Midwest Modern Language Association

The Classroom and the "Real World" as Contexts: Re-Examining the Goals of Writing
Instruction
Author(s): Chris M. Anson
Source: The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Spring,
1987), pp. 1-16
Published by: Midwest Modern Language Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1314994
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 The Classroomandthe "RealWorld"
as Contexts:Re-examiningthe Goalsof
Writing Instruction
ChrisM. Anson

Context,Ideology,andthe Goalsof WritingInstruction

In the English department, discussions about literacy are growing tense.
Where once teacherswith diversescholarlybackgroundswere willing to disagree
with each other in the spirit of intellectualinquiry, now there are much deeper
fracturesconcerning literacy and the teaching of writing.1 Ironically, new re-
search on the development of writing abilities has done little to relieve these
points of stressin our discipline. Instead,composition researchhas only widened
the gap between those who areeager to reviseour currentteaching methods and
those who, threatenedby the winds of change, are holding fast to tradition.
Meanwhile, composition instruction in many English departmentsis losing co-
herenceas one group of educatorscarriesout its pedagogicalinnovationswithout
much consensusfrom the other.
Achieving a unifiedphilosophyof compositionundersuchconditionsis no easy
task: the fieldsof inquirythat make up the traditionalEnglish departmentarere-
defining themselves, forming new affiliations.And, as Applebee has shown so
clearlyin Tradition andReformin theTeachingofEnglish,such changesoften leadto
moments of stress, to divisiveness.But if the history of our disciplineis tainted
with conflict, Applebeealso points out how, over the long term, we have "shed
the distortions of one point of view after another," and "respondedopenly to
changing pedagogical and social concerns, assimilatingand redefining them as
necessary"(255). In part, such reform is achievedonly when we can expose for
scrutiny the tacit ideologies that define our beliefs about language and literacy.
Becauseideologies generallyreferto a kind of"group consciousness"about the
goal of a particularenterprise, they are generally predictive of statements we
might make about language, or the way we might structurea writing curricu-
lum, or how we might teach a composition class, or what we might write on a
student's paper.2Most importantly, however, ideologies of literacy reflect our
attitudes toward different social and institutional contexts for writing: where,
how, what, and for whom we should write. In turn, those attitudes often are
mirroredin our assumptionsabout the most importantcontexts for our students'
writing.
In the following pages, I hope to shed some light on two competing instruc-

ChrisM. Anson 1
tional ideologies which take very differentviews of academicand non-academic
contexts for writing. Unfortunately, each ideology rejectsthe other so strongly
that together they have madeit even more difficultto reachfunctionalconsensus
about the goals of writing instruction. The solution, I believe, is emerging in a
new ideological position, at the center of which is the concept of the "discourse
community."

ContextsforWriting:The BattleOverCulture
Most of the currentdiscrepanciesover context pit the pragmaticwriting of the
"realworld" againstwriting as a chiefly academic,civilizing, or humanizing ac-
tivity. Typical questions raised during curriculum planning sessions suggest
something of this dichotomy: how much of the "realworld" should enter into
writing classes?Do the purposesand conventions of writing in and beyond aca-
demia really differ?How will the English departmentaccommodatethe recent
push to decentralizethe teachingof composition, scatteringthe responsibilityfor
writing into other coursesandprograms,including professionallyorientedones?
Should it be our mission to preparestudentsfor a world that demandsmore ex-
perience composing business letters and feasibility studies and software docu-
mentationthan personalessaysor descriptionsof beautifulscenes?By "preparing
studentsfor the realworld," do we compromisethe manyintellectualbenefitsof a
liberal, humanisticeducation?
At one end of the ideologicalcontinuum, the answersto such questionsclearly
favorthe academiccontext, particularlythe humanities.In this view, writing in-
struction is and should remaincontext-specific;it helps to indoctrinatestudents
into a particularkind of academicculture which privileges a certain body of
knowledge and a certain way of thinking about text. Functionally, writing is
epistemic, linked to the kinds of exploratoryand intellectualactivitiesthat char-
acterizeour own professionand are embodied in essayslike this one. When or-
ganizedinto a curriculum,suchactivitiesaremore often intendedto help students
become sophisticated,civilized, andhumanepeople than to preparethem to write
beyond the schools.
From this vantage point, writing instruction often helps students to define
themselvesas membersof a community with a specificculturalheritage. Suchin-
structionrelieson modelsof greatwriters, or it privilegesexploratoryor narrative
forms typical of the essayist tradition. In this view, writes Robinson, the term
"literacy"means

oneparticular andquitespecializedthing:aneasyfamiliaritywith acertainbodyof

attitudetowardthem,andspecialpracticesfor readingtextsso
texts, a particular
thattheywill yieldtheappropriate attitudes-attitudesthatmightleada professor
to callone student"cultured,"another"urbane," andstillanothera "candidate
for
graduateschool."("Literacy in the Departmentof English"484)

