUN, the student's ability to produce academic writing is

officially measured and certified during their junior or senior year by the

Upper Division Writing Proficiency Examination. The exam's annual pass/fail

rate has become the campus index of the student population's overall writing

performance. Unfortunately, the WPE has major flaws as a test of writing

ability. While the 32.5 percent failure rate may indicate a large writing

deficiency, this figure has questionable correspondence to students' writing

performance in classrooms or other contexts. In fact, the WPE's model of

writing may actually be contributing to the university's writing problems.

The exam is "a throwback to the kind of writing we used to do in English

11

classes before we knew anything about the composing process," says Thia

Wolf, who heads the writing lab responsible for counseling students

preparing for, or who have failed, the WPE. "One hour leaves no time for

revision, or really even any prewriting. There's no chance to make a topic

your own." One of the key advances of modern composition over traditional

conceptions is its view of writing as a process--planning, writing,

rethinking, rewriting. The WPE does not reflect this understanding. I

interviewed six students who had failed the WPE three or more times.

The exam's time limit was a major complaint. A finance major, who

had attempted his seventh WPE on the day of our interview, describes his

normal routine for writing school papers:

I would write out all my thoughts in the first draft. Second draft I

go over and try to put it into more of a sentence structure that's

understandable. Third draft I'm going in and correcting all the run-

on sentences and phrases. Fourth draft I'm correcting punctuation.

That's my standard way of writing for all business courses, all the

papers I've ever had to turn in.

I asked if he didn't also have to write in-class essay tests under time

pressure, as with the WPE. He replied: "It's not the same, because you're

going in prepared. You know the topic, you've been studying it for

hopefully the last month, and you know what's going to be on the test."

In the short time provided, the WPE expects students to write on

subjects they may know nothing about, or to produce a type of writing to

which they are unaccustomed, such as personal description or philosophical-

cultural reflection. The exam is coordinated by the chair of the English

12

department, and its bias toward students of the humanities is quite clear.

Two interviewees reported understandable difficulty with the following essay

topic:

"America is a great country because it has assimilated all cultures

through one

central language, English." --Theodore Roosevelt

"America in the 1980's is a multi-lingual country, and all of its

teachers should be

at least bilingual--if not trilingual." --Alfred Toffler

Write an essay in which you:

--examine the validity of each quotation;

--present your opinion on this matter. (Larson 1987)

Literature or philosophy students may be prepared to tackle this kind of

question; many are used to responding to ideas or texts with pages of social

speculation. Not so for students of science or business. A nutrition

major, three-time loser on the WPE, describes his dilemma: "They want a

certain way of English. I haven't been taught this way--I don't know what

they want. I have to guess and try to give them what they want. I'm from a

scientific background." Before returning to college to study nutrition,

this student had worked internationally as an agronomist. He showed me

samples of his writing in the field, including an article of fine quality

published in a scientific journal. The WPE is clearly not an accurate

measure of his writing ability.

WPE essay topics also reflect a cultural bias that is unfair to foreign-

born students. Nearly one-fourth of the 7,309 students sitting for the exam

in the 1986-87 academic year were identified as non-native speakers of

English by exam readers; 58.9 percent of the non-native speakers failed the

13

exam. The failure rate of students less familiar with English will

naturally be higher than for native speakers. But the WPE regularly asks

students to address issues of American culture--advertising, freeways, the

melting pot, the state lottery--which are bound to pose problems for the

foreign-born student. One student attending a special WPE preparatory class

put it simply: "Why don't they ask us questions about Japanese culture?"1

Although the WPE's annual report claims that "accessibility of the topic for

all students is the major criterion for the use of any topic for the WPE,"

this is evidently not borne out in practice (Larson 1987: 4).

Since the WPE could not provide reliable information about student

writing performance, I decided to consult the students themselves. Through

a fourteen-item questionnaire distributed to a broad sampling of majors and

class levels in selected general education courses, I sought students'

opinion of their own writing and their assessment of the quantity and

quality of writing instruction the university provides them. Two key

questions elicited interesting, and somewhat jarring, results. When asked,

"As a result of your education, do you consider yourself a skilled and

competent writer of English?" 210 students responded as follows:

Definitely not: 1.0%

Improving, but not quite competent: 11.4

Reasonably competent: 56.7

Very competent: 29.5

Not sure: 1.4

To the question, "Overall, do you believe this university provides

satisfactory writing instruction?" 195 students responded:

Probably not: 3.1% Probably yes: 74.4%

14

Definitely not: 12.3 Definitely yes:

10.3

We find that 86.2 percent of the respondents consider their writing

"reasonably competent" or "very competent." Further, a strong 84.7 percent

believe the university "probably" or "definitely" provides satisfactory

writing instruction. These results certainly do not support the continuing

gripes one hears from instructors about the sorry state of student writing,

nor the periodic official calls made for more and better writing

instruction. From the students' point of view, the writing situation at

CSUN is basically fine. We should temper this by pointing out that 42

students added comments at the end of the questionnaire criticizing various

aspects of the school's writing program, and 30 of these critical commenters

had judged the writing instruction as satisfactory overall. The most common

criticism was that more writing should be assigned or more writing courses

required: "We do not do enough writing to prepare us for the WPE. I also

think we should have more essay exams." Several complained about their

freshman composition course: "All freshman comp did for me was show me how

to write a formula essay, such as will help me pass the WPE. It in no way

challenged or stimulated my creativity or intellect." One may question why

so many of the students who commented critically still gave the university's

writing offerings an overall satisfactory mark. But the survey's thrust is

unavoidable: CSUN students believe they are writing competently and

receiving satisfactory writing instruction. My survey's results are partly

confirmed by a student survey reported in CSUN's Daily Sundial, 11 May 1988:

100 of 113 students, or 88.5 percent, said they were satisfied with the

teaching in general at CSUN (Cole).

15

The results of my student survey were unsettling. I had set out to

discover why CSUN suffered a writing problem, and now the students were

telling me there was no problem. What could we conclude? Either the

students were right, and many people on campus are sounding a false alarm on

the writing question; or the students were wrong and need better information

about the quality of their writing and the quality of their education.

Suspecting the latter was true, I undertook a faculty survey. I obtained

statistics on the number of students in each major and proportioned my

faculty respondents in rough accordance; so, for example, there were 23

respondents from the huge school of business, but only 1 from the small

geology department. Warned that a mailing survey would get a low response,

I knocked on office doors instead. I kept the survey simple by limiting my

questions to one: "How many of your students are writing as college students

should be writing?" Responses ranged from 5 percent by a biology professor

to 100 percent by a history professor; 81 responses produced an average of

42.8 percent. The faculty see a big writing problem: they believe that

less than half their students are meeting college standards. I should add

that I asked faculty to restrict their estimates to undergraduate courses--

all but two in my student survey were undergraduates, and I wanted my

faculty survey to address a similar group for comparison. Also, to maintain

my proportionate sampling across the majors, I asked the faculty who teach

general education courses to address their response to classes attended

primarily by majors in the teacher's department.

The faculty had a lot to say about student writing, most not

complimentary. My visits were at the end of the semester. Many teachers

were working through stacks of final exams and term papers, and were

obviously pleased for a chance to air their frustrations. Here are some

16

sample comments, along with each teacher's department or school, and survey

reponse:

The writing quality and analytic ability are disintegrating before my

eyes. It's really scary. (Sociology, 50%)

Only 20 percent can write up to standards I would apply if I were

hiring them as engineers. (Engineering, 20%)

When I suggest they go to the Learning Resource Center, they'll

say, "I'm a graduating senior--I'll never have to write again."

(Psychology, 10%)

The papers I receive are messy, poorly organized. Most of my

students can't develop an idea or thesis. (Radio-Television-Film,

35%)

They can't write complete sentences. The spelling is atrocious.

I've always tried to teach good writing, but I'm not sure I made a

dent. Maybe you can. (Business professor preparing to retire, 25%)

I did receive a few positive comments, of which the following was most

notable:

The quality of writing has improved in the last five-ten years. This

applies to my general education courses also. There's more awareness

of the need to write well, and I think the WPE has influenced this.

(History, 100%)

There were also several faculty who gave estimates in the 75 to 85

percent range but who added little comment, though a few of these explained,

"Most of my students are seniors." But a clear faculty consensus holds that

a majority of students are not writing as college students should write.

While faculty notions of what constitutes good writing may certainly be

called into question, the faculty are a highly literate group who read and

17

evaluate volumes of student papers, and their concern about the quality of

student writing must be taken seriously. If we define the college writing

problem in terms of whether students are meeting generally accepted academic

conventions, my survey is a significant indicator of a widespread writing

problem at CSUN.2

18

CHAPTER 2

WHY AREN'T CSUN STUDENTS WRITING BETTER?

Behind the student writing problem at CSUN lies an instructional problem

that is shared by schools and colleges nationally, and which is attributable

in large part to a traditional conception of composition that still prevails

in most writing classrooms. Traditional composition instruction attends to

the clarity and correctness of writing products, rather than to idea-

generating writing processes. Influenced by a positivist epistomology that

sees the writer as an oberver and recorder of "objective knowledge" that

pre-exists outside the writer, traditional composition leaves little room

for discovery and the making of new knowledge within the writing process

itself (Knoblauch and Brannon). Good editorship and adherence to pre-

assigned structures is given more importance than the development of

meaningful content. Students learn to avoid errors in grammar and usage;

the less advanced the class, the greater the emphasis on basic writing

mechanics. Students follow the writing patterns and formulas prescribed by

the teacher or textbook. Paragraphs must include topic sentences and move

from the general to the specific. Essays must adhere to a given mode--

description, argument, compare/contrast, cause-effect; the writer should

state a thesis, support the thesis, then restate the thesis. Good writing

practices are encouraged by the reading and analysis of professionally

authored essays.

Traditional writing instruction has been challenged by a modern process-

based conception that has been in rapid development since the 1960s. The

modern approach puts first priority on fluent writing and fluent thinking

instead of correctness. The focus is on learning to generate ideas and

19

order them in different ways, using writing as a tool for thinking. Grammar

lectures and workbook drills are rarely or never used. Students are

encouraged to set aside grammatical concerns during the composing-revising

process; only at the final editing stage is grammar attended to.

The less fluent the writer, the less emphasis is placed on mechanical

matters--the assumption being that students' technical prowess will follow

as they gain greater confidence with the written word. Modern composition

also rejects most structural rules and formulas, such as topic sentences,

thesis statements, and the traditional modes. Emphasis is on the content of

the writing, the ideas students are trying to communicate; students will

shape structures to suit their ideas. The classroom spends little or no

time studying professional essays; students learn writing best by actually

writing, getting reader feedback, and writing more.

An additional distinction between traditional and modern composition

concerns the teacher's conceived role in the classroom and her relationship

to student papers. The traditional approach is teacher-centered. Class

time is dominated by teacher lectures or teacher-led discussions about

mechanics and style. The goal of writing assignments, and the purpose of

teacher responses and any student revisions, are directed toward what the

teacher wants or expects or prefers. The modern approach, on the other

hand, is student-centered. The dominant classroom activities are writing,

and teacher and peer readings of and responses to student drafts. A

workshop atmosphere is the preferred mode, with the teacher as writing

coach. The goal of assignments, and the aims of responses and revisions,

are directed toward what the student wants to say. The teacher's primary goal

is to stimulate students toward more thinking and more writing, and to help

students achieve their intended purpose as communicators.

20

Researchers and practitioners of modern composition disagree widely on

issues of theory and practice beyond the basics presented here. But there

is almost complete consensus that traditional methods stultify students'

writing processes, leading neither to correct nor imaginative writing

products. Modern perspectives are represented in a rich selection of books

and journals, and in regular conferences and teacher institutes around the

country.3 Composition has grown into a substantial field over the past

twenty-five years, with interests that include rhetorical theory, analysis

of writing problems and strategies for teacher intervention, studies of the

cognitive processes involved in composing and revision, studies of the

relationships between reading and writing and between writing and speaking,

evaluations of classroom and writing program designs, and much more.

Unfortunately, while traditional writing instruction has been

overwhelmingly discredited by modern composition studies, most college

English departments and schools of education still cling to the traditional

understanding. And because that traditional method consists primarily of

teaching grammar rules and essay modes, and then tediously correcting papers

for errors, few colleges attach real importance to either writing

instruction or the training of writing teachers. The prevailing

traditionalist view has implications not only for the quantity and quality

of writing instruction at the college level, but heavily shapes how writing

is taught in elementary-secondary schools. If college composition is taught

through traditional methods, then college-trained schoolteachers will tend

to adopt these same methods. If colleges do not require significant writing

instruction, then schoolteachers will have little writing know-how to pass

on to students. In a 1983 study of 263 college catalogs, Clinton Burhans

found that most preparing teachers, even most preparing English teachers,

21

were not required to study writing beyond the freshman level; and only 10

percent of English education majors were required to take a course in the

teaching of composition.4

Writing Instruction in the Schools

We will consider briefly the impact of traditional composition at the

elementary-secondary level, then turn to its college manifestation at CSUN,

and then in chapter 3 to its impact on college writing instruction

nationally. The kind of writing preparation American students bring with

them to college is suggested in Arthur Applebee's 1984 report of a national

study sponsored by the National Institute of Education. Applebee's portrait

reflects well my own student experiences in the Los Angeles schools during

the 1960s, and schoolteacher friends advise me that the back-to-basics

trends of the 1980s have strengthened the routine nature of English

instruction in many L.A. schools. Hence, there is good reason to believe

that Applebee's description of national trends reflects also the general

school experiences of CSUN students. The NIE study, which examined

secondary school writing experiences in all subject areas, found that

students were seldom asked to produce writing of any reasonable length.

"Students were spending only about 3% of their school time--in class or for

homework--on writing of paragraph length or longer." On the other hand,

students were frequently engaged in mechanical tasks that involved slotting

in missing information: "fill-in-the-blank exercises, multiple-choice

responses, direct translation from one language to another [in foreign

language courses], and the like." The emphasis on filling in the blanks,

rather than on more creative and intellectually challenging kinds of

writing, was supported by the composition/grammar textbooks used by English

22

classrooms in the national study. "Only 12% of the exercises required

writing of even paragraph length--though all of these textbooks claimed that

their primary purpose was to teach writing" (Applebee 2, 3, 184).

Even when more extended writing was required of students, it tended to

be limited in scope. "The typical assignment is a first-and-final draft,

completed in class, and requiring a page or less of writing. Topics for

these assignments are usually constructed to test previous learning of

information or skills; hence the students' task is to get the answer

'right,' rather than to convince, inform, or entertain a naive audience."

Again, the composition/grammar textbooks highlighted the problem: "95% of

the extended writing tasks they suggested were designed to test previous

learning." Because assigned essays were treated primarily as tests of

previous learning, the essays became similar to the more restricted slotting

tasks, and students were denied opportunities to use writing for developing

ideas and higher-order thinking skills. "The task for the students was one

of repeating information that had already been organized by the teacher or

textbook, rather than of extending and integrating new learning for

themselves." The study found that "writing is more likely to be assessed

than to be taught." That is, the instruction most students receive comes

after their writing tasks are complete, in detailed comments and corrections

of their work. Help is rarely offered during the actual writing process.

"When they need [help], most students have to turn to friends or family

members, rather than finding it in instructional contexts" (Applebee 3,

184).

The results of this limited writing instruction are suggested in a 1984

assessment of writing achievement conducted by the National Assessment of

Educational Progress. The assessment involved 55,000 participants from

23

grades four, eight, and eleven in a nationally representative selection of

schools. The students performed a range of writing tasks, such as job

applications, descriptions, reports, analyses, letters, and stories. Papers

were judged to be unsatisfactory, minimal, adequate, or elaborated, and scoring

allowances were made for the restraints of testing conditions, such as the

time limit and artificiality of the tasks. The findings, reported by

Applebee, Langer, and Mullis, were "not flattering":

Most students, majority and minority alike, are unable to write

adequately except in response to the simplest of tasks. . . . Even at

grade 11, fewer than one-fourth of the students performed adequately on

writing tasks involving skills required for success in academic

studies, business, or the professions. In general, American students

can write at a minimal level, but cannot express themselves well enough

to ensure that their writing will accomplish the intended purpose.

(9)

A particular concern was the lack of analytic writing ability and higher-

order thinking skills among the older students:

One of the most distressing findings is the continuing difficulty

older students have explaining and defending their ideas. Even at

grade 11, relatively few students were able to provide adequate

responses to the analytic writing tasks, and fewer still were able to

muster arguments to persuade others to accept their points of

view. . . . Some of these problems may reflect a pervasive lack of

instructional emphasis on developing higher-order skills in all areas

of the curriculum. Because writing and thinking are so deeply

intertwined, appropriate writing assignments provide an ideal way to

increase students' experiences with such type of thinking. (11)

24

The assessment also polled student attitudes toward writing, and discovered

that enthusiasm for writing, which is low in general, decreases as students

progress through the grades. Only 57 percent of the fourth graders reported

that they like to write, which dropped to 39 percent by grade eleven. When

asked if people like what they write, 53 percent in grade four and only 37

percent in grade eleven responded in the affirmative (60).

Writing education at CSUN, and at many other colleges, may work to

reinforce rather than remedy the trends observed in the schools. Again, we

find a paucity of actual writing instruction; moreover, those providing this

small amount of writing instruction must work in unprofessional

circumstances, often with no specific composition training. As our point of

reference, let us begin with what a quality writing program at CSUN might

require, and then consider how the present program measures up. The

following broad requirements are drawn largely from my discussions with

writing program administrators and faculty interested in writing program

reform at CSUN.

1)The university should require several courses that include writing

instruction: two semesters of freshman

composition, writing-intensive courses in students' majors, and

writing-intensive general education courses. Instructors teaching

writing-intensive courses in the various disciplines will need smaller

classes and an introduction to the teaching of writing.

2)Writing instructors should have strong training in modern composition

theory and methods.

3)Composition faculty should have full-time tenurable positions, full

voice in their departments, reasonable

student loads and course loads, and professional respect and support.

25

4)Writing program administrators need adequate staff, office space, and

project funds, and the general support

of their departments and university.

5)At least a two-course sequence in English conversation, reading, and

writing, as well as support

services, are needed for students not fluent in English. Also, all

composition instructors

should have introductory training in English as a second language (ESL)

concerns.

Certainly, the above represent rather ideal conditions that few, if any,

American college writing programs would satisfy. But when we consider how

strikingly far is CSUN from meeting such standards, then the poor student

writing performance suggested in my faculty survey is understandable. We

will examine each point in turn.

Writing Course Requirements

The learning of writing, and learning of the critical thinking

associated with writing, is a lifelong project, to which college can and

should have much to contribute. But the fact that many students come to

college under-prepared as writers, and that many have also learned to

dislike school writing, makes the college responsibility greater than it

might be were progressive composition practices instituted in the

elementary-secondary schools. This is not to heap blame upon the schools

which, after all, draw their instructional models from the university.

Nevertheless, given present circumstances, if we hope to produce ably

literate college graduates, then we must redress students' past writing

neglect. CSUN's current writing requirements simply cannot accomplish such

26

redressing. The general education requirement consists of only one semester

of freshman composition. Roughly 30 percent of students (majors in

business, journalism, education, liberal studies, and some English options)

must also take one or more writing courses beyond freshman composition; and

perhaps 10-15 percent of incoming freshmen score low on the English

Placement Test and must complete one or two developmental writing courses

prior to freshman composition. This leaves 55-60 percent of CSUN students

who can complete four years of college with only one writing course, and 70

percent who can graduate with no writing course beyond freshman composition.

Of course, a number of students will take an additional writing course

voluntarily to better their skills. Also, teachers in a wide range of "non-

writing" courses regularly assign writing in the form of term papers, lab

reports, essay exams--though such teachers do not necessarily become

involved in helping students write better, and almost none have been trained

in the teaching of writing. But many of the students who need writing help

the most do not volunteer for more writing courses, and they learn to avoid

teachers with reputations for assigning writing. Religious studies chair

Pat Nicholson believes this kind of writing avoidance is widespread:

I have run into so many students in traditional liberal arts majors

who don't have to write. I was recently talking with a history major,

a graduating senior, who for the first time had to write a term paper.

And he told me that most students talk to other students and just

figure out a way to get through the whole program with teachers who

don't make you write.

While students in general have learned an antipathy for writing, the more

troubled writers particularly avoid dealing with their problem. Many have

been battered with loads of well-intended but ill-conceived criticism by

27

English teachers schooled in the traditional pedagogy, and students do not

want more of the same. Large numbers do not believe they have even the

potential to be good writers.

But simply requiring more students to take one additional course beyond

freshman composition, as is now required of 30 percent of students, would

not suffice. The additional course required of business majors, for

example, apparently does not bring the majority of enrollees up to widely

accepted college writing standards. Three of my faculty survey respondents

teach the writing-intensive business communications course, OSBE 305, and

estimated that 60, 10, and 33 percent--a paltry average of 34 percent--of

their students were writing as college students should write. And my poll

was taken at the end of the semester. Writing and writing instruction must

be integrated into a significant number and range of required courses, and

taught by teachers given appropriate composition training.

Training of Composition Teachers

The CSUN English department, like most college English departments, has

long assumed that anyone with an advanced degree in literature is qualified

to teach writing. Only about one-third of some sixty instructors teaching

developmental and freshman writing within the English department have

significant training in composition, according to Thia Wolf's estimate.

Most of the trained minority are or were CSUN graduate teaching assistants

and have taken a two-semester seminar in the teaching of writing; hence, all

teach in the modern mode. But the untrained majority teach with a

traditional emphasis, though employing some modern techniques. Wolf

discusses the latter group:

28

I think a lot of them teach the modes; maybe half of them teach

grammar. I mean, information has seeped in to these people--some have

been to a conference or two. Most of them use peer groups. Most use

revision. And in those respects they are not old-school at all. In

terms of their having a real vision of the writing process and what it

can do for the individual student, I'm not so clear about that. When

I go in to evaluate classes, it seems to me they're doing fairly

traditional stuff. The major thing I object to--and in a sense it's

not at all their fault, because it's partly the way the department set

the course up--is how much time they spend discussing professional

writing, rather than writing. It makes me crazy to walk into a

writing classroom and leave an hour and fifteen minutes later and the

students haven't put pen to paper. That really bothers me. I think

that goes on a lot.

The trend toward combining the modern (prewriting, revisions, peer groups)

with traditional (grammar lessons, modes and formulas) is widespread in

school and college writing classrooms, and composition researchers have

challenged this kind of "eclecticism." Using a "process" approach in order

to produce a teacher-prescribed compare/contrast essay gives students mixed

messages, and the student is not really the master of his/her paper

(Knoblauch and Brannon; Applebee 187-88). CSUN's English department has

long encouraged a traditional approach by ordering traditionally oriented

textbooks, including an anthology of professional essays, and mandating

their use. Most of the teachers cooperate with this, although a few quietly

ignore department policy and choose alternative texts. In fall 1988, under

a pilot policy developed by Wolf and co-composition director Cherryl

29

Armstrong, teachers may select their own materials for courses; the new

policy will later require departmental approval, however.

The traditional model of writing instruction also predominates in the

Pan-African studies writing program. Pan-African studies shares with the

Chicano studies department some 20 percent of CSUN's freshman composition

courses and 45 percent of the developmental writing courses (1987-88 school

year); the two programs serve heavily to black and Chicano students, but

include Asians, whites, and others as well. Professor Johnnie Scott, who

helps colleague Tom Spencer-Walters coordinate the Pan-African studies

writing program, showed me the syllabi he designed, and which almost all the

department's writing instructors follow. The syllabi cover the traditional

essay formulas, modes, and grammatical concerns with unusual rigor,

including an objective final exam that asks such questions as, "What are the

six types of fragment sentences?" As in many of the English department

courses, the Pan-African writing instructors combine traditional methods and

assumptions with modern techniques such as journal writing, peer groups, and

revisions. While the Pan-African writing program holds a workshop for its

faculty before each fall semester, probably few instructors have strong

composition training. As for the program coordinators Walters and Scott,

both are dedicated, veteran writing teachers who have undoubtedly attended

their share of composition conferences and workshops, and I am not sure why

their orientation remains so heavily traditional. Perhaps they have not

been exposed to the full modern theory and its critique of the traditional;

or perhaps they do know the modern view but have disagreements with it.

Be that as it may, the Pan-African writing program is nevertheless

nontraditional in terms of its emphasis on black authors for course readings and

its infusing the writing classroom with a perspective that affirms minority

30

cultures. The program is also nontraditional in that it enjoys the support

and respect of the department as a whole. When Pan-African chair Verne

Bryant refers proudly to the writing program as "the lifeblood of the

department," his sincerity is demonstrated concretely by, among other

things, a well-staffed and well-equipped Pan-African writing center.

Similar words from the chair of the English department, where composition is

viewed condescendingly and where support is minimal, would ring hollow.

Johnnie Scott's particular enthusiasm for teaching developmental writing--

since "that's where the action is"--would also be less typical in the

English department, as would Scott's commitment to working with students'

larger personal/academic needs:

In one [developmental writing] class, I had nineteen students, and not

one of then had an academic counselor. So when I conference I make

sure that each and every one of my students is placed with a

counselor. I also make certain that they're placed with tutors--and

not just in the writing center. I take them over to EOP [Educational

Opportunity Program] for tutors in psych, sociology, geography,

whatever it is. Cos', as I say, this is the Superbowl. It's not

about passing my course and then you're flunking everything else.

Students in the Pan-African writing courses undoubtedly benefit from the

rigor and commitment of Scott, his colleagues, and the Pan-African

department. Still, as a proponent of the modern in composition, I would

argue that those benefits could be extended much further were the department

to break cleanly from traditional composition assumptions.

I was unable to interview the Chicano studies writing program director

as the spring semester busily closed, and I cannot address the content of

the Chicano courses. I did, however, speak with Chicano studies writing

31

instructor Francine Hallcom, mostly about campus-wide writing issues. It is

probable that the Chicano writing program shares with English and Pan-

African studies a predominant traditional methodology and training gap,

combined with the positive nontraditional aspects that apply to Pan-African

studies.

