After going through Peter Elbow’s “Being a Writer vs Being an Academic,” I find myself disliking the approach and distinction that Elbow highlights. While I can agree that not all writers wish to pursue traditional academic studies and that not all academics wish to write about everything, inserting this distinction into a freshman writing class seems a bit dangerous. Are not the students there to learn how to write in an academic setting? First year writing classes are, unless I’m mistaken, there to help students learn to the write the types of papers that their higher level classes’ professors expect them to write. Taking away the academic aspects of writing in the classroom would leave students vulnerable in their higher level classes. I do like his idea of putting his students’ papers in conversation with each other; however, I find that being in touch with others, be they scientists, academics, politicians, etc., to be a useful skill because that type of writing and research is prevalent throughout many jobs. Elbow mentions the “self-absorbed” writer being a positive thing, but advocating for a self-centered idea, while it has the possibility to urge students forward, ultimately does more harm than good when they leave that class, at least in my opinion. With all the above being said, I find myself thinking about the nature of the first year writing class and whether or not its purpose is to prepare students for academic writing or to teach them how to write, in the sense that Elbow uses.

In Bartholomae’s article, “Writing With Teachers” he discusses power in the classroom and authorship of students. He says, “There is no better way to investigate the transmission of power, tradition and authority than by asking students to do what academics do: work with the past, with key texts; working with other’s terms; struggling with the problems of quotation. . . where one version of a student’s relationship to the past is represented with commentary of his own” (66)? Although I don’t totally disagree with this statement, I think that advances in technology allow us to move beyond this method. Traditionally the best way to learn was to study and mimic the writing style of those who came before us. Those writers, who dominated literary canons were usually very similar to each other (education, class, race, and gender). These people held/hold power because of the consistent study (see value) of the work that they produced. Academics have always “work[ed] with the past, with key texts; work[ed]with other’s terms.” As time passed, institutions began to recognize the value in the work of people who sat on the other side of the those people. I think the best way to transmit power to students, especially those who aren’t “like” the “classics” is by introducing them to works by people like them. By recognizing the value of people like them through critical study of their texts, students see and experience how possible non-standard authorship is.

I mentioned technology earlier, and should probably note its relevance here  😉 There are so many incredible non-standard voices that are contributing to important conversations that it seems useful to share with the students, people like them who are contributing to “text.” Of course this means expanding the definition of “text” and maybe reading voices via Twitter (maybe). In class I mentioned digital conversations and its relation to the articles we’re reading, and my students were really excited about it. I used #TheAfricaTheMediaNeverShowsYou to encourage them to recognize the power in their voices. I’m not sure if it worked. I’m not sure if this is clear. Are you still there?

Peter Elbow states that in order to write effectively, one must ignore audience, or at least for the majority of the writing. When I first started to read this, I couldn’t imagine how he could be right. In academic writing, one must always know the audience and whom one is talking to, whether it’s a friend, colleague, or professor. Audience is a crucial part of writing, something I have told my students over and over again. A student can’t write a formal academic paper to a friend and expect it to be polished and professional. It just will not happen.

I then started thinking about my creative writing side, however, and realized that Elbow is on to something I had never really thought of before. Writing, for me, is stream-of-consciousness and I write what I think. I write everything, even if it doesn’t make sense. But the audience is just me so it’s ok. Elbow states, “By doing this exploratory ‘swamp work’ in conditions of safety, we can often coax our thinking through a process of new discovery and development. In this way we can end up with something better than we could have produced if we’d tried to write to our audience all along.” Perhaps Elbow’s theory can work in some types of creative writing but not formal, academic papers. I’m going to explore this idea more.