New Thoughts on the Project (Lindberg quote)

After my trip to UNH this past weekend I've been thinking more about this project and the role of Murray in it. One question that I was dealing with was:

What was Murray's contribution to the field of composition? What was his significance to the field? This is a question that came from Tom and Lisa's book.

Clearly, several others have already answered this question (Dethier, Tobin, Ballenger, Newkirk)

Another question has been arising, though, a much more local question as I have been reading local histories of composition in different schools:

How did Donald Murray affect the writing program at UNH? Or, there is this... In 1986, writing in

"The core of the present UNH freshmen English program was established when Don Murray directed the program in the early seventies after publishing A Writer Teaches Writing" (Gary Lindberg, New Methods in College Writing Programs: Theories in Practice, p. 130).

Basically, I've gone back to the 60s and 70s. I'm interested in a number of questions:

1. How did Don, hired as a journalist, transition in the late 1960s/early 1970s from journalism professor to writing consultant/guru at the national and even international level. What was the nature of that transition and how did it play out on the ground?
2. What kind of "culture of writing" existed at UNH at the time Don arrived, dating back to the 40s/50s?
3. What role did Don play within this culture? How did he contribute towards, extend, affect change within the culture of writing at UNH during the late 1960s/early 1970s?
4. What was the nature of the transition in the Freshmen English program during the late 1960s when UNH went from a 401/402 sequence down to just 401? How did Don work with Les Fisher and Tom C to change Freshmen English at UNH?

In my mind, I have myself sort of working backwards with these questions from two potential points of departure:

1. My own experience at UNH and, in particular, in ENGL 401 in the spring of 1993. Question: What was and how did I, a very average 19 year old, experience that pedagogy? (I have all my old stuff)

2. Gary Lindberg, writing in 1986 (in a published book chapter summarizing the Freshmen English program circa 1986): "The core of the present UNH freshmen English program was established when Don Murray directed the program in the early seventies after publishing A Writer Teaches Writing" (130). This is a misleading assertion, but an interesting one nonetheless.

 Each of these offer ways of moving backwards into some of the questions I raised earlier.

Murray...reluctant radical teacher? So much of what Fleming is calling "radical" teaching harkens back to things Murray was talking about, but we don't associate Murray with radicalism, with critical pedagogy, with the leftist movement in the 1960s...and why? He didn't think of himself as a radical! He was a war veteran! His influences: 

1. His experience as a basic writer/marginalized student, 
2. his experiences with writing instruction at UNH (esp. Carroll Towle), 
3. his experience in journalism, 
4. and an educational climate at UNH that valued and encouraged experimentation and innovation

...and then his ability to tap into the ethos of the era. This is interesting... 

What created the UNH writing program:

• A history of attention to writing dating back to at least the 1940s (creative or otherwise) 
• A culture open to experimentation 
• The influence of Murray's own personal story of school failure (he was not a radical, but a war hero--how did he balance his age/history with the student-radicals of the time?) 
• The possibility for radical change made available by the cultural moment 

Organizing possible book chapters:

• Donald Murray: A Literacy Autobiography 
• Murray's Journey from Journalist to Writing Guru
• A Culture of Writing at UNH ...1930s to late 1960s 
• Freshmen English in the late 1960s

From some emails I've been sending:

To David Sheddon (6/20/12)