The English department's hiring of Thia Wolf and Cherryl Armstrong, and

their fall 1987 appointments as directors of freshman composition and

developmental writing, respectively, has meant new possibilities for faculty

development. Wolf notes: "The introduction of writing research into this

program has not been done until now. Cherryl and I are the first people who

are trying to acquaint the teachers with what's out there, with what we know

about writing." Wolf and Armstrong, who have Ph.Ds in composition and

rhetoric, have obtained a grant to lead a workshop series planned for fall

1988. Four eight-hour meetings will involve sixteen faculty participants--

eight from English, four from Pan-African studies, four from Chicano

studies. Says Wolf:

My faculty's really interested, and if I can pay them, they're even

more interested because they're used to being abused. They want to be

taken seriously, like professionals. What I'm hoping is that the

workshop will be successful and we will get twice or three times as

much money the following year so that we can reach a lot more people

or extend the time.

Wolf points out, however, that funding for the workshop was not obtained

through the support of the English department. "John Hartzog [of CSUN's

Learning Resource Center] got us that money from the academic vice-

president. The only support we really have is from the academic vice-

president, and Hartzog's our liaison. Without him we'd be nowhere." In a

32

later interview with Armstrong, I learned that the workshop depended on

"soft money" from the state lottery, and that the money was in question.

"We had money and now we may not have it unless we can spend it tomorrow.

It's soft money; it's money that doesn't really exist. That's one of the

problems--there isn't any hard money going into staff development."

Hopefully, the funding snags will be worked out and the workshop plans

realized. But if composition faculty are to receive the training they need,

there must clearly be stronger support from the English department and from

the university.

Composition Teacher Conditions

Teachers' working conditions are certainly crucial to the quality of

instruction. CSUN, and the nineteen-campus California State University

system (CSU), demonstrate a questionable commitment to quality writing

instruction through the conditions imposed upon CSU writing teachers. At

the center of these conditions is an unrealistically low salary

classification for composition courses. The classification provides only

for "assistant professor, step 1." And even though the CSU faculty's

collective bargaining contract provides that instructors graduate a salary

step roughly every two years, the CSU still only allocates its campuses a

step 1 salary. "The problem is we get money for step 1, and it costs us

more than step 1," explains Pat Boles, budget manager for the School of

Humanities, in which the English and Chicano studies departments are housed.

"This year our school will run a deficit in our salaries of about $50,000."

The CSU classification also makes no provision for the promotion of

composition instructors. Campuses manage to get by with the low salary

provision by hiring part-timers. While full-time faculty are assigned a

33

twelve-unit teaching load, they get paid for an additional three units to

provide office hours and participate in department committees. Part-time

faculty do not receive those additional three units of pay, which alone

means a 20 percent departmental savings for each course taught. Part-timers

are also denied many of the fringe benefits enjoyed by full-timers, and are

not promoted up the professorial ranks. Reliance on part-timers is a

growing trend in all departments across the CSU system, but is especially

strong in composition programs.* In CSUN's English department, nearly 100

percent of the composition courses are taught by part-timers. Pan-African

and Chicano studies, by contrast, have several full-timers committed to

teaching composition, and full-timers teach perhaps a majority of the

writing courses in those departments.

Through low salary and denial of other rights and benefits, the

university communicates to its predominantly part-time composition faculty

that they are not considered professionals, are not considered full citizens

in their departments, are not expected to provide more than minimal

instruction. Unlike regular full-time faculty, part-timers are not paid for

office hours and departmental participation; are not paid for release time

to do research or write books or articles related to their profession; are

not offered travel or conference pay in order to take part in professional

meetings and conferences; do not have access to tenure and the job security

that tenure provides; do not enjoy the full package of fringe benefits such

as health plans, retirement plans, full vacation and sick pay.

* At CSUN, and at most colleges, the terms composition program and compositioncourse generally refer to freshman and remedial writing classes, and I usethe terms this way here. Creative and narrative writing, and

34

intermediate/advanced expository writing, enjoy higher status thancomposition courses, are regularly taught by full-timers, and are notadministered by the English composition program.

Graduate teaching assistants are materially worse off than the regular

part-time faculty. One writer has aptly called regular composition faculty

"serfs," and the TAs "slaves" (Kytle). TAs, who teach either one or two

courses, are paid at bare subsistence level, with no health benefits or sick

leave. Their lowly status is reflected in the office space afforded them.

While full-timers are placed two to an office, and regular part-timers

typically share an office with four or five others, most of the twenty TAs

share a single office space that is reached through a forbidding, difficult-

to-find stairway on the fifth floor of the CSUN South Library. The TAs

probably suffer less psychological stress than

35

regular part-timers, however. Since most are resigned to the unspoken vow

of poverty that our society demands of college students, TAs' expectations

are not high. Also, the TAs are typcally excited about their new teacher

roles and the exquisite composition theories they are learning. Still, TAs

perform the same service as other instructors, their students generate just

as much income for the university (CSU campuses are allocated funds based on

the number of students enrolled in each course), and their underpay is a

blatant form of exploitation.

Because of the CSU budgeting structure, most salary-related policies

affecting part-timers and TAs are beyond the capacity of a single department

or campus to alter. But it is not beyond the capacity of the CSUN English

department to invite part-timers to the department's faculty meetings and

grant them the right to vote in those meetings. A majority of the English

department faculty, roughly sixty of one hundred, are disenfranchised part-

timers. That is, sixty composition faculty have only two voices, Wolf and

Armstrong, to represent them in the faculty meetings that approve or

disapprove any major policies related to the composition program and the

content of courses. The department's policy toward full-timers recognizes

that the role of a teaching professional includes participating in

discussions of departmental goals and how the job will get done. By denying

this voice to its part-timers, the department tells them they are not

professionals and do not really belong. Composition instructor Kim

Gillespie adds, "I think it makes people feel like victims, powerless and

uncaring, like they can't do anything about it." Indeed, it's difficult to

feel powerful or to imagine effecting changes when you haven't a vote.

36

Part-timers also cannot vote in Pan-African studies; part-timers do vote in

Chicano studies.

How do these conditions affect instruction? The low pay leads many

part-timers--in all disciplines--to hop across town between two or three

campuses, some teaching five or six courses, in order to secure a full

salary. The workload is particularly great for writing instructors, who

teach what may be the most labor-intensive of any school subject. The most

valuable instructional activities in composition are also the most time-

consuming: one-on-one conferences and sensitive responses to student drafts.

Even a four-course load is too heavy if they are all writing courses.

Instructors must by necessity devote less time to each writing student than

they might with a more manageable load of, say, two writing courses and two

literature courses; but literature courses are generally reserved for the

full-timers. A general picture of part-time instruction is provided by Jack

Friedlander in a review of national studies comparing the practices of full-

time and part-time instructors in two-year colleges. Friedlander reports

that part-timers had less say in choosing course materials, made less use of

instructional media and instructional support services, were less available

for student conferences, were less likely to base their grades on activities

that required out-of-class time to grade (objective tests, essay exams,

reports), were less involved in professional activities (reading scholarly

journals, attending professional meetings and conferences), and had less

contact with their teaching colleagues. Kim Gillespie suggests further that

the conditions of part-timers leads to less classroom innovation and more

traditional methods: "The low pay results in classes that look very much the

same from year to year, and that sameness is based on an unexamined pedagogy

because teachers aren't going to conferences and they're not reading

37

journals. So you'll find modes and grammar exercises and some lecturing,

and then essays out of the Dolphin reader."

When we examine the conditions of composition teachers, we begin to see

that the reform of writing instruction must be tied to reforming a system

that overuses and abuses part-time instructors generally. Commitment and

change are required at many levels. Departments must extend full

citizenship to their part-time faculty by granting them a voice and by

actively seeking their participation in departmental affairs. Full-time

faculty can further contribute to the professional standing of their part-

time colleagues by granting them full membership in campus faculty senates;

part-timers presently cannot vote in the faculty senate at CSUN. English

departments in particular must affirm the importance of their composition

faculty and the work they are doing by providing professional and moral

support; English full-time faculty, for example, can become involved in

issues of college literacy and writing program development. Finally, the

CSU system and the state of California must provide the funding necessary to

convert the majority of part-time positions into full-time positions.

Writing Program Administration

CSUN and the CSU system show again their low regard for writing

instruction through the little support offered writing program

administrators. My principal focus here will remain with the English

department, which accounts for 70 percent of CSUN's developmental and

freshman writing courses combined. While I have not a complete picture of

Pan-African or Chicano studies, it is a safe guess that the writing program

administrators of those departments work under more benign conditions than

the English department's two writing directors. The latter not only have

38

many more course sections, faculty, and students to provide for, but they

must operate within a traditional English department that treats composition

as "this bastard child."

The English composition program is equivalent to a department, but

without the staff or office space that departments are typically provided,

according to Cherryl Armstrong:

We have an office because we're professors. But we really need an

office for the writing program--the same sort of setup they have in

the English department office. We're running ninety sections of

writing courses in the fall. We're in fact a department inside a

department. We need a place for texts to be kept. We need a place

for people to meet. We need a full-time secretary who does

scheduling, who meets with people. We do all the secretarial work

ourselves.

Armstrong's duties include hiring, training, and scheduling faculty; hiring

and scheduling tutors; supervising, evaluating, consulting, record-keeping.

"The other thing I do is my teaching--I teach two courses." I ask if she's

tired. "Yeah. It's two full-time jobs."

Office mate Thia Wolf's workload is desperately unmanageable. Six of

her fifteen assigned units are allocated to running freshman English--

hiring, supervising, making policy decisions, keeping track of paperwork.

"I lose maybe the first three weeks of each semester doing nothing but

getting students slotted into comp classes after CAR Repair Day" (for

students who did not receive all the classes they wanted through computer

registration). She gets three units for teaching the TA seminar on the

teaching of writing, which includes visiting TAs' classes, writing

evaluations, consulting and mentoring. "It's exhausting because people

39

teaching their first semester are often in a state of crisis." Three units

are devoted to running the department's composition committee. "That's a

relatively difficult committee. It meets a lot, with a lot of paperwork, a

lot of decision making." Finally, Wolf gets 1.5 units each for coordinating

the writing-across-the-disciplines program and the writing lab. "Those, of

course, are full-time jobs at other universities." Wolf estimates that she

is doing three or four full-time jobs, "which is why I can work sixty or

eighty hours a week and not get the work done."

One of the biggest frustrations for both Wolf and Armstrong is that the

composition faculty do not have meetings. The directors have little way of

knowing what actually goes on in the classrooms. "There's no calibration of

that program," says Wolf, "no agreement about what should go on in any of

the courses. If we could just meet with these people a couple times a

month, it would make an enormous difference in the quality of the program."

Since the program has no budget, it cannot pay faculty to attend meetings,

and Wolf refuses to hold faculty meetings unless faculty can be paid for

their time--as are the full-time faculty. Wolf and Armstrong do hold

monthly potluck/rap groups that address various teaching topics; but, while

the rap groups have helped build community among some of the faculty,

attendance has dropped down, according to Armstrong.

Another frustration is the difficulty of changing policies. For

example, Wolf describes the unwieldy process for hiring new composition

teachers.

We sent out this job description that just says if you've had

experience teaching writing, come over and talk with us. And we wind

up interviewing maybe eighty people for two jobs. And most of those

people don't know anything about teaching writing. That and a number

40

of other things that create a lot of work and a lot of paperwork are

what wears down the people who run the program. It turns out that the

hiring process is extremely resistant to change.

Often, composition faculty will come to the program office with bright ideas

about grading policies or course descriptions, but then drop the ideas when

they learn of the cumbersome processes for obtaining departmental approval.

As with teacher conditions, many of the largest reforms needed in

writing program administration are beyond reach of the slim-budgeted English

department and will require action at higher levels. But again, the

department could take a more supportive posture by, for example, insisting

that the university provide its writing program with proper staff. The CSUN

administration would likely be responsive because of continuing concern over

the WPE failure rate. More immediately, the English department could give

composition priority in its personnel allocations, at least until the

composition workload approaches earthly levels. What keeps the department

from taking such measures are the competing interests within the department,

and composition's low status among those interests. Illustrative is the

department's recent hiring of an ESL specialist. Wolf, Armstrong, and the

new hire herself had understood she would be working with the writing

program to begin designing an ESL program and ESL teacher training. But

they later learned the department had assigned the new professor four

linguistics courses (for which there is big demand) and was listing her as a

linguist. In another instance, Wolf recounts that she had asked department

chair Gale Larson for a desperately needed office assistant but was told

that the creative writing program had priority as they had asked for an

assistant earlier. "He was applying a first-come, first-serve principle,"

Wolf explains, "but he wasn't thinking of size or need." (Ultimately, due

41

to a state hiring freeze, neither program received an assistant.) Wolf

observes: "Actually, they're not totally opposed to hiring people in this

field, but it's always an afterthought. You go through the literature and

linguistics hires first, and then there's a discussion about whether

composition will need anybody else."

Perhaps more fundamental than a shift in priorities is the needed shift

in attitude. The CSU's underfunding of composition programs draws

justification from the traditional denigrating view of composition that is

perpetuated by college English departments (Howard; Szilak; Staples; Nash;

Robinson; Kytle). Freshman composition is defined as a "service course,"

Wolf explains.

It teaches "skills." The way that basic mathematics is a skill or

learning to write your name is a skill. That's what it's equated

with, as opposed to a content course that has its place as a

discipline alongside other disciplines. It's not considered a

discipline, and therefore the people in charge of it are not--we don't

count. And that's why people in our department say stuff to us like,

"When are you going to get tired of this and teach some real classes?"

Modern composition has challenged the narrow definition of writing

instruction as the passing on of mechanical grammar skills and avoidance of

errors. It has opened up rich areas of inquiry, such as in the

relationships between writing, the learning process, and the development of

critical thinking. Insights from this growing field might hold the

potential to transform teaching as we know it, and could certainly offer

broad applications in literature classrooms. But people must be open to

the new information and new understandings. For the present, composition

remains what Wolf calls "this bastard child" of English departments.

42

"People make fun of it, they don't want to involve themselves in it, they

don't want to teach the classes."

It is unfortunate that the English department will soon be losing its

freshman composition director, who has given notice she will be leaving next

year (after spring semester 1989). "The job is really interesting, but

there's too much of it for me. I feel so disillusioned that if I don't get

a job at another university next year, I'm moving out of academics." It

appears the department had wanted someone to run composition in the

traditional and minimal way it had always been run; they did not want

someone who would advocate changes or try to create a truly meaningful

writing program. With Wolf's departure, the campus loses a particularly

dedicated and gifted teacher/administrator, one whom I and many others have

treasured as a model and mentor. No doubt she will be replaced with someone

who is more accepting of the program status quo.

English as a Second Language (ESL) Needs

CSUN keeps no statistics on the number of its students who are non-

native English speakers, nor on the number of students who are less than

fluent in English and might need assistance. When I asked a worker at the

CSUN Office for Institutional Research why such statistics weren't kept, he

gave the self-evident but interesting reply, "If we don't have the

statistics, it means the university hasn't had a reason to keep them."

Certainly, there should be a reason. We do know that 24.6 percent of students

taking the WPE in the 1986-87 school year were identified as ESL students.

But this cannot tell us the percentage of ESL students in the general CSUN

population, since ESL students have a higher WPE failure rate than non-ESL

students (58.9 versus 23.9 percent) and therefore take the exam more

43

frequently. Probably the best indication is offered by the Office of

International Programs: the campus has 512 foreign students living in the

U.S. on student visas, and about 3,600 students who are permanent U.S.

residents but not U.S. citizens. These do not directly translate into ESL

numbers. Some permanent residents have been in the U.S. since young

children, were never naturalized, but are essentially native English

speakers. Other students may be naturalized citizens but still learning

English; and still others may be U.S.-born citizens but raised in families

and communities where English was not much spoken. Still, the combined

figure of 4,112 (14 percent of the students) is perhaps the closest

indication we have regarding the number of ESL students at CSUN. In any

case, the large presence of foreign-born students, particularly Asians and

Mideasterners, becomes evident to anyone who strolls across campus. And as

a writing tutor here for two years, I know that many of these students need

concerted help with English literacy.

The university has essentially no ESL program for its considerable

number of non-native speakers. There is an intensive, twenty-hour-per-week

ESL program offered separately through university extension, but its

students are not enrolled at CSUN. Also, the English taught through

extension is too elementary for most ESL students enrolled at CSUN,

according to program director Michael Steadman. The university needs to

offer a bridge for students who have passed the TOEFL (Test of English as a

Foreign Language) but are not yet fluent with the language. What CSUN does

offer, under the English department, are seven sections of developmental

writing and two sections of freshman composition that are designated as ESL.

However, while these are popular courses that fill up quickly, the

instructors have no training in teaching ESL. Neither Wolf nor Armstrong

44

are sure what takes place in these courses. Quite likely, the teachers--who

have been unfairly burdened with courses they are not prepared to teach--

simply put greater emphasis on English grammar and mechanics. And an

emphasis on grammar is the practice most discouraged by modern ESL and

language acquisition theorists.

Some ESL proposals are being developed by English professor George Uba,

whom the English department is supporting for a year study of the subject.

Uba recommends the model employed at CSU's Long Beach State. "They require

every foreign-born student who has not resided in this country for at least

ten years to take a separate placement test. Depending on how they score,

they may be sent into a pre-developmental language acquisition course."

Long Beach offers a four-rung sequence: two semesters of language

acquisition (conversation, reading, writing), and two semesters of

developmental writing. Uba cautions, however, against the assumption that

the ESL writing course would be quite different from the non-ESL writing

course. "In fact, most theorists would argue just the opposite. The

emphasis on process and on rhetoric that we get in a non-ESL developmental

course is also the primary emphasis we should get in an ESL course. Our

primary emphasis should not be on workbook exercises like grammar and things

like that." Uba assumes, of course, that the teachers of ESL developmental

writing courses will have training both in modern composition's process

orientation and in ESL.

At the level of freshman composition, Uba points out, there are

legitimate arguments for sending ESL students either to ESL classes or to

non-ESL classes. The ESL composition class can address directly the

problems of developing literacy in a second language; the non-ESL class can

provide opportunities for interacting with native speakers. Uba suggests we

45

can have it both ways through paired classes--one ESL, one non-ESL--taught

by separate teachers. Once or twice a week, the pair would meet in one

large class. As we know from our classroom experiences, simply mixing ESL

and non-ESL students in the same class does not assure the kind of

networking we would like. Hence, Uba's proposal provides for monitored peer

activities.

They'll conduct peer editing sessions in which the teachers purposely

mix two ESL students and two non-ESL students, or they'll assign them

joint library work. Again, the interaction that we hope for outside

of class really does occur because we monitor it. At the same time,

because the integrity of the ESL classroom is maintained, if there are

specific needs that have to be addressed, that ESL teacher--who is

going to be more familiar with ESL writing needs--is going to be able

to address those needs.

Uba believes we also need more social networking outside of class

between ESL and non-ESL students. The best way the university can encourage

this is through the initiative of individual departments.

For example, the business department might hold a colloquium on

Japanese business management, or Asian business management, and then

invite Asians to talk about their experiences as children of

businessmen or, in some cases, as businessmen and businesswomen

themselves. In other words, each department can figure out a way to

get this networking into place. But it really depends on each

department to do that, because they know best what will serve a broad

range of students.

While his proposals appear excellent, Uba has "no sense" of whether

there exists the political support to actually institute such measures at

46

CSUN. For a political perspective, I spoke with professor Francine Hallcom,

an eighteen-year veteran of the Chicano studies department specializing in

writing instruction. Hallcom believes the university victimizes and

exploits ESL students. Since the majority of students in developmental

writing classes are native speakers, she explains, "you teach to the

majority. And the ESL speakers just simply do the best they can. They take

the class once, maybe twice, three times; they're usually diligent. So they

pass the class with a credit. Then they eventually do the same thing in

freshman comp, and then they fail the Writing Proficiency Exam." She

acknowledges that some ESL students contribute to the problem by putting off

their writing requirements until the end of college.

But I don't want to blame them for it anymore. It's more the fault of

the university because we accept them. If we're going to accept them

with this kind of writing skill, I think it's our duty to bring them

up to par--rather than let them sit here, generate a lot of FTE for us

and keep all of our professors employed, and then tell them when

they've accumulated 150 or 200 units [that they cannot graduate

because they've failed the WPE].* I saw a kid's transcript one time:

289 units and had failed the WPE five times or something--incredible!

That's real dishonest. That's really morbid.

* FTE, or full-time equivalency, refers to a formula the university systemuses for generating teacher salaries based on the number of studentsenrolled in classes.

47

Yet, Hallcom is decidedly skeptical about the prospects for change. She

has served on several ESL committees during her years at CSUN, and

invariably found the administration unwilling to take real action on the

issue.

I remember one time we had a very fancy committee. We had people from

foreign languages, special ed., English, admissions and records. Oh,

God, there must have been ten or twelve people. And we met, we were

very diligent, we did our research. And we turned in this 5-6 page

report. The bottom line was that we need to teach these people from a

different approach.

But the committee's report never led to a program. "I don't think the

university's interest is sincere, because after all of these years, I don't

see that money coming forward." Underlying the ESL problem is institutional

racism, Hallcom argues, and the committees are a mechanism to divert those

seeking change.

As a white male caucasian, it is not fashionable for you to just come

out and tell me you don't really give a damn about me or--that would

not be a healthy thing to do if you were an administrator on this

campus. So you would put a person like me, who might be a

troublemaker or who might struggle or something like that, on a

committee. And as long as I'm spinning my wheels on a committee and

turning in reports, you've got me happy. I don't serve on committees

like that anymore.

The needs of ESL and minority students are simply not a CSUN

priority. "The figures on minority students, if you look at it eighteen

years ago and now: worse. The figures on minority faculty hiring are

48

worse. . . . Basically, this is a school for white kids, and let's not kid

ourselves."

From Uba and Hallcom, we can derive that CSUN's failure to develop ESL

programs is not due to a lack of university awareness or lack of proposed

solutions. Nor is it wholly attributable to budget limitations: Long Beach

State has budget troubles like all CSU campuses, but has nonetheless

established a substantial ESL program. The bottom line is priorities and

attitudes. We learn from Hallcom that relying on the committee process does

not produce ESL programs, since it leaves white-biased institutional

priorities intact. Perhaps more active forms of pressure and protest will

be necessary to meet the needs of ESL students.

We have suggested that a majority of CSUN students may not be meeting

the university's writing expectations, and we have attributed this

deficiency to inadequate and ill-conceived writing instruction at school and

college. The university could potentially redress the problem through

rigorous, pedagogically sound writing programs, and by offering better

instructional models to future schoolteachers and curriculum designers. But

we find instead that the university perpetuates the writing problem. The

English department trivializes the composition profession and keeps its

practitioners disenfranchised; perhaps influenced by this trivialization,

the university system allocates meager composition salaries and meager

program budgets. If the slighting of composition has its source in a

narrow, mechanistic conception of writing instruction, or in an epistomology

that reduces writers to mere recorders of pre-existent knowledge, it is not

at all clear that the situation will be remedied simply by making better

epistomologies and pedagogies available. Wolf and Armstrong have offered

better models, but the English department may not really want to listen,

49

especially not if the better models cost money. So long as literaturists,

linguists, and others are committed to a strategy of sectional competition,

each group guarding its precious slice of a too-small budget, the department

may have a political interest in continuing to see composition as a "service

course."

50

CHAPTER 3

HOW TYPICAL IS CSUN? A NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

I could find no national studies of college writing performance.

However, college writing instruction and programs have been nationally

studied. The studies, along with numerous journal articles on "the state of

composition," reveal a consistent pattern among college composition

programs, one which broadly mirrors the writing situation at CSUN. If we

take into account the "minimal" writing achievement of eleventh graders in

the NAEP's 1984 national assessment, and the pattern of college writing

instruction indicated by surveys and journal commentaries, we can reasonably

conclude that the student writing problem at CSUN is a national college

problem.

One ready indicator that U.S. college students may not be getting the

most helpful writing instruction is the continuing predominance of the

traditional classroom methods which composition research has widely shown to

impede the learning of writing. Although the modern composition following

is growing, and some observers are quite optimistic about its growth

(Penfield), even the optimists would probably agree with Maxine Hairston's

1982 assessment:

The overwhelming majority of college writing teachers in the United

States are not professional writing teachers. They do not do research

or publish on rhetoric or composition, and they do not know the

scholarship in the field; they do not read the professional jounals

and they do not attend professional meetings. . . . They are trained

as literary critics first and as teachers of literature second, yet

out of necessity most of them are doing half or more of their teaching

51

in composition. And they teach it by the traditional paradigm, just

as they did when they were untrained teaching assistants ten or twenty

or forty years ago. (78-79)

Persistence of the traditional mode in composition courses is suggested

by Burhans' study of writing course descriptions in 263 college catalogs.

Burhans set forth criteria for a "contemporary" teaching model and a

"current-traditional" model, along the the same lines I have outlined in

this paper, and measured the course descriptions accordingly. He found that

only 3 percent of the "basic writing" courses (i.e., freshman composition)

and 1 percent of the remedial courses reflected “any influence whatever from

contemporary knowledge about writing and the teaching of writing." The

traditional view, on the other hand, was reflected in 89 percent of the

basic and 83 percent of the remedial courses; the remainder were

"indefinable." Burhans acknowledges that catalog course descriptions do not

always coincide with actual classroom practice, and that recent program

changes are often not reflected in the catalogs. But he argues that his

methods are reliable enough. Most college departments take their course

descriptions very seriously, according to Burhans, and usually develop them

from carefully revised multiple drafts to best reflect the department's

goals for the course. Also, Burhans did not choose his colleges randomly,

but instead weighted his sample toward schools "from which we expect the

highest levels of professionalism in theory, research, and application"

(641, 645, 646).

Staying power of the traditional mode is further evidenced by surveys of

college composition textbooks. Donald Stewart in 1978 found that only seven

of thirty-four widely used textbooks, or 21 percent, contained "any

appreciable awareness" of the modern composition field. "The other 27, and

52

some are the products of people with enormous reputations as literary

scholars, were strictly current-traditional in their discussions of

invention, arrangement, and style" (174). Burhans' review of a writing

textbook bibliography compiled in 1982 found that only 31 of 121 texts, or

26 percent, reflected any influence of the modern concepts. Burhans says

his assessment is generous, that many texts will devote minor sections to

the writing process "and then concentrate on primarily current-traditional

concerns" (652).

A very clear indicator of substandard writing instruction in the

nation's colleges is the conditions of composition teachers. As at CSUN,

composition teachers nationally are underpaid, overworked, second-class

citizens of the academic community. The conditions are regularly cited and

denounced in the composition journals and conferences. The following

account by a community college writing instructor is representative:

I went to graduate school in pursuit of the contemplative life. I

found it in graduate courses, in textual study, in literary

translation. I also found it in teaching the composition and

technical writing courses which paid my way. . . .

