Relationship to Don
I began teaching at the University of New Hampshire in the late 80s, the year after Donald Murray retired. (1)
Although I knew Don, I did not have the close relationship to him that many had. (Footnote 1)
Murray at UNH
Yet even to a new Master’s student TA such as myself, Don-—everybody referred to him as Don-—continued to cast a large shadow over all of our teaching. He was quoted, referenced, alluded to, and the first book I used in my first writing course was his Write to Learn. And Don seemed always to be around, at staff meetings or having lunch with graduate students. [...] Though Don had retired and it had been even longer since he had directed the Composition Program, there was no doubt that the pedagogical approaches that dominated the department had his fingerprints all over them.(1)
On Freshman English and Teaching at UNH
We did a lot of personal writing in those courses. We did a lot of research writing in those courses. We did a lot of writing about readings too. What we did most of all was to ask students to write about the things that mattered to them. We asked students to reflect on their experiences, to make meaning from events and ideas for the reader. We asked them to approach writing as a process and to have the courage to have their work critiqued and to engage in thoughtful and decisive revision. We had individual conferences with students every week to talk about their writing. We had frequent workshops, lots of in-class writing, lessons on craft, discussions of readings. (1)
There was also a culture of teaching writing at UNH that valued the authority of the student writer. We believed that we should be teaching students to write well so they could communicate the things that mattered to them, and that they would do their best work about the subjects that engaged their passions. We wanted them to feel passionate about their work and find joy in their writing. It was a place where we felt like teaching mattered and where we felt we were teaching students more than simply how to write better essays for their next college course. We weren’t only teaching students to become better academic writers; we were teaching people to become better writers. (2)
Though not universally the case, many of us teaching at UNH, particularly among the instructors and other non-tenure-track faculty, thought of ourselves as part of a community of writers teaching others what we loved to do, rather than scholars consigned to a job that others didn’t want. We wrote fiction and poetry and essays and talked about our own writing as well as our students’. I wager that many of the people I taught with during those years—Sue Wheeler, Becky Rule, Bruce Ballenger, Brock Dethier, Lad Tobin, Ann Williams—still think of themselves as writers as much as teachers or scholars. And those composition scholars in charge of the program at UNH at that time—Tom Newkirk, Pat Sullivan, Cindy Gannet, even the skeptical Bob Connors—were graceful and committed writers who valued craft in their work and the work of their students. (2) [...] And certainly not everyone thought of themselves as writers, or thought that students should be taught anything but “academic” writing, or saw Don’s ongoing influence on the program as positive (for there was always Bob Connors to go harrumphing down the hallway bemoaning the lack of training in classical rhetorical strategies). [3]
The Misreading Trope
This evolution of my writing pedagogies, along with my own writing practices, also illustrates the problematic nature of the term “expressivism,” and how ill-suited it is for the kinds of pedagogies Murray actually advocated. Unfortunately this has left Murray unread or misread over the years as solipsistic, naïve, and un-theoretical. The wide-spread use of the term “expressivism” as a pejorative has distorted important conversations that should be taking place about the personal position in writing, including questions about the value of individual experience in intellectual work, the purposes of writing beyond the composition classroom, and the ways in which experience and writing combine to help writers compose their identities in print. What’s more, such distortions have obscured the most radical and, to my mind, most important ideas Murray has about teaching writing, ideas that deserve renewed attention today. (1)
When I began to reread his work about the teaching of writing I was struck by two things. Far from being solipsistic and a-theoretical, he was a pragmatic and often subtle theorist whose critics had misread him, willfully or not. Also, such misreadings had obscured some of what was most radical about Murray, both then and today. (4)
Murray's Contributions
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). 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. (5)
What is true is that Don’s work is consistently and deeply humanistic. He clearly believes that each person has distinctive ideas that are worth hearing. His writing is infused with a respect for the ideas and integrity of individuals and the absolute belief that their lives will be fuller if they engage in writing to make meaning from their experiences. (5)
what may be the most radical position in his writing is given little attention. For what is most radical in the work of Murray, Elbow and others is not the idea of writing from experience, but turning the focus of the writing classroom toward student knowledge and writing. [...] Students were encouraged to see their ideas and experiences as valuable and to see their writing as connected to themselves, their identities, as opposed to something that was detached and impervious to personal responses or experiences. There was a shift in the perception of student identity: Rather than regard them as students to be filled with the teacher’s forms of writing, we were encouraged to regard them as writers first, and to engage them with their struggles to communicate their experiences, and by extension their identities, on the page. (5)
