Peter Elbow writes:
The contrast between the two media [speaking and writing] is reinforced when we turn to the story of how we learn to speak and to write as individuals. We learn speech as infants—from parents who love us and naturally reward us for speaking at all. Our first audience works overtime to hear the faintest intention in our every utterance, no matter how hidden or garbled that meaning may be. Children aren’t so much criticized for getting something wrong as praised for having anything at all to say—indeed, they are often praised even for emitting speech as pure play with no message intended.
What a contrast between that introduction to speech and the introduction to writing which most children get in school. Students can never feel writing as an activity they engage in as freely, frequently, or spontaneously as they do in speech. Indeed, because writing is almost always a requirement set by the teacher, the act of writing takes on a “required” quality, sometimes even the aspect of punishment. I can still hear the ominous cadence in my ears: “Take out your pens.” Indeed, in the classic case of school punishment the crime is speech and the punishment is writing (“I will not talk in class. I will not talk in class.”) Do some teachers still insist, as some of mine did, that ink must be used? The effect was to heighten our sense of writing as indelible, as the act of making irrevocable choices—as though there were something wrong about changing our minds. (152)
Elbow, Peter. “The Shifting Relationships Between Speech and Writing.” Everyone Can Write: Esays Toward a Hopeful Theory of Writing and Teachign Writing. 1st ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. 149-167.
Can we create a classroom where we praise this type of play with words, where even “meaningless” utterances can be valued and praised?
I would like to think that this is possible, that in a classroom we could begin to value “mistakes,” and utterances that are new, novel, and often considered “wrong” as risks and attempts at something new. Later, Elbow writes “writing turns out to be the ideal medium for getting it wrong” (153) becuase in writing we can often change things and edit our writing and delete or add before anyone ever reads it.
Writing can also be used as a messy way to find our meaning, to write out in search of meaning instead of recording what we already thing; this is using writing as a tool of thinking through something. Elbow writes that “Exploiting the ephemeral quality of writing is often a matter of exploiting chaos and incoherence. Often I find I cannot work out what I am trying to say unless I am extremely disorganized, fragmented, and associative, and let myself go down contrary paths to see where they lead” (154). I note as I read this that Elbow isn’t writing about thinking or writing as linear, but rather as recursive, fragmented, associative, and contrary. This makes me wonder why “finished products,” even to Elbow, have to be linear. I love to have my students freewrite, and I am certain that their freewrites are associative and fragmented, and often recursive. The students who challenge their own thoughts the most often have writing that contradicts itself/exposes itself to the possibility for paradoxes.
In traditional pedagogy, I completely agree with what Elbow says here. Freewriting and prewriting and writing to learn are great tools, and can be great instruments with which to learn what one thinks about an idea. They are a great means to an end, but I wonder why can’t they be solely a means? Why does Elbow reinforce the perfect product:
We think of the mind’s natural capacity for chaos and disorganization as the problem in writing—and before we finish any piece of indelible public writing, of course, that incoherence must be overcome. But what a relief it is to realize that this capacity for ephemeral incoherence is valuable and can be harnessed for insight and growth. (155)
Elbow seems unwilling to admit that while incoherence and contradiction is good in a rough draft or freewriting, it can also be fine in a “final product.” I guess I am asking why does Elbow merely critique our view of the mind’s propensity for chaos as the problem and not our view of strict rigid forms of final products. Why are these not problematized? Why is it that “We need writing to help domesticate our minds” (157)? Why this emphasis on domesticity, perfection, and discipline?
I am not meaning to say that clean, cohesive writing is bad, but rather am asking why messy, raw, scribbled, ephemeral writing is bad as a “final product,” or perhaps I am even asking why there needs to be a “final product.” I am, of course, informed by Sirc while asking these questions, and I think (although I haven’t checked to be sure) that Sirc even brought up Elbow in his essay that I read, noting that Elbow values the raw only as a means toward having a polished product.
Note to self: Look for Goody, Jack. The Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 1977.