I was much less happy when, Ph.D. in hand, I found that I was

qualified to fill a role as a writing instructor that shattered my

illusions about academic life. Most of the jobs I found were for

part-time employment, that is, less salary for a heavy teaching load,

few or no benefits, and no departmental voice in policy or decision-

making. . . . As a part-time and non-tenure track teacher, I was

shocked to find how little the departments in which I taught cared

about the quality of my work and how little supervision or

administrative support I received, and how reluctant department

53

members were to have anything to do with me. I was, after all, not a

colleague. (Staples 3-4)

The universality of these conditions is strongly suggested in a 1987

resolution adopted by the Conference on College Composition and

Communication, the major professional organization for those involved in

college composition:

WHEREAS, the salaries and working conditions of post-secondary

teachers with primary responsibility for the teaching of writing are

fundamentally unfair as judged by any reasonable professional

standards (e.g., unfair in excessive teaching loads, unreasonably

large class sizes, salary inequities, lack of benefits and

professional status, and barriers to professional advancement). . . .

(Robertson et al., Slevin)

The resolution calls for establishing grievance procedures and public

censure of institutions not complying with professional standards for post-

secondary teachers of writing.

Wide reliance on part-time faculty and TAs, or nontenurable (and hence

usually temporary) full-time faculty, for teaching composition courses is

indicated in a 1981 national survey of college and university writing

program directors conducted by Stephen Witte et al. Among 127 responding

institutions, Witte et al. found that introductory writing courses were

taught by faculty in the following proportions:5

Full-time tenure track: 30% Part time:

21%

Full-time nontenurable: 12% Graduate TAs:

37%

54

Of 15,252 course sections, 58 percent were taught by faculty whose positions

were part time, and 70 percent by faculty whose positions were probably

temporary. (As at CSUN, tenure-track faculty were more apt to teach non-

introductory writing courses; they taught 51 percent of such courses.) Noting

the predominance of temporary faculty teaching writing classes, Witte et al.

observe that "while many schools pay lip service to the teaching of writing,

they have obviously not worked this 'commitment' into their rewards system"

(57, 58). Witte et al.'s point about rewards is corroborated by Jeriel

Howard's two-year study of job ads listed in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

"Less than 15 percent of all BW [basic writing] positions offered tenure

track appointments. When possible salary was mentioned, BW positions

averaged approximately $6000 less than appointments at the same rank for

literature teachers" (5).

One figure in the Witte survey that provides an interesting contrast to

CSUN is the number of introductory writing courses that are taught by tenure-

track faculty--30 percent. It appears that the almost exclusive reliance on

part-time faculty by the CSUN English department's writing program is not

the norm among colleges nationally. Still, while a significant minority of

writing courses nationally are taught by tenure-track faculty, students in

those courses do not necessarily benefit from their teacher's higher status.

Firstly, many English departments require tenured faculty to teach a minimum

number of freshman writing courses. Such policies are well-intended but of

questionable value: the vast majority of tenured English faculty have no

interest or commitment to teaching introductory writing. Their freshman

composition duties are an unwanted distraction from literary pursuits, and

the courses are often taught perfunctorily. Commitment among tenured

faculty was the most frequently cited "least successful aspect" of the

55

programs surveyed by Witte et al. "They really don't give a damn about

teaching freshmen to write," complained one program director (109).

Secondly, the few tenured faculty actually committed to teaching

composition--whose students undoubtedly do benefit from their teacher's

full-time tenured status--may still find that their departments consider

their work less important than that of literature or linguistics professors.

Howard notes that full-time faculty seriously interested in basic writing

are often denied tenure appointments or are restricted in rank:

I could relate stories, now all too familiar, of tenure and promotion

committees which have refused to recognize work done in the area of BW

as valid criteria for either retention or promotion. I know highly

competent teachers, some with names you would recognize should I use

them, who have been denied tenure and/or promotion because they work

rather exclusively in BW. These people speak at our conferences,

publish in our journals, and, in some instances, consult nationwide.

But they do not research bird imagery in Keats or nominalization in

Chaucer. They are not quite real members of the fraternity of English

teachers. (6)

American college English departments are increasingly characterized by a

caste system in which a male gerontocracy of senior tenured literature

professors lord over a younger, predominantly female group of part-time

composition instructors. (At CSUN, for example, English part-timers are 77

percent female; full-timers are 67 percent male.) However, the size of the

ruling group is shrinking, while the ruled are multiplying. A 1982

Association of Departments of English survey showed 62 percent of

instructional effort in English departments devoted to writing and only 30

percent devoted to literature. Moreover, enrollment in writing courses was

56

growing fast, while literature enrollment slowly declined (Young, Gorman,

and Gorman 56, 57). In these times of lean college budgets and especially

small budgets for liberal arts and humanities, it is perhaps understandable

that the tenured literati would guard their narrowing turf by keeping the

composition majority disenfranchised, demoralized, transient. But does this

not undermine the educational ideals of literaturists and compositionists

alike? And would not a cooperative effort to develop critically thinking

minds through the joint teaching of literature and writing be preferable to

division and oneupmanship? And could we not collectively challenge the

heads of state who, through wrong priorities, dole out ever smaller slices

of the tax pie to education? And how long will writing teachers continue to

be abused before we pull ourselves together and fight back?

57

CHAPTER 4

SOLVING THE WRITING PROBLEM: EDUCATING, ORGANIZING

Achieving quality writing programs and quality conditions for writing

teachers will require action at all levels--classroom, department, campus,

state, federal. The plight of writing teachers is ultimately bound to that

of all educators and to the country's spending priorities. But let us begin

with what individual writing teachers and others can do today, and then

proceed to larger goals and more ambitious tasks.

First, composition instructors should get active in the composition

profession, and those already involved professionally should invite

colleagues to join them. True, the time and cost of attending conferences,

workshops, or meetings is prohibitive for many, particularly when the

university is not sponsoring participation. But professional involvement

can be a source of emotional sustenance, as well as classroom method and

theory. Modern composition is inspired by visions of what education could

be; for some, the vision is suggested in Donald Graves' descriptions of

first- and second-grade classrooms turned into buzzy, productive, child-

centered writers' workshops. We can't effectively challenge the abuses of

academe without a vision to guide us, and professional activity can help us

shape visions with our peers. It can also help us find ways to make our job

more satisfying, less exhausting. Maxine Hairston reminds us that many

traditional composition teachers work harder than they need to. "They

devote far more time than they can professionally afford to working with

their students. . . ." But because they haven't read the modern theorists,

58

"they don't know that an hour spent meticulously marking every error in a

paper is probably doing more harm than good. They are exhausting themselves

trying to teach writing from an outmoded model, and they come to despise the

job more and more because many of their students improve so little despite

their time and effort" (79-80). Activities might range from informal

rap/study sessions with co-workers to five-week summer institutes offered

by National Writing Project affiliates in many states.6 As composition

staff develop cohesion, they can collectively insist that the department and

university take more responsibility for faculty training.

Another important step for writing teachers is to make the critique of

education a topic for the writing classroom. Teachers can encourage

students to talk and write about their school experiences, to imagine what

education could and should be, to ask critical questions about American

schooling. I think the reason students in my questionnaire and in the

Sundial survey reported a general satisfaction with school is that they have

so little exposure to alternatives. Students need opportunities to build a

critique of their school experience, and they need models and direct

experiences with student-centered, egalitarian classrooms.7 At the same

time, teachers need student allies in the struggle for educational reform.

Thirdly, writing teachers can join the faculty union, where one exists,

and get active in it. Part-time lecturers are a growing voice within the

California Faculty Association (CFA), the union representing CSU faculty.

Part-timers have organized a statewide committee that is fighting for such

proposals as the conversion of part-time positions to full-time positions.

The union has recently won small but significant reforms for the lecturers,

who now have built-in salary advances and, after twenty-four units taught,

at least reasonable certainty of being rehired each year. "Different

59

faculty groups get their voice represented at the bargaining table by being

union activists," says Pat Nicholson, who presides over the CFA chapter at

CSUN. "There's no magic about this. If you want to be on the agenda, come

and get in." Broad changes in the conditions of composition faculty are

barely conceivable without large numbers of composition teachers working in

the union. Unions not only unite the strengths of part-time and full-time

faculty, but can wield that power on a statewide basis--which must be done

when taking on a statewide university apparatus. The union can be a source

of support for campus-level changes as well, such as in advocating for a

part-timer voice in the faculty senate and within departments. Use of the

union structure as a tool for writing program reform is a potentiality that

has still to be explored, and could only be explored in the context of

strong composition participation in the union.

Faculty in disciplines other than composition can support writing reform

by asking their departments to participate in writing-across-the-disciplines

programs. In fall 1988, CSUN's "WRAD" program is expanding to involve ten

faculty from the School of Engineering and ten from the School of

Communication and Professional Studies. Departments in which several

faculty are calling for WRAD participation can in turn lobby the university

to help with funding. My teacher survey suggests that large numbers of

faculty are disappointed with the quality of student writing. Those faculty

should insist that their departments and universities make writing

instruction a priority.

Program Modernization

A larger objective for writing reformers would consist in modernization

of university writing programs and removing institutional barriers to that

60

modernization. The CSUN English department has made an historic move toward

the modern by hiring the campus's first composition specialists to run its

writing program. But the department contradicts that move by making the

program answerable to, and dependent upon, a literary faculty largely

unsympathetic to composition and unfamiliar with the modern field. Writing

specialists need real authority over their writing programs in order to

apply what they know. As constituted, the English department drags

modernization, and the writing program could benefit tremendously by

separating off and forming its own department. Composition instructors

could immediately be enfranchised. Those involved in composition could

discuss and decide on the content of courses and the goals of the writing

program without having to negotiate with literature professors.

Composition would no longer be the departmental underdog competing with more

"respectable" disciplines for funds and staffing (though it must still

compete with other departments for finite university funds).

"I don't think it's healthy for English departments and writing

departments to be split," says Wolf. "But so many universities are run like

this one where people who teach writing are treated badly. It would be so

much easier and the program could get so much more done if it didn't have to

answer to the English department." Wolf describes the experience of a

colleague who tried to run a writing-across-the-disciplines program under

the English department at UCLA. "It nearly drove her out of her mind,

because they have all kinds of strange priorities that have nothing to do

with the priorities of a writing program." A literature department could

influence a writing program in healthy ways, Wolf believes, but this is not

happening at CSUN. "The department forbids us to teach literature in

composition classes. And I think, especially for developmental writing,

61

that's extremely damaging. These students are going to be most helped by

reading for pleasure." Wolf explains that reading fiction tends to be more

pleasurable than reading essays, and language acquisition theorists believe

that reading for pleasure supports our syntactic development as writers.

Barring a major shift in faculty attitudes toward composition, the

English department will continue to be a fetter upon the writing program. A

chief obstacle to "liberating" the program from the department is that it

would require an approving vote from the English faculty. Only two faculty

members, Wolf and Armstrong, represent composition among some forty voters.

Although the question has yet to be raised in departmental meetings,

knowledgeable observers have advised me that the faculty would resist the

writing program's secession. Composition may be viewed condescendingly, but

it does give the English department authority over campus literacy. With

composition gone and literature in a steady national decline, English

faculty might begin to feel inconsequential. Campus sources have also

suggested that the department has an economic interest in keeping

composition. It is apparently not uncommon for English departments to

subsidize small graduate seminars and the comforts of senior literary

faculty by packing composition programs with underpaid part-timers and TAs

(Szilak; Nash). English department chair Gale Larson denies this goes on at

CSUN or anywhere else, and he holds that the department's composition

courses actually produce a net loss. My discussion with School of

Humanities budget manager Pat Boles seemed to confirm Larson's contention

with respect to CSUN. Admittedly, the complicated budget formulas remain a

bit mysterious to me. But it is certainly clear that separating the writing

program from the English department may be a necessary step toward putting

composition under the control of composition people.

62

A second key institutional barrier to a modern writing program is the

writing tests required for college graduation, or for passing lower-division

writing courses, at CSUN and many other colleges. We have already observed

how CSUN's Upper Division Writing Proficiency Examination is a poor measure

of writing ability. But the role of such tests in keeping university

writing instruction within traditional bounds, and in upholding the

political status quo, deserves consideration as well. CSUN instituted the

WPE in 1980 in fulfillment of a CSU mandate that all CSU students, during

their junior or senior year, demonstrate writing proficiency before

graduating. The CSU mandate, known as the Graduate Writing Assessment

Requirement (GWAR), came in response to the so-called literacy crisis of the

1970s. The literacy crisis was actually a deliberate fiction based on

misinterpretations of declining SAT scores (Shor 1986: 59-103; Howe;

Steelman and Powell; Brodinsky). It served to accelerate a new conservative

political agenda in education, including the now unprecedented use of

proficiency tests in the nation's schools--tests to graduate high school,

tests to pass from grade to grade. Instead of the expanding education

budgets and broadening curricula of the 1960s, we would have smaller budgets

and narrow "back-to-basics" curricula emphasizing rote drills to prepare us

for the tests. The proficiency tests pleased conservatives because testing

focuses attention and blame on the individual, rather than the institution

or society, for the inadequacies of education. Ira Shor in Culture Wars says

it succinctly: "In the 1960s, masses of people confronted the system

together. Now, the system was confronting you, alone" (89).

Some positive measures did accompany the CSU's GWAR. Pre-freshman

composition developmental writing programs were introduced on CSU campuses

(remedial courses had formerly not been allowed). Also, a few CSUs added an

63

upper division writing course requirement, instead of an exam, to fulfill

the GWAR. Yet, the majority of campuses, like CSUN, opted for an exam. And

the broad conditions that undermine quality writing education in the CSUs--

too little writing and too few writing courses required, inadequately

trained writing faculty, overuse and abuse of part-timers, understaffed and

undersupported writing programs--went unaddressed. Now students take WPEs

which the universities have not prepared them to pass, and the universities

can blame the students. In 1986-87, 32 percent of CSUN's test-takers

received notices in the mail saying not that the university had failed them,

but that the students were failures. One group of students known to WPE

counselors are particularly hurt by the CSU priorities. These students have

completed their coursework, have devoted four or more years of study and

possibly gone into debt, but are denied degrees because they cannot pass the

WPE. The tests and the university have dealt them serious defeats. "They

are the human beings who have been destroyed by a vicious, vicious

institution," says one CSUN observer.

Tests like the WPE serve hidden political purposes: they deflect

criticism of the university by assuring legislators and taxpayers that

higher education is enforcing "rigorous" literacy standards; and they

provide a cheap substitute for the quality types of writing programs that

would make relics of writing proficiency tests. Their official purpose, on the

other hand, is to prompt students to take more writing courses or seek

tutorial aid to upgrade their writing skills. Perhaps, some may argue, the

WPE is still beneficial because it does encourage some students to work

seriously on writing improvement. Undoubtedly, this is true for some

students. But it is common knowledge at CSUN that large numbers of students

complete freshman composition and then avoid further writing involvement.

64

Their reasons? Some may not need more writing instruction or not believe

they need it. Others know their writing does need work; but with heavy

class loads and the knowledge that more writing courses are not required,

they let the writing go. Probably many have fears about writing or have had

bad experiences in writing classrooms. I asked a marketing major, four-time

WPE failer, why he had not taken English 305 (intermediate expository

writing) to prepare for the exam. "It's psychological," he said. "If

you're not good at something, most individuals are apt to shy away from it,

instead of attack it. And basically that's my attitude with writing." If

the official goal of the WPE is to prompt more students to better their

writing skills, the failure rates certainly do not suggest this is

happening. The percent of failures has climbed every year since the test's

inception.8

The WPE's net effect on university writing may actually be negative,

particularly in terms of its traditionalist assumptions. Wolf warns, "It's

a very dangerous test philosophically, because the message it gives to the

university is that this is what writing is all about." The exam is based on

the traditional five-paragraph theme that modern composition theorists have

widely discredited as a model for writing. By assigning the topic and

directing how the student must address that topic, the WPE subverts the

rhetorical understanding of writing as meaningful communication. The exam's

message is that it doesn't matter what students want to say or how they want

to say it; what matters is what teachers or test administrators want said

and how they want it said. The preordained topic and sub-questions also

discourage viewing writing as a discovery process. Writing instead becomes

a rigid, mechanical activity that fails to engage the confidence and fluency

with language which students bring to their daily speaking.

65

We have not studied or measured the extent to which the WPE affects

teacher and student views of writing, or affects writing instruction

practices, but there must be considerable impact. The test very likely

reinforces the traditional writing beliefs and classroom methods prevailing

in the university. Teachers and departments are rightfully concerned that

their students be prepared to pass the WPE. One student told me his

business communications course gave WPE practice exams, and this likely goes

on in other writing courses. The university writing center gets frequent

teacher requests for classroom presentations on the WPE. Until recently,

the center sent WPE counselors who would give talks and then have the

students take sample tests; the counselors would mark the tests and later

return them to students. Wolf abolished that policy after she discovered

that a video presentation would serve the purpose. Wolf resents the use of

the writing center to support the WPE, believing that the six counselor-

tutors--who are part-time faculty or TAs--should devote their time to

genuine writing instruction, rather than to test-taking strategies. "These

people are capable of conducting excellent writing instruction. They're

highly trained, highly competent. What they wind up doing is saying over

and over things like, 'Eat a good breakfast before you go take the test. Be

sure all of your points are well-developed.' It reduces them to machines."

But there is a big demand for WPE assistance: two-thirds of lab tutoring

time is spent in WPE counseling. The center also runs WPE prep sessions,

workshops, and classes, which Wolf describes as helpful for students who

haven't serious writing problems but need strategies for taking the test.

The WPE has become an axis around which much of the university's writing

attention seems to revolve.

66

The CSUs also use writing proficiency tests in the developmental writing

programs. The developmental courses are required for students whose low

scores on the English Placement Test (EPT) prevent their direct admission to

freshman composition. At CSUN, students must pass two developmental courses

(097 and 098) or only one course (098), depending on how low their EPT

scores are. Fifty-minute essay tests that are exactly like the WPE are

administered at the end of each course. Until spring 1988, the written exit

exams were the sole determiner of whether students passed the English

department's developmental courses. As an 097-098 tutor from 1986 to '88,

it was obvious to me that the exit exams were accentuating the traditional

orientation of the courses, with preordained topics, and formulaic modes and

structures. Moreover, the late part of semesters inevitably turned toward

taking practice exams. One instructor administered practice exams every

Monday for the second half of the semester. My tutoring time during those

weeks was devoted almost wholly to scoring these exams on a six-point scale,

and showing students how they could improve their scores. We did cover many

healthy, substantive writing concerns in these sessions--clarity,

development, and so forth. But the students were also imbibing a narrow and

decidedly unhealthy conception of writing, void of discovery, process,

experimenting with ideas and structures and topics. This is not to

criticize the instructors, who understandably wanted to ensure that students

passed the exams. The problem lies with the use of proficiency tests at the

end of writing courses. Fortunately, Armstrong has now introduced a pilot

program in which students are graded on portfolios of essays produced over

the semester; the exit exam is only one entry in the portfolio, reducing its

significance in the class. Rough drafts are attached to the essays to

verify that the essays were written by the students. The portfolio grading

67

method still needs to be evaluated and given the English faculty's approval,

but it is clearly a modernizing measure for the program. The Pan-African

studies developmental program has been grading portfolios--which include an

exit exam--for years, according to program director Tom Spencer-Walters.

Perhaps one day the programs will wean themselves completely from these

traditional exams.

Writing proficiency tests are widely used among colleges nationally.

CSUN professor Rosentene Purnell observed a "proliferation of testing" in

the wake of the "perceived literacy crisis." Her 1979 and 1981 surveys

revealed, respectively, that 45 and 47 percent of responding institutions

were using such tests (407). Most required them for passing beyond the

freshman year; others, for passing into upper division or for graduating.

The tests undoubtedly play an important role in other universities as they

do at CSUN, and they are probably influencing instruction in similar

traditionalist ways. Many of the respondents in Purnell's surveys also used

writing proficiency tests as a diagnostic or placement tool. A placement

test--to determine, for example, the appropriate writing course for incoming

freshmen--seems a legitimate practice, depending on the test's design. But

the use of writing proficiency tests for passing courses, advancing through

college, or for graduating, creates unhealthy pressures on writing

instructors and can limit a school's concept of writing.

Wolf proposes that CSUN eliminate the WPE and instead fulfill the GWAR

through an upper division writing course within students' disciplines; that

is, we would meet the CSU requirement while, at the same time, encouraging

the growth of writing across the disciplines. Passage of the GWAR could be

determined by committees of portfolio readers in order to avoid

inconsistencies of instructor grading across the courses. Supporters of the

68

WPE will no doubt argue that such a method allows too much variance: student

papers would not address the same topics; students might cheat by getting

others to write their papers, even their attached drafts. But the WPE

itself has plenty of variance. One test asks students a fairly accessible

question about their experiences with shoddy products (80 percent passed),

while another asks about the relative roles of technology and human behavior

in major world problems (59 percent passed) (Larson 1987). The bottom issue

is not consistency, or protection from cheating, or other reliability

concerns. It's dollars and priorities. The WPE is cheap and calls for

little in the way of writing instruction; Wolf's proposal would cost more,

and would require a significant university commitment to writing

instruction. While proponents of writing reform are educating and

advocating to win that commitment, we can also expose the hidden political

agendas behind the WPEs and GWARs, and their counterproductive role in

writing education.

Long-Term Requirements: Coalitions, New Priorities

Many important writing reforms can be accomplished at the campus level--

provided, of course, that proponents of change can organize. But the big

economic items on our list--professional salaries and benefits, conversion

of part-timers to full-timers, smaller teaching loads, a substantial writing

curriculum and well-funded programs--will take action at state and national

levels. Here, college writing teachers will need plenty of allies to wield

influence. We will need to work with other college faculty and with

schoolteachers; with other unions; with advocates for health care, child

care, the elderly, the homeless.

69

In California, one of the tasks of such a coalition is defeating the

"tax revolt" led by real estate and corporate interests. The tax revolt

laws, notably Proposition 13 in 1978 and the Gann Initiative which followed,

have reduced property taxes while putting a strong cap on state spending,

reducing the moneys available for education, health, and other public

services. In 1988, a coalition of groups including the California Faculty

Association placed Proposition 71--a measure to moderate the Gann Initiative

and release more state funds--on the June ballot. Tax revolters, on the

other hand, put forward Proposition 72 to strengthen Gann. California

voters heavily rejected Prop. 72 (38% yes, 62% no), but they also turned

down Prop. 71 by a narrow margin (49% yes, 51% no). While the Prop. 71

coalition was not successful in June, the undoing of the tax revolt laws and

the directing of state funds toward social needs will ultimately depend on

the strength of such "human needs" coalitions.

Because state coffers are finite, our broad human needs coalition must

finally target Washington, which collects most of our tax billions. There

we find the military thriving at $300 billion a year, while the ax continues

to fall upon education, health, and welfare. We also find the general tax

burden shifting away from wealthy corporate owners to bear more heavily

upon middle- and lower-income groups. Our country certainly has the money

to hire full-time composition teachers. But again, it's priorities. Our

coalition will need to muster the strength to introduce our priorities.

70

CHAPTER 5

MODERN COMPOSITION AND POLITICAL VISIONS

Two years after my CSUN study, I see its reform and action proposals as

broadly legitimate and worth supporting. Yes, writing programs need

stronger funding, modernization, and administrative autonomy from the

English department literati. Yes, composition teachers need to get

professionally and politically active, and must join hands with allies to

demand a shift in government spending priorities toward education and the

meeting of human needs. But I have come to a more critical view of the

"modernization" proposed in the study. My call for the introduction of

"modern" composition instruction as against "traditional" instruction

reflected a dualism that I had imbibed from composition modernists at

Northridge and from the composition literature generally. Richard Young,

Maxine Hairston, C. H. Knoblauch and Lil Brannon, and many others had taught

me of a "paradigm shift" from "current-traditional rhetoric" to

"contemporary rhetoric," from product-oriented, teacher-centered writing

instruction to process-oriented, student-centered instruction. While I was

aware that there were differences and debates among the moderns themselves,

these debates seemed less important to me than that there was an "old" way

of teaching and a "new" way. Composition teachers and others needed to

study the new paradigm and help move our writing programs toward the

humanistic pedagogies of the modern field.

Today, while I continue to regard modern composition as constituting a

broad pedagogical advance over current-traditional approaches, I also see

the modern field as fraught with problems whose significance does not pale

beside the great divide between process and product pedagogy. In

71

particular, this chapter will suggest that the modern field is as lacking in

a well-examined sense of pedagogical and social purpose as the current-

traditional model we have come to reject. My CSUN study speaks of how

composition should be taught, and of the need for modern methodologies.

But it does not ask why composition should be taught in the first place,

i.e., toward what end are we educating. Even as my study brought a radical

activist edge to writing program reform, I did not apply that same

radicalism to the teaching project itself. I saw the unions and human

needs coalitions as vehicles for political resistance, but I did not yet see

the classroom itself as a terrain for resistance. Chapter 4 does discuss

briefly the need for engaging students in a critique of education, but I

myself had not yet embarked on a broad critique. I had not yet made the

link between my own political values and my conception of writing

instruction.

The technocratic narrowness that informed my work likewise informs the

widest sectors of the composition profession, whose discussions, proposals,

and theories overwhelmingly gear to how writing can better be taught, while

rarely stepping back to ask why we do what we do. My proposal here is that

the composition profession cannot adequately address student writing

problems, such as those we observe at CSUN, without a wider sense of our own

purposes. In fact, theoretically speaking, I think it a mistake to even to

attempt to define what constitutes a writing problem--much less propose

classroom strategies to solve what we consider the problem--without first

establishing why we are teaching writing. Our "whys" provide--or should

provide--the basis for the "hows" that follow; our goals for the writing

classroom define what constitutes a writing problem. Furthermore, the goals

and methods we do choose for the classroom imply certain goals for the

72

world, imply values. Such commentators as James Berlin, Patricia Bizzell,

Victor Vitanza, and Greg Myers have been suggesting how debates on pedagogy,

composing process, or rhetorical theory involve often-covert debates about

values, ideology, politics. This chapter is informed by, and hopes to

contribute to, the efforts of such writers to make the covert overt, to

locate and assess the ideologies that guide modern composition. My

particular focus will be toward questions of purpose and ultimate ends. I

will explore and critique the prevailing purposes of modern composition,

with special concern for the social visions implied by those purposes.

