The Questioning

The Elbow/Bartholomae debate packs an awful lot of debated pedagogy in a few pages: the role of the author, authority in the classroom, the merits of expressive writing vs. academic writing, writing "space," and still others. These particular articles, summing up the arguments on both sides of the issues, have enormous relevance for our pedagogy statements and our current and future careers regarding how to teach composition and what you teach. I particularly appreciate the actual questioning that both men pursue, not only of their opponent's position, but also their own. Too often scholars seem married to their position and unwilling to examine the merits of their opponent's argument. In this debate, Elbow and Bartholomae attempt to answer questions Wayne Booth sees as central to rhetoric: "How can I change your mind?" and, perhaps more importantly, "When should I change my mind?" Neither seems willing to give up their positions in the end, though the attempt to see both sides serves them well.

It seems clear, though, that their theories have the same goals: to teach students to exercise control over their writing, to make them aware of the impact of culture on their writing, to think critically about their own and others' writing. The central question of their debate comes down to the method of teaching composition students. Are beginning writers best served by allowing them to immerse themselves in their writing and make it authentically personal, or by enabling them to see culture's influence and the difficulties of achieving authenticity? In the first method, the writer must be made to see the culture's influence and encounter doubt in their own authenticity, in the second, the writer must fight distrust of language and attempt to achieve authenticity in spite of the culture. Either way, the student writer must confront the same issues, just in a different sequence.

The question is, as Elbow puts it, "whether I should invite my first year students to be self-absorbed and see themselves at the center of the discourse - in a sense, credulous; or whether I should invite them to be personally modest and intellectually scrupulous and to see themselves as at the periphery - in a sense, skeptical and distrustful." And Bartholomae asks, "Are freshmen ready to think first and primarily about the problems of writing when they write?" and "Is it the job of college English to teach students to learn to resist and be suspicious of writing and the text?" Elbow worries about crushing the spirit of the beginning writer, about instilling distrust too early before the writer has had a change to gain confidence in their writing. Bartholomae questions the wisdom of allowing students to believe in their authentic voice, when that voice is actually the product of culturally produced language and situation.

There is no winner here, but also no loser. There is no right answer to this question. There can't be, because writing is not a black and white, mechanical process that works the same for every writer. In reality, some student will respond better to Elbow's method, some to Barholomae's. The important thing is to keep asking these questions, to keep seeking the answers. And perhaps we can ask our students these questions and have them weigh in as well. This is a discourse in which the more voices that participate, the better chance we have at discovering how writing works and how it should be taught to achieve the best results.