Murray/Emig Essays

    Both Donald M. Murray’s essay “Teach Writing as a Process Not Product” and Janet Emig’s piece “Writing as a Mode of Learning” provide the reader with some very useful information about the processes of writing and learning. I found Emig’s essay to be a little hard to comprehend due to what she terms the “off-putting jargon of the learning theorist” (14). In other words, it was a little more difficult for me to understand than Murray’s shorter essay. Regardless, both scholars argue for the reformation of writing education from a product-based evaluation into a process-based one.
      Murray opens his piece by pointing out one of the essential flaws in English teaching—“we teach writing as a product, focusing our critical attentions on what our students have done” (3). But he is quick to argue against that pattern and adamantly state that teaching writing is not teaching a product, but rather it is teaching a process—“the process of discovery through language” (4). He argues that during the three main stages of writing—prewriting, writing, and rewriting—the instructor must be very patient, never the “the initiator or the motivator” but rather the “reader, the recipient,” waiting for the student to finish the process in his or her own time and always supporting, but never directing, “this expedition to the student’s own truth” (5). Murray’s idealistic vision of writing comes through in his bold statements such as, “All writing is experimental,” and “Mechanics come last.” He also places great emphasis on the balance that must be kept between the writing process and time. He writes that it must have time to begin and end, to have both “unpressured time” and “pressured time—the deadline.” He elaborates by stating that each student is different and must be allowed to work at their own pace, “within the limits of the course deadlines” (6). The writing process is both outside of time yet within time. Something about this contradiction did not sit well with me.
     Janet Emig’s essay expands somewhat on Murray’s argument. The author first lists the major differences between writing and other forms of communication, talking in particular. Talking is natural, writing is learned. Emig then reinstates both the process and product of writing as individual in that it “possesses a cluster of attributes that correspond uniquely to certain powerful learning strategies” (7), namely that learning profits from reinforcement, seeks self-provided feedback, is connective, and it is active and engaged—self-rhythmed. Writing, likewise, benefits from restructuring and reinforcement, provides immediate feedback in the form of the written word on the page, is a connective process, and is self-rhythmed in that the writing process, like learning, is best done at one’s own pace.
     Emig makes a strong case for writing as a valuable tool for learning, and Murray’s argument goes along those same lines, insisting that writing be taught as a process, not a product. Since both of these writings are from the 1970’s, I would presume that both scholars made great contributions in transforming the field of writing from what it was back then to what it is today. But how relevant is it even today to encounter the situation Murray sees in many teachers of “blaming the student” for handing in a poorly-crafted essay, when in fact it is the education system’s fault for instructing the student in the product and not the process. This is evident in my own education; ever since middle school I have oftentimes wrote the literature essay based on what I knew my teachers wanted to see, based on the product they had instructed me to make. Murray calls this cheating “your student of the opportunity to learn the process of discovery” (5). Indeed, too often I’ve been given prompts in my literature courses that confine my thoughts to a narrow space, the professor’s own ideas actually, which I subsequently regurgitated as an A paper, not one thought my own. When was I undergoing the writing process?

Hunger of Memory pgs. 114-173

In the fourth chapter of Hunger of Memory, Complexion, I found Rodriguez’s comments about the color of his skin quite compelling. Being raised by a mother to whom “Dark skin…was the most important symbol of a life of oppressive labor and poverty” (127), the author grew to be ashamed of his very dark complexion and the stereotype of poverty he carried with it. Even though Rodriguez grew up in a middle-class family, he feels that his dark skin was a barrier between himself and the world of los gringos. I thought it was especially intriguing, however, at the end of the chapter when the author describes himself in the present world as an economically successful man whose skin has become a “mark of…leisure;” the author eventually realized that his “skin, in itself, means nothing,” and it is rather the economic and social environment of his life that gives the color of his skin any meaning (148).
    Understanding this about Rodriguez has helped me understand a little more about skin color in a broad sense. Oftentimes in the modern world, as the author states, the color of one’s skin has little to say about significant advantages or disadvantages that person may face in his or her life. Factors such as social and economic status weigh much more heavily on someone’s life than the ethnicity with which they were born. That being said, Rodriguez’s statement that “no one would regard [his] complexion the same way if [he] entered through the service entrance” seems especially true (148). The clothes that cover his skin tell more of his luxurious lifestyle than the man’s skin alone.
    Further on in the memoir the author approaches the word Chicano, meaning Mexican-American in both Spanish and English. Affirmative action movements took the formerly Mexican slang word and transformed it into a “public word, animated by pride and political purpose” (170). Reading this about Rodriguez’s memories of Chicano, I was reminded of my own. Several years ago my family and I attended the 90th birthday party of my great-aunt Josephina Quesada Alvarez, full-blooded Mexican sister of my full-blooded Mexican grandpa. Although I have rarely interacted with the woman in my life (as that side of my family lives far from mine, in Arizona), I will always remember that occasion for the long speech she gave about the word Chicano. After blowing out the candles on her cake, while she still had all eyes on her, she made us young family members sit at her feet as she explained to us the importance of knowing the meaning of Chicano, Chicana. Listening to her passionately declare the pride Mexican-Americans possess was my first experience coming to terms with the struggles my Mexican family had to deal with to receive a fair education in the United States. While her and my great-uncle Eugene went on to work for Arizona State University (she an admissions officer, he a professor of Art), it was not without a great effort to overcome the negative biases held by those around them. And while I, today, cannot remember what she said that day, I know it is important to remember that nothing in this country comes without a lot of hard work, whether it has been done for me by my ancestors or whether I will to do the work myself. In that I feel connected to Rodriguez’s exploration of his cultural identity.