2 The Classroomand the "RealWorld"

Elsewhere("The Users andUses of Literacy"),Robinson arguesthat, as teachers,
most of us "aretied, more than we sometimesrealize, to a single literatetradition
and its particularbiases"and have "failedto pay attention to the complexitiesin
our own society's means for 'shaping, storing, retrieving, and communicating
knowledge"' (12).
For its critics, the firstideologicalextreme takes a contextuallylimited view of
academicwriting, a view often at odds with students'careergoals or the experi-
ences they will have beyond schooling. Documenting the narrowing of writing
to literaryarts, for example, ShirleyBriceHeath points out that during the nine-
teenth century, writing was associatedwith the acquisitionof "culturedtaste,"
with a body of "specializedand eloquent texts." Writing was no longer seen as a
"skill used by all men to instruct and entertain their fellows," but came to be
"criticalin the cultivationof taste, the creationof a satisfactory'culture'"(34). As
a result of this culturaldefinitionof literacy, academicwriting servedbelletristic
and epistemic purposes,carryingon intellectualinquiry in the essayisttradition
(see Scribnerand Cole). Literacybecame "knowledge of a specialkind of litera-
ture, without recogni[tion] that such an equationis a sociallyprivilegedandeco-
nomically self-servingone: more a matter of status and value than fact" (Robin-
son, "The Social Context of Literacy" 11). In this tradition the purposeof lit-
eracyin higher educationwas to "trainartistocrats,a classof men whose educa-
tion was intentionally made to be unrelatedto the affairsof the larger society,
resting instead on eternalprinciples"(Berlin 41).
From this firstideologicalperspective,it is difficultto think of decontextualiz-
ing the writing curriculumbecause most of us do not share membershipwith
manyother contexts. We simplydon't careto understandmuch-at leastin a for-
mal way- about the non-academiccultureswhere most of our studentswill carry
on their professionallives. We know that these culturesarefilledwith important
epistemicand socialactivities,yet we trivializetheir kind of literacy,and think of
their readingand writing activitiesas pragmaticand skills-driven,without much
aestheticvalue or intellect. And we worry that too much attention to such con-
texts will eventuallyturn higher educationinto little more than vocationaltrain-
ing.
The entirely skills-basedapproach,of course, representsthe secondideological
extreme, which has rejectedthe "elitism"of traditionalliterature-basedwriting
instructionand replacedit with a content-freeor content-neutralpedagogy. This
ideology is, to use Winterowd's term, "scientismic," reflecting an attitude
toward meaning that is
at theleast"pragmatic,"
slantedradically
towardlanguageasanagencyforgetting
thingsdone and againstlanguageas play. Afterfollowingthe scientismicargu-
ments-most of theminterestingandinformative-onebecomesawarethat the
hasno placeforpoemsor stories,but is concernedover-
scientismicconsciousness
whelminglywith informationandthe reductionof uncertainty.(280)

ChrisM. Anson 3
Not surprisingly,non-academiccontexts play an importantrole in the definition
of this utilitarian ideology: students learn to "survive"not only in the "real
world" beyond academia,but in other academiccontexts whose ties with that
world are more apparentthan those of the literaturedepartment.Studentsprac-
tice the fundamentalsof effectiveprose, and learnsimpleconventions such as the
proper salutationsfor businessletters. If and when sophisticatedrhetoricalcon-
cepts such as audienceor purposearebroached,they are often isolatedfrom any
actualwriting context and placedon the samelevel as rules and mechanics.The
goal of such instructionis to preparestudentsto write in manypossiblecontexts,
and so it must remaingeneral, simple, and objective.
Because it appearsnot to emphasize the traditions of Western literacy, this
ideology is often thought to foreshadowthe eventualdecayof our culture. In his
report on the state of the humanities, for example, Secretaryof EducationWil-
liam Bennett criticizesthe last twenty yearsof curricular"erosion"that has led to
the trivializationof content:
Thedesiredendsof educationchangedfromknowledgeto "inquiry," fromcontent
to "skills."We beganto seecollegeslistingtheirobjectivesasteachingsuchskillsas
reading,criticalthinking,andawarenessof otherpointsof view. Theseareun-
deniablyessentialendsto acollegeeducation,buttheyarenot sufficient.Onestudy
groupmembersaid,"Whatgood is knowinghow to writeif you areignorantof
the finestexamplesof the language?"(21)
By and large, it is in academiccontexts that these finest examples are taught,
learned, analyzed, and perpetuatedas part of our culturalliteracy. For Bennett,
then, the purposeof literacyinstructionis not to help peopleproduceandcompre-
hendlanguagein diversesocialandinstitutionalcontexts, but to help them acquire
something less tangible, something like the "good culture"that comes from be-
ing "in the company of great souls" ("To Reclaim a Legacy"21). Clearly, this
sort of curricularemphasison a body of culturalknowledge suggests that the pur-
pose of education-more specifically, the purpose of a course where students
compose texts-is to help them to join a class of people whose membershipis
definedby a specificview of literacy and familiaritywith a specificbody of dis-
course. As a form of humanisticliteracy, this ideology is, to some critics, a subtle
but powerfully coercive mechanismfor doing away with diversity-or, in the
words of William Spanos,that "threateningOther precipitatedby the recurrent
historicalrupturesthat disintegrateandmultiply the existing 'common [singular]
body of humanisticknowledge"' (9).
Bennett's fear of an entirely skills-basedpedagogy, of course, is not without
good cause. As FrankSmith points out, an information-processingapproachto
literacy (which emphasizesthe skills of transmission)often obscuresor ignores
two majorfunctionsof writing: to createexperiencesandto exploreideas(117ff.).
And Applebee points out that there has been

4 The Classroomand the "RealWorld"

 preciouslittleconsiderationof therelationship
betweentheskillsof Englishandthe
"higher"goalsof expressionor responseto literature.Almostwithoutexception,
skillshavebeentreatedas subjectsfor directteaching,sometimeswithina frame-
work of lessons,sometimesas "incidental" or "functional" instructionopportu-
inserted
nistically in the course of otherwork . . . [and]protectedby thedesireof
teachersto havesomethingconcreteand"useful"to do in theirclasses(249-50)
In this respect, Bennett'sreportis accurateand relevant.At the same time, how-
ever, it revealsa dangerouslybifurcatedattitudetoward teaching, as if we had no
choice but to associateourselveswith one or the other ideologicalextreme-that
is, to teach the contents of select works that "virtuallydefinethe developmentof
the Western mind" (21), or to teach the sorts of rudimentaryskills that will en-
able students to write in any context.
Unfortunately, even educatorshonest enough to explore their own beliefsob-
jectively are falling prey to this attitude of extremes. In his most recent publica-
tions, for example, E. D. Hirschhasrepudiatedmuch of what he has saidover the
last decadeabout the teaching of readingand writing. That earlierwork, Hirsch
confesses,concentratedon skillsto the exclusion of content. The resultwas advo-
cacyof pedagogicalformalism,the "dominantassumptionof readingandwriting
theory," which claims that we can teach people to write well by teaching them
the underlyingprinciplescommon to all writing tasks. And much of the motiva-
tion for that formalismcame from the need to preparestudentsto write in a vari-
ety of contexts, both academicand non-academic.
According to Hirsch's new theory, when readersand writers do not share a
common "culturalliteracy"- that is, a common body of literate knowledge-
their communicative efficiency declines: they read more slowly or write with
more difficulty. For Hirsch,
we cannotdo a goodjob of teachingreadingandwritingif we neglect,by concen-
tratingon technique,theparticular culturalvocabularies
we wantto teach. . . And
if thatis so we will needto ask,Istherea centralcanonof culturalinformation
that
is analogousto thecentralcanonof literatu;e?Isthereacultural contentthatdefines
literacy?("Reading,Writing, andCulturalLiteracy"145)
Inevitably, Hirsch became frustratedwith an ideological extreme in whose con-
textual neutralitythere was no place for culturalcontent in the development of
readingand writing abilities.But what sort of culturalcontent leadsto improved
literacy?Facedwith such a question, most educatorswill, like Hirsch, fall back
on their own subjective judgments about the great works to which they
themselves have been exposed, and from which their own literacy skills have
presumablydeveloped. This sort of extremist position, fueled by a desire to re-
build the humanitiesfrom the pieces of a shatteredcurriculum,has led Hirsch,
Bennett, and others to propose that we establisha nationalcommittee to single
out the dozen or so texts that all students should be required to read (and
presumablyto write about) to build their cultural literacy. Not coincidentally,

ChrisM. Anson 5
the best people to decide what might be includedin the central canon are pro-
fessors, mainly in the humanities.
The sort of ideologicalflip-flopdemonstratedin Hirsch'srecent thinking is not
uncommon among teachersin English departments,particularlythose who find
themselvesstrandedon the burningbridgebetween composition theoristson one
side and their literary counterpartson the other. Even retreats like Hirsch's,
alarmingthough they may seem, areoften only sighs of resignationthat composi-
tion continues to lack the respectit has sought and deservedas a field of inquiry.
When it does, writes Maxine Hairston,
thephrases"skillscourse"and"servicedepartment" will disappear
fromourprofes-
sionalvocabularies. Suchlanguagemisrepresents anddemeanswhatwe do when
we teachwriting,andit adversely affectsourself-imageandtheimagewe present
to the restof the universityandto the community.(12)

