Patrick wrote
> writers must continually monitor what someone else
> wants, expects, and how with minimal effort (there are other courses, after
> all) they might meet such expectations. I am sure all of us are aware of
> such stances and the constraints they impose; and we try to work against
> them. But I sense the institutional setting works against our best
> intentions. I recall one of my colleagues who insisted that late papers
> would be penalized. The "real world" has its norms. But surely, no one in
> that world is expected to produce four or five major papers in more or less
> the same period
>
Of course students must monitor what someone else wants -- that is
considering audience after all. And of course, expedience is a factor --
that is human after all. I don't believe we can pull ourselves out of
the "centre" of the writing exercise so long as 1. we are assigning it,
and 2. we are evaluating. I think what the student is engaged in is a
complex negotiation between themselves and us. When they fail at it, it
is either because they have stayed entirely in their own circle --
ignored us -- or capitulated entirely to our authority -- ignored
themselves. If they do the former, they will be frustrated because we
don't "get it" (because they haven't given it TO us); if they do the
latter they will be frustrated because they've "done what you asked".
Yet they won't have done. What I think most of us ask for is that kind
of engagement or urgency that Roberta noted. We want the negotiation,
and in the process we expect our own ground to be shifted. You can look
at this socio-cognitively, heck you can even go back to TS. Eliot and
extrapolate from "Tradition and the Individual Talent", but that
negotiation is part of the student's maturing. That maturing involves
not only adopting the dominant discourse, but also resisting it and
reshaping it to the student's own ends. Thereby, of course, the student
will reshape that discourse to include him/herself. The more senior the
student, that is the more deeply "in" the student is to the discourse
the more likely they are to both accept the dominant discourse AND to
reshape it. In this sense, I think the writing is real, very real.
Whatever they write afterward, wherever they write it, will be
influenced by their learning that they can shape a discourse community
with their writing and thinking.
Rob Irish
--
**************************************
Dr. Robert Irish, Director
Language Across the Curriculum
Applied Science and Engineering
University of Toronto SF B670
416.978.6708
http://www.ecf.utoronto.ca/~writing
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