#4. A Reminder about the Politics of Composition

In my last blog post I discussed the 1996 collection Composition in the Twenty-First Century, and it looks like I am not quite done writing about it yet! A segment of text from David Bartholomae's paper caught my eye, where Bartholomae offers an interesting and lengthy definition of the enterprise we call composition. I found the first part of this definition thought provoking and it is reproduced below: 

"It is, rather, a set of problems produced by a wider, more diffuse set of practices and desires, usually brought into play by instances of language change or variety (or by the possibility that writing might change or be various). In a sense, the history of composition has been the record of institutional and professional responses to challenged standards, challenges to a standard of writing produced by writers who were said to be unprepared. Composition marked the people and places charged to prepare those students and/or defend and rationalize their "unauthorized" writing" (p. 11). 

I recently wrote a seminar paper on the New Abolitionists, and while I don't associate David Bartholomae with the abolitionist debate, what he says here is awfully similar to Sharon Crowley's argument in favor of abandoning first-year composition (FYC) writing requirements. Crowley, in her 1995 article "Composition's Ethic of Service, the Universal Requirement, and the Discourse of Student Need," writes that composition studies has always been guided by an institutional ethic of service, where "the required introductory composition course...is the site wherein those who are new to the academy learn to write its prose" (p. 227). Without going into significant depth about abolitionism, Crowley essentially argues that FYC, as a gatekeeping mechanism, has degraded writing instructors, their students, as well as the field of composition studies at large. Instructors are exploited labor-wise, students are unmotivated, and the rich diversity of the field's research output is obscured behind mundane subject matter associated with FYC (these are Crowley's ideas, not mine!). In order to restore dignity to all of these stakeholders, Crowley argues that FYC requirements should be abolished, with writing courses made optional for students who are particularly motivated to take them. While I find it a little surprising that Bartholomae is taking up this type of rhetoric, perhaps this makes sense as the New Abolitionism was all the rage when this conference took place. This is evidenced by the fact that Bartholomae's paper appears in the collection alongside Robert Connors' history of abolition. The collection also includes a paper by Crowley, who discusses the field's mythology surrounding the emergence of process pedagogies. 

While I am not an abolitionist, I have pondered what to make of Crowley's ethic of service in the year 2026. Crowley argues that if writing instruction at the higher education level is ultimately an elitist enterprise as an opposed to a democratizing one, writing instructors are agents of the institution and thus unable to act according to the interests of students, regardless of pedagogical approach. I wonder, has anything changed significantly within the field since the 1990s that would undermine this outlook? If not, would the current crop of writing instructors agree with Crowley's take? I am not sure, however, since the New Abolitionism never came close to achieving its acknowledged goals, and writing requirements remain standard across U.S. colleges and universities, it seems fair to conclude that many people in the 1990s were not deeply troubled by this ethic of service, even if they accepted it as the guiding mission of composition studies. Perhaps this is the ongoing mindset now. 

Seen in an elevator.

To concede a point to Crowley, perhaps it is fair to say that any instructor-student transaction involving evaluation and assessment can always be seen as a judgment about whether a student, based on their language use, belongs at an institution. Perhaps the ethic of service is still alive and well. At the same time, thinking about the present moment, I think we have made great pedagogical strides that indeed benefit students. To offer some examples, I know many writing instructors who have long been helping students to recognize the fallibility of Standard Academic English as a realistic and desirable conception of "good writing." Not only this, but the advancement of multiliteracies frameworks have gone far in showing students that they possess sophisticated and complex literacy practices. I will also say that my adoption of contract grading has created space for improved equity in my own classroom. 

To use the terms of the New Abolitionists, I feel that I might be going back into seminar paper mode, where I am offering reheated "reformist arguments" in stating this position. Other scholars have stated what I am saying in much more articulate terms. For example, a paper by Sullivan et al. (1997) highlights reforms the authors made to the writing program at Temple University in the 1990s. They argue that writing program administrators can effectively work within inside of a system to provide a better quality of writing instruction for students. I agree with this sentiment and will conclude by suggesting that while we as writing instructors are definitely agents of the institution, perhaps I ultimately disagree with Crowley that we thus can't act according to the interests of the students. Composition is many things, but I can feel confident in saying that it is not a zero-sum, black and white enterprise. 

References

Bartholomae, D. (1996). What is composition (if you know what that is) and why do we teach it?. In L. Z. Bloom, D. A. Daiker, & E. M. White (Eds.), Composition in the Twenty-First Century: Crisis and Change (pp. 11-28). Southern Illinois University Press.

Crowley, S. (1995). Composition's ethic of service, the universal requirement, and the discourse of student need. Journal of Advanced Composition, 15(2), 227-239.

Sullivan, F. J., Lyon, A., Lebofsky, D., Wells, S., & Goldblatt, E. (1997). Student needs and strong composition: The dialectics of writing program reform. College Composition and Communication, 48(3), 372–391.