But neitherimage nor pedagogy is likely to be enhancedif we continueto takeex-

treme ideological positions, returning to traditionor insisting, in the face of all
criticism, that teachingthe skillsof writing ought to be professionallyrespected.
We need to promote ideologicalchange, especiallyin public and educationalat-
titudes towarddifferentcontexts for writing. We must encouragea respectfor all
contexts where writing is done-both academic and non-academic-without
underminingthose contexts' culturesor taking a limited view of the sorts of in-
tellectualinquirythat definethem. And, with the help of researchmethodologies
from disciplinessuch as sociolinguisticsand anthropology, we must begin to ex-
plore more fully the varied cultural, social, and institutional contexts where
writing is done.

EmergingIdeologyandthe Conceptof "Discourse

Community"
Until recently, researchon writing was preoccupiedwith understandingthe
writing processesof studentsin academicsettings- usuallythe compositionclass.
That researchhas resultedin valuableknowledge about how students compose
and revise, how they develop writing abilitiesover time, and how they readand
evaluate their own and each others' writing (see Hillocks for an exhaustive re-
view). Recently, however, severalcomposition theorists have pointed out the
need to considerhow context might influence the way people write. Beach and
Bridwell, for example, suggest that studying writing without taking into ac-
count the many dimensionsof context is a little like "studyinganimallife by visit-
ing zoo cages"(6). In our zeal to understandthe complexitiesof the writing proc-
ess, we've neglected to consider the ways that specific discourse communities
might influencewriters'attemptsto formulateand expresstheir ideas. We have,
in other words, avoidedlooking at writing from a socialpoint of view (Faigley,
234 ff.; Odell, 249).

6 The Classroomand the "RealWorld"

 Increasingly,researchersare now beginning to explore the social and institu-
tional contexts of writing, especiallywith an eye to understandingthe relation-
ships between writing and the attitudes, knowledge, and activities sharedby
peoplein certaindiscoursecommunities.Suchexplorationscreatethe need for the
researcherto borrow the methods of the linguist or anthropologist-observing,
analyzing, and, whenever possible, ridding oneself of predispositionstoward the
communities studied. When objectivityis not possible(andit rarelyis), then the
good researchermust be fully aware of herjudgments and must document how
they influence what she sees.
Created from the demands of the research, that stance does two important
things. First, it helps to rid the researcherof bias toward particularcommunities
where people write. More importantly, however, it compels the researcherto
look beneaththe stereotypesof those communities, probingfor new insights into
the processesand functions of writing. It requirestaking a middle position be-
tween the two ideologicalextremesI havedocumented,neitherunderminingthe
contents of the writing (or communities) being studied, nor looking only at its
surface, or at the simple "skills" requiredto produce it. It tries to understand
something about the relationshipbetween writing and the knowledge andbeliefs
of particulargroups of people who defineand use that writing in particularways.
This kind of research,at leastin writing, is relativelynew. Consonantwith the
methodologies it has assumed,however, it is beginning to revealways in which
writing-not only the actual processesof composing, but dimensions of audi-
ence, purpose, and convention-vary from context to context. And perhapsthe
most importantconsequenceof this new work for teachingis what it says about
generic skills on the one hand and the function of culturalor situationalknowl-
edge on the other.
Discourse communities definewriting in specialways basedon the role of the
community, the needsof its participants,its own history of literacy,and the con-
ventions it has developed. Regularwriters for sportsmagazinesareusuallymem-
ers of the sportsculture;they understandits vocabulary,its attitudes, the generic
and operationalconventions of its discourse.The sameis true for writers in cor-
porate cultures, as Brown and Herndl document ("An EthnographicStudy of
CorporateWriting"). These researchersbecamepuzzled by an almost "perverse
resistance"of professionalwriters in a majorcorporationto change some of their
writing behaviorsfollowing a businesswriting seminar.Against all the seminar
leaders'advice, the writers stubbornlycontinued to use two formal featuresin
their writing: superfluousnominalization, and inappropriatenarrativestruc-
tures. After conducting a qualitative study of the writers and their contexts,
Brown and Herndl discoveredthat the featuresthemselvescould not be divorced
from the communicativecontext in which they appeared.In short, the features
had acquiredpowerful significanceas signs of group affiliation.To strip them
from one's writing would be to renouncemembershipin the community. And as