The publications that you've sent that were NOT published in scholarly journals are really helpful. I have all of Don's published articles that were published in scholarly venues. But as you know, Don wrote a good deal outside of scholarly arenas. So, anything you find that fits into this period (1965-1985) is helpful--although, I do not need, at this point, copies of his Boston Globe columns (1986-death). For example, in your last packet you included a publication from January 1980 in New Hampshire Magazine ("The Not-So Good Old Days"). These kinds of more mainstream publications interest me a great deal and it's really interesting to see that Don came back to this not-so-good-old-days theme several times in several different venues. This is significant to me. Don's approach to the teaching of writing emerged at a time (late 1960s/early 1970s) when writing pedagogy was beginning to change a good deal in English in the U.S. Some of this change has been linked to radical or critical pedagogy, a new form of teaching advocated by leftist faculty members and teaching assistants. I just read an entire book on this subject, focused on the University of Wisconsin, Madison. What Don was advocating, in terms of the teaching of writing--and he was advocating it BEFORE or just around the same time as some of these so-called radical educators--was very much in line with their program. What's interesting to me, though, is that Don frames his project differently and this is not surprising because he was not a child of the 60s, as we know. He was a World War II vet! So, at the same time that some were advocating for more "open" approaches to the teaching of writing and framing their arguments within the larger project of cultural change of the late 1960s, Don was building his program of writing instruction from other sources. I think that he did "tap into" the ethos of the era in order to get his message across. But clearly, he was "in" the late 1960s and not "of" them. When I see this recurrent theme of the not-so-good-old days (literally, I now have copies of this theme in three different publications over a span of around 8 or so years), it confirms my sense that Don's pedagogy emerged from a number of sources (none of which really had to do with 60s radicalism), but that an important source of his ideas was his own experiences with school as a child and adolescent. This feels a bit dangerous, on one level, to chalk up his entire pedagogical project to autobiography--but it is undoubtedly the case that Don's pedagogy was built on a very frustrated and alienated educational foundation that he experienced when young. He didn't need the 60s to tell him that the educational power structure needed to be changed. He had experienced it himself in the late 1930s and 40s and the amazing part is that what he had experienced in those days, in terms of writing instruction, really hadn't changed much by the time he got back to UNH in the 1960s. There was at that time (1960s) still an over-focus on "form" and not enough focus on "meaning" (as the title of the book I just read argues). Don sought to change that...and he did so, I am coming to believe, for very personal reasons and out of a deeply personal and painful personal history.

The final piece, Teaching Writing as a Process...this is a reprint of his manifesto, Teach Writing as Process, Not Product--the article that he is best-known for and which is reprinted in our field's major anthology (for grad students). What's interesting about this artifact, though, is to see the organization which published it--the Illinois Association of Teaching of English...sort of off-the-beaten-path, but also to see the way that Don was "repurposing" his work and disseminating it to wider audiences. The original version of this piece was published in The Leaflet, a publication, I believe, of the New England Association of Teachers of English. It's interesting to see the way Don was engaged in sharing this work at a national level by October 1973 and also to see the way in which his audience was not just college writing teachers, but K-12 English Educators. That has changed a good deal these days...folks who teach writing at the college level talk mostly to themselves and folks who teach writing K-12 do the same--we have different annual conferences and there is not that much overlap...but in the early days of the field, there was a wonderful back-and-forth between those in the colleges and in the lower grades and Don helped instigate that and this artifact helps demonstrate the types of audiences he sought to, and did, reach.

To Bonnie Sunstein:

I'd love to talk more with you about this project. Basically, I've gone back to the 60s and 70s. I'm interested in a number of questions:

1. How did Don, hired as a journalist, transition in the late 1960s/early 1970s from journalism professor to writing consultant/guru at the national and even international level. What was the nature of that transition and how did it play out on the ground?

2. What kind of "culture of writing" existed at UNH at the time Don arrived, dating back to the 40s/50s? 

3. What role did Don play within this culture? How did he contribute towards, extend, affect change within the culture of writing at UNH during the late 1960s/early 1970s?

4. What was the nature of the transition in the Freshmen English program during the late 1960s when UNH went from a 401/402 sequence down to just 401? How did Don work with Les Fisher and Tom C to change Freshmen English at UNH?

In my mind, I have myself sort of working backwards with these questions from two potential points of departure:

1. My own experience at UNH and, in particular, in ENGL 401 in the spring of 1993. Question: What was and how did I, a very average 19 year old, experience that pedagogy? (I have all my old stuff)

2. Gary Lindberg, writing in 1986 (in a published book chapter summarizing the Freshmen English program circa 1986): "The core of the present UNH freshmen English program was established when Don Murray directed the program in the early seventies after publishing A Writer Teaches Writing. (130)--this is a misleading assertion, but an interesting one nonetheless. 

Each of these offer ways of moving backwards into some of the questions I raised earlier.

So, that's where I'm at and that's what I'm up to this summer. Sorry if I've overshared, but given your investment in UNH, I thought you mind find this interesting. :) All of this is very much in the thinking stage, still, so I'd love to talk with you about it all at some point. :)