Throughout Don’s work there is the consistent belief that writing should be concerned with the exploration of ideas and meaning. (6)
Perhaps Murray does not get read or discussed today because there is the sense that he is old news. We all respect students now, right? We all believe in student-centered classrooms, right? We all understand that individual experiences vary by race, gender, culture, class and that that we need to allow people to make meaning from their experiences, right? When I read current scholarship on literacy narratives or creative nonfiction or personal writing or teaching ESL or any number of issues I often can trace the echoes of Murray’s work, even though few writers have bothered to read or cite him. But I think there is the sense that whatever he had to say has been long since settled, one way or another, so he is not relevant to read except for historical purposes. (7)
The other possibility is that Murray doesn’t get read anymore because what he advocates, particularly in terms of who generates knowledge in the writing classroom, remains too radical for rhetoric and composition. With so many first-year composition programs still focused on “academic writing” and the teaching of argument, often through themed courses or standardized syllabi in which students have limited choice about what they write, there is little sense of classrooms that are truly “student-centered.” More than a few composition teachers talk in the hallways about the need for student-centered classrooms, but run courses in which there is no doubt that authority and expertise remain with the instructor. (7)
Again, it is not that I want to somehow glue on to Don Murray’s work currently fashionable ideas and theories that don’t really fit. Instead I see his work connected into more recent scholarship in ways that helps both illuminate and challenge all sides in intriguing and useful ways. (7)
Legacy and Contributions
His legacy in his writing and in his work at UNH has been to challenge and inspire teachers there and others across the country to respect student knowledge, to respect students as writers. (8)
What Don Murray’s work does is remind me that writing can be transformative. It can transform our sense of self. It can transform our sense of the world. And it certainly can transform our sense of identity when it conflicts with dominant cultural forces. (8)
I began teaching at the University of New Hampshire in the late 80s, the year after Donald Murray retired. (1)
Although I knew Don, I did not have the close relationship to him that many had. (Footnote 1)
Murray at UNH
Yet even to a new Master’s student TA such as myself, Don-—everybody referred to him as Don-—continued to cast a large shadow over all of our teaching. He was quoted, referenced, alluded to, and the first book I used in my first writing course was his Write to Learn. And Don seemed always to be around, at staff meetings or having lunch with graduate students. [...] Though Don had retired and it had been even longer since he had directed the Composition Program, there was no doubt that the pedagogical approaches that dominated the department had his fingerprints all over them.(1)
On Freshman English and Teaching at UNH
We did a lot of personal writing in those courses. We did a lot of research writing in those courses. We did a lot of writing about readings too. What we did most of all was to ask students to write about the things that mattered to them. We asked students to reflect on their experiences, to make meaning from events and ideas for the reader. We asked them to approach writing as a process and to have the courage to have their work critiqued and to engage in thoughtful and decisive revision. We had individual conferences with students every week to talk about their writing. We had frequent workshops, lots of in-class writing, lessons on craft, discussions of readings. (1)
There was also a culture of teaching writing at UNH that valued the authority of the student writer. We believed that we should be teaching students to write well so they could communicate the things that mattered to them, and that they would do their best work about the subjects that engaged their passions. We wanted them to feel passionate about their work and find joy in their writing. It was a place where we felt like teaching mattered and where we felt we were teaching students more than simply how to write better essays for their next college course. We weren’t only teaching students to become better academic writers; we were teaching people to become better writers. (2)
Though not universally the case, many of us teaching at UNH, particularly among the instructors and other non-tenure-track faculty, thought of ourselves as part of a community of writers teaching others what we loved to do, rather than scholars consigned to a job that others didn’t want. We wrote fiction and poetry and essays and talked about our own writing as well as our students’. I wager that many of the people I taught with during those years—Sue Wheeler, Becky Rule, Bruce Ballenger, Brock Dethier, Lad Tobin, Ann Williams—still think of themselves as writers as much as teachers or scholars. And those composition scholars in charge of the program at UNH at that time—Tom Newkirk, Pat Sullivan, Cindy Gannet, even the skeptical Bob Connors—were graceful and committed writers who valued craft in their work and the work of their students. (2) [...] And certainly not everyone thought of themselves as writers, or thought that students should be taught anything but “academic” writing, or saw Don’s ongoing influence on the program as positive (for there was always Bob Connors to go harrumphing down the hallway bemoaning the lack of training in classical rhetorical strategies). [3]