Though I will argue on behalf of the purposes and visions that I favor, I

more generally hope to encourage writing teachers to more fully explore and

articulate their own purposes.

By clarifying our larger world aims, we may not only have more

appropriately directed debates in the composition profession, but we will

set firmer ground for making pedagogical choices, and for judging different

models and theories. Our larger social why can also provide our students a

clearer basis for participating in the writing class. As Philip Brady

observes, in a valuable and under-distributed little collection entitled The

"Why's" of Teaching Composition, "many students are no longer willing to simply

take our word that writing 'is part of a basic education' or that writing

'will be good for you in the future….' " (v-vi). Sharing our broader why

with students can, ideally, open up the kind of discussion that will help

students determine their own whys and why-nots with regard to writing and to

education.

Classroom Purposes and Better-World Visions

73

This chapter assumes that the purposes we establish for the teaching of

composition will be in accord, or should be in accord, with our better-world

vision--our notion of how the world can be made a better place, and of what

that "better place" should look like. Most of us do not carry explicit

world visions in our mind; rather, we carry implicit visions, or a set of

values which may or may not be strongly articulated. When we make our

implicit vision explicit, we also draw the contours of our ideology. Göran

Therborn in The Ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology offers that an ideology

addresses three questions: What exists? What is good? What is possible?

(Berlin 1988). To create a vision, we would first ask ourselves what our

values are, and then imagine how a society would be arranged that put our

values into practice (what is good?). Next, we would ask whether our ideal

society is realistic (what is possible?). For example, do certain aspects

of human nature pose insurmountable obstacles? (what exists?) Finally, we

would determine what is the best we consider possible for humanity, and what

steps might be necessary to move us from our present global mess toward our

(realistically) ideal society. We will call this our better-world vision.

Most of us describe our values through a common set of words--democracy,

equality, justice, compassion--but we mean different things by the words.

When we link our values to a vision of how society should be arranged, our

values take on more definite meaning.

The proposal that we shape our pedagogies according to our social goals

may run against the grain of many teachers who believe our job is to teach

writing in a relatively neutral manner, leaving our personal political

agendas outside the classroom. At the same time, the notion that education

should serve the welfare and betterment of society has been a constant in

American public discourse since the country's founding. Thomas Jefferson

74

argued that an educated citizenry would be an essential safeguard against

governmental tyranny and, in Jefferson's elitist terms, would produce "a

national aristocracy of talent" to assume the nation's leadership. The

Jacksonian democrats would later propound a more egalitarian conception

wherein universal free schooling would be "an equalizer rather than a

selector." For Jacksonians, the school had the task of "eliminating all

privilege and destroying all elites by giving to all men the same good

common education" (Perkinson 11-12). Andrew Carnegie saw the "true panacea

for all the ills of the body politic" bubbling forth through "education,

education, education," and Lyndon B. Johnson agreed that "the answer for all

our national problems comes down to one single word: education" (qtd. in

Perkinson, front matter). Education's social-cure potential has been often

exaggerated, and radical critics argue that education's makers and shapers

have actually been more interested in social control than social solutions

(Bowles and Gintis; Apple; Apple and Weis; Sharp and Green; Giroux and

Purpel). But if we only see in education, as Henry Giroux proposes (1983),

one "contested terrain" among many terrains, it is certainly one major

institution where ideological power is wielded and social purposes pursued.

The widespread objection to teachers bringing their social-political

goals to the classroom derives in part from the positivist belief that

educators are passing along objective, neutral knowledge--a belief that has

been widely challenged by proponents of knowledge as a social construct

(Kuhn; Bizzell 1979; LeFevre; Popkewitz 1978, 1980), and also challenged by

critics who see the "reification of knowledge" as a means by which knowledge

that serves elite social control is protected from criticism (Popkewitz

1987b; Giroux 1980; Apple). Yet, the objection to teachers introducing

social goals may also reflect schooling's division of labor between the few

75

top administrators who retain the right to determine larger goals and

purposes, and the mass of teacher-workers who are expected to carry out the

agenda set by administrators. Most teachers--especially, though not

exclusively, at the elementary-secondary level--have internalized the roles

assigned them within this undemocratic framework: they do not see themselves

as having the right or the expertise to determine, with others, the social

purposes of education (Densmore).

Whatever neutrality teachers may claim, I believe that people who work

in education are very much motivated by social visions, or by sets of values

that imply visions. Peter Elbow calls writing teachers "closet preachers"

who "feign modest goals" but "deep down, want the moon." "People who end up

as writing teachers were often most compelled, when going to school, by

questions like 'what is good and bad?' and 'why do people do what

they do?' and 'how can I make the world better?' " (1978: 57).

For teachers to take their visions out of the closet may constitute not only

a challenge to administrators, but a challenge to teachers' defined social

role as neutral conveyers of official knowledge (Althusser). If, at the

same time, students are invited and given the confidence to criticize

teacherly visions and to develop and promote their own visions in the

classroom and beyond, traditional education is undermined further.

Restrictive institutional contexts may allow us to pursue such visionary

education in only piecemeal fashion, or may require collective teacher

endeavors to alter the institutional context. But our notions of how the

world should be deserve sharing. By submitting them to the critical

scrutiny of our community of colleagues and students, we allow our visions

to become more coherent and mature. And we are more apt to find fellow

travelers with whom to work to achieve the visions. The profession of

76

composition provides the open forum we need for sharing and arguing out our

social proposals. Our journals and conferences should help us to clarify

visions, and help us to work out strategies for putting our social purposes

into teaching practice in local contexts.

Many composition teachers do design pedagogies to accord with their

social aims--though the process tends to be a covert one that does not allow

the larger aims to be questioned or scrutinized by students or colleagues.

On the other hand, even when we attempt to keep our social agenda separate

from our teaching--or believe we have no social agenda--what we do in the

classroom unavoidably has social-political implications (on the value-laden

nature of any teaching, see Kohlberg and Mayer, and Boehm; as applied to

educational research, see Popkewitz 1978). I believe that the composition

profession could benefit enormously by becoming more aware of the social

purposes implicit in our work. An exposition and critique of those purposes

constitutes an essential starting point in planning how to educate for a

better world. I have culled from the composition literature various

purposes given for the learning and/or teaching of writing. I have also

looked for indications of social vision that the teaching goals are intended

to serve. Since social aims are rarely made very clear, however, I have

often looked instead for the social purposes that the teaching goals seem to

imply. I will represent the teaching goals and social visions current in the

field through five models: utility, individual growth, individual mobility, collaborative

growth, and collective empowerment. I will critique the first four models, and

call for further development of the fifth model.

Model I: Utility

77

The goal of this book is to help you gain more control of your own

composing process: to become more efficient as a writer and more

effective with your readers.

--Linda Flower, Problem-Solving Strategies for Writing (2)

In this book we propose to introduce you to the many types of writing

assignments that you may confront in college and to prepare you to do

these assignments successfully.

--Elaine Maimon et al., Writing in the Arts and Sciences (7)

The utility model represents the narrowest and predominant conception of

the purposes for teaching composition. The aim is to help students "write

effectively" or "write well" for school, careers, life in general. As

defined in current-traditional instruction, effective writing is clear,

editorially correct, and in conformity with the five-paragraph model or

other formulaic demands. In the contemporary view, however, effective

writing is more adequately defined as achieving the writer's communicative

purpose in the specific rhetorical situation, and this writing ability is

integrally linked to critical thinking ability. But toward what social ends

shall we teach students to write better? In the utility model, larger

social ends are not at issue: our job is simply to teach good writing.

Linda Flower implies that the larger purposes be left up to the students:

"Whatever your goals are, you are interested in discovering better ways to

achieve them" (1). This sounds fair, doesn't it? Yet, in the context of an

unfair society, such apparently neutral pedagogies may not be neutral and

may not be fair. If our purpose is only to help students better achieve

their goals, whatever their goals are, without our attempting to challenge,

influence, or prompt reflection upon those goals, then we are practicing a

78

pedagogy of the status quo. The utility model implies a social reform

strategy which seeks to help society do better whatever it is now doing.

Unfortunately, some of the things our society now does leaves many people

hungry and homeless, and renders our planet decreasingly habitable. Do we

want our colleges to produce effective communicators who help employers

become "better" at busting unions? "better" at designing the means for

nuclear annihilation?

If our teaching purposes do not extend beyond the utilitarian, we have

no pressing reason for raising such questions. In fact, some utility-

oriented writing teachers seem bent on turning students away from larger

issues. This is most notable among those who see writing as problem

solving, where the requirement for a specific, "operational" solution tends

to keep in line students interested in social criticism. If a student

writer asks, "What can be done about our oppressive administration?" the

question would be too vague and emotion-laden, according to Young, Becker,

and Pike's Rhetoric: Discovery and Change. The writer should instead focus on

specific acts: how can we induce the administration to extend library

hours, or eliminate student driving restrictions, or abolish its requirement

that all freshmen live in dormitories (96). The authors' alternatives may

be easier to solve, but what if the student wants to do something about the

administration's general oppressiveness? The authors consider oppression too

"vague" a problem for a writing assignment. But there are plenty of writers

in the world who purport to discuss oppression in quite definite terms as,

for example, Simone De Beauvoir discussed the oppression of women, and

Martin Luther King the oppression of blacks. The Rhetoric authors secondly

object that discussing oppression would be too emotional, but they offer no

reason why emotional terms or topics should be avoided. The desire to avoid

79

emotionality could lead to the exclusion of any number of important issues

from the writing classroom. Young, Becker, and Pike offer that a well-asked

question "defines what is sought and guides but does not constrict inquiry"

(96). Their claim is ironic, since turning students away from the large

problem of administrative oppressiveness and to a smaller problem of

extending library hours is certainly to constrict inquiry. Flower also

prefers that her students stay "specific." When students fail to establish

realistic goals for their writing assignments, Flower warns, "they often

produce essays on enormous topics such as the problem of nuclear

disarmament--problems on which they have limited inside information and

limited reason to write. . . . In two pages what can you say on such topics

that anyone would really want to read?" (19) Yet, students may have very

good reason to write on such topics as nuclear disarmament, and if we allow

such topics to be discussed only by authorities with the "inside

information," we limit the capacity of students and the general public to

intervene in global issues. Reductionist problem solving often does not

encourage democratic modes of thought (see Berthoff and Ohmann for further

critique of problem solving).

Constraints on Utility: Social Inequalities

The key unfairness of utilitarian pedagogy, however, lies not in its

failure to address the big issues "out there," but in its general neglect of

the histories and socially imposed inequalities that affect students' own

fortunes in the writing classroom, in college, in their career pursuits.

Shirley Brice Heath's pioneering ethnography Ways with Words shows how

children from their day of birth begin to acquire different endowments of

"cultural capital" (Bordieu's term) that weigh heavily upon their success in

80

school. Heath researched the ways of language and life in two small

working-class communities, one black and one white, in the Carolina

Piedmont, and compared these with the cultural ways of the black and white

middle-class residents of a nearby larger town. She found that the language

and values, the concepts of time, space, and order, and the sense of self-

importance learned in infancy and early childhood made the middle-class

children (of both races) better equipped than the working-class children for

the kinds of thinking, work, and literacy demanded at school. Rather than

working to counter such class differentials--which, in the school projects

developed by Heath, was sought by valuing and building upon the ways and

resources that working-class children bring with them to school--most

schools tend to reinforce and strengthen class and other differentials. One

of the seminal studies on the class bias in school tracking was the 1970

work of Ray Rist, who found that a class of ghetto children was divided into

ability groups during the second week of kindergarten, and that the

teacher's decision to place children in "fast," "average," or "slow" groups

appeared to be based primarily on students' socioeconomic status, rather

than on any demonstrated ability differences. The teacher's differential

academic expectations became self-fulfilling prophecies, and students were

directed into relatively rigid learning tracks in subsequent years.

In a 1980 study, Jean Anyon observed the occupational channeling in a

comparison of five schools--two "working-class" schools, one "middle-class,"

one "affluent professional," and one "executive elite" school. In each

setting, the work patterns, school knowledge, and teacher-student roles

helped prepare students to assume their expected places in the

occupational/class hierarchy. Learning in the working class schools meant

following the steps of a usually mechanical procedure, involving rote

81

behavior and very little decision making or choice. In the middle-class

school, students looked for the "right answer" by following directions, but

the directions often called for some figuring and making of choices. The

affluent professional school emphasized more creative, independent kinds of

learning; students were continually asked to express and apply ideas and

concepts. The executive elite school was even more geared to developing

students' analytical powers. Students were expected to conceptualize rules

by which elements may fit together in systems and then to apply these rules

in solving problems. One example of the relative power enjoyed by the

executive elite students was a series of language arts assignments where

each student had to plan and present a lesson, including a worksheet or game

and a homework assignment, for the whole class; afterwards, the class would

critically appraise the presentation. Such an assignment would be

unthinkable within the narrow obedience routines of the working-class

schools. In general, the higher the students' social class, the more their

learning shifted away from the memorization of facts and getting right

answers, and moved toward the conceptualizing of science, math, and social

frameworks. The executive elite students were explicitly taught to think

not in terms of right or wrong answers, but in terms of whether they agreed

or disagreed with given answers. Hence, in terms of William Perry's scheme

for intellectual and ethical development during the college years, the elite

children were advancing fruitfully along toward a position of committed

relativism, while the working-class and middle-class children were being

trained in dualistic absolutes.

Processes of class channeling continue up through the college years.

Donald Lazere describes California's three-tiered state college system--a

model widely emulated throughout the U.S.--which consists of the elite

82

Universities of California for the best academic achievers, the non-elite

California State Universities for the middle achievers, and the bottom-track

two-year community colleges, which have open admissions. Although,

according to a 1960 Master Plan, the three tiers were supposed to serve

their students equally well, different funding bases soon led to inequities.

A 1969 study cited by Lazere found that, of every $100 the state spent for

higher education, an average of $60 was spent for each UC student, $30 for

each CSU student, and $10 for each community college student. A later study

held that

the unequal funding per student takes place not only on the level of

graduate education and research at UC, where it might be justified,

but in undergraduate and especially lower-division programs, such as

Freshman English, that are comparable in the three systems and are

supposed to be the strong points of the CSU and community colleges

relative to UC. (Lazere 383)

The inequitable funding--which undoubtedly contributes to the budget

shortages observed in my CSUN study--impacts not only on the instruction and

services available to students but, Lazere points out, leads to differences

in the physical environment. Spacious grounds and expressive, imaginative

buildings at the UCs versus the no-frills landscapes at the community

colleges translates into less self-esteem and less enthusiasm for studies at

the latter institutions. Of course, the lower-income students, who are most

often in need of the best instruction and services and motivating

environment, are the least likely to have access to these. A 1982 state-

commissioned report tabulated the numbers of dependent undergraduates in the

three college systems who came from families with annual incomes of $30,000

83

or more: 64 percent of UC students, 55 percent of CSU students, and 31

percent of community college students fit this category (Lazere 383).

The impact of educational channeling, combined with other institutional

and historic inequities, upon minorities has been well-documented. Blacks

and Hispanics, the two largest nonwhite minorities, are less likely to be

graduated from high school than are whites. Blacks and Hispanics who do

graduate high school are less likely than whites to enter college (Astin

51). Blacks and Hispanics who do enter college are overrepresented in the

two-year institutions (i.e., the college low track), and are also

overrepresented among those who leave college before completing their

bachelor's degrees (Wilson 125, Astin 51). While women do enjoy parity with

men in educational attainment, gender disparity in the job market is even

greater than racial disparity. Among college graduates who worked full-

time year-round in 1987, black males earned 80 percent, black females earned

67 percent, and white females earned 68 percent of what white males earned

(U.S. Bureau 137-44).

A cherished American ideal, alive and well in the composition field,

sees education as the key to eliminating such inequities. We have seen,

however, that education widely supports and reinforces social inequalities.

This is evidenced not only in the tracking systems, with their differential

pedagogies and environments, but in textbooks that underrepresent and

misrepresent the histories and present realities of minorities, women,

workers, and other groups (Anyon 1979; Hahn and Blankenship; Ellington).

The Council on Interracial Books for Children believes that textbooks'

characterizations of U.S. society as a "true democracy," along with

avoidance of our society's structural injustices, leaves students from less

privileged groups with only themselves to blame for their failures.

84

Students reading the widely used secondary level history texts assessed by

the Council in 1977 "might well conclude that women and third world people

are unsuccessful by nature, heredity, or inclination":

Native Americans were dispossessed of their land because they "did not

understand the concept of private land ownership"; Asian workers

received low wages because they were "willing to work for very

little"; Blacks could not find good urban jobs because they were

"unskilled and uneducated"; Chicanos face problems because they are

"not fluent in English"; Filipinos and Puerto Ricans were colonized

because they were "not ready for self-government"; and women "lack

sufficient strength" and are "too frequently pregnant" to be an

important part of the workforce. (90, 91)

That such messages may effectively shape young people's thinking is

suggested in Michelle Fine's 1983 study of New York City youths, mostly

black and Hispanic, who resided at or attended juvenile residential

facilities because of academic, family, or other problems. The surveyed

youths widely agreed with the statement, "My problems are my own fault," and

were more likely to attribute their failures to their personality than to

situational factors such as poverty, race, family, or neighborhood (228).

Fine believes that the individualistic perspectives offered at school tend

to reinforce students' sense of powerlessness when they fail academically.

"Not that these adolescents have no role in creating their own problems, but

the economic and social realities of their lives do create the conditions in

which these youths exist, get into trouble, and survive" (233). She argues

that effective schooling must encourage social criticism and social

advocacy: "For schools not to reproduce self-blaming youths, schools need to

create contexts in which economic and social inequities are examined

85

meaningfully and in which education itself is analyzed critically. Schools

also need to be leaders in agitating for economic and social conditions in

which human needs can be nurtured" (233). The Council on Interracial Books

concurs: "Young people should learn of the societal roadblocks that must be

surmounted before equity is achieved. They should learn why and how to

create the social changes necessary to achieve equity" (29).

Utilitarian writing classrooms that seek to help students "achieve their

goals," without encouraging students to explore the social context in which

they pursue their goals, leave students ill-equipped for their trials in

academe and beyond. As Patricia Bizzell points out, our pedagogical choices

affect a heterogenous student population unequally (1982a: 237). Working-

class college students who flounder in their attempts at "academic

discourse," when it seems to come so readily to their more affluent

classmates, need more than prescriptions for individual success which lend

themselves to rationales of self-doubt and self-blame. They need "the

critical training to trace their victimage to social forces," including the

channeling processes just described, and "hence to work toward control of

their own destinies," such as through recognition of the non-fixed nature of

existing social arrangements (Bizzell 1982b: 196). They also need

pedagogies that affirm and make active use of working-class students' own

knowledge, cultural resources, and histories (Heath; Shor 1987a, 1987b). In

fact, all kinds of students--middle class and working class, majority and

minority, men and women--need legitimated their sense of alienation with

authoritarian classrooms and dull, life-irrelevant curricula that schools

and colleges impose upon them. They need teachers who model alternative,

egalitarian pedagogies, and who offer students frameworks not only for

mastering the intellectual tools of academe, but for critiquing academe,

86

critiquing society, and struggling for democratic power in our social

institutions. In short, the writing classroom needs purposes and visions

that are far broader than the teaching of "effective writing."

The better-world vision implied in the utility model is one in which

individuals more effectively pursue their goals; that is, it represents the

capitalist ideal. As Adam Smith proposed, "the natural effort of every

individual to better his own condition" would carry capitalist society to

wealth and prosperity (540). Smith recognized that this competitive system

involves human costs: "Wherever there is great property, there is great

inequality. For one very rich man, there must be at least five hundred

poor. . . ." (709-10) But, regretfully, human nature makes such costs

inevitable. "The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an

ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce

admit of a remedy" (493). This is not to suggest that Flower, Maimon et

al., and others who indicate narrowly utilitarian purposes for the writing

classroom necessarily share the views of Adam Smith. I wish only to point out

what their indicated purposes seem to socially imply. There may be

legitimate reasons for describing our purposes more narrowly than we

actually conceive them--e.g., keeping one's job, the constraints of

publishing--and the purposes described here and in the pages ahead may tell

as much about the institutional objectives with which we make compromises as

about the views of the authors themselves. Yet, I think that utilitarian

notions of education and corporate-efficiency ideals are a genuine

influence, perhaps the most powerful influence, among theorists of

composition; such certainly holds true for American educational thinkers

historically (Callahan; Shannon; Popkewitz 1987a). I believe it important

that we share our larger purposes in textbooks and professional articles,

87

insofar as the context permits. In the classroom, sharing our purposes and

visions demystifies education for our students. And, if we are open to

students' challenges, to hearing their purposes, to negotiating among our

differing agendas--the teacher's, the students', the institution's--the

writing classroom becomes a more humane and democratic place.

Model II: Individual Growth

Writing does not serve merely a utilitarian function. That is why we

encourage students to appreciate writing that discovers meaning, form,

and self.

--Erika Lindemann, A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers (7)

I'm not saying people are wicked if they keep their real voice a

secret, but they are neglecting a great source of power.

--Peter Elbow, Writing with Power (294)

We need to design a college writing curriculum that will

systematically confront students with tasks to develop their

discursive and cognitive maturity.

--Janice Hays, "The Development of Discursive Maturity in College

Writers" (1983: 141)

I will discuss four aims that seem to fall under the rubric of

individual growth: self-awareness, honesty, intellectual growth, and power

to influence others. Proponents of individual growth rarely indicate their

larger visions, and each of the four aims might be read along utilitarian

lines. For example, Anne Ruggles Gere in The "Why's" of Teaching Composition sees

"integrity and self-knowledge" as having "internal value" for writing

students, but she also stresses how these qualities enhance students'

88

"political power," meaning their ability to persuade an audience. "I use

the word 'political' in its broadest sense--to push the world in a certain

direction, to alter people's ideas and ideals" (28). Toward which direction

does Gere wish students to push the world? Which ideas and ideals does she

believe need altering? That students should push the world toward

"integrity" can be read in Gere, but is not explicitly stated, and we can as

readily construe a utilitarian call to help students push the world wherever

they wish to push it. In fact, the pursuit of personal or intellectual

growth toward unexamined social ends is an overwhelming trend in

composition. However, as we have already addressed general problems in the

utility model, we will now consider the literature as expressing social

visions beyond mere utility.

Self-Awareness

Self-discovery or self-awareness is a key project of the "expressionist"

school of composition (see Berlin's typology, 1982). What students are

supposed to discover about themselves, and toward what end, is not discussed

much in the literature--assumably, expressionists wish their students to

find these answers for themselves. Yet, expressionism does seem to favor

certain kinds of discoveries more than others. Writing teachers "must

recognize and use as the psychologists do in therapy, a person's desire to

actualize himself," says pioneering expressionist Gordon Rohman (1965: 108).

Self-actualization is identified with an inner "sense of power, of self-

fulfillment," and with becoming "more of the person we potentially can be"

(Rohman 1965: 112; 1972: 374). Expressionists believe student writers self-

actualize by approaching their subject with integrity, freshness, a growing

sense of their uniqueness--by discovering what Ken Macrorie calls one's

89

"authentic voice" (1970a: 149), and Peter Elbow, "what your inner self

sounds like" (1981: 306).

The self that the expressionists wish us to discover is thus

characterized by its authenticity (discussed below under "honesty") and its

uniqueness. Expressionist uniqueness, or individuality, is tempered

somewhat with references to commonality--Rohman offers that when a writer

reveals his/her unique experience, "we recognize the experience as our own

too" (1965: 108)--and this individuality-versus-commonality creates a

theoretical tension that begs to be sorted through by proponents of

expressionism. But, in general terms, expressionism regards the writer more

as an individual than a social being. Donald Murray likens our students to

"fingerprints and voiceprints, each different from the other," and advises

the teacher, "If you are able to accept your loneliness, your individuality,

then you are on the way to accepting theirs and helping them to accept it

too" (132, 145). Expressionist students help each other in the search for

their unique truth by responding to drafts. But, as Elbow explains,

students are not to theorize or argue about responses, nor discuss or

theorize about the subject matter addressed by the writer (1973: 85-106).

Afterwards, the writer uses the peer responses "for his own private

purposes" (1973: 140). Likewise, Murray's students have no discussion

before writing since this "may get in the way of the students' writing the

way they write" (75). If, while responding to drafts, students begin

talking about the subject rather than what the writer has said about the

subject, the teacher should "let that run for a short while, but then bring

the discussion back to the treatment of the subject, not the subject itself"

(201). This emphasis on uniqueness and individual truths has political and

social ramifications. Murray observes in the writing classroom a range of

90

experiences and backgrounds, with "welfare mothers sitting beside children

of the corporate rich" (133). For Murray, such differences of life fortune

are part of a "diversity" to be "gloried in," but he does not discuss them

as opportunities for students to explore the impact of social inequalities

in our lives, or as opportunities to make critical judgments or moral

commitments. Whether the student is rich or poor, has higher or lower

aspirations, is academically successful or unsuccessful, they are encouraged

to see their condition as an individual matter, rather than a social and

political matter. Hence, while the assumed goal is self-affirmation,

expressionist individualism becomes a prescription for self-blame.

The expressionist's better world is one in which we pursue our

individual purposes, and it is not incompatible with Adam Smith's capitalist

scheme. But the concern is less with economic structure than with internal

life--a vision well attuned to Eastern philosophies, which are regularly

cited in expressionist literature. Whatever we do in the world, it should

be done with a clear sense of who we are inside. In the face of unjust

authority or unjust institutions, this often means a preference for the

bending-reed approach, for creatively adapting to--rather than collectively

challenging--dislikeable conditions. Consider Elbow's advice to a student

or worker who is unhappy with the writing assignment required by a teacher

or boss:

Perhaps you must write an essay for a teacher who never seems to

understand you; or a report for a supervisor who never seems able to

see things the way you do; or a research report on a topic that has

always scared and confused you. If you try to write in the most

useful voice for this situation--perhaps cheerful politeness or down-

91

to-business impersonality--the anger will probably show through

anyway. . . .

In a situation like this it helps to take a roundabout approach.

First do lots of freewriting where you are angry and tell your reader

all your feelings in whatever voices come. Then get back to the real

topic.

After doing lots more writing and exploration of the topic without worrying

about the tone, the student will find it "relatively easy to revise and

rewrite something powerful and effective for that reader" (1981: 307-8).