ChrisM. Anson 7
long as the community uses (andtacitly accepts)such featuresof discourse,noth-
ing in the world will change its writing.
Before they learnedwhy highly intelligent corporatepersonnel would resist
changing their writing habits, Brown and Herndlhad assumedthat certainprin-
ciples of writing could be taught across diverse institutional contexts. But di-
vorced from the context of particulardiscoursecommunities, such principlesare
nearly meaningless. I became convinced of this myself recently when I began
working with college seniorsengaged in professionalwriting internshipsat local
businessesand corporations.Cindy is a casein point. When she began her intern-
ship at the Honeywell Corporation, she hoped that her history as a competent
writer in college would stand her in good stead. As an honors student, she had
done well academically,and had been praised more than a few times for her
writing.
Cindy began her internshipwith an interesting if somewhat formidabletask:
to updateand rewrite a 200-pagedocumentdescribingthe corporation'ssponsor-
ship of public and community programs.After beginning her work on this proj-
ect, Cindy soon becamefrustratedwith her writing and puzzled at some of her
corporatesupervisors'responsesto it. Together, we soon discoveredwhy. Now
that she hadjoined a differentdiscoursecommunity, many of the "rules"about
successfulwriting had changed. Certain kinds of complex or academicsyntax
were eschewedwhile otherswere accepted.Certaintransitionalphrasesandturns
of expressionthat had won respect from her teachersnow were not commonly
used. Manyof the devicesandhabitsthat hadmarkedher as an intelligent thinker
in school no longer worked for her. Instead, she had to demonstrateher intelli-
gence in new ways, especiallyin an awarenessof what we discoveredwas a com-
plicated network of audiences, both within and beyond the corporation, for
much of her writing. Like the academiccontext, there was still a high price on
creativity,but of a differentsort. And, for much of what she wrote, her author-
ship was no longer central:her writing was, she felt, "jointly owned" and "col-
laborativelyproduced." This collaborativeview of text-ownership contrasted
sharplywith her dominantacademicview, in which texts arethe expressionofin-
dividualtalent, produced, as Milton might have put it, through lonely contem-
plation in some still, removedplace(for a similarview from an academic-turned-
businessman,see Babinski, 37-38).
These briefexamplescarrysome importantimplications.Chief among them is
the need for us to think about writing less egocentrically-from a perspective
which is less governed by our own professionaldispositions, interest, and con-
texts. To draw an analogy, we might considerwhat would happenif universities
acrossthe country suddenlyrequiredthat all studentstake an introductorycourse
in reading. At present, most college reading courses are consideredremedial,
often housed in learningand study skills centerswhich provideextra help for ail-
ing undergraduates.Facedwith a mandateto design an undergraduatereading

8 The Classroomand the "RealWorld"

curriculum,many educatorswould turn to the literaturedepartment,the most
likely overseersfor such a program.After all, what better place to teach students
about readingthan the departmentin whose collective consciousnesslie at least a
thousand years of textual history?
Facultyin other disciplinesmight well agree. Like writing, readingas a process
representsto them a specializedactivity, a form of analysiswhose purveyorsin-
habit the halls andofficesof literaturedepartments.In acceptingthe common, so-
cial view of reading and writing as literary enterprises or, alternatively, as
grammar-drivenskills taught in the English department,they areblind to their
own, tacit knowledge about the way discourseworks in their fields. And because
they have always assumedthat readingand writing are essentiallyliteraryenter-
prises, they areoften insecureabout their own literacy, not to mention their abil-
ity to help students with theirs (see Zinsser, 59, for some testimonials).
But reading ought not to be considered so restricted an enterprise. Certain
kinds of advancedorganizing features,textual formats, and other structuralcon-
ventions which arecentralto readingandwriting in manytechnicalfieldsdifferin
importantways from the intricatestructuralfeaturesof a novel like Middlemarch.
And learning to analyzea contemporaryshort story may be quite differentfrom
learninghow to assessthe validityof a researchreporton the languageacquisition
of childrenwith Down's syndrome.To help studentsto become proficientin the
processof reading, in all its richness, by requiringthem to take a course with a
specific,contextuallyrestrictedcanonis a little like teachingthem to build houses
only in the forest, using only wood and vines. When they move to the plainsand
discovermud and sandthey are, for a time, quite homeless. And in that time, if
conditions are very bad, they could lose their lives . . . or theirjobs.

