Changing the question: Should writing be studied?

Composition Studies, Spring 2003 by Trimbur, John

Now certainly adherence to the pedagogical imperative-on the part of students and teachers alike-does make it difficult to imagine writing courses that focus not only on developing writing abilities but also on an education in rhetoric and writing studies. The shift from the question "How can writing be learned?"-which already has well-prepared answers in the process movement's workshop practices-to the question "Should writing be studied?" clashes with the sensibilities of many compositionists, for whom writing is figured not as a field of study that belongs in the curriculum but as a practice that pervades the curriculum, beginning with the first-year course and extending into writing across the curriculum, where writing specialists urge colleagues to adopt workshop activities.

On the other hand, as I have mentioned, a trend has emerged to give an affirmative answer to the question "Should writing be studied?" This current is still in the early stages of development, but you can get a sense of its possible meanings in the collection Coming of Age: The Advanced Writing Curriculum, in chapters such as Andrea Lunsford's "Histories of Writing and Contemporary Authorship," Gail Stygall's "Discourse Studies," Richard Leo Enos' "History of Rhetoric," and Beverly Wall's "Political Rhetoric and the Media." The editors, Linda Shamoon, Rebecca Moore Howard, Sandra Jamieson, and Robert A. Schwegler suggest that three considerations are crucial in designing an advanced writing curriculum-to provide students with historical and theoretical awareness of the study of writing as a discipline, to prepare them for careers in writing, and to prepare them to use writing as a means of persuasion in public spheres. Robert A. Schwegler's chapter, "Curriculum Development in Composition," gives a particularly strong answer to the question "Should writing be studied?" To provide students with a sense of disciplinary membership and thereby to include them in the construction of writing studies, Schwegler says, we must present writing as a subject of intellectual inquiry.

These positive answers to the question "Should writing be studied?" signify a shift from the first-year composition course as the main focus of writing teachers' and theorists' attention to a lateral four-year curriculum. I do not believe you can answer the question "Should writing be studied?" within the confines of the first-year course. As I've argued elsewhere, the first-year course exists in a state of "accumulative disequilibrium," overburdened by the demands of various stakeholders-college administrators, students, parents, prospective employers, and the public, as well as compositionists themselves ("The Problem"). These demands, no doubt, are familiar ones: to help students negotiate the literacy tasks of college courses, to validate the integrity of the undergraduate degree, to increase retention, to critique media and mass culture, to negotiate differences, and to enable students to communicate "effectively" in the workplace and responsibly in public spheres. These demands on the first-year course can be a source of aggravation (when, for example, state legislatures or the accountability movement gets involved), but they have also been a powerful source of energy and innovation. Still, there are epistemological consequences in banking so much on one course.