Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories (Berlin)

To teach writing is to argue for a version of reality, and the best way of knowing and communicating it... And all composition teachers are ineluctably operating in this realm, whether or not they consciously choose to do so. (256)

• Neo-Aristotelians/Classists
• Positivists/Current-Traditionalists
• Neo-Platonists/Expressionists
• New Rhetoricians

I will be concerned in each case with the way that writer, reality, audience, and language have been defined and related so as to form a distinct world construct with distinct rules for discovering and communicating knowledge. (766)

I am also concerned, however, that writing teachers become more aware of the full significance of their pedagogical strategies. (766)

The dismay students display about writing is, I am convinced, at least occasionally the result of teachers unconsciously offering contradictory advice about composing-guidance grounded in assumptions that simply do not square with each other. (766)

...in teaching writing we are tacitly teaching a version of reality and the student's place and mode of operation in it. Yet many teachers (and I suspect most) look upon their vocations as the imparting of a largely mechanical skill, important only because it serves students in getting them through school and in advancing them in their professions. This essay will argue that writing teachers are perforce given a responsibility that far exceeds this merely instrumental task. (766)

There is much here for Murray and Berlin to agree on... Murray was very much concerned about the student's place and mode of operation in reality and certainly did not look upon his vocation as the imparting of mechanical skill...Murray would agree with Berlin entirely on the count that his responsibility as a writing teacher far exceeds the merely instrumental task of "getting them through school and in advancing them in their professions." Lots to agree on here.

This placement of the self at the center of communication... (772)--on expressionistic rhetoric

One conclusion should now be incontestable. The numerous recommendations of the "process"-centered approaches to writing instruction as superior to the "product"-centered approaches are not very useful. Everyone teaches the process of writing, but everyone does not teach the same process. The test of one's competence as a composition instructor, it seems to me, resides in being able to recognize and justify the version of the process being taught, complete with all of its significance for the student. (777)