Definingthe Goalsof WritingInstruction

TowardCoherence:

Considering the diversity of the many discoursecommunities where people

write, we might be tempted to give up hope of teaching studentsanything about
writing except what we know as membersof our own communities. After all,
most teachersare experts in a specificfield. Our effectivenessas educatorscomes
from teachingin these areasof expertise,not frompretendingto know something
about the language of other communities. Furthermore,it would be fruitlessto
select one or two other contexts to preparestudents to write in, and even if we
did, we would have to treatthose contexts very generally:the "corporateworld,"
or the "artsorganization," or the "social service agency."
Although this argumentwould seem to supportthe status quo of traditional,
single-context instruction (e.g., instructionbasedon literature),theoristsin the
field of composition who hold to a contextually pluralisticview of how people
learnto write actuallyuse the argumentto bolster a new approachto instruction
now generallyknown as "writing acrossthe curriculum."In the traditionalcur-
riculum, students practicewriting in a single course, learning the conventions,

ChrisM. Anson 9
processes, and subject matter that define the context in which the course is
taught. In writing acrossthe curriculum,on the other hand, studentsarerequired
to write in any and every one of their classes-both to become more proficient
writers simply by writing more often, and to use writing as a way to understand
and learn about the subjectmatter at hand.
The goal of writing acrossthe curriculumis to help students understandand
practicewriting in differentcontent areasand, by default, to learnto adaptto the
language in differentdiscoursecommunities. In writing acrossthe curriculum,
eachcourse, each department,each division of a college or universityis respected
for its own unique contributionsto students'knowledge of, and practicewith,
the forms of written and oral discourseit uses.
Theorists of writing across the curriculum assume that teaching writing
through literatureis, finally,like teachingwriting throughbiology or anthropol-
ogy or the history of science, especiallyif in these coursesstudentsreadandwrite
about important works in the field-Watson and Crick or MargaretMead or
Burton'sAnatomyof Melancholy.Writing in all courses-even ones unlikely to
have used reading and writing in the past, such as physical education or
mathematicsor studio arts- is assumedto be fundamentalto students'intellec-
tual growth (see Fulwiler and Young's LanguageConnections, Gere'sRootsin the
Sawdust, or Griffin's TeachingWriting in All Disciplines. This "re-integration"of
writing into all learningcontexts also promises, as William Zinsser has recently
argued, to create a new of
public image writing, one less tied to the stereotypical
English grammaror literaturecourse weakly disguisedas a course in the process
of writing:
CountlessAmericansare paralyzedin theirjobs by the inabilityto express
themselves.Thiswouldn'thappenif theyunderstood fromchildhoodthatwriting
is a craftthatappliesto everyareaof life. It'snot a speciallanguagethattheyhave
beensentoff to learnfromtheEnglishteacher,astheyaresentoff to learnartfrom
the artteacherandmusicfromthe musicteacher.(58)
Properlyimplementedprogramsin writing acrossthe curriculumoffer some
specialadvantagesto teachersof literature,relieving them of the burdento teach
studentseverythingthey should know about writing. Like teachersof biology or
the historyof scienceor anthropology,teachersof literaturehavean indispensable
function in enhancingstudents'literacy.In all these courses, studentscan learnto
write using the forms and conventions of the field. Alternatively, they can use
writing as a tool for learning about the subjectmatter of the course and for ex-
ploring their interactionswith it. In the firstcase, they arecoming to understand
what it meansto write as an expert in the field: they arebeing indoctrinatedinto
one of many discoursecommunities. In the second case, they are building new
knowledge through the act of writing. This latterfunction of writing-"writing
to learn"insteadof "writing to write"- appealsto those who balk at the thought
of trying to turn undergraduates(especiallynon-majors)into practicingexperts
in ten or fifteen weeks.

