The World Through Rose Colored Glasses
I kept going back to the Mike Rose article after class Thursday, and every time I did, I got more and more pissed off. It wasn't that he was saying anything that was all that disagreeable, its more that he's really a piss poor academic.
Look at his argument for a minute, and I mean really look at it rhetorically and you'll see what I mean. You can boil his argument down to this (and if his paper was a student's paper, this is what I'd do)
1. Blocked writers get blocked because of rules.
2. Good writers don't get blocked because of rules.
Um... So... Yeah. The difference (particularly since he's a 'cognitivist,' a term as out of date as his idea of 'empirical' study), for Rose, and here's the coup de grace, is that a good writer knows a rule doesn't necessarily mean they have to follow it. Holy shit! Are you freaking kidding me? So, if I drive 56 in a 55, my car won't explode? Had I known this, my life would have been so different... I know I'm being overly sarcastic, but, seriously, the difference then really has little to do with teachers. The kids (and I'm thinking young children here) need structure. To deprive them of it (even if its made of rules and the 5 paragraph structure) is to deprive a piano player of the scales. They need to learn the rules in order to break the rules. Yes, I know we have a part in presenting exactly how 'hard and fast' a rule is, and that its certainly better to present a rule as a guideline, but we're talking about personality types in this essay, (antiquated) psychological approaches to teaching supported through ten, yes a whopping ten, brief case studies. If the kid doesn't get that he can break writing rules, he's got more cognitive problems than just with writing, I'd bet on it.
Rant over.
Lou out.
Comments
Response to Foamy
Have you guys heard of Foamy the Squirrel? He's an Internet phenomenon similar to Strongbad. Foamy rocks. Foamy rants. Lou would like Foamy.
Ok Lou, I hear ya. I really do. And I agree with 99% of your points, so don't think I'm arguing with you here.
That said, I really need to pose a counter. I think students actually do have trouble realizing that rules are breakable -- especially by the time they reach us in 106. I know based on two things: 1) my 106 students, who are slowly, reluctantly, painstakingly letting go of some of the steadfast rules they learned in high school and 2) me.
The best professor I have ever had made me F**K**G INSANE because he never answered a question with an answer and never told me what he wanted me to do. He made me figure it out. He was my "rulebreaker," and I had him as a prof during my junior year of undergrad. Before that, I kid you not, I had "cognitive problems," because I didn't realize that writing rules were flexible. Moreover, I didn't WANT to realize that they were flexible -- they made my world make sense! I knew the rules and, for the most part, was pretty damn good at abiding by them and writing great papers within them, so my world was shattered (then put back together) when I realized I could go anywhere, do anything, with my words. I see the same struggle -- cognitive and rhetorical -- happening in my students when I talk to them in conferences or discuss ideas or issues with them in class. I like to think I've brought a little bit of that old prof with me, and I'm forcing them to find their own answers and step outside the box and their rule-goverened comfort zones (however frustrated it may make them when I answer a question with a question).
Controlled chaos
Oh, I'm all about chaos inspired teaching and forcing students to comes to terms with the writing process myself, I just think that Rose's article doesn't really talk about what its trying to talk about well or eloquently or convincingly, nor do I think that there's a 'plan' for when and how or where to break/present the 'rules'. I've got a 5 paragrapher who I'll be 50 bucks on right now will not let it go this semester, despite my all but telling her she needs to let it go. I've also got four or five kids I can feel breathing life into their essays because they can do something new, because they're ready. My point is that ten kids (or twenty in our case) do not make a case study, nor is there any solution to this mess. Nor will there be. It just irritates me for Rose to sound like "Hey, here's the deal," when actually what he's saying is "Hey, here's nothing."
More in class when I can actually take 10 15 minutes to explain.
Provided we all still care.
words, words, words!
I think what Rose is really advocating here is a model akin to Janice Lauer's (1979) proposed "Metatheory of Heuristic Procedures." That is, we don't need rules so much as we need guidelines that are flexible, highly generative, and widely applicable to any number of occasions and forms. By encouraging beginning or intermediate writers to explore, visualize, analogize, classify, synthesize, and rearrange ideas -- rather than simply adhere to structures – we are in effect enhancing their ability to think through the written word. To me, this seems far better suited to the purposes of everyone involved than a rule-based approach. As Rose points out, the problem with rules is that they may be internalized (perhaps even fossilized) in a way that stifles future development, even in a cognitively normal individual. I believe this is due in no small part to the fact that the word itself carries a great deal of semantic baggage: a rule is generally conceived of as a restrictive principle governing conduct that, if violated, may result in punitive consequences. The resulting connotations alone might make anyone, apart from the sociopathic personality, averse to breaking it.
I also take issue with the notion that a case study is suspect if it only examines 10 participants. Rose explains that he selected his participants because they represented two obvious demographics: students who could write with relative ease, and students who had great difficulty writing. I'm not sure that extending the study to 20 or 200 or even 2 million would yield better results. In fact, there have been case studies (e.g., Emig, 1971) that focused on a single participant, yet still managed to be credible. I think one of the problems is that we often apply the quantitative criteria of reliability and validity to qualitative studies, when in fact they should be judged by their own criteria.
Refs:
Emig, J. (1971). The composing Processes of twelfth graders. Urbana: NTCE.
Lauer, J. (1979). Toward a metatheory of heuristic procedure. CCC 30, 3, pp. 268-269.