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Writing matters

Article in International Journal of Qualitative Studies In Education · July 2002

DOI: 10.1080/09518390210145499

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William G. Tierney
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Writing matters
William G. Tierney
Published online: 25 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: William G. Tierney (2002) Writing matters, International

Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 15:4, 427-430, DOI:
10.1080/09518390210145499

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 QUALITATIVE STUDIES IN EDUCATION, 2002, VOL. 15, NO. 4, 427 ±430

Writing matters

WILLIAM G. TIERNEY
University of Southern California
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On an early Saturday morning in January I ®nd myself shivering from the cold and I
silently curse myself for leaving my sweater in the car. I am sitting in the back of a
high school classroom and listening to a teacher speak about science to her charges.
The enthusiasm is high in the class ± there is a lot of motion with students moving back
and forth and chattering in small groups ± but the classroom itself reminds me of when
I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco 25 years ago. The walls have mismatched
faded paint on them; there is a hole punched in a ceiling tile and a window is broken.
A light is out and the room is dark even though it is mid-morning. A stack of tattered
books lie on a table in the back that students can use but not take home with them.
The room is bereft of any signs or color. I am observing the class for a project about
the problems and challenges students face en route to college.
The teacher gives the students a break and I race outside as much to get warm in
the California sunshine as to ®nd a bathroom to relieve myself. Too much co€ ee! The
previous acting superintendent of schools had said that one of his main goals would be
to ensure that the toilets were working in all of the public schools. I remember think-
ing what an absurdly meager goal to have, but he was unsuccessful: the bathroom o€
of the classroom this morning isn’t functioning, and I follow some students to another
building. I race back to the classroom so I am not late for class and resume my seat in
the back of the room. There is a brief lull and I pull out my ever-present packet of
reading materials so I will not get bored. I have brought with me the responses to
``Get Real;’’ I have avoided looking at them for weeks. I am worried what the
respondents have said. I gingerly ®nger my way through the articles and feel relieved
± a letter from Carolyn, how nice; a challenge by Philippe; a story by Jane; and
helpful comments from Deborah about the weaknesses of what I wrote. I continue
to glance around the room and see that the students are moving back into small
groups to work on a project that the young teacher has asked them to do. I begin
to get absorbed about how I might respond to these essays by scratching out notes. I
feel a tap on my shoulder. I look up and a slender boy, about 15, is leaning over from
the group nearest me. He wears a thin white T-shirt and I re¯exively think he must be
freezing. ``Hey mister,’’ he whispers, ``can you help us with this?’’

The stakes

Philippe asks what the stakes are in the scholarly debates over narrative. Deborah,
too, asks what the stakes are that prompted the language of crisis. The ``stakes’’ are
people. The stakes are that 15-year-old youth and his friends who must su€ er through
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education ISSN 0951±8398 print/ISSN 1366±5898 online # 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/09518390210145499
 428 william g. tierney

being educated in a school where the toilets do not function, there are no books to take
home, and the classroom lacks any computers.
Carolyn writes about how her world, the world, moved on September 11. Like
many of us, Carolyn was ``immersed in illness, grief and terror.’’ I certainly acknowl-
edge similar feelings to what Carolyn describes, but I increasingly rebel when I hear
people say, ``everything changed’’ after September 11. I had visited this classroom
before and after September 11. I will return to it several times over the next several
years. Everything has not changed. These students are still without books; the walls
are still bereft of educational materials; the classroom still remains dark; and the toilets
still do not work.
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Since I have read much of the work of these authors, I assume that if they were to
sit in the same classroom on that chilly January morning they would agree with me
that the stakes are inordinately high. Where we might di€ er is not in our feelings but
in our responses. Philippe, I suspect, would push us to ``develop critiques of social
power’’ about how society has let such social conditions exist, while all the time asking
for more close-up analyses of the ``existing social su€ ering.’’ Deborah might push us all
that much further not to assume that we know what that 15-year-old youth wants. As
with the excellent example of Abu-Lhugod’s remarkable text, Deborah will caution us
``not to position [ourselves] as superior to one’s informants and to place oneself on the
same footing.’’ While Jane will inevitably critique the writing that derives from the
project, Carolyn will search for each of our voices in our analyses. But if the stakes are
high, if they are embodied in the lives of those with whom we work, what do we do?

The writing

Carolyn and Philippe, it seems to me, approach Get Real from two di€ erent vantage
points. Carolyn reminds me that the ``personal is political’’ and Philippe encourages
me not to obsess so much about textual practices. These strike me as contradictions,
but again, as authors I am suggesting we need to ®nd a way to incorporate both
viewpoints. I have never said that the author’s voice ought to be absent from a text,
and I have utilized a variety of voices in my own writing (Tierney, 1993, 1997, 2002a,
2002b). The challenge, however, is when to employ a particular narrative structure.
In this light I agree/disagree with Carolyn and Philippe.
In Carolyn’s essay, for example, she writes about the importance to promote the
idea ``tolerance for di€ erence is embraced’’ after September 11. She uses her voice, her
self, as a way to promote this tolerance. Although I agree with her that at times when
we are vulnerable on the page we enable others ``to express how they feel,’’ I also
re¯exively shudder at a call to ``tolerate di€ erence.’’ Liberals have too often told me,
as a gay man, that they, too, seek to create a more tolerant environment. If I under-
stand Philippe correctly, he will scold me not to focus so much on words and narrative;
we ought not ``love to ®ght so hard over so little.’’ But again, the stakes are not little,
and words have meaning.
I neither seek nor want tolerance. Yes, I appreciate the sentiments. I surely wish
that people had been more tolerant in Laramie, Wyoming so that Matthew Shepard
still walked on this earth. But part of our problem is our language and our voice.
When we make calls for tolerance we inevitably assume a position toward the ``Other’’
that needs to be ``troubled,’’ to use Patti Lather’s well-worn phrase. What does it
mean when well-meaning people say that they want to create an environment where I
 writing matters 429

