At any given college in the United States the first-year writing course finds itself serving many masters, and trying to meet several (possibly incompatible) objectives. For the moment I want to consider two of the most common pedagogical objectives for first-year composition, in order to highlight the operation of the criteria of authenticity and apprenticeship that, I have argued, help to explain some of the hostility toward simulation.
It's Academic: Writing teachers often share with administrators and their colleagues from disciplines that don't teach writing a belief in a phantom called "academic writing," the existence of which is only evident at such a hopelessly vague and general level that it is rendered all but useless for the purposes of designing a meaningful writing course. You don't have to look very far into the writing practices of your colleagues in other disciplines to understand that the notion of a generalized core of academic writing practice is sketchy indeed. Doug Brent notes that there has been considerable hostility to the idea that a generalized academic discourse exists and that first-year writing classes are capable of doing more than establishing general skills; Brent himself favors a course design that avoids "pretending to offer an introduction to such a thing as Universal Educated Discourse” (p. 261) [1]. It is important to note, however, that while the debate seems to be about definitions of what counts as academic discourse, what is really at stake is the ability to claim the moral high ground of an authentic relation with writing and/or discipline. Brent, for example, cites David Russell's argument that the first-year writing course presents only an “abstract and commodified” (Rusell’s phrase) approach to writings. The implied alternative here is clearly the establishment of some authentic, non-commodified relationship with writing. This is reinforced by Eubanks and Shaeffer's "A Kind Word for Bullshit: The Problem of Academic Writing" where they observe that for many writing teachers the most damaging kind of bullshit produced by students is the writing that bears all the hallmarks of effective writing but which nevertheless is somehow understood to lack "sincerity" (p. 386) [2]. Finally, I would point out that it is in discussions of the relationship between first-year writing and academic discourse that the mentor/apprentice model is most often invoked; this is the case even when there is a clear understanding that no generalized academic discourse exists [3].
Audience Awareness: A major focus in many first-year writing classes is to develop in students an understanding of the importance of writing to a particular audience within a specific context. The appeal to the apprenticeship model saturates even the language we use to talk about the writing task. For those of you who teach classes based around audience awareness, how many times have you found yourself talking about the importance of a student "tailoring" his or her writing to their target group? Moreover, this approach is defined by the promise of authenticity: the goal of having students write with a particular audience in mind is, after all, so that they will produce writing that lacks the artificiality that occurs when one is writing for a hypothetical audience. However, it is in this insistence upon the authenticity provided by writing with an audience in mind that our classes are at their most inauthentic. The challenge here, of course, is that however elaborate and creative the instructional devices we use to help students visualize an audience for this or that writing project, such an audience is almost always a virtual construct. Students are well aware that the real audience for their writing, its only authentic recipient, is the teacher. We may design assignments where they have a living, breathing, praising and criticizing audience in the form of their classmates, for example. But most students understand very clearly that the criteria for effective engagement with an audience are derived from the writing having a function that has real consequences. And the function of most assignments in the writing class is to be graded, their consequence is the production of a grade. Yes, there may be other things that will emerge as byproducts of that assignment. But the exigence, the impetus for the production of that specific piece of writing, is the cultural and institutional imperative to instruct students in writing and to have them produce material that can be sorted and graded. Furthermore, writing for a virtual audience or even an actual audience of one does not reflect the problems of writing for a real audience [4]. The fact that student writing inevitably calls forth a response (in the form of grade and/or feedback) is itself a distortion: in the world at large most writing is sent out, freighted with authorial ambition. . .and disappears without trace. Fine pieces of writing are ignored, taken out of context, or used in unexpected ways; pieces of dreck become unexpectedly influential. And real audiences demonstrate a generosity that puts the response of many writing teachers to shame; just as often they can be unexpectedly harsh. Who among us has not had their dream of the collegiality of academic discussion eviscerated by the twelve-gauge of an intemperate peer review?
If the problem with the writing classroom, from one point of view, is that it isn't enough of a realistic simulation of the "real" writing practices in which it claims to train students (be those academic writing or writing for specific audiences beyond the academy) for other teachers the writing classroom involves too much simulation [5]. Moreover, the dissatisfaction with the traditional writing classroom voiced by many faculty is that it effectively insulates students from real-world issues and the writing that flows from them. One response to this perception has been a movement to break down the boundaries that separate the classroom from the rest of the world and to have students take their writing public through experimentation with new media publication formats, most recently in the form of blogs.