Elbow's advice is sound in the sense that we are often caught in circumstances

that forbid open complaint or expression of anger, and that blowing off steam

elsewhere is often necessary to perform well the work required of us. Yet,

because Elbow does not even consider the possibility of turning anger into

positive resistance, nor consider the need for larger political strategies to

undo the hierarchal structures that make us angry in the first place, he

offers us only a vision of perpetual surrender to authority. The

expressionist focus is less toward the transformation of oppressive social

structures, and more toward techniques to help people feel better within

alienating circumstances.

Some interesting calls for self-actualizing pedagogy have been coming

from observers of the labor market. Notably since the late 1960s, the

number of high-skilled, high-paying jobs has not kept pace with our

country's increasing population of college graduates. Russell Rumberger,

whose 1981 book Overeducation in the U.S. Labor Market substantiated several earlier

studies (Berg, Freeman, Carnegie), points to a "growing disparity between

the higher expectations of young people and the lack of opportunity to

satisfy them" (15). Rumberger estimates that 40 percent of all U.S. workers

92

with some college education were overeducated for their jobs in 1976, that

56 percent of younger workers faced this circumstance, and that

projections to 1985 indicate a deepening

overeducation (or under-utilization) trend (86-96). (National and state

education commissions have widely claimed that technology is upgrading

general skill requirements in the job market; this claim is challenged by

Rumberger [1987] and by other contributors in Burke and Rumberger's The Future

Impact of Technology on Work and Education.) James O'Toole, supervisor of the 1973

federally-sponsored study Work in America, worries that the disjunction

between education and employment is creating frustration and low morale

among younger workers--"workers who, ironically, have the educational

backgrounds to articulate their dissatisfactions":

A situation in which taxi drivers have college degrees is not

necessarily benign. . . . College-educated taxi drivers in New York

City have formed a radical socialist Taxi Rank and File Coalition and

control fifteen of fifty garages in the city. The coalition garnered

20 percent of the vote in a 1974 union election. (1977: 59)

O'Toole comforts non-socialist readers that this is not to alarm or forecast

revolution. He believes, however, that the situation demands a new approach

to education, instilling career expectations that are not "lower," but

"realistic." The approach would look to John Dewey's education for "human

growth," which is based on the notion that "most people find life rewarding

and satisfying when it is experienced as a continuous course toward

fulfilling one's individual potential--both on and off the job" (140).

O'Toole explains: "Dewey wanted to equip youth to find educative experience

even in the worst jobs. He felt that each worker should have 'the education

93

which enables him to see within his daily work all there is in it of large

and human significance' " (141). Apparently, a data entry clerk typing

numbers into a computer for eight hours a day may find her work illuminating

and enriching if she has "discovered herself." The key for O'Toole, though,

is that the depressant conditions of the labor market require that we offer

youth a broad, growth-oriented schooling that permits "adaptability and

coping with change in an unpredictable environment. . . . Historically, the

people most able to adapt to the vicissitudes of social life have been the

liberally educated, for whom learning has always been a way of life" (145,

147).

Similar advice is offered by the Carnegie Commission on Higher

Education. Their 1973 report on College Graduates and Jobs, significantly

subtitled Adjusting to a New Labor Market Situation, suggests that "the prospects of

grave political repercussions" can be diminished if college students learn

to "adjust" to new circumstances by "developing realistic expectations about

jobs," and by looking on higher education as personal growth. College

should be seen as "much more than preparation for an occupation," but rather

as an opportunity to "broaden interests that can enrich all of subsequent

life": "Higher education was once most helpful in entering a higher class

status; subsequently, in entering into a better job; and increasingly now,

in entering into a better life" (10). So, students should not expect a

better job, but they should expect a better life! Expressionists and others

who teach composition for growth and self-discovery must develop a clear

conception of their social goals. Do we want self-aware students who are

forever adapting to the "vicissitudes of social life?" Or do we envision

ourselves and our students democratically directing our social course?

94

Honesty

Honesty, integrity, and authenticity are terms that hold mystery for

expressionists, a mystery tied to their belief in a magical Truth to be

discovered deep inside of us. This belief is often only put to us

implicitly, but Elbow is straightforward: the writer's agenda is to "put

magic into words," "the entrance into magic is through the truth," and "the

best advice is simply to believe in magic and find where your magic lies"

(1981: 370). A magical Truth is linked to a magical Unity. Again, the

linkage is often only hinted toward, as in Gere's "wholistic" view of

integrity. Moral honesty is "only part, and a lesser part," of the full

meaning of integrity, says Gere. "Derived from the Latin integritas--defined as

wholeness, entireness, completeness--the word integrity means no element is

missing, nothing is divided or broken" (19). Hence, to write with integrity

means to produce a composition that is whole and complete. But the

implications are more global: "Written composition exemplifies integrity to

students who face a fragmented world. Writing provides a means of uniting,

of making whole. Students who experience integrity in written composition

may be able to extend that integrity to other areas of their lives" (27).

Gere seems to intend a wholeness in student writing that will promote

wholeness in the world. Were Gere looking only for wholeness, however, she

would not use the word integrity, which connotes honesty as well as wholeness.

What may be informing Gere's notion of integrity is a communion-like vision

of humanity searching for the Truth that will unite us all--a notion that

guides many of our religions. The Quakers, for example, regard God as "the

source of unity among conflicting forces" (Brinton 166). "In withdrawing

into the presence of God," say the Quakers, "man seeks to perceive the whole

as it is seen by God. Adherence to the part--to a particular individual,

95

nation, race or class--may be overcome by communion with the Father of all

being" (Brinton 62). The vision finds its modern political expression among

radical pacifists, for whom nonviolence "relies on the power of truth rather

than force of arms and flows from a sense of the underlying unity of all

human beings" (Cooney and Michalowski 11). There are problems in this

vision, which I will take up in my section on collaborative growth. But

those advocating wholeness as a pedagogical aim should make their wholeness

vision clear, so we can frankly assess it.

For now, let us consider the more ordinary idea of honesty in writing,

as suggested by Erika Lindemann: "Because other media threaten to re-create

us as plastic people, Disney delusions, and Madison Avenue stereotypes, we

want students to write honestly, with a kind of tough sensitivity, about

subjects that matter to them" (7). If we link this composition aim to a

vision, it might propose that a better world is one in which people conduct

their lives and affairs honestly, without corruption, and that we begin to

approach that better world by practicing honest writing and honest living

ourselves, and encouraging the same in others. While I want to make clear

that I do value honesty and openness, and I encourage this in the freshman

writing classes that I teach, I want to point how honesty is insufficient as

a non-utilitarian teaching or social goal.

The achievement of an honest society must take into account the forces

that lead people to dishonesty and, in particular, must conceive of social

and economic structures that will favor honest conduct. A society that

allocates inordinate power to small groups and individuals (such as

corporate owners), and then asks those individuals to not abuse that power,

is trusting the wolves with the chickens. When the power holders establish

dishonest or plastic or Madison Avenue institutional priorities, those of us

96

who, as a matter of survival, must work in those institutions are often

forced to serve dishonest priorities. A plain case are workers in the news

media. A 1983 study by Dan Hallin tells of New York Times' El Salvador

correspondent Ray Bonner, whose reportage was seen by influential

conservative critics as too sympathetic to the Salvadoran rebels. In what

many observers believe was a response to political pressures, the Times

pulled Bonner out of El Salvador and later assigned him to the financial

pages (18-19). One reporter wrote to Hallin of the pressures against

expressing a left-of-center perspective in the news:

A reporter will often hold back on following the logic of his own

opinion if other reporters . . . are beginning to jokingly refer to

him as a "Com/symp." Not only is he afraid some right-wing informer

lurking in the bar might overhear . . . he is even more afraid that

his reputation might get back to his desk. (qtd. in Hallin 18)

The quoted reporter's concerns are supported by case after case of firings,

demotions, transfers, and suppressed stories described in Ben Bagdikian's

authoritative critique The Media Monopoly. Any overt punishment of a reporter

delivers a lasting lesson to everyone in the news organization, until

avoidance of the prohibited news subject becomes unconscious, an

"internalized bias," says Bagdikian (217-18). One of the most widely

prohibited subjects is anti-corporate news. Of the 1,110 members of the

professional organization, Investigative Reporters and Editors, only 6 have

corporate life as their beat (56). The problem is exacerbated by the

rapidly centralizing corporate ownership of the media, and by the media's

increasing obligations to corporate advertisers. The bulk of the output

from our country's 25,000 media outlets was controlled, in 1981, by 46

corporations; in 1986, by 29 corporations; in the early nineties, media

97

leaders predict, by a half-dozen corporations (21, 235). Bagdikian

concludes that the heads of these corporations constitute a "new Private

Ministry of Information and Culture" (xx). The media problem may be seen as

the tip of the iceberg as far as constraints on honest expression in our

society. Particularly when people are dissatisfied with institutional

conditions, how often can students be honest with teachers? teachers be

honest with administrators? any subordinate be honest with any superior?

All dangerous undertakings. Writing teachers should certainly strive to

create a classroom environment where students feel safe to say what they

really think. But teachers interested in an honest world should not give

favor to naiveté. Students need opportunities to explore and make judgments

about the stifling of free expression in our lives, and need opportunities

to imagine alternative worlds.

Intellectual Growth

Intellectual or cognitive growth--under such terms as critical

thinking, problem solving, discursive maturity, liberal education--

represents one of the most cited objectives in modern composition. When we

scan the literature for the purposes of such growth, we primarily find the

silence that seems to imply utilitarian ends (see, for example, the

collection gathered by Hays et al., The Writer's Mind). But, again, for our

discussion, let us assume non-utilitarian visions on the part of our

writers. An intellectual objective with growing currency in composition is

that of initiating students into the "academic discourse community" (see

discussions in Bizzell 1982a, 1982b; Bruffee 1982a, 1984; Bartholomae; see

applications in Bartholomae and Petrosky; Mike Rose; Maimon et al.). As

Kenneth Bruffee proposes, "we would see ourselves as people appointed by the

98

knowledge communities our students aspire to join to induct students into

the conversation of educated human beings" (1982a: 111). If viewed as

social vision, Bruffee's proposal offers that a better world is one

populated by intellectuals. That some intellectuals might oppress other

intellectuals does not appear to be at issue in Bruffee's work (and the

issue is heavily ignored in the work of other academic discourse

proponents). What is important is that people will be able to reason

together through a common code, weigh issues abstractly, entertain multiple

perspectives.

Let us accept, for present purposes, that helping students join the

"educated conversation" of academe is a desirable goal--or at least that the

fostering of mass intellectuality is essential to any democratic better

world. Next we must ask whether that educated-conversation project is

enough, and what values and visions inform our approach to that project.

Interesting answers are suggested in the models of moral-cognitive growth

taken up by a number of composition theorists. William Perry's influential

nine-stage scheme, presented in his Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the

College Years (1968), defines a simplistic position of right-wrong dualism, an

intermediate position of relativistic thinking, and an advanced position of

commitment within relativism (discussed in Bizzell 1984, Hays 1987; applied

in Hays 1983, and Rosenberg). Perry's goal is for students to take a moral

stand, but a stand that is based on thoughtful reflection rather than

unexamined truths. We would look for "considered conformity as against

blind conformity, judicious revolt as against blindly reactive revolt"

(209). Perry acknowledges that his model implies particular moral

preferences. "The values implied by the word 'growth' in our scheme are

inescapable" and suggest that "it is better to grow than to arrest growth or

99

to regress" (emphasis in original) (45, 44). He sees his model as

contributing to the making of better persons and making of a better world:

"An advanced person showing a high rate of growth becomes somehow a 'better'

person. . . . We would argue . . . that the final structures of our scheme

express an optimally congruent and responsible address to the present state

of man's predicament" (44, 45). In Perry, the educated better world

readable in Bruffee is more definitely asserted. Moral betterment is

defined not in terms of our specific positions on justice, equality,

political systems, the Ten Commandments, or other principled criteria, but

becomes rather a question of intellectual sophistication. Whether we favor

conformity or revolt, dictatorship or democracy, our positions have equal

merit in Perry's moral scheme, provided they have been reflectively

determined. Paradoxically, Perry asks students to move beyond simple

relativism to commitment, while his own model refuses to make the same

commitment: it is a relativist model (see Kohlberg and Turiel for a fine

critique of relativistic moral education).

Let us offer to Perry's model the example of Henry Kissinger who, like

most members of our country's corporate-political elite, is a highly

educated shoo-in for Perry's ninth stage of moral development. No public

figure in our times has enjoyed wider praise for his intellect. Kissinger

has taught government at Harvard, diplomacy at Georgetown; the catalog at my

local university library lists sixty-four of his works. He served as

national security advisor under Nixon and Ford, secretary of state under

Ford and Carter, and won the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the

agreement that ended the Vietnam War. During his most powerful years under

Nixon, our peace prize winner used his discursive talents to co-engineer the

secret invasion of Cambodia (he personally selected targets for the B-52

100

raids and "seemed to enjoy playing bombadier" [Hersh 122]); to help

orchestrate the overthrow of Allende's elected left-wing government in Chile

and its replacement by a brutal military regime that was friendlier to U.S.

corporate interests; to order illegal wiretapping of the Nixon

administration's political critics, and FBI/CIA spying on anti-war activists

and radicals or suspected radicals. Chronicler William Shawcross adds that

Kissinger's personal qualities were less than exemplary--self-serving, self-

centered, manipulative, anti-democratic (77-79). I do agree with Perry,

Bruffee, and others that intellectuality is better than non-intellectuality,

reflectiveness better than non-reflectiveness. But educators need

pedagogical models and visions that help us make the link between

intellectuality and our commitments to a just and humane world; ethically

relativistic models do not address this need.

One attempt to join intellectual growth with an explicit commitment to

justice can be found in the moral-cognitive model of Lawrence Kohlberg (see

Miller for an analysis of freshman papers that uses Kohlberg). Like Perry

and many other developmentalists, Kohlberg proposes a curriculum of moral

dilemmas that stimulate students' thinking and advancement to higher stages.

But, where Perry defines moral maturity as arriving at a well-considered

commitment to (seemingly) any position, Kohlberg's highest stage involves a

well-considered commitment to "principles of justice." Unfortunately,

Kohlberg's justice principles are defined vaguely as "reciprocity and

equality of the human rights" and "respect for the dignity of human beings

as individual persons," and there are indications that what Kohlberg has in

mind is capitalist justice. What is more, Kohlberg claims that his moral

stages and principles are "culturally universal" and, specifically, that

they are free of any class bias: "The moral stages do not represent an

101

American middle-class value bias; they are universal" (Kohlberg and Turiel

414). Kohlberg's purportedly universal, class-neutral system is reflected

in the U.S. Constitution--"The moral basis of the Constitution and the major

moral values of our society are the principles of justice which we say are

the core principles of any mature morality" (Kohlberg and Turiel 442)--and

in the value postulates of "ethical liberalism" (Kohlberg and Mayer 472).

On ethical liberalism, Kohlberg and co-author Rochelle Mayer cite the works

of Mill, Dewey, Locke, Kant, John Rawls, and a "modern statement" by R.S.

Peters that relates this liberal tradition to education. In Peters, it is

argued that a just society need not be an egalitarian one, since egalitarian

logic would finally force us to genetic breeding to ensure that all of us

are born with similar assets; hence, egalitarianism leads to infringements

of liberty (57). In Rawls, whom Kohlberg frequently cites in his works, we

are advised that inequalities are justified if the entrepreneurial

incentives afforded by the inequalities lead to more efficient production,

thereby raising the long-term prospects of society's least advantaged

members (Rawls 78, 302; Martin 66). Although Kohlberg does not speak

directly to such points, we do notice that his list of "universal values"

includes "property," "economic and business contracts," and "equality of

opportunity," but does not include equal distribution of wealth (Kohlberg

and Turiel 433). We need not grapple here with the arguments about equality

and justice in order to agree that, in a world that includes millions of

socialists and other egalitarians, Kohlberg's principles of justice are far

from universal.

Those who teach writing to promote intellectual growth--and perhaps all

of us do share this aim--need to define critically the growth we wish to

encourage. Suppose we accept that values and visions are implicated in any

102

pedagogy we choose. Suppose also that we reject Perry's moral relativism,

and Kohlberg's capitalist universals. In fact, suppose we reject in general

the search for universal values: after all, the value of "justice" may be

fairly universal, but the more definite our conception of justice, the less

universalist we become. We might then conclude that our responsibility as

educators is to commit to, and teach from within, a moral position that is

not universally shared. That is, we would embrace biased teaching,

willfully shaping our pedagogies to accord with our non-universal values.

The readings, questions, and ways of thinking that we introduce and do not

introduce to our students would become, rather than half-conscious

reflections of our social-political interests, fully conscious reflections

of those interests. And what shall those interests be? By what criteria

ought we to select our values? One answer is suggested by Leon Trotsky in

his 1931 essay "Their Morals and Ours":

Whoever does not care to return to Moses, Christ, or Mohammed; whoever

is not satisfied with eclectic hodge-podges must acknowledge that

morality is a product of social development; that there is nothing

invariable about it; that it serves social interests; that these

interests are contradictory; that morality more than any form of

ideology has a class character. (377-78)

The values we choose should express the social interests we support in a

struggling world.

Writing as Individual Power

We turn now to the pedagogical aim as suggested by Andrea Lunsford: "As

always, the power to write, to express clearly and truly, translates into

political, economic, and social power." (1987: 253). That effective writing

wields power--i.e., the power to influence others, the power to change the

103

world--is a fairly universal assumption in composition. It must be pointed

out, however, that this power is most often conceived as an individual,

rather than collective, pursuit. As Elbow urges, we should never conclude

"that individuals are helpless to change the world and that words cannot

move mountains" (1981: 370). Hence, we learn that individuals can move

mountains, but we do not learn that individuals must typically join

collectives to move mountains.

While the authors who teach writing as individual power give little

indication of how they hope such power will be used--and we may therefore

read them as utilitarians--we might also read them as pursuing a democratic

vision. They are perhaps proposing that we can democratize society by

helping more individuals become articulate writers and speakers. This

vision is a seductive one since it is certainly true that a participatory

democracy requires an articulate citizenry. We should note, however, that

those who offer writing as individual power are not discussing the need for

radical social transformations as prerequisite to democracy. The

assumption, rather, is that ours is already a democratic society,

structurally speaking, and that our task remains to provide every individual

the literate tools needed to assert their voice within our democratic

framework. This seems clearly the view of Elaine Maimon et al.:

Learning how to articulate ideas for oneself and then for others

prepares students for public discourse in the society at large. . . .

Historically, in Europe, a university was intended to be a training

ground for the religious and secular ruling classes. In the United

States, Jeffersonian democracy makes all citizens members of the

ruling classes. Each person in a democracy has a vote; each person

should have a voice. (1984: ix)

104

While few put it so stoutly, similar democratic assumptions widely inform

the composition and English fields. At the 1987 English Coalition

Conference, representatives of the National Council of Teachers of English,

the Conference on College Composition and Communication, and other major

English associations held that language arts instruction "can and should

make an indispensable contribution to educating students for participation

in democracy." Abilities to communicate, listen, think critically, and to

appreciate multiple perspectives and cultural diversity were seen as the

essential requirements for democratic participation (Lloyd-Jones and

Lunsford 85). Since our social context is held to be democratic, our

educational task becomes simply a matter of preparing students to become

effective participants in the civic process. Also, since a democratic

society does not deny power to its citizens, the powerless ways that writing

teachers often recognize in their students and strive to help students

overcome are seen primarily in psychological terms, or as internalized

cultural messages--not as a reflection of genuine social powerlessness. Says

Elbow, "Many people are tricked into feeling more powerless and helpless

than they are because of ways in which they were brought up and because of

patterns in our culture" (1978: 63).

The goal of empowering students toward democracy deserves support, and

writing can be an essential tool in that empowerment. Also, writing

teachers do need to address the psychological dimension of powerlessness

noted by Elbow: members of subordinate groups widely internalize their

social status, and this becomes a barrier to their political advancement

(Sennett and Cobb). Nevertheless, any strategy for student empowerment must

begin by recognizing the realities of our social status, the real

powerlessness that most of us live with daily, and the fundamentally

105

undemocratic character of American society. From C. Wright Mills' 1956

classic The Power Elite to more recent studies of the processes of governing

circles, a substantial literature has documented the existence of a socially

cohesive American ruling class, estimated by William Domhoff at 0.5 percent

of the U.S. population. This class wields a dominant influence in both

major political parties; their pro-corporate, anti-labor, and anti-third

world objectives are formulated in policy planning groups such as the

Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Committee for

Economic Development, the Business Roundtable, and are consistently

implemented by the world's leading capitalist states (Domhoff; Dye; Shoup

and Minter; Sklar 1980a; Parenti; Moody 127-46). The most powerful policy

planning group is the 1800-member Council on Foreign Relations. Founded in

1921, the CFR has played a decisive role in U.S. foreign policy under every

administration since at least 1940. In Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign

Relations and United States Foreign Policy, Laurence Shoup and William Minter's

historical case studies reveal the CFR's central role in setting the terms

for U.S. participation in World War II; in planning a post-war global-

capitalist order under U.S. economic, political, and military dominance; in

inspiring the U.S.-Soviet cold war; in guiding U.S. military intervention in

Vietnam; and in prompting the renewal of U.S.-China relations under the

Nixon administration. The capitalist class is well-represented in the CFR

and especially predominant in the CFR leadership. Shoup and Minter's

background studies found that 55 percent of the general members, 84 percent

of the directors, and 93 percent of the officers were members of the

capitalist elite (91). Shoup and Minter note that the CFR represents

primarily the largest corporations, who have the most interest in protecting

and expanding overseas investments. The top ten of Fortune's top five hundred

106

industrial corporations averaged four CFR members from each corporate board

of directors (97).

In 1973, under the initiative of CFR chairman and Chase Manhattan Bank

chairman David Rockefeller, the CFR established the Trilateral Commission,

in which America's ruling elite could develop cooperative global plans with

their elite counterparts in Japan and Western Europe. In a 1980 anthology

exploring this 300-member planning group, editor Holly Sklar calls

trilateralism "the creed of an international ruling class whose locus of

power is the global corporation" and who "view the entire world as their factory, farm,

supermarket, and playground" (1980b: 8-9). According to the Trilateral

Commission, "history shows that every effective international system requires a custodian"

(qtd. in 1980b: 8). A global custodian may well be required. But

membership on the commission--and on the CFR--is by invitation only, and

these bodies are not held democratically responsible to the world over which

they aim to preside. As an indicator of these organizations' continuing

power in government, over ninety appointees in the Carter administration

were present or former members of the CFR, the Trilateral Commission (TC),

or both. Jimmy Carter, Vice-President Walter Mondale, Secretary of State

Cyrus Vance, and Defense Secretary Harold Brown each belonged to both

organizations. Reagan's first administration included over eighty

appointees with present or former CFR or TC affiliation, including George

Bush (who resigned from both organizations during the 1980 campaign),

Secretary of State Alexander Haig (CFR, TC) and his successor George Shultz

(CFR), Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger (CFR, TC) and his successor Frank

Carlucci (CFR) (Perloff 158, 168-69; Dye 250-51; Domhoff 139-40; Sklar and

Everdell 91-92).

107

While American democracy allows the common people some voice in

government, such as the right to choose between an affluent-white-male-pro-

corporate Democrat or an affluent-white-male- pro-corporate Republican, the

system does not require democratic pretensions in the economic sphere.

America's richest 1 percent can control 34 percent of all national wealth

and 45 percent of financial assets without transgressing Jeffersonian

democracy (Stephen Rose 9). General Motors can deprive 30,000 workers of

their livelihood at Flint, Michigan, in order to seek out cheaper labor

abroad, while democracy thrives (see Michael Moore's recent film Roger and Me).

In the daily life of the American family, classroom, and workplace, we may

uncover violence, fear, and the quiet normalcy of dictatorship, but the

powerlessness of a silenced child is only a state of mind in our democratic

society.

If we define democracy as having a direct voice or accountable

representation in all the decisions that affect us--most vitally, decisions

regarding our social resources--it becomes clear that non-democracy and non-

power for the many are structural norms in our society. Democracy so

defined allows not only a more adequate social critique, but a more adequate

vision of empowerment, than does democracy defined along Jeffersonian lines.

It allows us to conceive of student empowerment as something more bold than

helping students "discover their power" while they (and we) remain

institutional subordinates all of our lives.

The degree to which writing can empower students, or can be translated

into social-political power, should neither be underestimated nor

overestimated. The power of any particular piece of writing to effect

change in readers or effect change in the world may be enhanced by

"authentic voice" or other qualities of its content, but the social context

108

of the communication is what is crucial. Bagdikian tells of two letters

written in 1969 by Richard Berlin, president of the Hearst Corporation, to

President Nixon and to Nixon's assistant attorney general, asking the

administration to support the Newspaper Preservation Act. The act would

exempt Hearst and other large media chains from anti-monopoly laws that

forbid price-fixing agreements between companies. After receiving Berlin's

letters, the Nixon administration reversed its previous opposition to the

newspaper bill, and the bill was passed. The media giants returned the

favor in 1972. Watergate stories potentially damaging to Nixon were widely

suppressed by major media in the months before the election, and Nixon,

whose prior relationship with the media had been far from happy, received

the highest percentage of newspaper endorsements of any candidate in modern

times (90-101). How many richly voiced letters from average citizens would

it have taken to persuade Nixon to maintain his original stand against the

Newspaper Preservation Act? A thousand letters? Too few. A million?

Perhaps. In an historical context where the major media outlets are

controlled by a handful of giants, and where average citizens who would like

to influence others through their writing have almost no alternative press,

our most persuasive words have only limited power. Of course, we do have

the capacity to create new contexts, to build vast social movements and

popular presses from neighborhood to national levels that could allow

overwhelming numbers of us to become truly influential writers. And our

students today do need writing and other intellectual talents to help them

begin such a project. But Elbow, Lunsford, and others who rightfully seek

to help students find power with writing must also address directly, and

involve students in exploring, the social problematics of that empowerment.

109

We need to envision and strategize toward social contexts in which we can

practice meaningful democratic power.

Model III: Individual Mobility

They looked to education for the promises their parents had so often

mouthed, and they reaffirmed a faith that schooling ought to make a

difference in the job a man or woman could expect.

--Shirley Brice Heath, Ways with Words (28)

The men wanted to change their lives, and for all their earlier

failures, they still held onto an American dream: Education held the

power to equalize things. After Vietnam, they had little doubt about

what their next step had to be: up and out of the pool of men society

could call on so easily to shoot and be shot at.