10 The Classroomand the "RealWorld"

 In writing acrossthe curriculum,writing thus becomes centralto the science
course, the history course, the course in the contemporaryshort story-but no
single intellectualcontext, literatureincluded, is assumedto standat the heartof
the writing course. Once this assumptionis acceptedin principle, the problems
that remain to be solved for each "content" course across the curriculum are
mainlyprocedural:how best to integratewriting into the course, how best to re-
spondto or evaluatethat writing, how much time to devote to discussingor prac-
ticing the writing, what forms of writing to use, and so on. The problemsfacing
the more "generic"composition program, however, are much greater, and it is
those problems to which I will now turn.
First, writing acrossthe curriculumseemsto leavethe compositioncurriculum
stranded.Without a strong affiliationwith one departmentor another, writing
instructionseems to lose some of its "substance."What sort of content shouldbe
taught?
In responseto this problemsome educatorswill claim that the best contents we
can teachin compositioncoursesarevalues,especiallyas these aredefinedthrough
the history of ideasandpasseddown to us through written texts. In other words,
to make the next generationof corporateleadersresponsibleand ethical, to make
tomorrow's social serviceworkers and pathologists and librariansgood thinkers,
we need to immerse them in the sorts of ethical and intellectual discourse that
characterizesthe academyas a center of learning. That discourse,by its very na-
ture, is multifariousand interdisciplinary.
In the past, this view has led the way to single writing coursesbasedon a set of
diversereadingsfrom many fields, often organizedarounda theme ("strugglesof
youth," "resistanceand rebellion,""topicsin contemporaryethics," etc.). In the
absenceof a cross-curricularwriting program, these coursesareofferedin an at-
tempt to show studentshow centralreadingandwriting areto all subjectsandin-
tellectualpursuits.
But beneaththe admirablerationale,the composition coursebasedon a collec-
tion of readingsis little more than a blend of traditionalliterature-basedinstruc-
tion and a feeblereplacementfor writing acrossthe curriculum.It is a way for the
compositioncurriculum,threatenedby the humanitiesfor being too practicaland
by the rest of the curriculumfor not being practicalenough, to hold on to its
status in the face of an imminent movement toward the decentralizationof
writing. Clearly, no single course focusing on certain written products of
thought would do as much to demonstratethe functions, processes,andvarieties
of writing in a complex, pluralisticworld as a full-fledged writing-across-the-
curriculumprogram,in which studentspracticethe forms of writing they areex-
posed to.
A more principledsolution for the composition course, I believe, is to make it
the core of the writing-across-the-curriculumprogram. Beginning in the first
year, studentswould enroll in composition coursesdesignedto help them widen

ChrisM. Anson 11
their perspectives,explore and practicemany kinds of writing in many different
contexts, and develop strategies for understandingand practicing writing in
future, unknown contexts. The rationalefor this approach,of course, is not new;
more than fifteen years ago, GenevaSmithermanarguedthat
if Englishinstructionis to be usefulto ourstudentsin pursuitof theirimmediate
academic goals,it shouldassistthemin linguistically andrhetorically
conceptualiz-
ing complex ideasfrom a variety of academic disciplines.To manyof my col-
leagues,this smackstoo muchof what theycalla "servicecourse"approach; yet
from the students'viewpoint-and I basemy thinkingon both experienceand
research-suchinstructionis aninvaluable service,makingtheagonizinghoursof
writing and rewriting worth all the trouble. If Englishinstructionis to helpour
studentssurvivein today'smulti-cultural, multi-linguisticworld,it mustfacilitate
theircompetence ascommunicators in a multiplicityof modesandsituational con-
texts anddeveloptheirunderstanding of communications processesandsystems.
(22)
The assumptionsbehindsuch a view of languagelearningclearlycall for a peda-
gogy that deliberatelyavoids locking students into a particularcontext, instead
taking a pluralisticview of literacy. Consonant with such a view, the character-
istics of successfulor unsuccessfuldiscoursebegin to breakdown, to weaken in
the face of their contextual relativity. Our common model of learning assumes
that the criteriafor good writing arerelativelyfixed. It is ourjob to help students
to acquirethese criteriaas part of their competencein the written language. In a
contextually relativisticview, however, what counts as successfulwriting in one
context may be unsuccessful-or may at least breach some establishedconven-
tions-in another. In "Teaching Anthropology is a Good Way to Teach
Writing," Douglas Smith has suggestedthat the highest form rhetoricalexplora-
tion comes from the processescommon to such an "anthropological"perspective
toward literacy-one which is characterizedby the professionalhabit of thought
describedby the words "culturalrelativity":
Theanthropological conceptsof culture
andworld-view
in themselves
carryanimpli-
cationof relativity.Theyimplythatthevalidityof anyoneapproachto realityis in-
tersubjective,that alternativeand equallyintegratedrealityconstructsexist.
(254-55)
Translatedinto a model of learning,this assumptionsuggestsa pedagogybased
on inquiry and exploration. Instructioncan focus not on isolated skills but on
strategiesfor understandingthe many contexts where writing is practiced.Such
strategiesmust includewhat Odell, Goswami, andQuick havecalled"askingthe
right kinds of questions" about one's writing context ("Writing in Non-
Academic Settings"). Among such questions must be what sort of knowledge
base (call it "culturalprecedents")the discoursecommunity uses to inform its
writing and to comprehendit. That knowledge base might include Aristotle,
Shakespeare,and Faulkner;it might alternativelyinclude a year'sdocumentation

