Emily's presentation on Bartholomae was organized in a way that made both the differences and the similarities more clear between Elbow and Bartholomae. Creatively she also took the wind out of several myths that she encountered about Bartholomae.
She points out that Bartholomae, like Elbow is also interested in teaching students to be better writers. Different from Elbow he sees himself as teacher in control. Students cannot teach themselves and if they did they would just reproduce "basic writers." Students must be taught what they came to higher education without. He will teach students to develop the second language of academia by dense reading and difficult critical thinking.
Elbow encourages students to write and to learn about and trust themselves. Bartholomae teaches students to learn to write and encourages skepticism. As Emily put it, Elbow writes first in the process and Bartholomae writes last after considering the critical questions and rhetoric. His students must explore through research. He wants his students' writing not to be subjective but scholarly - worthy of publication in the academic community.
Both have like minded peers. It is good that there are both kinds of teaching so that one could follow what is best for him or her. Lundsford like Bartholomae wants to see the whole argument worked out in her mind before she begins to write. While that works and is best for her, her long time writing partner Lisa Ede writes in pieces and revising as she goes, and after many drafts learning what she wants to say.
As someone else said, if I am beginning to develop that second language of higher academica, I need that dense reading and researching to explore critical questions. There is time later to switch over to Elbows' write-to-know oneself. Emily stated that both believe voice is important. But while Elbow believes that voice is a higher priority and must be discovered early as a writer, Bartholomae suggests that humans are socially constructed and so we must determine our place in the construct and then we will be able to find our voice with or against the dominant culture.
Thanks Emily for clarifying some of the mystery between these two important composition leaders.
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You're welcome, and might I say, this was a very nice explanation of the presentation. It's always encouraging to know when I'm being obscure, and I'm glad that you got all of that out of my presentation.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that all writers approach writing differently. In fact, depending on the difficulty of a writing assignment, I may approach each piece I write differently, so I think that being familiar with many approaches is a good idea.
The question then becomes, what do we have time for? How much can we teach in one or two semesters? These are questions that I am still struggling with. It seems that we must not only help students find style and voice, but we must also help them to be clear, concise and then also teach them how to find the writing method that best suits them. It's a little daunting.