--Mike Rose, Lives on the Boundary (137)

Americans widely see education as door to the better jobs and the better

life. In a 1989 national survey of college freshmen, the leading "very

important" reason for going to college was "to be able to get a better job"

(cited by 76 percent of respondents), and the leading important objective in

life was to be "very well-off financially" (cited by 75 percent). Students'

goals are not narrowly materialistic, however: opportunities for

challenging, interesting work, and "to be helpful to others" were cited more

often than "high anticipated earnings" as essential in career choice ("Fact

File"). If there are such things as universal human pursuits, I would think

that material well-being and satisfying labor ought to be among them.

Composition teachers can widely agree that the instruction we offer should

help students in their better-job quest. But our different assessments of

110

the world, and different hopes, lead us to help students differently. The

composition field's prevailing visionary model in terms of career and

economic advancement is that of individual mobility. The mobility ideal is

linked to a conscious or unconscious acceptance of the capitalist order.

Capitalism works, or can be made to work, and those at the social bottom--

for whom the system has not worked--can reach upwards through education.

Some mobility proponents, such as Ross Winterowd, are optimistic about the

upward road: "The challenge in our capitalist democracy is convincing the

have-nots, who in general are the illiterate or marginally literate, that

the American dream is real, attainable, and worthwhile" (204). Others, such

as Lindemann, think the lanes are closing: "The argument that writing opens

doors to many satisfying, lucrative professions no longer holds up as well

as it used to." But we are advised to edge into traffic and make the best

of it. "Even though many entry-level jobs do not demand exceptional writing

skills, students applying for these positions are instantly branded as

illiterate if their resumes or letters contain misspelled words. . . . The

ability to write well still creates economic power" (4). Some touters of

mobility recognize that the obstacles to advancement are not only

educational but political. In a 1981 symposium on Black English and

education, Michigan's state employment commission director Martin Taylor

cites three major barriers to minority success in the working world: lack

of education, lack of skills, and discrimination. Regarding the last,

Taylor observes that employer discrimination continues despite legislation

and affirmative action programs. He suggests not the need for more

effective political action, however, but argues that "the best protection

against chronic unemployment is still education" (242). Discrimination is

111

thus left as a social given; education will help minorities make do in a

society that will be unfair to them in perpetuity.

The mobility question has been central in the debates over school

policies on Black English and other non-privileged dialects. After the 1979

King court case ordered the Ann Arbor, Michigan, school district to recognize

the validity of Black English and to take students' home dialects into

account in the teaching of Standard American English, some black leaders

protested the case because, as Detroit columnist Carl Rowan asserted, the

King approach would "consign millions of ghetto children to a linguistic

separation which would guarantee that they will never make it in the larger

U.S. society" (qtd. in Smitherman 1981: 53). Geneva Smitherman's reply to

Rowan and other King critics takes on their mobility assumptions and places

these in global context. "Note that it is not high unemployment, or the

shifting balance in world economic power, or the crises caused by a highly

advanced, technological capitalist society in the United States but

'linguistic separation,' mind you, that will keep black children and youth

from making it in the United States." Smitherman argues that the policies

proposed by black middle-class leadership "only ensure that a few blacks

slide past the gatekeepers":

Limited by an analysis based solely on race, without considering

issues of class, they are unable to propose solutions that address the

broader structural crises that affect all groups in United States

society, but affect poor blacks with disproportionate severity. While

King reminds us that standard English is a sine qua non of survival in

our complex society, the harsh reality is that if all blacks commanded

the language of textbooks and technocracy, the system, as it is

presently constructed, could not accommodate all of us. Further, if

112

our society could solve the problem of black unemployment--and that's

a big if--it would only shift the burden to some other group. It

would do nothing to address the fundamental cause of unemployment.

(53)

Implied in Smitherman's response is a proposal not simply for

multilingual/multicultural education, but for political multicultural

education, and for broad analyses and political programs outside the

classroom (see Smitherman 1987). It is important to stress such political

and systemic contexts because, within a new composition trend toward

linguistically and culturally sensitive pedagogy, there is not always a

willingness to link insights about "cultural capital" with the implications

of such insights regarding the need to eliminate race, class, and gender

oppression. In Heath's Ways with Words we are treated to an exquisite

ethnography of working-class life, and then to a very compelling pedagogical

application in which working-class children study their own community's life

and culture while making their transition into the abstract conceptual

discourse of the school. We look forward to what conclusions Heath may draw

for linking such pedagogy to struggles for transcending the working-class

poverty and powerlessness her ethnography describes. But we are offered

only that the school-acquired conceptual habits "may have . . . relevance

to future vocational goals" (363), that working-class parents should learn

to help their children plan their futures as do middle-class parents in the

larger town (364), and that allowing working-class ways of life to become a

more integral part of school culture can work against the role of schools in

legitimating middle-class power (369). These are valid designs and yet

politically limited. Heath's conclusion looks toward the vocational

advancement of individuals, not toward the political advancement of

113

collectives. She rightfully challenges the school's role in reproducing

unequal class relations, but what about the larger system that makes

inevitable such class inequalities? Heath answers:

It is easy to claim that a radical restructuring of society or the

system of education is needed for the kind of cultural bridging

reported in this book to be large scale and continuous. I have chosen

to focus on the information and bridging skills needed for teachers

and students as individuals to make changes which were for them

radical, and to point to ways these cultural brokers between

communities and classrooms can perhaps be the beginning of larger

changes. (369)

What Heath doesn't say is that radical teachers (e.g., Freire and others)

also work on small, local ventures as the modest "beginning of larger

changes," but that their work seeks to prefigure the larger changes by opening

up dialogues and critical studies on social-political transformation.

Culturally sensitive curricula uninformed by transformative vision can

become just another strategy for individual growth--reinforcing the very

mobility myths and individualist ideologies that isolate, discourage, and

often defeat working-class youth. The pedagogies Heath introduced into the

Piedmont schools, while stirring enthusiasm and promise, were later phased

out, and Heath cites as a contributing factor the movement toward back-to-

basics curricula and pressures to teach to standardized tests (356). Such

eventualities remind us that we cannot afford to put our larger political

needs to the margins of education.

Redefining Career Preparation

114

In recent college composition trends, career preparation has meant

teaching students to work in collaborative groups, to recognize and master

various kinds of discourse, and to think critically through technocratic

problem-solving models. Students, in other words, are to learn the writing

and conceptual modes, and the cooperative working habits, required on the

job in technical, professional, and administrative fields. The approach is

based upon what we might call the American-dream model of education, which

encourages students to see themselves as autonomous individuals pursuing

their private career successes in an unproblematic workplace, an

unproblematic labor market, and an unproblematic world. Meanwhile, the

world beyond academe is forcing workers--including college-educated

workers--to cut back upon their dreams, lower their expectations. The

cutback demands--e.g., Americans' average annual income in constant dollars

has declined 14 percent since 1973 (U.S. Census 110-12)--have their source

in global economic trends. The profit rate on investments, the most

important indicator of economic health, took an international decline of 30-

40 percent in 1965-75 and has never recovered. At the same time, U.S.

corporations, which enjoyed happy expansion and world dominance from the

early fifties to mid-sixties, have lost the competitive advantage to

Japanese and, to a lesser extent, Western European firms. According to

labor journalist Kim Moody's An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism, U.S.

business leaders responded to the new circumstances by getting better

organized as a class in order to pursue mutual interests, such as in cutting

labor costs (by forcing union concessions, busting unions, transferring

production to third world countries or to weakly organized regions in the

U.S.); shifting the tax burden away from the wealthy and toward middle- and

low-income groups; and weakening workers' bargaining power by cutting back

115

the social net of unemployment benefits and poverty programs. Employers'

leading political lobby, the Business Roundtable, has successfully won labor

law reforms friendly to business, while detoothing the regulatory agencies

most favorable to labor, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity

Commission, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the

National Labor Relations Board. One manifestation of employers'

aggressiveness against labor in recent decades is the growing number of

unfair labor practice charges against employers, from 3,655 in 1957 to

31,281 in 1980. Moody notes that most unfair labor practice charges stem

from the firing of workers who openly support unions (119) (the joint

employer offensive is detailed also in Slaughter and Goldfield).

College graduates entering today's labor force will encounter employer

drives not only to lower wages and reduce worker rights, but to routinize

the work process itself, while placing effective control into increasingly

fewer hands. The historic efforts to rationalize labor in order to enhance

profit have traditionally been focused upon industrial workers (Braverman;

Edwards; Noble). However, clerical and service sector workers experienced

similar processes as their ranks swelled during the 1950s, and numerous

studies have identified professional, technical, and administrative workers

as the newest target for labor rationalization, i.e., controlling the former

controllers (Garson; Johnson; Zimbalist). Dale Johnson and Christine

O'Donnell observe tendencies toward "dequalification" and erosion of

privilege within many middle class occupations:

The conditions of work . . . begin to change from relative

independence to dependence, from varied, sometimes interesting, and

creative activity to routine task, from superordination to

subordination, from job security to job insecurity, from employment as

116

educated and skilled labor to underemployment in terms of education

and skill levels attained, and from economic well-being to relatively

reduced levels of income. (230)

Philip Kraft traces such changes in the field of computer programming.

During the 1950s, "programming remained very much an individual affair.

Programs, including the largest and most complex computer systems, were

usually put together from start to finish by the same individual or group

that worked on every aspect of the job. . . ." The programs had distinct

"personalities"--some terse and elegant, others long and highly detailed,

and some programmers "could make the machines 'do tricks' which were

mysteries to the uninitiated" (56). But, in the early 1960s, idiosyncratic

software production gave way to "structured programming" and

"modularization," which broke down software systems into discrete units.

Programmers found their options limited to a handful of logical procedures,

and they were expressly prohibited from asking for information not called

for within the narrow tasks allocated to them. The majority of programmers

lost the independence and control they had once enjoyed--and which had

allowed them to demand high salaries--while a smaller number of systems

analysts now reserved the privilege of planning whole projects, parceling

out smaller parts to the programmers and coders under their supervision.

The routinization of teachers' labor is perhaps better known to us.

According to Patrick Shannon's Broken Promises: Reading Instruction in Twentieth-Century

America, public schoolteachers saw widespread loss of their once-held

autonomy when, beginning in the late 1910s, Frederick Taylor's industrial

principles of scientific management became the leading model for designing

curricula and school operations. Over the decades, teachers' curricular

planning roles would be increasingly appropriated by administrators, local

117

school boards or state commissions, and textbook publishers. Shannon

characterizes the current back-to-basics and standardizing trends in reading

instruction as scientific management gone modern:

The process of reading is segmented into discrete skills so that

increments of progress can be identified across the grades. . . .

Objective tests replace teachers' judgement concerning whether or not

a student is to be considered literate because teachers' judgement is

unpredictable. . . . Next, a search is made for the most efficient

instructional means to move students through the levels of

reading. . . . And finally because few teachers would originally

choose this organization for their instructional behavior, a formal

hierarchy of authority is established within reading programs. (57)

Our college graduates will face tremendous adversity in their pursuit of

satisfying careers, and the college classroom should gear students

intellectually for their present and future challenges. Some

compositionists may argue that our field's growing orientation toward

academic discourse and critical thought provides the very tools students

will most need in taking on their local and global problems. Perhaps so.

But there is good reason to believe that the discourses being taught at the

university may actually contribute to students' sense of political

helplessness in the working world. What struck Kraft in his interviews with

computer programmers was how few of these mostly college-trained workers

understood the organizational relationships at their workplaces, or

recognized the systematic nature of the routinizing and deskilling processes

to which management was subjecting them. "Relationships, for example,

between a programmer and a manager were almost always viewed as personal

ones, rather than as part of an overall structure which individuals were

118

inserted into or removed from as the requirements of the organization

demanded" (6). Nearly all the programmers believed that their salaries

depended on individual negotiations with their managers, and were unaware

that salaries and raises were pre-plotted in narrow increments by personnel

departments. The programmers' lack of knowledge about salary derived, in

part, from a professionalism promoted by their companies that holds it

"unprofessional" for programmers to discuss their salaries with one another.

This same ideology has kept unions out of virtually all programming

workplaces, with management insisting that "programmer professionalism" and

unions do not mix. Programmers are thus left with deceptive notions of

individual advancement, Kraft observes, "while major decisions about the

work they do, pay, and about their career prospects are settled for them in

an impersonal way by thoroughly organized employers" (96). Joan Greenbaum,

a veteran in the computer field, writes that many programmers did try to

fight the changing conditions of their labor during the 1960s, but "we

lacked a conceptual base from which to present our arguments" (40). As a

result, she theorizes, many programmers feeling the tide of job degradation

"only too gladly clung to the belief that they were professional" (49). The

professionalism provided a modicum of self-esteem for workers who were

losing their power and control on the job but who saw no way of resisting

the process. Professional ideology provides similar solace to

schoolteachers being deprived of the kind of autonomy traditionally

associated with professionals, as Kathleen Densmore found in her 1984

teacher case studies. "With its emphasis on individualism . . . the

ideology of professionalism prevents teachers from recognizing that their

problems are shared by other teachers, and other workers; consequently, they

119

tend to view failures and problems in personal terms, and do not seek social

or institutional structural changes" (155).

Of course, teachers have been much more successful than have programmers

at rising above this debilitating professionalism, recognizing their worker

status, and getting organized. At the same time, the ideology remains

perhaps the leading obstacle to teachers' further political advancement, as

it has also among college faculty (Meisenhelder). Teachers learn their

"professionalism," just as they learn to fatalistically accept existing

educational systems and methods as "just the way things are," at the

university (Shannon 52-60; Popkewitz 1987a). Students need intellectual

training that allows them to move beyond a personal view of their problems

in a fragmented world, and toward a social view of our problems in a

connected world. They need discourses that address existing conditions not

as reified givens to which we must unavoidably adapt, but as historically

contingent phenomena waiting for our collective intervention.

Model IV: Collaborative Growth

In business and industry . . . and in professions such as medicine,

law, engineering, and architecture . . . collaboration is the norm.

All that is new in collaborative learning, it seems, is the systematic

application of collaborative principles to that last bastion of

hierarchy and individualism, the American college classroom.

--Kenneth Bruffee, "Collaborative Learning and the 'Conversation

of Mankind' " (647)

Leaning to invent in communities will do more than enable success in

classrooms and careers. It is absolutely essential to achieving peace

120

and, indeed, maintaining life on this planet in the twentieth century

and beyond.

--Karen Burke LeFevre, Invention as a Social Act (129)

In the growing composition trends toward collaborative learning and

collaborative writing, collaboration normally refers to more than simply

having students meet in groups to respond to individual papers; rather, it

entails group decision making and group projects. As with other trends, the

collaborative literature emphasizes utilitarian ends--that working in groups

leads to better ideas, that it teaches the cooperative skills needed for

academic and career success. Yet, we may also read the literature as

implying a particular social vision, and occasionally we find explicit

references to such larger aspirations. The collaborative better world is

one in which people have learned to get along, where we either accept our

differences or strive to work them out through cooperative and peaceful

means. Oppressive gender, race, or class structures need not lead to

divisive political battles in the collaborative better world: cooperative

conflict resolution is the key. This vision, which we will call social

harmonist, is not limited to advocates of collaborative learning; in fact, we

may see it as implied in any pedagogy that encourages a strategy of

adjustment or accommodation, rather than challenge or confrontation, with

the existing world order. The harmonist ideal is strongly suggested in

Elbow's non-adversarial "believing game" (where we share perceptions and

experiences), which Elbow says is more likely than the "doubting game"

(where we try to find holes in the other person's view) to "keep people

willing to talk to each other if the game breaks down" (1973: 175). The

style of the doubting game is "closing, clenching," "competitive,"

121

"aggressive: meeting threat by beating it down," while the believing game is

"opening, loosening," "cooperative," "nonaggressive: meeting threat by

bending, incorporating; nonviolent" (178-79). We also see the harmonist

vision in Edward Corbett's "rhetoric of the open hand," which Corbett favors

over the "rhetoric of the closed fist." Writing in 1969, Corbett identifies

close-fisted rhetoric with the sixties' movements, whose angry mass

demonstrations represent a "retreat from reason," whereas open-handed

rhetoric would emphasize logical persuasion through "normal channels of

communication." Corbett considers coercion and violence as expressions of

irrationality, and cites the modern father of nonviolence: "Mahatma Gandhi

once said, 'Violence is essentially wordless, and it can begin only where

thought and rational communication have broken down. Any society which is

geared for violent action is by that fact systematically unreasonable' "

(293).

What kind of social harmony are Corbett and others proposing? Will our

better world operate peacefully because the gross inequities and

expansionist economic systems that undergird war between classes and between

states have been replaced by egalitarian, cooperative systems? Or will

peace come because subordinates have learned to cooperate with

subordinators, and superpower elites have learned to rule the globe

collaboratively through East-West détente and Trilateral Commissions?

Corbett acknowledges such concerns:

The younger generation may regard the open hand as bearing too much of

a resemblance to the glad hand; they may see the civility, decorum,

and orderliness of the older mode of discourse as a facade behind

which the establishment in all ages has perpetrated injustices on the

have-nots. (296)

122

Corbett answers, however, that if there has been hypocrisy in the older

rhetoric, it has been "the result of human frailty, not of an inherent

weakness" in the ancient art of civil persuasion (296). Corbett's subtle

defense seems to argue that promoting harmony in an unequal order is not

necessarily hypocritical, and that through peaceful, open-handed persuasion

we might convince the elites to rule more benignly, to rise above the

"human frailty" that had led them to tyrannical action.

Gandhi's Social Harmony

Harmonist ideologies are traditional means by which ruling groups

encourage acceptance of their rule--or have been means for directing lower-

class resistance into relatively safe channels that leave intact ruling

class power. Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolence represented one such safe

channel; his political thought and practice provide one of our richest

sources for the study of harmonious social theory. Behind the Indian

leader's politics lay a social vision that is far from egalitarian, or far

from what most of us would consider egalitarian. Gandhi was a firm believer

in the Hindu caste system, which holds that each person's life occupation is

determined by heredity. Critical of modern corruptions of the system which

have produced innumerable castes and subcastes, each associated with

gradations of superiority and inferiority, Gandhi called for a return to the

four original caste divisions, called varnas: "The law of Varna prescribes

that a person should, for his living, follow the occupation of his

forefathers. I hold this to be a universal law governing the human family"

(1965: 47). If all accepted their heredity occupation--whether teacher,

warrior, merchant, or laborer--with no sense of superiority or inferiority,

then social peace could be had, Gandhi proposed.

123

If [the four Varnas] are members of one body, how can one be superior

or inferior to one another? . . . It is this canker [of superiority

and inferiority] that is at the root of the various ills of our time,

especially class wars and civil strife. . . . These wars and strife

could not be ended except by the observance of the law of Varna. For

it ordains that every one shall fulfill the law of one's being by

doing in a spirit of duty and service that to which one is born.

(1965: 8-9)

There was nothing unequal in allotting one group power and authority over

other groups, in Gandhi's caste conception. This same principle applied to

class relationships as well as caste. His theory of trusteeship forbade

tenant farmers from seizing and distributing the rich landlords' property;

rather, the rich would administer their wealth for the benefit of all.

We may not forcibly dispossess the Zamindars [landlords]. . . . They

only need a change of the heart. When that is done, and when they

learn to melt at their tenants' woe, they will hold their lands in

trust for them, will give them a major part of the produce, keeping

only sufficient for themselves. (1970: 23-24)

Again, the existence of rulers and ruled would imply no inequality, Gandhi

imagined, and no disharmony:

What is needed is not the extinction of landlords and capitalists, but

a transformation of the existing relationship between them and the

masses into something healthier and purer. (1970: 41)

Everybody would regard all as equal with oneself and hold them

together in the silken net of love. . . . We would hold as equal the

toiling labourer and the rich capitalist. (1962, vol 2: 335)

Relations between the sexes involved a similar standard.

124

I do not envisage the wife, as a rule, following an avocation

independently of her husband. The care of the children and the upkeep

of the household are quite enough to fully engage all her

energy. . . . The man should look to the maintenance of the family,

the woman to household management; the two thus supplementing and

complementing each other's labours. (1965: 32)

As with class and caste, the sexual division of labor implied no inequality:

"Nor do I see in this any invasion of woman's rights or suppression of her

freedom. . . . The woman who knows and fulfills her duty realizes her

dignified status. She is the queen, not the slave, of the household over

which she presides" (1965: 33). It should be noted that such questions of

equality were widely debated among Indian activists and intellectuals during

Gandhi's time (though more so on caste and class than gender questions), and

that Gandhi was making choices between available alternatives. Gandhi's

organization, the Indian National Congress, became notably split during the

1930s between left and right political camps, with Gandhi the most

influential conservative voice (Bose; Ambedkar; Rao; Mukerjee;

Namboodiripad; Sarkar).

Despite his elitist visions, Gandhi genuinely sympathized with oppressed

people and devoted his life to their uplift. But because he could never

break his sense of loyalty to the Indian upper class, Gandhi's politics were

haunted by contradiction. On the one hand, his ability as a spiritual

leader to move the Indian masses into political action was unequaled; on the

other hand, he carefully controlled that action, narrowing its political

scope, ensuring that the thrust of resistance would be directed against

British colonial interests, not against wealthy Indian interests. Thus,

when Indian workers and peasants repeatedly read Gandhi's anti-colonial non-

125

cooperation campaigns as a signal to rise up against all authority, Gandhi

fought to restrain them. In a February 1921 response to spreading

industrial strikes that were partly inspired by the Gandhi-led nationalist

protests, Gandhi warned: "Strikes are the order of the day. They are a

symptom of the existing unrest. . . . There are not wanting labour leaders

who consider that strikes may be engineered for political purposes. In my

opinion it will be a most serious mistake to make use of labour strikes for

such a purpose. I don't deny that such strikes can serve political ends.

But they do not fall within the plan of non-violent non-co-operation" (1958-

82, vol. 19: 365-66). In May 1921, Gandhi delivered a similar message to

tenant farmers who had launched rent strikes and other protests in northern

India's United Provinces: "The Kisan [tenant] movement has received impetus

from Non-co-operation but it is anterior to and independent of it. Whilst

we will not hesitate to advise the Kisans when the moment comes, to suspend

payment of taxes to the government, it is not contemplated that at any stage

of Non-co-operation we would seek to deprive the Zamindars [landlords] of

their rent" (1958-82, vol. 20: 106).

Gandhi's nonviolent politics cannot be understood apart from his

historic role in containing lower class militancy, in ensuring that India's

bourgeois leaders would retain firm control of both the nationalist movement

and a future independent India. Nonviolent civil disobedience was a means

of waging struggle that attempted to affirm the "underlying unity" between

adversaries. Informing it, however, was a moral code with a double

standard. While Gandhi's spiritual ethics strictly forbade the use of

political violence by the lower classes, the same ethics allowed exceptions

for state violence. In 1918, Gandhi led a recruiting campaign, marching

from village to village, attempting to raise a volunteer Indian army to help

126

Britain's war effort; he believed such work would make British rulers more

favorable to Indian independence (Gandhi 1957: 444-49). In 1944, Gandhi

again offered the Indian National Congress's "full co-operation" in

Britain's military struggle as a bargain for independence; the British

rejected the plan (Tendulkar, 6: 263). A 1938 episode demonstrates even

more clearly Gandhi's class loyalties and the class bias in his nonviolent

philosophy. Under a temporary system of dual rule, the British had allowed

Indian leaders to hold limited power in the provinces during the late 1930s,

and Gandhi's Congress party had won elections in seven provinces. At the

same time, a rising labor movement had launched a wave of industrial

strikes, and picketing workers (some supported by Congress activists) were

being met with police batons and sometimes bullets, in Congress provinces.

In his Harijan magazine, Gandhi criticized obstructionist picketers and

endorsed police action. "To prevent the workers from going to their work by

standing in front of them is pure violence and must be given up. The owners

of mills or of other factories would be justified in invoking the assistance

of the police, and a Congress Government would be bound to provide it if the

Congressmen concerned would not desist" (qtd. in Tendulkar, 4: 269).

Critics accused Gandhi of contradicting his nonviolent code. "Foolish

consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," was Gandhi's Emersonian

reply. "I have deplored the necessity for it. . . . But till the Congress

has developed a peaceful method of dealing with violent crimes, its

ministers must use police and, I fear, even the military, if they are to

undertake the administration of the affairs of the country in the present

stage of its career" (qtd. in Tendulkar, 4: 270). Corbett has argued that

Gandhi saw "violence" as irrational. Actually, it was the violence of

workers in revolt that Gandhi considered irrational; the violence of state

127

repression or of inter-state warfare was "rational" or "necessary."

Gandhi's dual morality meant that protesters must plead with the open hand,

even while the state bludgeons them with the closed fist. A critique of

Gandhi does not of itself disconfirm nonviolent philosophy or similar

harmonious theories (on nonviolent theory in the U.S. anti-nuclear movement,

see Ryan 1986). But I am hoping to raise questions, and also to suggest the

value of studying the purposes that have historically been served by our

theories.

Clarifying Our Collaborative Values

Composition teachers whose work is inspired by visions of a cooperative

world--and my own teaching is inspired by such--must conceive as clearly as

possible the terms of that cooperation. This would involve not only

identifying our basic scheme for the future society, but determining the

kind of cooperative values we wish to promote in the here and now. Some

collaborative advocates seem to propose cooperating indiscriminately, as if

all humanity shared the same interests and can now join together. Bruffee,

for example, describes academe and the workplace beyond as "communities of

knowledgeable peers," where "status equals" engage in agreed-upon

discourses. He does acknowledge that we sometimes write to please superiors

in the corporate or department hierarchy, but he stresses that, "In most

cases people write in business, government, and the professions mainly to

inform and convince other people within the writer's own community, people

whose status and assumptions approximate the writer's own" (1984: 642).

Hence, that which is egalitarian and harmonious in our institutions seems to

merit greater attention than that which is hierarchal and conflictive.

