Engaging Ideas. John C. Bean
we really have control in Central America, so that part of me says no, that's not imperialism. But other parts of me say we really do control a lot of what is going on in Central America by the amount of dollars and where we put them. So in that sense, we do have imperialism … So the other big question on that, and why I brought in the balance of power, is, where are we allowed to cross the line and where are we not?
Tutor: Okay then, if you're going to ask that question—where are we allowed to cross the line?—it implies that a line is drawn. So what I guess I'm trying to get you to say is [pause]
Writer: Whether I'm for or against.
Tutor: Yes!
Writer: The reason why I'm undecided is because I couldn't create a strong enough argument for either side. There are too many holes in each side. If I were to pick one side, somebody could blow me out of the water.
The student writer, obviously engaged with the assignment, is keenly aware of the tentativeness of different positions, each of which can be “blown out of the water” by an alternative view. Both the facts of the case and, more troublingly, the definition of imperialism are open‐ended problems. The student longs for a “right answer,” resisting the frightening prospect of having to make meanings and defend them. Good writing assignments often produce this kind of discomfort: the need to join, in a reasoned way, a conversation of differing voices.
We thus need to help our students see that academic writing involves intellectual and often emotional struggle. The struggle is rooted in the writer's awareness that a problem exists—often dimly felt, unclarified, and blurry—and that the writer must offer a tentative, risky proposition in response to that problem, a proposition that competes for readers' allegiance with other differing propositions.
Teaching Multiple Drafts as a Thinking Process
Fortunately, the writing process itself provides one of the best ways to help students learn the active, dialogic thinking skills valued in academic life. Students need to understand that even for the most skilled writers, composing an essay is a tortuous process because, as writing theorist Peter Elbow (1973) has argued, “meaning is not what you start out with but what you end up with… Think of writing then not as a way to transmit a message but as a way to grow and cook a message” (15). Thus, the elegance and structure of thesis‐governed writing—as a finished product—evolves from a lengthy and messy process of drafting and redrafting. An across‐the‐curriculum emphasis on multiple drafts encourages the messy process whereby writers become engaged with a problem and, once engaged, formulate, develop, complicate, and clarify their own ideas. The habit of problem posing and thesis making does not come naturally to beginning college students, who write more clearly (but dully) when given easier assignments that do not challenge them as thinkers. The next sections explore this phenomenon in more detail.
Avoiding a Thesis: Three Cognitively Immature Essay Structures
To see more clearly the relationship between a dialogic view of knowledge and the approach to writing instruction advocated here, let's examine several cognitively immature organizational structures that students often resort to when unable to produce thesis‐governed prose.
“And Then” Writing, or Chronological Structure
By “and then” writing we mean a chronological narrative in which the writer tells what happens between time point A and time point B without focus, selection, pacing, or tension. Students produce “and then” writing when they resort inappropriately to chronological organization. Typical examples are students' writing a plot summary of a film or short story instead of an analysis. Another example, commonly encountered in the sciences, is students' writing a literature review that simply summarizes articles in chronological order by date of publication rather than analyzing what's known and unknown.
“And then” writing can be illustrated by the following student's difficulty in producing an interpretive argument about Shakespeare's The Tempest. This excerpt is from the introduction of the student's first draft:
Prospero cares deeply for his daughter. In the middle of the play Prospero acts like a gruff father and makes Ferdinand carry logs in order to test his love for Miranda and Miranda's love for him. He is also very cruel to the servant Caliban. In the end, though, Prospero is a loving father who rejoices in his daughter's marriage to a good man.
Here the student seems to be summarizing the plot of The Tempest without forecasting an argument or proposing a thesis. The body of this draft contained similar passages of lengthy plot summary. However, in an office conference the instructor discovered that the student actually intended an argument. She thought that Prospero was a loving father, in contrast to several of her classmates who thought that Prospero was a tyrannical ruler and parent. The instructor helped her recast the introduction to set up a thesis.
Many persons believe that Prospero is an evil person in the play. They claim that Prospero exhibits a harsh, destructive control over Miranda and also, like Faust, seeks superhuman knowledge through his magic. However, I contend that Prospero is a kind and loving father.
The student is now prepared to make an argument. The paper poses a problem (What kind of father is Prospero?), indicates an opposing view (Prospero is harsh and hateful), and asserts a contestable thesis (Prospero is loving). She now needs to develop her reasons for claiming that Prospero is loving and organize her paper hierarchically to support these reasons with appropriate textual details.
It must be noted, however, that it is not just inexperienced writers who produce chronological structures. In their pioneering study of writing and cognition, Linda Flower and John R. Hayes (1977) show that long passages of chronological writing characterize the early drafts of expert writers (see also Flower, 1979). In fact, they argue that chronological thinking provides a natural way of retrieving ideas and details from long‐term memory. But experienced writers convert “and then” material into hierarchically focused material as they revise, whereas novice writers seem satisfied with the draft at the “and then” stage.
“All About” Writing, or Encyclopedic Order
Whereas the “and then” paper strings details on a chronological frame, the “all about” paper tries to say a little bit of everything about a topic. When well written, such papers may seem organized hierarchically because the writer usually groups data by category or topics. But the categories do not function as reasons in support of a thesis. Rather, like the headings in an encyclopedia article, they are simply ways of arranging information that do not add up to an argument.
Unfortunately, educators in America have a long tradition of rewarding “all about” writing. Teachers encourage such writing whenever they assign topics rather than problems. Typical topic‐centered examples include assigning a “report on North Dakota” in fifth‐grade social studies, a “library paper on General Rommel” in eleventh‐grade history, or “a term paper on schizophrenia” in college psychology. Assignments like these have endured because they have one major virtue: they increase students' general store of knowledge about North Dakota, General Rommel, or schizophrenia. But they often do little to increase students' maturity as writers and thinkers.
Consider the difference between a student who is asked to write a traditional term paper on, say, Charles Darwin versus a student who is asked to write a research paper on Darwin that must begin with the presentation of a problem or question that the writer will investigate and try to resolve.
Without guidance, the first student will tend toward “all about” writing, perhaps producing an initial outline with headings like these:
1 Early childhood
2 How Darwin became interested in evolution
3 The voyage of the Beagle
4 An explanation of Darwin's theory
5 Darwin's influence
This