Others Assessments of Don's Contributions/Significance

Who mentions Berlin? 

That he does not cite theorists and write at impenetrable length about his debt to theories such as phenomenology does not mean such work is not theoretically informed or serious. There is a theory of writing here that cannot be dismissed as the cheap pop psychology of individual expression by the likes of James Berlin. Unfortunately, however, too many scholars in our field seem unwilling to believe that theory can unfold in narrative and elegant writing, and so Murray is dismissed as a-theoretical. (Williams p. 5)

Much of Newkirk (2008).

Our Mornings With Murray (Ballenger, 2008)

There is much I might say--much that has been said--about Donald Murray's contributions to how we think about composing, but I think this idea, that language, like the violin, takes on a life of its own from a single note, is central to his work as a writer and teacher. In a sense, Don argued that words have a singular agency, one that behaves much like an unruly character in the first draft of a novel or short story, bossing the writer around, surprising her, and most of all, defying her intentions. (Ballenger, 2008, p. 42).

My writing students need many things from me--guidance in analyzing rhetorical situations and understanding academic discourse, insights about methods of invention and revision, help with developing a more sophisticated understanding of the social aspects of language use. But Don reminds me, again and again, that there is still room, that there will always be room, for a little of the muse's magic. (45-46)

Newkirk

Perhaps his greatest lesson for me was to "listen to the text." Don claimed that the evolving text could "inform," could suggest direction if the writer was receptive to it (and not too rigid or tied to a predetermined plan). The evolving text can be an active partner in the writing--if we enter a receptive, flexible state of mind. Sentence could suggest sentence, ideas could spin out in unanticipated ways as we "expect the unexpected." He had no patience for those writers who dwelt on the agonies of writing--if it's so very painful, he would say, they should find other work. He passed on a very appealing vision of composing--almost gemlike, with a repertoire of moves and not of fixed forms. (Thomas Newkirk, Minds Made for Stories, p. 142)

Nern

The teacher who uses Murray's method is telling students, "I'm going to give you a chance to learn how to think and write, not like an English major, but like the human being you are." (MA Thesis, p. 62)

Wiillams

Students who learned through such a process of discovery could eventually adapt it to whatever genres—from memo to job application to essay to letter to scientific paper (31)—they would encounter and be better able to communicate their ideas. “There is no way we can tell what our students will need to write in their lives beyond the classroom” (31) so we needed to help them think and work as writers who constantly need to adapt to unfamiliar situations. (2)--TRANSFER

The concept of “experience” and how we make sense of our experiences through language, to ourselves and to others, is a dominant and fundamental part of Murray’s work. He is continually interested in experience and epistemology. How do we create knowledge, create significance for ourselves, out of the events that happen to us? How do we make meaning from experimentation, mistakes, testing, and revision? What are often considered mistakes in writing courses should instead be seen as “evidence of language being used to lead the mind to meaning. Therefore they are not mistakes in the conventional sense but merely experiments that didn’t work, but which may have beneficial side-products” (13). (5)

Tobin (WOE 2008)


I suspect that is one reason why Don's contributions to our field have sometimes been underestimated: many of his insights about the processes of writing and teaching have become so deeply embedded in our practices that we often forget their source, assuming, for example, that everyone in our field has always recognized the value of journal writing and free-writing and re-writing. (29)

Another reason that the originality and sophistication of Don's work is sometimes not fully credited by composition scholars is that his ideas were expressed in such clear and lucid prose. I know that it sounds as if I being facetious here but I really believe that the lack in Murray's writing of academic jargon and academic citation, not to mention the lack of pretentiousness and obfuscation, is what led some to criticize his work as unsophisticated or solipsistic. (29)

This is all to say that there are compelling reasons for the kinds of reassessments of Murray's work and his place in the field that you'll find in the three essays that follow. While all three of the essayists-- Bruce Ballenger, Tom Newkirk, and Donna Qualley--were close to Don professionally and personally, these essays were not written as celebrations or eulogies but rather as critical re-appraisals of Murray's work. Interestingly, all three of the pieces began first as presentations on a 2008 CCCC panel, "The Generative Theories of Donald Murray," in which Bruce, Donna, and Tom agreed to each re-assess a single Murray essay that he or she thought was particularly generative and particularly misunderstood. But while they may have started with that prompt, it's clear that Bruce, Tom, and Donna gave themselves permission to ditch the assignment whenever it got in the way. I am certain that Don would have been pleased with the process and the product. (30)

Topically:

Agency

While it may not be “quaint,” this idea is hardly revolutionary, but, when Don and a few others urged writing teachers to reimagine their classrooms as places where authority is dispersed, they were doing it against the orthodoxy of current-traditional pedagogies, which emphasize the more formal qualities of composition that the teachers know and the students must learn. For Murray, writers always learn from each other.This idea was most powerfully expressed in Don’s 1972 essay, “Teach Writing as a Process, Not Product,” first presented as a talk to the New England Association of Teachers of English. (Ballenger, “Reconsiderations” p. 299)