12 The Classroomandthe "RealWorld"

of an importantcorporatemerger, or the history of an artmuseum'sacquisitions,
or the lessons learnedfrom a seriesof malpracticesuits. Teaching those specific
knowledge basesis not nearlyas importantto writing instructionas teachingthe
strategiesfor deciding what knowledge is importantand how it can be obtained.
In inquiry-basedinstruction, students become ethnographersof language,
gathering, analyzing, responding to, writing about, and practicing different
forms of discoursethey see and hear them. Becauseeach student is making indi-
vidual discoveriesabout writing, the classroombecomes a forum for sharingand
analyzing the data the studentsbring in. In such a course, the goal of becoming
proficientas a writer in any particularcontext is not nearlyas importantas learn-
ing how to learn about new contexts and the way discourse works within
them-learning the importanceof audience,purpose, conventions of discourse,
andother aspectsof the surroundingcontext. In Smith'sview, this approach"dis-
tances"studentsfrom the writing processwhile simultaneouslyenablingthem to
understandand respect the range of its characteristics:
The perspectiverulesof grammarand compositionwith which teachershave
bulliedstudentssincefirstgradelosetheirsanctitywhentheycanbe seenasdevel-
opmentsof a particular cultureratherthanas God-givenlaws .... Fromthisnew
distance,famouspiecesof writingfromthepastarereducedto theirstatusasexem-
plarsof literarygeniusto thestatusof culture-bound
argument.Studentswho had
been intimidatedby the awe-inspiringmystiqueof writing lose theirparalysis
whentheweightof the world'sgreatliteratureis liftedfromthem.Studentswho
hadbeenenchanted by the samemystiqueburytheirmusesandget to work. (255)
For teachersdisposedto somewhatless relativism,the casebookapproachoffers
a useful alternative.In the past, rhetoricalcases for writing have typically pro-
vided students with an exigency to be respondedto in writing and some back-
ground information about the writing context. Unfortunately, most casebook
rhetoricssufferfrom providing too little information;the problem, the audience,
the context-all stereotypicaland artificial-pale beside real communicativeset-
tings. "Deep cases,"on the other hand, which often include ten or twenty pages
of supplementaryinformation, can be especiallyuseful in showing students the
relevanceof social context to the writing process. As students respond to the
writing task in a deep case, discussionand group collaborationcan focus on why
certaintextual or rhetoricaldecisionswere made, what effect they might have on
the case's audience, and how the context itself is influencing the writer's com-
posing choices.
In anotherinquiry-basedapproach,studentsmight work with only a few kinds
of writing definedat a high level of generality-perhaps a feasabilitystudy, a per-
sonalnarrative,a seriesof processinstructionsfor differentkindsof audience,and
an editorialon some ethicalissue. In creatingthese pieces, however, the students
are compelled to make their own decisions about their audience, purpose, con-
tent, and persona.

ChrisM. Anson 13
 In all of these approaches,students are shown how to raise questions. Their
learningis definedthrough their attemptsto answerthese questionsas they draft
andrevisetheirwriting. Producinga perfectessay or reportor letter is not the ul-
timate goal of such instruction; it is knowing how to embrace uncertainty
through inquiry-but always the student must resolve this uncertaintyfor her-
self.
As writing acrossthe curriculumtakeshold, we must not only considerwhat
will happento the composition curriculumbut to the role of the writing teacher
aswell. If we defineourselvesas membersof a community that spendsmuch of its
time immersedin a certainkind of literaryenterprise,then we must begin openly
to acknowledge that we are not the only or most central community to use
writing for important things. We must also take a hardlook at how, and how
often, writing is used in literaturecourses.
If, on the other hand, we think of ourselvesas specialistsin writing, then we
had better become much more knowledgeable about the many contexts where
writing is practiced, and that will mean continuing the trend toward a wider,
more social and contextual basis for our research.In keeping with the develop-
ment of their own interdisciplinaryresearchparadigm, composition teachers
would also do well to become much more diversifiedcontextuallyin our instruc-
tion. And that will mean learning about the language of other disciplinesacross
the curriculumjust as we help faculty in those disciplinesto understandmore
about the theory and practiceof writing.
Clearly, these sorts of changes are not easy to achieve, and they take a kind of
disciplineand focus that we should not compromisein our searchfor a balanced
pedagogy. In redefiningthe goals of writing instructionfor the eighties andnine-
ties, then, we will be facingsome difficultbut, I think, extremelyimportantques-
tions in the delineationof writing in variouscontent areas- questionswhich will
eventuallybring us closerto a unifiedlearningexperiencefor all our students, and
toward a more coherent, principledbasisfor what we do when we teachwriting.

The University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Notes

1. For some representativeviews, see Robinson ("Literacyin the Department of English"); Man-
ning; Hairston; and Schulz and Holzman.
2. See Prattefor a generaloverview. Taxonomies of instructionalideology areusuallyhypothetical,
basedon observation,ethnographicresearch,or attitude questionnairesand inventories. For sev-
eral examples in the areaof literacy education (specificallywriting), see Kroll; Fulkerson;Dia-
mond; and Gere, Scheussler,and Abbott.

14 The Classroomand the "RealWorld"

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16 The Classroomand the "RealWorld"