can be tolerated? I ``tolerate’’ a tear in my rotator cu€ because I have exercised too
much; it’s a pain, but I have learned to live with it. That is how I interpret a call for
tolerance, and however much I agree with the import of placing our voice in a text at
times, I also worry over words and the power of the author. Some have said we should
``celebrate’’ di€ erence, but that too, strikes me as trivializing the Other. Perhaps the
meaning I am searching for is to ``honor’’ di€ erence.
Words have meaning; authors have power. Jane o€ ers useful suggestions about
how to develop the art of writing and she provides helpful cautions about the ®ction±
non®ction divide. Part of my concern about the personal might be best highlighted by
my initial paragraphs . My focus in those paragraphs was on the school and I used my
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voice to help frame the picture. I would like to ask Jane for her advice: when the class
had a break and I went outside in the sunshine my point was to highlight the cold in
the classroom; I o€ ered the example about the restrooms to highlight the sad state of
the school. Was it necessary for me to write that I was heading to the bathroom
because I had had ``too much co€ ee’’? Such an example seems self-absorbed; why
does the reader need to know the motivation for the move toward the bathroom if the
narrator is not essential? Writing matters, and how we teach and learn to place our
selves into the text is critically important in getting our points across to our readers.

The reader

Deborah wonders if she had written a poem or short story in response to ``Get Real’’
whether it would have been acceptable to the editors of QSE. Knowing these editors, I
am sure it would have been accepted, if not encouraged. We have now an array of
journals that enable us to use experimental voices, and, as Deborah usefully points
out, earlier generations of anthropologist s have experimented with genres as well. I
failed in the text if readers take from it, as Deborah seems to, that I believe ``all
re¯exive writing [is] a form of narcissism.’’ To the contrary. My concern is not to
advocate one stance or another, but to encourage us to develop multiple narrative
styles depending on the audience we intend to reach. I appreciate the hard work that
Jane points out goes into developing di€ erent narrative voices and worry about how
to develop them for myself, my students, and my colleagues.
My concern is ®guring out how to write in a manner that provokes response and
helps foment change. QSE is an academic journal for academics. If we accept that the
conditions of the school described at the outset of my response are unacceptable, then
of necessity there are multiple groups that need to be involved to e€ ect change.
Academics will always be one of my primary audiences since they are my tribe. But
as I speak with teachers, or a foundation’ s program o cers, or policy analysts, or
parents, or the students themselves, I recognize that I need to have multiple voices.
Sometimes they want me to ``write in a more personal voice’’ as Carolyn asks me to
do, but at other times they could care less about my voice. Parents often want to know
what to do to help their kid. A foundation o cer wants to know in shorthand what I
think, not what I feel. The more I write, the more I recognize that if I am to
participate in e€ ecting change, then I need to reach out to multiple audiences, and
to do so, I must utilize multiple languages. Just as an article written in English is
useless in a land where no one reads English, so is a narrative voice that does not
resonate with the intended reader.
 430 writing matters

Ultimately, these are good problems. They make me think, they make me feel,
they make me believe. I regret that my writing was weak enough that Carolyn read
the tone of my text as overly argumentative , for my purpose has not been to say, ``I’m
right and you’re wrong.’’ If anything, I disagree with comments such as Richardson’s
recent either/or assertion about writing. ``Academic discourse,’’ she writes, ``names,
categorizes, and constructs others in racist, masculinist, and colonial texts’’ (2002,
p. 880). Such a comment seems to draw a battle line: either we provide poetic
representations of those with whom we work, or we are racist, masculinist, and, I
suppose, homophobic. I wrote ``Get Real’’ to move us away from such assertions for I
see them as false dichotomies. I want to encourage us to think about writing not so
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that we substitute one discursive style for another, but in order to develop a plurality
of voices as we try to understand and answer that youth’s question, ``Can you help
us?’’

References

Richardson, L. (2002). Poetic representation of interviews. In J. Gubrium and J. Holstein (Eds.), Handbook
of interview research (pp. 877±891). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Tierney, W. G. (1993). Self and identity in a postmodern world: A life story. In D. McLaughlin & W. G.
Tierney (Eds.), Naming silenced lives (pp. 119±134). New York: Routledge.
Tierney, W. G. (1997). Academic outlaws: Queer theory and cultural studies in the academy. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Tierney, W. G. (2002a) . Interpreting academic identities: Reality and ®ction on campus. Journal of Higher
Education, 73(1), pp. 161±172.
Tierney, W. G. (2002b) A walk in the olive garden. Qualitative Inquiry (forthcoming).

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