128

Bruffee's conception of peership, whether in the classroom or workplace,

urges us to forget our socioeconomic and other status differentials:

Outside the learning group . . . people may have widely different

positions in the management hierarchy of a union or corporation, in

the professional or student hierarchy of an educational institution,

or in a system of social or economic class. But as collaborative

learners all these people are peers. With regard to a course in

ethnography or in elementary Chinese, the vice-president of a

corporation, the janitor, the English professor, the freshman, the

society matron, and the shoe salesman must leave their social

differences behind. (1982b: 38)

An alternative to Bruffee's version of collaborative learning would

encourage students to bring their social differences into the classroom, and

would make the study of our differences and commonalities integral to the

curriculum (Trimbur, for example, has proposed that the classroom should

look for "dissensus" as well as consensus). Rather than teach a value of

blanket cooperativeness, our classroom would ask critical questions about

collaboration: With whom must we collaborate to make our lives better and

our world better? Are some collaborations unwise? Do our literary texts,

or texts in various disciplines, or articles of mass media seem to suggest

that we collaborate with some groups but not with others? If we consider

how today's employers are widely using the cooperative ethic, the importance

of such critical preparation for our students becomes apparent. Since the

1970s, hundreds of companies have turned to what Business Week

calls "The New Industrial Relations": "A fundamentally different way of

managing people is taking shape in the U.S. Its goal is to end the

adversarial relationship that has grown between management and labor. . . ."

129

Based on "a more enlightened view of worker psychology," the new approach

stresses "labor-management trust" and "a participatory process in which

workers gain a voice in decision-making on the shop floor" ("New Industrial"

85). In a 1987 series of ads in Business Week, General Motors declares: "The

symbols of confrontation have been replaced by the symbols of cooperation.

Everyone eats together, parks together, and works together" (qtd. in Parker

and Slaughter 3).

At the center of the new approach are the "quality circles," work teams,

and problem-solving groups that have long been linked to the success of

Japanese industries. But the glowing pictures offered us by business and

media are challenged by Mike Parker and Jane Slaughter, both former auto

workers, who name the new team concept management-by-stress:

Management-by-stress uses stress of all kinds--physical, social, and

psychological--to regulate and boost production. It combines a

systematic speedup, "just-in-time" parts delivery, and strict control

over how jobs are to be done, to create a production system which has

no leeway for errors--and very little breathing room. (14)

The sense of fear in MBS plants is striking. The power exercised

by supervisors, combined with little sense of either union presence or

individual rights, chills the desire to criticize a plant where

company loyalty is a priority. (21)

By appealing to workers' genuine desire for a democratic voice on the job,

the team concept allows management unprecedented access to workers'

knowledge. Work teams strive toward kaizen, a Japanese word meaning

continuous improvement, and offer up their suggestions to management. But

management, of course, prefers those suggestions that increase output.

"Changes in a job can never result in more breathing space for team members.

130

Any improvements become the impetus for management to find even more ways to

speed up the team" (Parker and Slaughter 19). The team concept relies

heavily on worker peer pressure. The team leader--who is a member of the

union, not management--comes to see himself as a supervisor and is

essentially a straw boss for management. There is strong peer pressure

against absenteeism because, rather than provide substitutes, the company

expects the team to cover for their missing member. "Workers are expected

to believe that personal illness or family needs must take second place to

perfect attendance" (29).

Most team programs have a strong ideological component. GM, for

example, sends thousands of employees from its Hydra-matic Division to week-

long "Family Awareness Training" sessions with the stated aim of

"establishing a family atmosphere within the division" (qtd. in Parker 19).

The first ground rule at the training is that no one tells whether they are

hourly or salary (union or management). Identities stripped away,

conference participants spend an emotionally intense week in group

sensitivity exercises, developing interpersonal skills, disclosing their

joys and fears. The final stage, according to the training facilitators'

handbook, "is one of unity, high spirits, mutual acceptance, and high

cohesiveness. It is the esprit stage" (qtd. in Parker 20). Parker comments:

A primary goal of most of these sophisticated exercises is to break

down a person's psychological defenses and develop openness. . . . But

defenses serve a purpose. In the unreal atmosphere of Family

Awareness Week, it may be easy to let them down. But back home, some

"family members" have the power to assign jobs, grant exceptions, and

even destroy the livelihoods of others. Does naive openness in the

work situation always make sense? (20)

131

Parker believes that the trainings manipulate workers' needs for belonging

and intimacy, in an attempt to redefine their identity not as union people

but as company people.

In the new industrial relations, collaboration means persuading workers

to accept wage cuts, speedups, tighter managerial control, and other

manifestations of the general employer offensive--all for the profitability

of our family, the company. Workers urged to identify with the company are

also urged to non-identify with fellow workers and, notably, to see themselves

in competition with workers in other countries, in other firms, or even in

other plants within the same company. As the chief negotiator for B.F.

Goodrich Co. puts it, "Union leaders to one degree or another are realizing

that it's not 'us against them' but 'we against the world' (qtd. in

"Concessionary Bargaining" 68).

In the composition literature, collaborative learning is heavily geared

to preparing students for collaborative writing and working situations they

will face "as professionals." No doubt many of our students will make good

use of such cooperative training. But Kraft, Densmore, and others (Johnson;

Popkewitz 1987a) suggest that the concept of professional is itself problematic

and ideological, while Peter Meiksins argues that the deskilling in many

middle class occupations indicates the lack of control over the labor

process within--and hence the working class nature of--these occupations in

the first place. Composition teachers should be asking what kinds of

collaborative skills and collaborative values our students will be needing

as workers, in the context of widespread employer aggressiveness against

workers. In their new book, Singular Texts/Plural Authors: Perspectives on Collaborative

Writing, Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford wonder what will be the result "when the

professional work scene is populated much more by women and people of

132

color," and they ask whether collaborative pedagogy can empower women and

students of color "so they can function as full participating members of

collaborative writing groups" in workplace settings (138, 122). While race

and gender equality in writing groups should absolutely be sought, Ede and

Lunsford are taking too much as given in terms of students' professional

prospects, and they do not make sufficiently problematic the larger

institutional context and labor-management struggles within which the

writing group is situated. My fear is that, without such wider scope, we

may end up sending into the work world students who, like the computer

programmers described by Kraft, are unable to penetrate management's glossy

ideologies and recognize the larger organizational relationships and

structures that are geared to their exploitation. Ede and Lunsford discuss

their "growing awareness of and sensitivity to" issues of "power and

authority, of consensus and conflict, of gender, race, and class" (13), and

they bring such concerns to bear upon the field of collaborative writing

(more so with gender than with race and class). Yet, the authors seem

reluctant to turn their sensitivity into concrete political commitments as

educators. They ask appropriate and pointed questions:

How does--and should--collaboration challenge or re-situate the

attitudes, values, beliefs, and ideological assumptions students and

teachers bring to the writing class? . . .

To what extent can--or should--collaborative activities attempt to

highlight or address inequities of gender, race, and class? (125)

But these remain "unanswered questions" for Ede and Lunsford, and I am left

wondering what keeps them from attempting at least initial answers. If

nothing more, it would help to know what moves them to favor the radical

pedagogy implied in their questions, and what holds them back from such

133

pedagogy. As it stands, the authors offer the less risky assertion that

collaborative pedagogy is worth our efforts because "it holds the potential

for allowing, finally and fully, for the presence of others" (126)--here

suggesting the very "sweeping and vague" notion of community which the

authors later note has been challenged by Myers, Trimbur, and Harris (136).

I think, still, that Ede and Lunsford's "polyphonic chorus of voices" (126)

is not the same as Bruffee's "community of knowledgeable peers," and that

the former's emphasis on gender, race, class, and other differences will

positively confront collaborative teachers with questions of political

commitment.

Model V: Collective Empowerment

Many students are in college because they still believe in the

American dream; they must learn to challenge it before they can write

good history.

--Richard Ohmann and Jack Weston, "A Guide to Marxist Teaching:

Freshman English"

(29)

As an overall objective, I set for my curriculum the goal of jointly

presenting literacy and life as a means of transcending the mental and

ideological limits imposed by institutions and mass culture. For me,

this meant that my worker-students would become literate, conceptual

in habits of mind, confident in their approach to intellectual study,

and more articulate and assertive in understanding why things are as

they are.

--Ira Shor, "Reinventing Daily Life" (502-3)

134

Proponents of what I have called the collective empowerment model--

better known as radical, critical, emancipatory, or liberatory pedagogy--do

share many goals in common with their non-radical composition colleagues.

Any teacher versed in contemporary "process" pedagogy wants students to

become "conceptual in habits of mind" and "confident in their approach to

intellectual study," as does Ira Shor. Any contemporary teacher hopes that

students will develop penetrating analyses and insights, as do Ohmann and

Weston in their proposed course based on a family history project. The

moderns will widely support Ohmann and Weston's injunctions favoring

student-centered, collaborative learning over the teacher-lecture format:

"[Assign] a project that can't get done unless the students write both

individually and in groups. . . . Have students take control of their learning. Don't

prepackage all the assignments; get students to help frame them" (26).

Moderns will likewise appreciate Shor's conception of the teacher "withering

away," which he describes as "a metaphor for the teacher's balance between

saying too much and saying too little; enough withdrawal to create a vacuum

for student assertion, enough direction to structure a critical inquiry."

Shor's withering teacher replaces authority-dependence with "a camaraderie

not yet of equals but moving in that democratic direction." The teacher as

organizer fades as the students emerge; the liberatory goal is for the

teacher to become expendable (1987a: xii, 98). Yet, what distinguishes

these radical teachers' objectives from that of many composition colleagues

is an explicit view of the teacher as social change agent. Ohmann and

Weston's version of freshman English seeks to help students "in unveiling

capitalist social relations, and seeing their own place within these

relations" (27). Shor's purposes include "preparing students for their

history-making roles," and setting the foundations for "purging sexism and

135

racism, evoking class solidarity, and initiating social reconstruction"

(1987a: 269-70).

Composition teachers whose pedagogy aims toward collective empowerment are

primarily socialists and Marxists or neo-Marxists; the Progressive

Composition Caucus that meets at the annual Conference on College

Composition and Communication describes itself as "socialist-feminist" in

its newsletter Progressive Composition. However, I have seen no explicit

discussion of socialist vision or strategy in the composition literature,

and an adequate rendering would run beyond the scope of this paper. Those

interested in exploring socialist visions should be aware that the

socialist and Marxist umbrellas encompass widely divergent

traditions. Most importantly, the view of socialism that has become

world-dominant, and that has its sources in the Stalinist and social-

democratic traditions, equates socialism with state ownership of production.

An alternative tradition, stressing socialism as a system of democratic

workers' control, finds Marx and Engels as its pioneering exponents (Marx's

democratic conception of socialism is made lucid in his treatment of the

1871 Paris Commune in "The Civil War in France"; see helpful discussions by

Draper 1986, 1987). One of the best short introductions to these differing

traditions is Hal Draper's 1966 essay The Two Souls of Socialism which identifies

two historic tendencies--a socialism-from-above and a socialism-from-below--and

observes: "Socialism's crisis today is a crisis in the meaning of

socialism. For the first time in the history of the world, very likely a

majority of its people label themselves 'socialist' in one sense or another;

but there has never been a time when the label was less informative" (1).

Of the existing socialist states, Draper writes:

136

The socio-economic system which has replaced capitalism [in the

Communist states] would not be recognizable to Karl Marx. The state

owns the means of production--but who "owns" the state? Certainly not

the mass of workers, who are exploited, unfree, and alienated from all

levers of social and political control. A new class rules, the

bureaucratic bosses; it rules over a collectivist system--a

bureaucratic collectivism. Unless statification is mechanically

equated with "socialism," in what sense are these societies

"socialist?" (1)

Socialism-from-above, for Draper, is "the conception that socialism . . .

must be handed down to the grateful masses in one form or another, by a

ruling elite which is not subject to their control in fact," while

socialism-from-below "can be realized only through the self-emancipation of

activized masses in motion, reaching out for freedom with their own hands. .

. ." (2)

Any assessment of the successes and failures of twentieth-century

socialism, and of the prospects for a future socialism of a from-below

variety, must begin first of all with some criteria for making judgments--a

definition, a vision. In my own broad conception, a socialist society is

based on a system of production for human needs, not private profit, and is

characterized by a rigorous democracy that leaves no aspect of human

relationships outside the realm of democratic scrutiny. For more specific

proposals, I recommend a 1983 collection Socialist Visions, edited by Stephen

Rosskam Shalom, which includes visionary debates on socialist political

democracy, socialism and the environment, race and nationalism, division of

labor, family and sex roles, economic planning, and concludes with a

bibliography. I also recommend more pleasurable excursions through utopian

137

fiction, including Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time and Ursula LeGuin's

The Dispossessed. For historical considerations of why working-class and

socialist movements have fared poorly in the U.S., see Mike Davis, Prisoners of

the American Dream; Stanley Aronowitz, False Promises: The Shaping of American Working

Class Consciousness; and Kim Moody, An Injury to All.

The potential contribution of the writing classroom toward a socialist

project--or toward encouraging the kind of political participation and

movements for change that creates a basis for socialist departures--depends

on historic circumstances and the level of general activity outside the

classroom. Shor writes: "In a time of insurgent movements, the impact of

critical classrooms is visible and immediate. In periods of diffused

radicalism or conservative reaction, the influence of critical learning is

low-profile and long-term" (1987a: 270). The classroom is not a place where

the social structure is changed, according to Shor, but where "knowledge,

perception, ideology, and socialization are challenged," and where people

can be "mentally armed against domination" (1987a: xi, 99). In Critical Teaching

and Everyday Life, Shor describes some of his more successful collaborative

class projects--the rewriting of the U.S. Constitution, focusing on the

practice of freedom in work and sexual life; the writing of non-sexist

marriage contracts; the design of democratic by-laws for the operation of

the classroom. The models for problem solving and conceptual thinking that

Shor has developed contrast interestingly with conventional approaches.

Consider first how one influential mainstream model tends to narrow student

aspirations. John Chaffee's Thinking Critically grows out of a nationally

recognized interdisciplinary program in critical thinking that Chaffee

directs at LaGuardia Community College in New York City. Chaffee's approach

emphasizes relevancy to students' lives, and his chapter on solving problems

138

presents a situation that is undoubtedly real for many working-class

students. We are asked to imagine ourselves a single parent with one four-

year-old child, holding down a boring supermarket cashier job that barely

pays the bills, and attending our first year of college which, we hope, will

lead to a well-paying, satisfying career. Although we enjoy school, we're

physically exhausted and depressed, due to the time demands of school, job,

and child. What do we do?

After stating the problem in "specific terms" rather than "general

terms," and identifying the "specific results" we seek, we are asked to list

our alternatives. Before listing alternatives, however, "it makes sense for

us to determine which actions are possible and which are impossible. We can

do this by exploring the boundaries of the problem situation" (emphasis in

original). Boundaries, we are told, are "the limitations in the problem

situation that we simply cannot change." Chaffee mentions two sample

limitations--time constraints; vocational qualifications limiting how much

we can earn at the present time--and then asks us to think of others.

"After we have established a general idea of the boundaries of the problem

situation, we can then proceed to identify the possible courses of action

that can take place within these boundaries." Chaffee suggests

brainstorming and discussing the problem with others as potential means for

looking at the problem afresh, then offers two sample courses of action--

take fewer classes; find additional sources of income--and invites us to

think of others (69-70). Chaffee's critical thinking program unambiguously

favors the status quo: students do not question their social-political

boundaries or the narrow courses of action that those boundaries impose upon

us as individuals; they do not ask what kind of society would trap single

139

parent worker-students in such depressing circumstances, nor picture new

social possibilities.

Shor's aim is precisely the opposite: "The critical study of themes

from everyday life needs to be carried out in the broadest terms possible. .

. ." (1987a: 114). Borrowing from Paulo Freire's method of codification--

abstracting familiar objects or issues away from their everyday contexts to

allow for "unfamiliar" systematic scrutiny--Shor teaches a problem-solving

method that encourages both conceptual habits of mind and utopian

imagination. He represents the method through a series of visual forms,

starting with this one:

A PROBLEM SOLVING METHODLife Description

Step oneObservation

Diagnosis

Step twoInvestigation

Reconstruction

Step threeResolution

In the first "description" step, students observe and describe in careful

detail a familiar object, such as a classroom desk-chair or a hamburger that

Shor brings to class, and they also begin some value judgments--the chair is

hard, uncomfortable, and all chairs face toward the teacher in front; the

hamburger is greasy and rubbery. In "diagnosis," students place the object in

its social context. The chair becomes part of students' larger experiences in

alienating schools. The hamburger represents Americans' fixation with non-

nutritious fast food; and one class recreates the entire production and

distribution process that delivers us the burger. In the third step, students

"reconstruct" or "negate" the problem with specific proposals for humanized

chairs, humanized schools, or systems that deliver healthy food. A second

140

visual form teaches students further means of abstraction and generalizing of

their experiences:

NAME GENERAL DEFINITION LIFE EXAMPLESJunk Food Mass produced food that

is cooked quickly in fast-food places, or bought, packaged and processed in supermarkets.Usually, it’s low in nutrition.

burgersfriescanned fruits/vegetablespackaged cerealscookies, cakedonutscandy

"Junk food," "lost cause," "racism," "democracy," "common sense," and any

other number of concepts or life problems are systematically broken down;

or, a series of life examples are grouped together, defined and named;

afterwards, the negation of each concept is envisioned by the students and

systematically described. As students' analytic facility grows, they can

combine the first two visual forms into a more elaborate model through which

they can diagnose school, work, or community problems and reconstruct social

alternatives:

141

NAME

example:authoritarianism

GENERALDEFINITION

LIFE EXAMPLES

1.

NEGATIONS

2.“peer

discipline”or

“peer democracy

NAMEGENERALDEFINTION 3.

A final representation, that of concentric circles, is offered to represent

developmental phases in a process of social change, where the inner circle

represents the present society and the outer rim, utopia.

Rather than leave students with an either/or view of utopia that would

likely only reinforce their sense that things can't really be changed, Shor

encourages students to consider and discuss the personal or social changes

that would be realistic, and yet carry us closer to the world we would like

to see (1987a: 155-80).

142

Red Indoctrination?

While teaching freshman English as a graduate assistant at The

University of Texas at Arlington, I have experimented in small ways with

radical pedagogy (programmatic constraints have not permitted experimenting

in large ways). I have been open with students about my radical intentions,

and have also discussed my political classroom aims with fellow graduate

teachers and with program directors. The response of my students to an

openly radical teacher on this conservative Texas campus is plainly

enthusiastic, i.e., "great, something different." But questions are posed:

"Do you expect us to agree with you?" "How do you grade papers?" I assure

students that they need not agree with me, and that I grade papers according

to my sense of general college writing standards. I acknowledge, however,

that I do have biases which affect my evaluation of a paper's argument. I

point out that I am watchful of my biases as I grade, that I try to be as

fair as I can--such as by giving papers whose positions are sharply opposed

to mine slightly higher grades than I think they deserve. I then suggest

that every teacher has biases of one kind or another which affect how we

grade, and I ask if anyone has ever experienced such teacher biases. My

question gets lots of nods and knowing smiles. I ask more: Has anyone had

a teacher who claimed to be open to all points of view but really wasn't?

Do you ever give teachers the bullshit you know they want to hear? Have you

ever challenged a teacher and paid for it? Depending on the class's

temperament and the level of rapport already established, the stories are

shared and the question of freedom of expression in the classroom gains

status as a permissible and important topic in the course. The ability of

an openly biased teacher--or of a covertly biased teacher--to maintain free

expression depends on the degree of trust we establish with our students. I

143

have been able to establish what I consider relatively high trust in my

classes through critical discussions of the teacher-student relationship;

through a non-authoritarian teacherly posture and peer rapport with

students; through a willingness and enjoyment of being challenged on all

class issues, all class processes; and through being helpful as a writing

teacher to students of all political persuasions. I am widely challenged by

my students, and I rarely sense that students are mimicking my views in

class or in their papers--though undoubtedly some of this goes on, as it

will in all classes where teachers are allocated power over students.

In sharing my radical-educator agenda with other teachers in my program,

the common criticism I receive is that I am "indoctrinating" students, using

my teacherly power to push my views upon them. My critics argue that openly

biased teaching, regardless of fair intentions, will prompt students to bend

their views toward that of the teacher-grader, and that we can mitigate such

coercion by keeping students second-guessing as to our own opinions on

issues. My critics also emphasize, of course, the educator's responsibility

to approximate a neutral stance as best we can, rather than attempt to

propagate our personal beliefs. My experience does not support the view

that a frank teacherly bias stifles free expression. At least where the

discussive atmosphere is egalitarian and away from teacher dominance, I have

found that my far-left opinions, when I choose to assert them, help stimulate

open expression, including in graded papers. I should add, however, that my

political educator strategy does not look toward persuading students of my

specific positions per se; in fact, I feel I am most successful as a teacher

when my mouth is shut and my students are talking. At the same time, I do

introduce a political agenda, and this is done through the syllabus itself--

through the kinds of critical inquiry encouraged, through the reading

144

materials assigned, through the questions asked in the course. My struggle

to democratize the classroom, to win students' assertive participation, also

expresses my political agenda.

I do concede that my open bias will give clearer direction to students

who are bent on pleasing the teacher by echoing teacher opinions, and that

such students might derive certain benefit from a teacher who leaves her

opinions more in question. But I do not think such students are numerous;

many more prefer saying what they believe, and want teachers who they can

trust to listen caringly, respond honestly, grade fairly. I would propose,

moreover, that teachers who do not make clear the biases they bring to the

classroom, or who are unaware of those biases, pose much greater and subtler

problems for students than any that might be posed by the teacher whose

views are made candid. Students do not come to freshman English prepared to

recognize the political implications of our pedagogies, of how we ask them

to think, of the questions our course asks and does not ask. When we ask

students to read a text through the lenses of New Criticism rather than

critical Marxism, to solve problems Chaffee's way or Flower's way instead of

Shor's way, to discover themselves as individuals rather than as members of

an historically situated social group, and we do not indicate to students

the non-universal values that inform these activities, they will tend to

regard our concepts as neutral tools. Many will internalize, to varying

degree, the supposedly impartial concepts of reading, writing, and thinking

taught in composition. Our pedagogies unavoidably express biases, express

ideologies. Teachers who do not indicate their biases or the biases that

inform their course are teaching ideology as though it were objective

knowledge. Given the unfortunate power differentials that characterize our

classrooms, when the teacher hands out the class syllabus he or she launches

145

an ideological offensive. Teachers who sympathize with students, and who

seek ways of giving up the power we hold over them, would do well to help

students understand the nature of our offensive so they can mentally defend

themselves. In less military terms, we want to enable students to make

critical judgments about everything we do in the classroom, to make informed

decisions about their participation in and/or challenge of the class

process, and to make politically conscious choices about the concepts they

do and do not embrace. In my view, our political honesty with students

helps open the door to non-manipulative, non-authoritarian teaching. I

personally feel that my honesty increases my accessibility with students; by

laying out my cards and letting students place me as they will, I step down

from the teacher's false-neutral pedestal and move closer toward the

peerhood that I prefer.

Let us acknowledge, still, that however honest we are with students, a

coerciveness is built into our jobs, and any democratic forms we establish

in the classroom will remain skewed ones. Students do not decide if their

teacher passes the course; students do not give us grades that may affect

our access to scholarships, graduate programs, or gainful employment.

Students do widely fill out teacher evaluation forms at the end of courses.

But an individual student's negative evaluation of a teacher carries little

weight, unless supported by many similar complaints from other students; and

even then, sanctions against the teacher are relatively rare. On the other

hand, the teacher-grader places an effective mark on the permanent record of

each student. The sanctioning power of a dissatisfied student rarely

matches that of a dissatisfied teacher-grader, and this differential

provides a material basis for undemocratic classroom relations. In the

liberatory classroom, according to Shor, "democratic relations . . .

146

legitimize the critique of oppression; students experience freedom while

examining the forces which impede freedom" (1987a: 96). If this is true,

then the kind of liberatory pedagogy that Shor proposes is not really

possible in our school institutions as constituted. This should not deter

us from searching out the most democratic, humanizing, and politically

progressive modes that our institutional contexts allow. But it should

remind us--and here I agree fully with Shor--that "political opposition on

campus, in schools, and in society is needed to protect the right of

teachers and students to invent the critical pedagogy we need" (1987a: viii-

ix).

On Pursuing Liberatory Goals

Chapter 4 proposed that composition teachers begin the project of

writing program reform through professional involvement, informal rap/study

sessions with co-workers, union participation, and then moving on to effect

institutional changes as faculty develop cohesion and organizational

strength. The present chapter makes our local organizing tasks more complex

and even more ambitious. Now program reformers would be calling, not just

for modern composition methods, but also for liberatory methods, not just

for larger education and social budgets, but also for a new social-political

order. In lieu of a fresh set of program proposals for the liberatory

reformer--which I'm afraid is beyond my present means--I would like to close

with some general thoughts.

Certainly, our most challenging task is that of winning the majority of

our colleagues to liberatory pedagogy and social visions. While such may

not be realizable apart from a much wider political mobilization in the

society, we may in our more immediate teaching and reform projects aspire to

147

values consistent with the egalitarian world we envision (e.g., values that

counter sexism, racism, and elitism with their democratic opposites). In

addition, with particular respect to composition, liberatory reformers may

pursue a number of theoretical points which, if not immediately radical in

content, do open doors for rich discussion. As the contemporary field

increasingly emphasizes writing as a process of critical reflection, it may

be pointed out that what is good for the student is good for the teacher.

To begin reflecting on educational purpose and the values that inform our

purposes is to begin breaking free of the prevailing technocratism that

delimits and demeans our work as writing teachers. We become less the

social functionary, more the self-conscious social actor. To recognize the

value-laden nature of our work--that we are never teaching "effective

writing" pure and simple--is to challenge the false-neutral scientism that

quietly binds us to politically conservative institutional objectives. As

teachers more willfully articulate their purposes and values, they may in

turn be challenged by other sets of values. Formerly covert political

partisanships become overt and self-conscious partisanships. This does not

mean that radical partisans will necessarily prevail in the ensuing

discussions. But the existence of wider candid political discussion would

itself represent tremendous advance for modern composition and, I think,

hopeful prospects for liberatory writing teachers.

