I find value in Bartholomae’s stance on the training of academic writers. That is to say that there is value in the argument that nascent academic writers develop best through teacher guidance, that mimicking nurtures them, or most simply put, that the rules must be learned before they can be broken.
Consider this line from Bartholomae’s Writing With Teachers: A Conversation With Peter Elbow:
“Picasso couldn’t have been a cubist if he hadn’t learned to draw figures.”
Please forgive the fact that I have drawn from Wikipedia for the sake of expediency. However, I think these lines sum up what Bartholomae was getting at quite nicely.
“From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. Ruiz [father] was a traditional academic artist and instructor, who believed that proper training required disciplined copying of the masters, and drawing the human body from plaster casts and live models.”