>The problem of addressing a community--and a fictitious one, at
>that--without the possibility of conversing with anyone particular face to
>face is pretty much the problem of writing in school, isn't it. Usually
>this problem is formulated as one of including the (reified) Reader (in the
>suggested guise of everyone). A more practical approach, however, is
>writing in such a way that one does not _exclude_ those particular people
>one hopes to address. This approach, no doubt, includes a wider audience de
>facto.
And Rachel responded in part:
>But that's just the point! Writing in school is performing a set task
>with no meaning outside of performing the task for the sake of receiving
>a (hopefully favorable) evaluation, i.e. an good grade. There is usually
>no further purpose or use to it. This we were all inured to by the time
>we escaped from high school. One might call this text production for
>its own sake, or discourse for discourse's sake.
I wonder if the questions of invented (or elided) audience and the lack of
external purposes for writing are the problems of writing in school. I
guess in part I want to question the commonplace that school is somehow a
uniquely unreal social site. School seems as real as anything to me and
most sites involve strong internal orientations and motivations. How much
of what happens in family life at home results in products for distribution
outside the home? How often are children expected to act in light of
imagined audiences (whether in the context of religion--a god watching your
actions--or extended fantasy play)? If fantasy play is a developmental
leading activity as Vygotsky suggested, then why is it a problem writing to
fictious audiences?
I'm not arguing that typical writing pedagogy in school is functioning
wonderfully. In fact, I argue for the kind of whole language, workshop
approaches, writing-to-learn/WAC activities that I assume Marty was
suggesting at the end of his message. However, I think the problem of
writing (and many other activities) in school has to do with the kind of
socialization that schooling promotes and with complex/holistic (generic)
configurations of writing contexts.
I also think a central problem is that writing is not as supported as
reading is in other key cultural sites like home and community (i.e., the
problem of reading would look like the problem of writing if it weren't for
fairly widespread practices and resources like bedtime stories, children's
literature, libraries and their programs, TV shows that promote reading,
etc.). When I read the literacy autobiographies of the English/English
Education students in my classes, most report, especially between 3rd and
10th grade, some intensely negative experiences with reading and writing in
school. My sense is that most become readers in spite of or in opposition
to school (through intense self-directed reading of some genres or topics).
In contrast, very very few developed comparable self-directed writing
practices.
Paul Prior
p-prior who-is-at uiuc.edu
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign