Highest Level Beliefs of the UNH Tribe

All of these are anti-common sense. All are anti-school. All fly in the face of what we have been taught about how writing works...

1. Anyone can write. (Writers are special people who were born that way)

See blog post “Murray’s BIG PICTURE Philosophy” for quote on students’ potential.

There is potential even in the most unlikely student, and it may take a teacher all of ten minutes to tap it. ("Motivating Force," p. 59)

From My Twice-Lived Life:

The teachers these days are far better educated than my teachers were, far more dedicated to teaching, far more willing to try new methods of teaching, and determined to reach out to the students ignored in the days of my youth, the students who come from disadvantaged homes, students with learning disabilities, students from different ethnic or language backgrounds, students with emotional, mental, or physical limitations. (141)

Sub-point 1: The best students to teach are those whom the system has defined as the least prepared/skilled

That is also the reason I prefer to teach beginning students, especially remedial students. The reluctant writers have no idea of the importance and excitement of writing, no suspicion that rewriting will let them see their worlds more clearly than they ever have before by using the lens of language. ("Teach the Motivating Force," p. 58)

Stupid kids may not be stupid. Students classified as slow may simply have the illusion writers know what they are going to say before they say it. Since they do not know what they are going to write, they may be paralyzed and not write. Such students, once they understand how writers write, may be released from this paralysis. Some slow students may then appear less slow when their writing evolves towards a subject. ("Internal Revision: A Process of Discovery" p. 141 in The Essential Don Murray)

Unmotivated students may be motivated to write when they find writing an adventure. ("Internal Revision: A Process of Discovery" p. 141 in The Essential Don Murray)

Sub-point 2: Something about diversity, the value of diversity (there is a poem Murray drew on about diversity)

All children can learn (Graves, "Back to School")

We discovered, first of all, that all the predictors of success in composition--test scores, academic record, social-economic background, maturity-simply did not predict individual performance when we responded to the students individually. Our best students were sometimes our colleagues' worst students, and our colleagues' best students our worst. (171)

2. Those who teach writing should, themselves, be writers. (Most teachers don't write much.)

The tone for writing is set by what the teacher does, not by what the teacher says. (Writing, p. 12)

As we have seen, few adults write. Teachers are no exception; they do not write either. Teachers report that they do not write because they don't like writing, feel they are poor writers, do not have time to write because of teaching demands, or do not believe it necessary to practice writing in order to teach it. 

Seldom do people teach well what they do not practice themselves. It would be unheard of for teachers of music or art not to practice their craft. For some reason, the craft of writing is seen as an exception. What is not valued by teachers in their personal lives will not be introduced into the lives of children. It is therefore little wonder that writing is taught, if at all, as an afterthought, even when it is spoken of approvingly in public. (Graves, Ford Foundation Report, p. 15)

How does the teacher learn to spot the potential which lies within a student's writing or a student's experience so the teacher can encourage discovery? By being a writer. This does not mean that writing teachers should be Writers, with a capital W. It does mean they should frequently use language in a search for meaning; have recently experienced first-hand the terror and joy of putting words on paper. The single most dramatic change that can be made in a language arts or English teacher who wants to teach writing is for the teacher to write with the students. 

It is hard to imagine a music teacher who has never made music, or an art teacher who has never drawn a picture but, unfortunately, it is normal to have writing teachers who have written only academic papers-and shockingly few of those. The great majority of "writing" teachers have never written a story or a poem, never felt language leading them across the page.

The teacher should write with the student, showing the student how badly the writer writes, revealing the failures and mistakes and stupidities and awkwardness that clumsily lead the writer toward meaning, a meaning the writer did not expect, perhaps did not even want to accept. The teacher writes beside the student, the way the oboe teacher plays along with the student oboist, sharing the challenge of their art. (Murray, "Teach the Motivating Force of Revision," p. 59)

We need to have teachers who write themselves, I just can't stress the importance of that enough. And teachers need help with their own writing--where they have their writing responded to as they would hope to be able to respond to students' writing. The reason that many teachers don't write with students is (1) it's never occurred to them; (2) they've never ever seen a human being doing it in their entire lives. But for me the metaphor is, when you write you undress, and if you want to be able to write well you have to be willing to be a professional nudist. Now there's nothing more upsetting than to have someone walking around fully clothed in a nudist camp, and that often is the teacher, saying ‘Hmnn, well, that's a funny navel’, ‘Hmnn, didn't the Lord give you a better body than that one?’ I think that's immoral. (“Renters and Owners: Donald Graves on Writing,” The English Magazine, NIE Report Package 474)

Add something about teachers writing WITH students or even in front of students?

3. Writing IS thinking; meaning is discovered through the act of writing. (Most of us think of writing and thinking as separate processes.)

Composite of a UNH Writing Teacher ("Teach the Motivating Force of Revision" p. 58):

Yesterday a student asked me in conference, "What are you doing?" It was a fair question. I was dressed in what passes for University of New Hampshire faculty style--L. L. Bean shirt and Dunham boots-leaning back in my chair, feet on my desk, chatting about old cars and how he felt about them. It might not seem that I was doing anything, and he was paying for the course out of his own pocket. 

"I'm following your piece of writing." 

He looked puzzled.

"To see where it may take you."

"But I'm kind of tired of it. I don't know if I want to write about that old Volvo any more."

"Fine. No need to. I'm just kind of interested in that guy who is so involved in that car he can de- scribe it in hundreds of details. I can see the car now, in this draft, but I'm getting more interested in the guy who saw a vision of a fine car in that rusty hunk of junk. It might be a story.” 

We sit quietly for a couple of minutes. 

"But I can't write a story."


"What do you mean?"


"Well I don't know exactly what I want to say. I haven't got any themes. I mean writing fiction, you have to know so much." He draws a huge map in the air, "Like Tolstoy. A whole world. How everything fits in."

We chat about how writers discover what they have to say, how little they know, how essential is my ignorance of what happens in the next chapter of the novel I am drafting. I point out that he may discover an article on rebuilding junk cars, on mechanics who gouge the unsuspecting, on how to save money repairing a car. We even discuss the possibility of a girl who waves to the fellow working on the car which makes him write a story in which there is no Volvo at all. Our fifteen minutes is up. He turns at the door, "What do you want me to do?" 

"Write."


"Well, what? What do you expect me to do?" 

"Whatever you want. I want to be surprised. You don't know what you're going to write, how can I know? It wouldn't be any fun if I did."

The layman believes--and often writes badly himself because of it--that the writer has a complete thought or vision he merely copies down, acting as a stenographer for the muse. A few writers on rare occasions have reported such an experience--but only after years of thinking, reading, and craftsmanlike writing. For most writers the act of putting words on paper is not the recording of a discovery but the very act of exploration itself. (italics added, "Explorers of Inner Space," 908)

The strongest motivating force for our students was the discoveries they made about themselves and their world through the evolution of the writing process. They learned that the counsel, "Know what you want to say before you say it," was fallacious. The writer finds out what he has to say by writing. ("Perhaps the Professor," 170)

We are beginning to understand that the role of discovery is crucial to effective writing--in technical reports as well as poems, political essays as well as short stories, research papers as well as movie scripts. Sheridan Baker points out, ". . . the process of writing is a process of discovery. Everyone who writes has experienced this process, has discovered, through writing it out, what he has in mind. Yet this simple fact is one not frequently propounded in our textbooks."  ("Teach the Motivating Force," p. 57)

5. Writing is a process of self-discovery. It is an individual process in which each person attempts to find the meaning of his life. We use language not so much to report what we know as to discover what we know. It is important that students have the opportunity for disciplined, intensive self-exploration through writing. (“Why Teach Writing and How?” The English Journal, 1973)

Metaphors for this:

The fact is that most writers, most of the time, do not know what they want to say before they say it. Some may not even know what they have said after they have said it. Writing is not necessarily built by accretion, but scholarship. It may be the piling up of blocks, but it may also be the shooting of an arrow at a moving target only dimly perceived.
 ("Teach the Motivating Force of Revision," p. 59)

"I tried to protect myself in a way they cannot completely understand, allowing my subconscious to work, avoiding involvement, waiting for the moment when the line tightens and I must draw in my catch. (All metaphors are dangerous or I would describe the feeling of the growing idea as intellectual indigestion, a strange, rumbling, eruptive discomfort.)" ("The Explorers of Inner Space," 909)

Now, as I come to the end of this article, still another private experiment with the process of writing, I begin to see, like a photograph slowly evolving in the developer--shadow turning into line--what I have to say because I have dared to try to say it. ("The Explorers of Inner Space," 911)

I have polished, shaped, cut down, and built up this article during a dozen readings and rereadings. I don't always enjoy this process for I am lazy, but it is necessary. It comes with the territory. The writer knows he has to make the stubborn personal effort by sweat to discover his meaning so that he will find out precisely what he has said. (italics, "The Explorers of Inner Space," 911)

4. Students, not subjects, are at the center of the good teaching. (Schools are organized to teach subjects, especially in the higher grades.)

Might use Murray's list of ten from "Process Not Product."

(this quote from Graves captures it: “Worse, it had nothing to do with what writing is for: to help students learn to think through the issues and concerns of their everyday lives.” (Newkirk book, p. 60)

It is ironic that a nation built by teenage pioneers, sea captains in their twenties, and statesmen in their early thirties has created a teacher-centered educational system which keeps most of its students in a state of permanent adolescence through, and sometimes beyond, the awarding of the Ph.D. ("Finding Your Own Voice: Teaching Composition in an Age of Dissent" p. 118)

Sub-point 1: The student is the authority and source of knowledge

The main task of the teacher is to help students know what they know. (Ford Foundation report, p. 22)

Graves' poem that ends with "I've been looking for what kids know ever since..." (in Newkirk/Kittle book, p. 103)

The student found his own subject, aimed at his own audience, and selected a form which delivered his information and its meaning to his audience. ("Perhaps the Professor Should Cut Class," 169). 

Sub-point 2: Students are knowledge makers and not just receivers

In the classroom learners are viewed as receivers, not senders. A far greater premium is placed on students' ability to read and listen than on their ability to speak and write... Yet when students cannot write, they are robbed not only of a valuable tool for expression but of an important means of developing thinking and reading power as well. The imbalance between sending and receiving should be anathema in a democracy. A democracy relies heavily on each individual's sense of voice, authority, and ability to communicate desires and information. (Graves, Ford Foundation report, p. 5)

We need to right the balance between sending and receiving. (Graves, Ford Foundation report, p. 27)

5. The content of a writing class is students' writing. (Most courses, including English, come with content and students are to write ABOUT that content.)

Most writers rent their pieces and the teachers own them. (Graves, p. 475 “Renters and Owners: Donald Graves on Writing,” The English Magazine, NIE Report Package)

IT WAS DARK when I arrived at my office this winter morning, and it is dark again as I wait for my last writing student to step out of the shadows in the corridor for my last conference. I am tired, but it is a good tired, for my students have generated energy as well as absorbed it. I've learned something of what it is to be a childhood diabetic, to raise oxen, to work across from your father at 115 degrees in a steel-drum factory, to be a welfare mother with three children, to build a bluebird trail, to cruise the disco scene, to be a teen-age alcoholic, to salvage World War II wreck-age under the Atlantic, to teach invented spelling to first graders, to bring your father home to die of cancer. I have been instructed in other lives, heard the voices of my students they had not heard before, shared their satisfaction in solving the problems of writing with clarity and grace. I sit quietly in the late afternoon waiting to hear what Andrea, my next student, will say about what she accomplished on her last draft and what she intends on her next draft. (Murray, "The Listening Eye," p. 13)

