cinco.de.mayo

Breuch

 

What I take away from Breuch’s philosophical exercise is that the writing process has been simplified and made formulaic.  This seems to happen a lot in formal education.  We (we being whoever) try to reduce everything into five, easy, consumable steps.  Even though we (we being whoever) know that anything worth doing comes down to working hard and doing it, we still want a map when we come upon new territory.  The world is complex, we are complex.  Textbooks are not.  Textbooks have useful information but they also simplify matters.  Although I guess that isn’t a bad thing.  I guess it’s about recognizing the role of the thing, the textbook.  A textbook is a reference, a guide.  Relying entirely on them for subject matter and for activities results in textbook like living and experiencing.  What sucks is that some people do most of their reading from textbooks.  Even holding a textbook is not the same as folding up a newspaper or holding a novel between your hands. 

 

Distinguishing between skills and the act of writing is valuable because writing requires so many different skills and actions.  Good writing that is.  Crap writing isn’t so involved.  Kinda like that sentence.  I say the distinction is useful because even though earlier I made fun of breaking knowledge into consumable bits, it’s necessary to do this.  But the consumable bits need to work within a larger process of learning, thinking, expressing. 

 

Berlin

Truth is never fixed and neither is the writing process.  I have reduced Berlin’s essay into one line of truth.  The process I went through to arrive at that line was to: 1) read the article, 2)underline as I read, 3)let it marinate in my mind, 4) look back at the parts that stood out to me (the underlined and starred areas), 5) write. 

 

This process will not be the same the next time I write.  The line I wrote after the first line that, “Truth is never fixed and neither is the writing process,” was developed differently than the first.  The second played off of the first.  The truth of the second played off the truth of the first. 

 

A moment for Aristotle.  As readers we have triggers.  Words and phrases that trigger associations that may lead to our enlightenment or our doom, in terms of understanding the reading.  Our the triggers might not be that dramatic but simply make our eye twitch in the middle of a sentence.  Aristotle is a trigger word for me. I realized that when I read essays that mention Aristotle, I associate it with a tall thin man with a long white beard.  We don’t speak the same language and if he was captain of soccer team and was picking players, he would completely bypass me.  And vice versa.  We wouldn’t even see one another.  That happens.  Real people stand next to us but we are so wrapped up in our own world that we don’t know they’re there.  This is not just ignoring someone.  This is not even realizing they exist.  Aristotle and I do not exist for one another…yet.  But we haven’t played any hard ball yet. Maybe some day we will. 

 

Fulkerson

This is what I appreciated about Fulkerson (which sounds very close to F @&! Kerson): he was very precise in his breakdown of what he was looking at: 1) critical / cultural studies 2) expressivism 3) rhetorical approaches—which he further breaks down into three categories.  What I found most helpful, however was page 657 when he presents four questions as part of his “analytical scheme.”  The chart he uses was helpful to me in comparing the three approaches.  It helps me to follow his argument and also hone in on where his argument breaks down.  Even better than the chart, though, were the questions. They’re useful to me for understanding and articulating my philosophy on writing and its subsequent impact on how I teach.  Up to this point I have read different theories. At times during those readings I’ve thought, “Ah yes, I do that.” Or “Ah yes, I agree with that.” Or “Ah no, that goes against my principles.”  While I have an idea of my phi….oh I just had a moment.  Here it is.  I’ve had to write my teaching philosophy a couple of times.  One was during my elementary school certification program.  I think I had to do it twice.  And then in 791 last semester.  But both of those papers were on teaching.  Philosophies of teaching.  In contrast, the questions Fulkerson asks have to do with writing.  These questions are taking a step back.  A lower step of the pyramid.  I’m going to briefly answer the questions.

1). What makes good writing?  Good writing means the writer enjoys what they are writing, but also it is hard work.  The reader might not necessarily enjoy the writing.  There are a million reasons why.  It’s not a topic they’re interested in, they don’t appreciate the style, they’re not in the right frame of mind to read.  Regardless of whether the reader likes it or not, they can still peel away layers of the writing.  In other words, the writing has depth.  The depth is created by meaning, by associations, by word choice, by ideas, by description.

 

2) How do written texts come into existence?  The hand puts the pencil to paper in order to create some sort of meaning.  The meaning is created through a system of symbols.  This is what would differentiate from, for example, a picture.  A picture also has meaning, but the meaning is communicated through an image.  Because meaning in writing is represented through symbols, the writer has to understand the symbols at the micro and the macro level (level of the letter and level of the word, sentence, paragraph). The writer has to draw upon meaning around them and funnel it into written words, which are meant to be “funneled” back up to the reader for interpretation and understanding.  Before the written text can exist, there has to be interaction and thought.  Often the interaction is between people but if a person was locked in a room, they could still write. There would still be interactions of ideas, interaction between person and space, and of course all the interactions that led to that person being locked up in the first place. 

 

3) How does one teach college students effectively?  Lots of writing with different purposes and different audiences.  Give concrete strategies and options for approaching writing.

 

4) How do I know this? I don’t remember much about writing that was taught to me formerly.  Most of my understanding about writing comes from doing it and getting feedback from other people.  The concrete strategies part I added on through my experiences as a teacher.  Some students like “discovering writing” on their own and others need more concrete steps.  Neither way is wrong; they balance each other.  Sometimes explicit instruction is necessary and faster, but we also learn best by doing.