Hunger of Memory pgs. 1-73

In Hunger of Memory, Richard Rodriguez tells of his childhood and adult experiences in the American education system. When arguing against bilingual education he writes:

Today I hear bilingual educators say that children lose a degree of individuality by becoming assimilated into public society… They do not seem to realize that there are two ways a person is individualized…The fact is that only in private—with intimates—is separateness a prerequisite for individuality…In public, by contrast, full individuality is achieved, paradoxically, by those who are able to consider themselves members of the crowd. Thus it happened for me: Only when I was able to think of myself as an American, no longer an alien in gringo society, could I see the rights and opportunities necessary for full public individuality. (26-27)

Rodriguez argues against bilingual education because, as he says, it separates one from his public individuality. When schools insist that children be taught in their native language (in order to remind them of their separateness, their heritage), they distinctly remove them from public society and any chance of having a public identity whatsoever. Because Rodriguez was forced to learn English from an early age in school, he was at first very aware and afraid of the differences    between himself and his fellow pupils; however, as he became more and more fluent in English he began to value the power it gave him to be a competent and extremely intelligent member of society.
    Later in his memoir, Rodriguez recalls the differing reactions his parents had to his education. While his mother constantly encouraged his learning and praised his achievements, his father “never verbally encouraged his children’s academic success;” however, he “recognized that education…could enable a person to escape from a life of mere labor” (58). This passage, along with many references the author makes to his family life, strikes me as a poignant reminder of my own father’s family life. His parents, too, were immigrants to America with very little education and, perhaps less so than Rodriguez’s parents, little ability to speak and write English. From their perspective, the desire to work hard and a strong education was everything one needed for a successful life in America. Like Rodriguez, my father struggled to learn English at an early age in Catholic school. Although my father barely succeeded in graduating college, his work ethic enabled him to go on to become a very successful businessman. My brother, sister and I, along with my father’s only brother’s children, represented an even greater future for my grandparents. And when my oldest cousin became the first person in our family to graduate college, and my grandfather was there to see it, it was a very proud moment for everyone in our family. Education isn’t a guarantee for success, but it gives one the opportunity for a greater life than the generation before.

Brandt Essay

In Deborah Brandt’s essay “Remembering Writing, Remembering Reading,” the author relates her study of forty Wisconsin residents of various ages and socioeconomic backgrounds. Brandt asked the participants questions about their earliest memories of reading and writing, questions that revealed information about “literacy learning as it has occurred across the twentieth century” (Brandt 460). The author ultimately concludes that the processes of learning to read and write, while often connected in school settings, are drastically different, something the author calls the “cultural disassociations of reading and writing” (461).
The patterns Brandt found among her interviewees reveal that the process of learning to read is often a pleasurable experience shared with one’s family, while writing is “remembered as occurring in lonely, secret, or rebellious circumstances” (464). Brandt provides many examples how this pattern plays out in our society—parents encourage reading, yet they shy away from writing or discourage it altogether. Reading has come to be seen as an enjoyable, relaxing activity—a healthy escape—while writing is remembered as a chore to accomplish, such as doing the bills or keeping business records.
Brandt ends her essay by arguing that the cultural disassociations shown through these interviews reveal the need for “a broadening of the scope by which we study literacy practices and the need to understand school-based writing in terms of larger cultural, historical, and economic currents.” Brandt explains that to better understand the situations in which people have come to learn to read and write will serve to help scholars to grasp “what literacy instruction represents to students in the future and how it sometimes, inexplicably, to go awry” (477).
While I find Brandt’s essay very interesting and entertaining, as many of the anecdotes remind me of my own early reading and writing experiences, the passion with which she argues the understanding of these experiences eludes me. I agree with her on the immense importance of these activities, but I feel like researching such a concept would be so tedious and seemingly ineffective that I fail to see the point of this essay aside from entertaining the reader with a vast and sentimental array of childhood experiences.