In teaching beginning students there is no content in the writing course until they put it in. ("Teach the Motivating Force," p. 58)

In another two-semester writing course I gave 220 hours of lecture during the year. My teaching evaluations were good; students signed up to take this course in advance. Apparently I was well-prepared, organized, entertaining. No one slept in my class, at least with their eyes shut, and they did well on the final exam. But that devil found me in late August working over my lecture notes and so, on the first day of class, I gave the same final exam I had given at the end of the year. My students did better before the 220 hours of lectures than my students had done afterwards. I began to learn something about teaching a non-content writing course, about under-teaching, about not teaching what my students already know. ("The Listening Eye" p. 15)

Murray's dialogue with the student, see this post. There is a passage where he writes about the job of the writing teacher being to "draw out of the student an area in which the student is an authority."

IMPORTANT POINT: The content does not have to always be autobiographical, though:

The search for information should not merely be autobiographical in a limited sense. The student does learn from the street corner, but he also learns from books. The coed who has worked as a waitress may be handed Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London, or sent to an article on restaurant management. The intellectual process does not mean just reading; it certainly does not mean just feeling. ("Finding Your Own Voice," 119)

When he sits down knowing his subject, knowing his audience, he may write narrative, poetry, argument, critical analysis, even ex-position. During any writing course the student should practice many forms, each appropriate to what he has to say. ("Finding Your Own Voice," 120)

6. Welcome and Respect Diversity (Schools are designed with trying to get everyone to know and do the same things and those who do are rewarded.)

Such artificial and arbitrary designations between writing courses are usually made for the convenience and the snob satisfaction of the teacher, not for the benefit of the student. My university, for example, segregated freshman English students who were regularly admitted to the university from special students who were admitted on probation. A study showed that the segregated students were patronized--on one hand less was demanded of them--and that the regularly admitted students, "the chosen," were cheated of the opportunity to work with students who were often older, more strongly motivated, and who on occasion wrote with an honesty and vigor far superior to that of the select student. Now we are experimenting with heterogeneous grouping, saying not that everyone has the right to pass, but that everyone should have the opportunity to attempt to pass-and that citizens of an intellectual community with differing backgrounds have much to offer each other. (Murray, “Why Teach Writing and How?” The English Journal, 1973)

In “Creativity: Talk-Article Outline” (4/1/69) Murray closes with a poem, “In Praise of Diversity” Phi Beta Kappa Poem, Columbia University, 1953. Of this poem, Murray writes, “But as teachers of creative writing I would like to suggest you listen to the following poem.” I think that this poem embodies one of his core beliefs about the value of diversity and his advocacy for the poem likely reflects his sense, from his childhood, that he was a square peg always being put into a round hole (Folder: Murray: Random Handouts, Conference Papers, Teaching Exercises)

In closing I would like to go back over this expedition and point out some things I see that may have implications for the classroom. I expect you will see others—and not agree with all of mine. Good. My theology is based on difference. ("A Writer's Geography: One Writer at Work" p. 193 in Newkirk book)


My teachers in Durham had taught me to respect and listen to the individual student, to delight in diversity, to be myself and reveal my feelings as well as my opinions honestly as well as whatever learning I had accumulated. ("To Heck With Nostalgia" p. 10)

Murray’s Four Cornerstones to an Effective Writing Curriculum (“Why Teach Writing—and How?” The English Journal, 1973)

The teacher and the students must understand that writing is a process of discovery (1236)

The next element which underlies the effective writing curriculum is respect for the individual (1236)

The next cornerstone is publication. (1237)

The final cornerstone is failure. (1237)

Teaching writing is what happens between assigning and evaluating.

The teacher in this classroom was not dealing with either the initiation of compositions or their final evaluation. Rather, she was participating at points within the process where help counted most. (Graves, Ford Foundation Report, p. 23)

Failure is an Essential Element of Writing

Teaching writing should be fun/pleasure

Students Should Write Essays