148

NOTES1 This was passed to me by WPE counselor Marlene Pearson.2 Table 1.--CSUN Faculty Opinion of Student Writinga

dept. or school (no. of responses): average responseArt (3): 20.0% Home Ecomomics (2): 47.5%Biology (5): 15.6 Journalism (2): 65.0Business, School ofb (20): 49.5 Liberal Studiesd

(2): 40.5Child Development (2): 50.0 Music (2): 40.0Computer Science (4): 41.3 Physics (1): 45.0Economics (3): 13.3 Political Science (3): 41.0Engineering, School ofc (8): 43.0 Psychology (6):

42.3English (3): 68.7 Radio-TV-Film (3): 36.0Geology (1): 60.0 Sociology (1): 50.0Health Science (5): 29.6 Speech Communication (3):

49.3History (1): 100.0 Theater (1): 60.0

Total responses: 81Average response: 42.8%

a Survey taken in May 1988: "How many of your students are writing ascollege students should be writing? Restrict your estimate toundergraduate courses, and exclude general education courses with primaryenrollment from students outside your department."

b Except economics, which is listed separately.

c Except computer science, which is listed separately.

d Liberal studies does not have its own department courses. However,I polled two instructors of specific courses--one in humanities, one inmusic--in which liberal studies majors are heavily enrolled.

3 Influential works on modern composition classroom methods include those

of Elbow, Graves, Macrorie, Murray. For theoretical perspectives, see

149

Cooper and Odell, Knoblauch and Brannon, North. Major journals include

College Composition and Communication, College English, Research in the Teaching of English.

Major annual conferences are held by the National Council of Teachers of

English, and the Conference on College Composition and Communication. One

of the leading organizations training teachers in modern composition methods

is the National Writing Project, 5635 Tolman Hall, School of Education,

University of California, Berkeley CA 94720. 4 Table 2.--Required Writing Preparation of Future Teachersa

% required to take % required to takeintermediate or advanced a course in teachingwriting course composition

English majors 15 0

English education majors 2910

Other education majors 6 0a Based on 263 college catalogs. Source: Burhans, p. 647.

5 The 127 respondents consisted of 14 from 2-year colleges, 67 from

"four-year institutions," and 46 from "universities." The "universities"

are distinguished from "4-year institutions" in that the former have

professional schools--law, medical, dental--or substantial graduate

programs. CSUN, with its small graduate offerings, would be considered a 4-

year institution.6 See note 3 for National Writing Project address.7 A fine anthology on bringing critical awareness into the classroom is

Shor, 1987b.

8 Table 3.--WPE Failure Rates

150

1980-1 22.0%1981-2 22.91982-3 24.51983-4 26.51984-5 27.11985-6 30.11986-7 32.5

Source: Larson, 1987.

151

WORKS CITED

Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses." Lenin and

Philosophy and Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review,

1971. 127-86.

Ambedkar, B.R. What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables. Lahore,

Pakistan: Classic, 1977.

Anyon, Jean. "Workers, Labor and Economic History, and Textbook Content."

Harvard Educational Review 49 (Aug 1979) 361-86.

---. "Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work." Journal of Education 162

(win 1980) 67-92.

Apple, Michael W. Ideology and Curriculum. London: Routledge, 1979.

Apple, Michael W., and Lois Weis, eds. Ideology and Practice in Schooling.

Philadelphia: Temple Press, 1983.

Applebee, Arthur N. Contexts for Learning to Write: Studies of Secondary School Instruction.

Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1984.

Applebee, Arthur N., Judith A. Langer, and Ina V.S. Mullis. The Writing Report

Card: Writing Achievement in American Schools. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing

Service, 1986.

Armstrong, Cherryl. Personal interview, May 1988.

Aronowitz, Stanley. False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness.

New York: McGraw, 1973.

Astin, Alexander W. Minorities in American Higher Education. San Francisco: Jossey-

Bass, 1982.

Bagdikian, Ben H. The Media Monopoly. 2nd ed. Boston: Beacon, 1987.

Bartholomae, David. "Inventing the University." When a Writer Can't Write: Studies

in Writer's Block and Other Composing Process Problems. Ed. Mike Rose. New York:

Guilford, 1985. 134-65.

152

Bartholomae, David, and Anthony Petrosky. Facts, Artifacts, and Counterfacts: Theory

and Method for a Reading and Writing Course. Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton, 1986.

Berg, Ivar. Education and Jobs: The Great Training Robbery. New York: Praeger, 1970.

Berlin, James A. "Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical

Theories." College English 44 (Dec 1982) 765-77.

---. Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-1985.

Carbondale, IL: Southern llinois UP, 1987.

---. "Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class." College English 50 (Sep

1988) 477-94.

Berthoff, Ann E. "From Problem-Solving to a Theory of Imagination." College

English 33 (Mar 1972) 636-49.

Bizzell, Patricia. "Thomas Kuhn, Scientism, and English Studies." College

English 40 (Mar 1979) 764-71.

---. "Cognition, Convention, and Certainty: What We Need to Know About

Writing." PRE/TEXT 3 (fall 1982a) 213-43.

---. "College Composition: Initiation into the Academic Discourse

Community." Curriculum Inquiry 12 (1982b) 191-207.

---. "William Perry and Liberal Education." College English 46 (Sep 1984) 447-

54.

Boehm, Lorenz. "Human Values and the Basics: Is There Any Choice?" College

English 40 (Jan 1979) 505-11.

Boles, Pat. Personal interview, May 1988.

Bose, Subhas Chandra. The Indian Struggle, 1920-1942. Bombay: Asia Publishing

House, 1967.

Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis. Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform

and the Contradictions of Economic Life. New York: Basic, 1976.

153

Brady, Philip L. Introduction. The "Why's" of Teaching Composition. Ed. by Brady.

N.p.: Washington State Council of Teachers of English, 1978, 1978. v-

viii.

Braverman, Harry. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth

Century. New York: Monthly Review, 1974.

Brinton, Howard H. Friends for 300 Years: The History and Beliefs of the Society of Friends since

George Fox Started the Quaker Movement. Wallington, PA: Pendle Hill, 1976.

Brodinsky, Ben. "Back to the Basics: The Movement and Its Meaning." Phi

Delta Kappan 58 (Mar 1977) 522-27.

Bruffee, Kenneth A. "Liberal Education and the Social Justification of

Belief." Liberal Education 68 (sum 1982a) 95-114.

---. "CLTV: Collaborative Learning Television." Educational Communication and

Technology Journal 30 (Spr 1982b) 26-40.

---. "Collaborative Learning and the 'Conversation of Mankind.' " College

English 46 (Nov 1984) 635-52.

Bryant, Verne. Personal interview, May 1988.

Burhans, Clinton S., Jr. "The Teaching of Writing and the Knowledge Gap."

College English 45 (Nov 1983) 639-56.

Burke, Gerald, and Russell W. Rumberger, eds. The Future Impact of Technology on

Work and Education. London: Falmer Press, 1987.

Callahan, Raymond E. Education and the Cult of Efficiency. Chicago: U of Chicago P,

1962.

Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. College Graduates and Jobs: Adjusting to a

New Labor Market Situation. New York: McGraw, 1973.

Chaffee, John. Thinking Critically. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton, 1988.

Cole, Charlene R. "Students Grade Educational Quality at CSUN." Daily Sundial.

California State University Northridge (11 May 1988): 11-12.

154

"Concessionary Bargaining: Will the New Cooperation Last?" Business Week 14

Jun 1982: 66+.

Cooney, Robert, and Helen Michalowski, eds. The Power of the People: Active

Nonviolence in the United States. Culver City, CA: Peace Press, 1977.

Cooper, Charles R., and Lee Odell, eds. Research on Composing: Points of Departure.

Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1978.

Corbett, Edward P.J. "The Rhetoric of the Open Hand and the Rhetoric of the

Closed Fist." College Composition and Communication 20 (Dec 1969) 288-96.

Council on Interracial Books for Children. Guidelines for Selecting Bias-Free

Textbooks and Storybooks. New York: Council on Interracial Books, 1980.

Davis, Mike. Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in the History of the US

Working Class. London: Verso, 1986.

De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Trans. and ed. H.M. Parshley. New York:

Knopf, 1952.

Densmore, Kathleen. "Professionalism, Proletarianization and Teacher

Work."Critical Studies in Teacher Education: Its Folklore, Theory and Practice. Ed. Thomas

S. Popkewitz. London: Falmer Press, 1987. 130-60.

Domhoff, G. William. Who Rules America Now? A View for the '80s. New York:

Touchstone-Simon, 1986.

Draper, Hal. The Two Souls of Socialism. 1966. Reprints of the 1968 pamphlet

edition, published by the Independent

Socialist Clubs of America, are available from Solidarity, 7012 Michigan

Av, Detroit MI 48210.

---. Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, Vol. 3: The "Dictatorship of the Proletariat." New York:

Monthly Review, 1986.

---. The "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" from Marx to Lenin. New York: Monthly Review,

1987.

155

Dye, Thomas R. Who's Running America? The Conservative Years. 4th ed. Englewood

Cliffs, NJ: Prentice, 1986.

Ede, Lisa, and Andrea Lunsford. Singular Texts/Plural Authors: Perspectives on

Collaborative Writing. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1990.

Edwards, Richard. Contested Terrain: The Transformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth

Century. New York: Basic, 1979.

Elbow, Peter. Writing Without Teachers. New York: Oxford UP, 1973.

---. "Why Teach Writing?" The "Why's" of Teaching Composition. Ed. Philip L.

Brady. N.p.: Washington State Council of Teachers of English, 1978. 57-

69.

---. Writing with Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process. New York: Oxford

UP, 1981.

Ellington, Lucien. "Blacks and Hispanics in High School Economics Texts."

Social Education 50 (Jan 1986) 64-67.

"Fact File: Attitudes and Characteristics of This Year's Freshmen."

Chronicle of Higher Education 14 Jan 1990: A33-34.

Fine, Michelle. "Perspectives on Inequity: Voices from Urban Schools."

Applied Social Psychology Annual. vol. 4. Ed. Leonard Bickman. Beverly Hills,

CA: Sage, 1983.

Flower, Linda. Problem-Solving Strategies for Writing. 2nd ed. New York: Harcourt,

1985.

Freeman, Richard B. The Overeducated American. New York: Academic Pr., 1976.

Friedlander, Jack. "Instructional Practices of Part-Time Faculty." New

Directions for Community Colleges 30 (1980) 27-36.

Gandhi, M.K. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. 86 vols. Delhi: Ministry of

Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India, 1958-82.

156

---. Non-Violence in Peace and War. 2 vols. Ahmedabad, India: Navijan Press,

1962.

---. My Varnashrama Dharma. Bombay: Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan, 1965.

---. My Theory of Trusteeship. Bombay: Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan, 1970.

Gandhi, Mohandas K. An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Boston:

Beacon, 1957.

Garson, Barbara. The Electronic Sweatshop: How Computers are Transforming the Office of the

Future into the Factory of the Past. New York: Simon, 1988.

Gere, Anne Ruggles. "Writing: Why and What?" The "Why's" of Teaching Composition.

Ed. Philip L. Brady. N.p.:

Washington State Council of Teachers of English, 1978. 17-32.

Gillespie, Kim. Personal interview on three occasions, April 1988.

Giroux, Henry A. "Teacher Education and the Ideology of Social Control."

Journal of Education 162 (win 1980) 5-27.

---. Theory and Resistance in Education. South Hadley, MA: Bergin, 1983.

Giroux, Henry A., and David Purpel, eds. The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education:

Deception or Discovery? Berkeley, CA: McCutchan, 1983.

Goldfield, Michael. The Decline of Organized Labor in the United States. Chicago: U of

Chicago P, 1987.

Graves, Donald H. Writing: Teachers and Children at Work. Portsmouth, NH:

Heinemann, 1983.

Greenbaum, Joan. "Division of Labor in the Computer Field." Monthly Review 28:

3 (Jul/Aug 1976) 40-55.

Hahn, Carole L., and Glen Blankenship. "Women and Economics Textbooks."

Theory and Research in Social Education 11 (fall 1983) 67-76.

157

Hairston, Maxine. "The Winds of Change: Thomas Kuhn and the Revolution in

the Teaching of Writing." College Composition and Communication 33 (Feb 1982)

76-86.

Hallcom, Francine. Personal interview, April 1988.

Hallin, Dan. "White Paper, Red Scare." NACLA Report on the Americas 17: 4

(Jul/Aug 1983) 2-35.

Harris, Joseph. "The Idea of Community in the Study of Writing." College

Composition and Communication 40 (Feb 1989) 11-22.

Hays, Janice N. "The Development of Discursive Maturity in College

Writers." The Writer's Mind: Writing as a Mode of Thinking. Ed. by Hays et al.

Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1983. 127-44.

---. "Models of Intellectual Development and Writing: A Response to Myra

Kogen, et al." Journal of Basic Writing 6: 1 (spr 1987) 11-27.

Hays, Janice N., et al., eds. The Writer's Mind: Writing as a Mode of Thinking. Urbana,

IL: NCTE, 1983.

Heath, Shirley Brice. Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and

Classrooms. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge UP, 1983.

Hersh, Seymour M. The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House. New York:

Summit, 1983.

Howard, C. Jeriel. The Politics of Basic Writing: Program Administration. Paper

presented at the Annual Meeting of the Conference on College Composition

and Communication, March 1983. ERIC ED 229 784.

Howe, Harold III. "Let's Have Another SAT Score Decline." Phi Delta Kappan 66

(May 1985) 522-27.

Johnson, Dale, L. ed. Class and Social Development: A New Theory of the Middle Class.

Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1982.

158

Johnson, Dale L., and Christine O'Donnell. "The Dequalification of

Technical, Administrative, and Professional Labor." Class and Social

Development: A New Theory of the Middle Class. Ed. by Johnson. Beverly Hills, CA:

Sage, 1982. 225-44.

King, Martin Luther, Jr. Why We Can't Wait. New York: Harper, 1964.

Kohlberg, Lawrence, and Rochelle Mayer. "Development as the Aim of

Education." Harvard Educational Review 42 (Nov 1972) 449-96.

Kohlberg, Lawrence, and Elliot Turiel. "Moral Development and Moral

Education." Psychology and Educational Practice. Ed. Gerald S. Lesser.

Glenview, IL: Foresman, 1971. 410-65.

Kraft, Philip. Programmers and Managers: The Routinization of Computer Programming in

the United States. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1977.

Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd ed. Chicago: U of

Chicago P, 1970.

Kytle, Ray. "Slaves, Serfs, or Colleagues--Who Shall Teach College

Composition?" College Composition and Communication 22 (Dec 1971) 339-41.

Larson, Gale K. "1986-87 Annual Report of the Upper Division Writing

Proficiency Examination." California State University Northridge, 14 Sep

1987.

---. Personal interview, April 1988.

Lazere, Donald. "Stratification in the Academic Profession and in the

Teaching of Composition." Humanities in Society 4 (fall 1981) 379-94.

LeFevre, Karen Burke. Invention as a Social Act. Carbondale, IL: Southern

Illionois UP, 1987.

LeGuin, Ursula. The Dispossessed. New York: Harper, 1974.

Lindemann, Erika. A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP,

1987.

159

Lloyd-Jones, Richard, and Andrea A. Lunsford, eds. The English Coalition

Conference: Democracy through Language. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1989.

Lunsford, Andrea A. "Politics and Practices in Basic Writing." A Sourcebook

for Basic Writing Teachers. Ed. Theresa Enos. New York: Random, 1987. 246-58.

Macrorie, Ken. Telling Writing. Rochelle Park, NJ: Hayden, 1970a.

---. Uptaught. New York: Hayden, 1970b.

Maimon, Elaine P., et al. Writing in the Arts and Sciences. Cambridge, MA:

Winthrop, 1981.

---. Readings in the Arts and Sciences. Boston: Little, 1984.

Martin, Rex. Rawls and Rights. Lawrence, KS: UP of Kansas, 1985.

Marx, Karl. "The Civil War in France." The Marx-Engels Reader. Ed. Robert C.

Tucker. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1978. 618-52.

Meiksins, Peter. "New Middle Class or Working Class?" Against the Current 2: 4

(win 1984) 42-48.

Meisenhelder, Tom. "The Ideology of Professionalism in Higher Education."

Journal of Education 165 (sum 1983) 295-307.

Miller, Susan. "Rhetorical Maturity: Definition and Development."

Reinventing the Rhetorical Tradition. Ed. Aviva Freedman and Ian Pringle. Conway,

AR: L and S Books, 1980. 119-27.

Mills, C. Wright. The Power Elite. New York: Oxford UP, 1956.

Moody, Kim. An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism. London: Verso, 1988.

Mukerjee, Hirendranath. Gandhiji: A Study. 2nd ed. New Delhi: People's

Publishing House, 1960.

Murray, Donald M. A Writer Teaches Writing. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton, 1985.

Myers, Greg. "Reality, Consensus, and Reform in the Rhetoric of Composition

Teaching." College English 48 (Feb 1986) 154-74.

160

Namboodiripad, E.M.S. The Mahatma and the Ism. New Delhi: People's Publishing

House, 1958.

Nash, George. "Who's Minding Freshman English at U.T. Austin?" College English

38 (Oct 1976) 125-31.

"The New Industrial Relations." Business Week 11 May 1981: 84+.

Nicholson, Pat. Personal interviews on two occasions, April and May 1988.

Noble, David F. America by Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism.

New York: Knopf, 1977.

North, Stephen M. The Making of Knowledge in Composition: Portrait of an Emerging Field.

Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton, 1987.

Ohmann, Richard. English in America: A Radical View of the Profession. New York: Oxford

UP, 1976.

Ohmann, Richard, and Jack Weston. "A Guide to Marxist Teaching: Freshman

English." Radical Teacher 9 (Sep 1978) 26-29.

O'Toole, James. Work, Learning, and the American Future. San Francisco: Jossey-

Bass, 1977.

Parenti, Michael. Democracy for the Few. 5th ed. New York: St. Martin's, 1988.

Parker, Mike. Inside the Circle: A Union Guide to QWL. Boston: South End, 1985.

Parker, Mike, and Jane Slaughter. Choosing Sides: Unions and the Team Concept.

Boston: South End, 1988.

Pearson, Marlene. Personal interview, April 1988.

Penfield, Elizabeth F. "Process, Product, and the Administration of the

English Department." ADE Bulletin 84 (fall 1986) 11-15.

Perkinson, Henry J. The Imperfect Panacea: American Faith in Education, 1865-1976. 2nd

ed. New York: Random, 1977.

Perloff, James. The Shadows of Power: The Council on Foreign Relations and the American

Decline. Appleton, WI: Western Islands, 1988.

161

Perry, William G., Jr. Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years: A

Scheme. New York: Holt, 1968.

Peters, R.S. Ethics and Education. Atlanta: Foresman, 1967.

Piercy, Marge. Woman on the Edge of Time. New York: Fawcett, 1978.

Popkewitz, Thomas S. "Educational Research: Values and Visions of Social

Order." Theory and Research in Social Education 6 (Dec 1978) 20-39.

---. "Paradigms in Educational Science: Different Meanings and Purpose to

Theory." Journal of Education 162 (win 1980) 28-46.

---, ed. Critical Studies in Teacher Education: Its Folklore, Theory and Practice. London:

Falmer Press, 1987a.

---. "Ideology and Social Formation in Teacher Education." Critical Studies in

Teacher Education: Its Folklore, Theory and Practice. Ed. by Popkewitz. London:

Falmer Press, 1987b. 2-33.

Progressive Composition. Newsletter of the Progressive Composition Caucus.

Address: Progressive Composition, Dept. of English, Univ. of Houston,

Houston TX 77204-3012.

Purnell, Rosentene B. "A Survey of the Tesing of Writing Proficiency in

College: A Progress Report." College Composition and Communication 33 (Dec

1982) 407-10.

Rao, M.B., ed. The Mahatma: A Marxist Symposium. New Delhi: People's Publishing

House, 1969.

Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap-Harvard UP, 1971.

Rist, Ray C. "Student Social Class and Teacher Expectations: The Self-

Fulfilling Prophecy in Ghetto Education." Harvard Educational Review 40 (Aug

1970) 411-51.

162

Robertson, Linda R., Sharon Crowley, and Frank Lentricchia. "The Wyoming

Conference Resolution Opposing Unfair Salaries and Working Conditions for

Post-Secondary Teachers of Writing." College English 49 (Mar 1987) 274-80.

Robinson, Jay L. "Literacy in the Department of English." College English 47

(Sep 1985) 482-98.

Rohman, D. Gordan. "Pre-Writing: The Stage of Discovery in the Writing

Process." College Composition and Communication. 16 (May 1965) 106-12.

---. "My Friend Henry." College Composition and Communication 23 (Dec 1972) 373-

77.

Rose, Mike. Lives on the Boundary: The Struggles and Achievements of America's

Underprepared. New York: Free Press-Macmillan, 1989.

Rose, Stephen J. The American Economy Poster and Fact Book. New York: Pantheon,

1987.

Rosenberg, Vivian M. Reading, Writing, and Thinking: Critical Connections. New York:

McGraw, 1990.

Rumberger, Russell W. Overeducation in the U.S. Labor Market. New York: Praeger,

1981.

---. "The Potential Impact of Technology on Work and Education." The Future

Impact of Technology on Work and Education. Ed. Gerald Burke and Russell W.

Rumberger. London: Falmer Press, 1987. 74-95.

Ryan, Howard. "Nonviolent Theory and Anti-Nuclear Politics." Deadly

Connections: An Against the Current Anti-Militarist Pamphlet. 1986. Available

from Against the Current, 7012 Michigan Av, Detroit MI 48210.

Sarkar, Sumit. Modern India 1885-1947. Delhi: Macmillan, 1983.

Scott, Johnnie. Personal interview, May 1988.

Sennett, Richard, and Jonathan Cobb. The Hidden Injuries of Class. New York:

Vintage, 1972.

163

Shalom, Stephen Rosskam,ed. Socialist Visions. Boston: South End, 1983.

Shannon, Patrick. Broken Promises: Reading Instruction in Twentieth-Century America.

Granby, MA: Bergin, 1989.

Sharp, Rachel, and Anthony Green. Education and Social Control: A Study in Progressive

Primary Education. London: Routledge, 1975.

Shawcross, William. Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia. Rev.

ed. New York: Simon, 1987.

Shor, Ira. "Reinventing Daily Life: Self-Study and the Theme of 'Work.' "

College English 39 (Dec 1977) 502-6.

---. Culture Wars: School and Society in the Conservative Restoration 1969-1984. Boston:

Routledge, 1986.

---. Critical Teaching and Everyday Life. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987a.

---, ed. Freire for the Classroom: A Sourcebook for Liberatory Teaching. Portsmouth, NH:

Heinemann, 1987b.

Shoup, Laurence H., and William Minter. Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign

Relations and United States Foreign Policy. New York: Monthly Review, 1977.

Sklar, Holly, ed. Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World

Management. Boston: South End, 1980a.

---. "Trilateralism: Managing Dependence and Democracy." Trilateralism: The

Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management. Ed. by Sklar. Boston:

South End, 1980b. 1-57.

Sklar, Holly, and Ros Everdell. "Who's Who on the Trilateral Commission."

Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management. Ed. by

Sklar. Boston: South End, 1980. 90-131.

Slaughter, Jane. Concessions and How to Beat Them. Detroit: Labor Notes, 1983.

Slevin, James F. "A Note on the Wyoming Resolution and ADE." ADE Bulletin 87

(fall 1987) 50.

164

Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Eds. R.H.

Campbell, A.S. Skinner, and W.B. Todd. 2 vols. New York: Oxford UP,

1976.

Smitherman, Geneva. " 'What Go Round Come Round': King in Perspective."

Harvard Educational Review 51 (Feb 1981) 40-56.

Smitherman-Donaldson, Geneva. "Toward a National Public Policy on

Language." College English 49 (Jan 1987) 29-36.

Staples, Katherine. Money, Status, and Composition: Assumptions Underlying the Crisis of

Part-Time Instruction. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Conference

on College Composition and Communication, March 1984. ERIC ED 243 118.

Steadman, Michael. Personal interview, April 1988.

Steelman, Lala Carr, and Brian Powell. "Appraising the Implications of the

SAT for Educational Policy." Phi Delta Kappan 66 (Mar 1985) 603-7.

Stewart, Donald C. "Composition Textbooks and the Assault on Tradition."

College Composition and Communication 29 (May 1978) 171-76.

Szilak, Dennis. "Teachers of Composition: A Re-Niggering." College English 39

(Sep 1977) 25-32.

Taylor, S. Martin. "Education and Employment." Black English and the Education of

Black Children and Youth: Proceedings of the National Invitational Symposium on the King

Decision. Ed. Geneva Smitherman. Detroit: Center for Black Studies, 1981.

241-58.

Tendulkar, D.G. Mahatma: Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. rev. ed. 8 vols.

Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India, 1960-63.

Therborn, Göran. The Ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology. London: Verso, 1980.

Trimbur, John. "Consensus and Difference in Collaborative Learning." College

English 51 (Oct 1989) 602-16.

165

Trotsky, Leon. "Their Morals and Ours." The Basic Writings of Trotsky. Ed. Irving

Howe. New York: Random, 1963. 370-99.

U.S. Bureau of the Census. Money Income of Households, Families, and Persons in the

United States: 1987. Current Population Reports, Series P-60, No. 162. Wash

DC: GPO, 1989.

Uba, George. Personal interview, May 1988.

Vitanza, Victor J. " 'Notes' Towards Historiographies of Rhetorics; or,

Rhetorics of the Histories of Rhetorics: Traditional, Revisionary, and

Sub/Versive." PRE/TEXT 8 (spr/sum 1987) 63-125.

Walters, Tom Spencer. Personal interviews on two occasions, April and May

1988.

Wilson, Reginald. "The State of Black Higher Education: Crisis and

Promise." The State of Black America 1989. Ed. Janet Dewart. New York:

National Urban League, 1989. 121-35.

Winterowd, W. Ross. The Culture and Politics of Literacy. New York: Oxford UP, 1989.

Witte, Stephen P., et al. A National survey of College and University Writing Program

Directors. Technical Report No. 2. Texas Univ., Austin. August 1981.

ERIC ED 210 709.

Wolf, Thia. Personal interviews on four occasions, March through May 1988.

Work in America: Report of a Special Task Force to the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1973.

WPE test-takers, names withheld. Personal interviews on six occasions,

April 1988.

Young, Art, Mike Gorman, and Margaret Gorman. "The 1982-83 Writing and

Literature Survey: Courses and Programs." ADE Bulletin 76 (win 1983) 52-

59.

166

Young, Richard E. "Paradigms and Problems: Needed Research in Rhetorical

Invention." Research on Composing: Points of Departure. Eds. Charles R. Cooper

and Lee Odell. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1978. 29-47.

Young, Richard E., Alton L. Becker, and Kenneth L. Pike. Rhetoric: Discovery and

Change. New York: Harcourt, 1970.

Zimbalist, Andrew, ed. Case Studies on the Labor Process. New York: Monthly

Review, 1979.

167