In this regard the goals of Charles Tryon's (2006) class are fairly typical. He wants to find ways for students to take charge of their writing, to provide them with a sense that writing "matters" (p. 128) [6]. This desire is linked for Tryon, as it is for so many of us, to a feeling of the deep connection between the world of writing and citizenship. His goal is to foster an educational approach that will
work against consumerist models that encourage students
to view themselves as passive consumers rather than active participants. More important, a composition class that nourishes citizenship should convey the connections between the classroom and the so-called real world. . . . (p. 128)
For this reason, Tryon constructs assignments that require his students to maintain their own web logs and read those of others. Tryon situates his pedagogical interest in blogs in terms of an opposition between this new form of discourse and the expectations associated with a traditional academic paper. Blogs, he notes,
have a reputation for wild, unfettered political commentary, hardly the form of writing that would seem to lend itself to reflection or the multiple revisions of a polished essay. However, my specific investment in Web logs celebrates precisely these qualities that are often criticized: blogging’s ephemerality, its focus on the everyday, and its no-holds-barred argumentative style. (p. 128)
The academic essay, in all its polished finery, stands outside the realm where meaningful, authentic, public discourse is actually happening; our investment in "academic writing" celebrates precisely the values that aren't valued by the vital voice of democracy. Of course it is one thing when you are reading the voice of democracy; it is quite another when it begins to read you. Tryon discovers that the bloggers have tracked their site traffic back to his site and are now blogging about his assignment, many of them in less than flattering terms. To Tryon's credit, this is one of those great "lemons into lemonade" situations where a teacher losing all credibility with his or her students but which, if you can turn it around, makes for a productive learning moment. And Tryon appears to have done a great job in teaching to the moment.
There are many facets of blogs that make them an object worthy of study and pedagogical experimentation [7]. It is becoming quite clear, furthermore, that for some scholars the bloom is clearly off the blog. Veteran blogger Stephen Krause (2004), for example, in his 2004 article "When Blogging Goes Bad" detailed the account of a failed experiment with blogs in his class [8]. The experience certainly didn't sour Krause on blogs as a form, and he locates the origin of the problems in his course design and some of his assumptions. Nevertheless, he concludes that "blogs are an exciting writing tool, one of the most interesting and potentially most useful to come to the writing classroom since email. . . .But it's become clear to me that blogs are not as useful as the relatively old-fashioned technology of electronic mailing lists for writing that is interactive and dynamic. "
Tryon is concerned, as we have seen that students are always being positioned as consumers of writing. He wants them to take writing seriously and feels that writing for a real audience on the Internet will facilitate that: "The instant feedback and endless arguments that constitute a large corner of the blog world quickly bring to the surface the techniques by which good argument can proceed as well as the logical fallacies that often emerge when blog writers fail to think through their arguments" (pp. 128-29). He is thrilled that "most students felt validated when outsiders commented on their blog entries, even when the commenter disagreed with what they had to say" (p. 130). He also sees reading different blogs and commenting on them as a vehicle for more effective political participation (p. 131). He wants the writing to be real, he wants his students to feel that it is real, and he wants them to see writing as connected with real issues: all the things that the enclosed writing class, focused on academic discourse and argument appears to limit.
In blogging, however, he has selected a technology that fosters none of those things. The idea that consumerism is only a passive activity, for example, sits rather oddly in this age where we have been encouraged as part of our patriotic duty to shop till we drop. Being an "active" contributor in an age predicated upon a hunger for fleeting celebrity is no guarantee that one is not as heavily implicated in the frenzy of consumerism as a person buying twelve flat screen TVs [9]. Most seriously, Tryon's enthusiasm for the "interactive" potential of this technology leads him to fundamentally mistake its nature and purpose. For all his professed admiration for the "ephemerality" of blog culture and its "no-holds-barred argumentative style" he wants to apply some very traditional criteria for evaluating its effectiveness. Concepts like "logical fallacies" are only a matter of concern if you think that the purpose of individual blogs and blog culture as a whole is to persuade others. The purpose in fact is much simpler: it is to opine and then recirculate the blogs of others as you preach to your particular choir. Blogging marks the point where use value becomes pure exchange value. The writing has no function except to be of the kind that will get it linked and quoted and commented upon. It is not supposed to do anything, or prompt any action beyond contributing to the production of a swirling mass of largely unwarranted (and I use that word in the old-school argumentative sense) self-promotion [10].
For all that I think that Tryon is barking up the wrong tree, his article is interesting precisely because at its core it is not about blogs at all. It is about a prevalent strain of dissatisfaction that many writing teachers feel with the institutional position of composition at many universities, and many of its disciplinary norms. As writing teachers we have tried to fix the problem by application of every technology that promises to get people talking together or, more especially, talking with others beyond the classroom walls. Remember listervs? MOOs? Hypertext? Do a little digging and you will find no shortage of Tryon and Krause pieces associated with each of those technology initiatives.
With the clarity of hindsight it is easy to look back and see that the 1990s represented a blending of ideas about active learning and emerging communications technologies that seemed highly promising to many of us at the time but whose results have been mixed, to say the least. What happened was that active learning instead became interactive learning. This was not however remotely akin to what Gee argues should be the educational goal: critical learning. Instead, in many classrooms, and in many articles reflecting upon those new media innovations, the fact of interactivity was taken as evidence that learning was occurring. Just as some teachers are apt to see the writing produced in the writing classroom according to various models as authentic, so the attempt to transcend the traditional classroom through new media technologies produces the fantasy that students are now, as Tryon believes, engaging authentically, face-to-face (or, if we are to take the blog equivalent, pseudonym to pseudonym) with culture.
