Endless “Crisis and Panacea” for Writing
What have scholars and teachers been doing to improve writing and the teaching of writing in American schools for the last one hundred and sixty years–especially the writing of essays?
The answer to that gives us a fascinating historical perspective of the teaching of writing in America——
In 1994, composition scholar Robert J. Connors (scroll down to the last obituary in the list for the year 2000) published his view of a broad pattern. He pointed out in his article, “Crisis and Panacea in Composition Studies: A History,” that scholarship and intellectual activity had grown by leaps and bounds in the field of teaching writing during the past thirty years (now it’s past forty-five years).
But Connors felt progress has been limited mainly to a series of crises followed by temporary panaceas—all of which were temporary and none of which were turned into permanent, lasting solutions.
Connors believes that further temporary ‘crises,’ accompanied by their temporary ‘panaceas,’ will “continue to shape the discipline” of the teaching of writing. What have teachers learned from all these crises and panaceas? Connors declares that all the failures of the past—“profitless exercises” (his terminology)—can be used as standards for judging all future crises in writing.
Connors optimistically proclaims—for no particular reason, it seems, since he gives none—that teachers of writing won’t repeat the mistakes of the temporary crises, the temporary excitements and panics, and the temporary panaceas that are the proven history of teaching writing in America which he has taken so much trouble to trace and to document.
That historical accumulation of failures is, I think, somewhat akin to Thomas Edison’s view of his 2,000 failed experiments in making a light bulb. Edison is reported to have said, “I didn’t fail 2,000 times. I just figured out 2,000 ways that it didn’t work.” For Connors, the discipline of teaching writing has not failed innumerable times—teachers have just found innumerable ways that are not the best ways to teach writing.
Now, I can accept that Edison remembered all his failures or had access to his own records of them, keeping them handy as archived references.
But who is going to do that record keeping, that monitoring, for teachers of writing all across America?
Surely, no individual can do it. The NCTE? The CCCC? Hardly. Even if they were able to do so, writing teachers don’t need a list of failures—they need a list of thorough successes built on a solid, proven, and widely accepted theoretical foundation.
All the scholarship of writing teachers, all the back & forth of crises and panaceas, have not been enough to appease Professor Wayne C. Booth’s complaint about the deficiencies of teaching writing:
. . . where is the theory, where are the practical rules . . .?
Nor have the scholarship, crises, and panaceas provided any promise of a solution. A perspective of trial and error our writing teachers have got, but an insightful, full perspective they have not. Why?
Crisis, Again & Again
A relatively recent article provides the answer, and not from within the ranks of those who teach writing—
In 2003, an article in The New York Times provided some insight by which to judge Connor’s perception of the recurring pattern of crisis and panacea in teaching writing.
In that article, “ON EDUCATION; Discovering Crisis, Again and Again,” journalist Michael Winerip shares what he learned from Laura Haniford, a University of Michigan doctoral candidate who had presented a paper at a recent annual education convention that Winerip attended.
Haniford’s paper focused on the news media’s coverage of a racial achievement gap in local schools—the difference between how whites and blacks scored on standardized tests, as covered by one small newspaper, The Ann Arbor News, from 1984 through 2001.
Haniford noticed huge swings from year-to-year in the number of articles and the number of letters to the editor about the achievement gap issue, with nothing at all or in any way concrete happening to change things. And she was amazed that the achievement gap remained virtually unchanged, no matter how much attention was or wasn’t given to it.
Haniford wondered, “How can such wildly fluctuating coverage by the news media be explained [despite no change in the achievement gap]?”
To answer this question, she used a research model developed in 1972 by Anthony Downs of the Brookings Institution . . . :
Stage 1: A highly undesirable social or academic condition exists, but has not yet captured public attention.
Stage 2: Alarmed discovery and euphoric enthusiasm by officials and interested parties.
Stage 3: Public and news media realize the true cost of reform and the sacrifices required.
Stage 4: Gradual decline of public interest.
Stage 5: Post-problem. A twilight realm of little attention or spasmodic recurrences of interest. [This is where teachers and schools are now; the NCW’s five years of “Challenge to the Nation” have passed, Proficiency scores have not increased, and very little is being said, as Stage 5 describes.]
The steps of the cycle fit perfectly both the racial achievement gap issue that Haniford was documenting AND Connors’s description of constantly repeating “crisis and panacea” in the field of teaching writing.
With the constantly recurring crises and panaceas that Connors describes and that Haniford reviews in outline form so well, can there be any doubt of the future of writing in America?
Ahem. Not without a NewView . . . .