The Misreading Trope
This evolution of my writing pedagogies, along with my own writing practices, also illustrates the problematic nature of the term “expressivism,” and how ill-suited it is for the kinds of pedagogies Murray actually advocated. Unfortunately this has left Murray unread or misread over the years as solipsistic, naïve, and un-theoretical. The wide-spread use of the term “expressivism” as a pejorative has distorted important conversations that should be taking place about the personal position in writing, including questions about the value of individual experience in intellectual work, the purposes of writing beyond the composition classroom, and the ways in which experience and writing combine to help writers compose their identities in print. What’s more, such distortions have obscured the most radical and, to my mind, most important ideas Murray has about teaching writing, ideas that deserve renewed attention today. (1)
When I began to reread his work about the teaching of writing I was struck by two things. Far from being solipsistic and a-theoretical, he was a pragmatic and often subtle theorist whose critics had misread him, willfully or not. Also, such misreadings had obscured some of what was most radical about Murray, both then and today. (4)
Murray's Contributions
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). 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. (5)
What is true is that Don’s work is consistently and deeply humanistic. He clearly believes that each person has distinctive ideas that are worth hearing. His writing is infused with a respect for the ideas and integrity of individuals and the absolute belief that their lives will be fuller if they engage in writing to make meaning from their experiences. (5)
what may be the most radical position in his writing is given little attention. For what is most radical in the work of Murray, Elbow and others is not the idea of writing from experience, but turning the focus of the writing classroom toward student knowledge and writing. [...] Students were encouraged to see their ideas and experiences as valuable and to see their writing as connected to themselves, their identities, as opposed to something that was detached and impervious to personal responses or experiences. There was a shift in the perception of student identity: Rather than regard them as students to be filled with the teacher’s forms of writing, we were encouraged to regard them as writers first, and to engage them with their struggles to communicate their experiences, and by extension their identities, on the page. (5)
Throughout Don’s work there is the consistent belief that writing should be concerned with the exploration of ideas and meaning. (6)
Perhaps Murray does not get read or discussed today because there is the sense that he is old news. We all respect students now, right? We all believe in student-centered classrooms, right? We all understand that individual experiences vary by race, gender, culture, class and that that we need to allow people to make meaning from their experiences, right? When I read current scholarship on literacy narratives or creative nonfiction or personal writing or teaching ESL or any number of issues I often can trace the echoes of Murray’s work, even though few writers have bothered to read or cite him. But I think there is the sense that whatever he had to say has been long since settled, one way or another, so he is not relevant to read except for historical purposes. (7)
The other possibility is that Murray doesn’t get read anymore because what he advocates, particularly in terms of who generates knowledge in the writing classroom, remains too radical for rhetoric and composition. With so many first-year composition programs still focused on “academic writing” and the teaching of argument, often through themed courses or standardized syllabi in which students have limited choice about what they write, there is little sense of classrooms that are truly “student-centered.” More than a few composition teachers talk in the hallways about the need for student-centered classrooms, but run courses in which there is no doubt that authority and expertise remain with the instructor. (7)
Again, it is not that I want to somehow glue on to Don Murray’s work currently fashionable ideas and theories that don’t really fit. Instead I see his work connected into more recent scholarship in ways that helps both illuminate and challenge all sides in intriguing and useful ways. (7)
Legacy and Contributions
His legacy in his writing and in his work at UNH has been to challenge and inspire teachers there and others across the country to respect student knowledge, to respect students as writers. (8)
What Don Murray’s work does is remind me that writing can be transformative. It can transform our sense of self. It can transform our sense of the world. And it certainly can transform our sense of identity when it conflicts with dominant cultural forces. (8)
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