Of course, this is a fantasy. Kara Dawson (2007), in a commentary for the Chronicle of Higher Education laments the fact "the blog postings I required my students to write were just not very interesting. Those students are bright, insightful, frequently opinionated, and, as a whole, a pleasure to be around. Their blogs were not" [11]. Despite beginning to feel some of the symptoms of blog overload (too many to read, too many to write), she is quick to note that she still loves blogs. "But the key difference is that I am not forced to read any of those blogs. None of them were created because of someone else's course requirement." The blogging community is, like the gaming community, a community of self-motivated enthusiasts. They are not writing, by and large, because someone is telling them they have to do so to get a grade.
The enthusiasm for incorporating blogs into the writing classroom, then, stands as a particular instance of a more general reliance upon the importance of authenticity and apprenticeship in the field of writing instruction. There is absolutely nothing wrong with requiring students to investigate these things and participate in them. However if you are to use these technologies and pedagogies effectively, I would argue, it is important not to be confused about what you are doing. The lesson many of us learned from our first stumbling experiments with technology in the writing classroom was that the very last place to look for authentic, motivated community was in a required course in a subject that most people either detest, loathe, or feel they have already mastered.
There is, then, a peculiar kind of Scylla and Charybdis that threatens to drown the exhausted writing teacher. For some the problem is that the writing classroom is an ineffective simulation. For others the problem is that it is too much of a simulation. The greater problem, I have argued, is that neither group explicitly sees the problem as one that is related to simulation, except indirectly. Instead, for both it becomes about a quest for authenticity: students authentically caring about writing as they engage authentically with an authentic audience about authentic issues. Given that the writing classroom is always, irredeemably, an artificial, constrained, instructional situation characterized by performance expectations reinforced by assessment criteria, such a quest for authenticity is doomed to failure and frustration. Our response should be not to run from the simulational aspects of the classroom but to embrace them, and to figure out how to design our simulations more effectively.
This goal becomes even more important once we realize that our students already approach our classes as if it were a game. . .albeit a poorly designed one.
1. Brent, D. (2005). Reinventing WAC (again): The first-year seminar and academic literacy." College Composition and Communication, 57 (2). 253-276.
2. Eubanks, P. & Schaeffer, J. D. (2008). A kind word for bullshit: The problem of academic writing." College Composition and Communication. 59 (3). 372-388.
3. For examples see the essays in Ravelli, L. & Ellis, R. A. (Eds.). (2004). Analyzing Academic Writing: Contextualized Frameworks. London: Continuum. In "Teaching Academic Writing on Screen: A Search for Best Practice," for example, Helen Drury observes that in the genre-based pedagogy (a pedagogy derived from the Systemic Functional Linguistics model shared by a majority of the volume's contributors, it is important that students understand "the purpose of the learning program and the role of academic writing and genres in the discourse communities they are joining. In this sociocultural approach, new students to the 'community' are 'apprenticed' into the academic culture (p. 239). Interestingly, the quotation marks around community and apprentice seem to indicate that in its artificial, constrained situation, the writing classroom lacks the requisite authenticity to produce real community and apprentices.
4. One attempt to overcome the problem of the hypothetical or ersatz audience is represented by service learning courses. Here there is very often a real audience for student writing. And in general service learning courses point the way to a more effective (if generally unacknowledged) use of the writing class as simulative space. They become problematic, however, to the degree that we insist on seeing the writing produced in such a situation as inevitably more authentic. While the audience for student writing represented by a local community group or non profit is real, the writing is still being called forth in the context of a required class that demands material to be graded. This is a very different situation to one where the student has voluntarily donated his or her time to the community group.
5. Simulation, here, is understood in a rather narrow sense, where the environment that emphasizes training and practice inevitably simplifies or even distorts the activity that it aims to simulate.
6. Tryon, C. (2006). Writing and citizenship: Using blogs to teach first-year composition. Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture, 6 (1): 128-32.
7. See, for example, Lindgren, T. (2005). Blogging places: Locating pedagogy in the whereness of weblogs." Kairos, 10 (1).
8. Krause, S. D. (2004). When blogging goes bad: A cautionary tale about blogs, emailing lists, discussion and interaction." Kairos, 9 (1) Fall.
9. The words that should be haunting every discussion of the democratic, or radical, or revolutionary potential of blogs are those of Emily Dickinson: "Publication—is the Auction / Of the Mind of Man."
10. Humorist Gene Weingarten (2008) recently published a hilarious, albeit deeply depressing, account of what it is like to be immersed for 24 hours in the world of endless information circulation in which blogs have become such key players. Those who are looking to this brave new world to "nourish citizenship" should probably not read "Cruel and unusual punishment." Weingarten finds, for example, that the old adage "Information overload is like drinking from a fire hose" needs some updating. The modern information reality is "Not fire-hosing exactly. Waterboarding." Washington Post Magazine. March 23: W12
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