Berlin, James A. “Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories

Berlin, James A. “Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories”255-270
“From this point of view the composing process is always and everywhere the same because writer, reality, reader, and language are always and everywhere the same. Differences in teaching theories, then, are mere cavils about which of these features to emphasize in the classroom” (255).
Cavil--to raise trivial and frivolous objection
“I do, however, strongly disagree with the contention that the differences in approaches to teaching writing can be explained by attending to the degree of emphasis given to universally defined elements of a universally defined writing process. The differences in these teaching approaches should instead be located in diverging definitions of the composing process itself—that is, in the way the elements that make up the process—writer, reality, audience, and language—are envisioned” (256).
“Rhetorical theories differ from each other in the way writer, reality, audience, and language are conceived—both, as separate units and in the way units relate to each other” (256).
“To teach writing is to argue for a version of reality, and the best way of knowing and communicating it--. . .in the metarhetorical realm of epistemology and linguistics” (256).
“The dismay students display about writing is, I am convinced, at least occasionally the result of teachers unconsciously offering contradictory advice about composing—guidance grounded in assumptions that simply do not square with each other” (256-7).
“Thus rhetoric is primarily concerned with the provision of inventional devices whereby the speaker may discover his or her argument, with these devices naturally falling into three categories: the rational, the emotional, and the ethical” (258).
“The aim of rhetoric is to teach how to adapt the discourse to its hearers—and here the uncomplicated correspondence of the faculties and the world is emphasized” (260).
“In the Platonic scheme, truth is not based on sensory experience since the material world is always in flux and thus unreliable. Truth is instead discovered through an internal apprehension, a private vision of a world that transcends the physical”(261).
(Platonic) “The purpose of rhetoric then becomes not the transmission of truth, but the correction of error, the removal of that which obstructs the personal apprehension of the truth” (261).
“The major tenets of theis Platonic rhetoric form the center of what are commonly called “Expressionist” textbooks. Truth is conceived as the result of a private vision that must be constantly consulted in writing” (263).
“Classical Rhetoric considers truth to be located in the rational operation of the mind, Positivist Rhetoric in the correct perception of sense impressions, and Neo-Platonic Rhetoric within the individual, attainable only through an internal apprehension. In each case knowledge is a commodity situated in a permanent location, a repository to which the individual goes to be enlightened” (264).
The problem is that “knowledge is a commodity situated in a permanent location”. I find that to be untrue as well, knowledge is a living growing thing that moves within and without the mind.
“For the New Rhetoric, knowledge is not cimply a static entity available for retrieval. Truth is dynamic and dialectical, the result of a process involving the interaction of opposing elements” (264).
True, and great way to think of it, but why do we associate these things as to developing into the “truth”?
“Young, Becker and Pike state the same notion:
‘Constantly changing, bafflingly complex, the external world is not a neat, well-ordered
Place replete with meaning, but an enigma requiring interpretation” (265).
“For the New Rhetoric truth is impossible without language since it is language that embodies and gnerates truth” (265).
“Berthoff agrees: ‘The relationship between thought and language is dialectical: ideas are conceived by language; language is generated by thought’ (p. 47)” (265).
“In the New Rhetoric the message arises out of the interaction of the writer, language, reality, and the audience. Truths are operative only within a given universe of discourse, and this universe is shaped by all of these elements, including audience” (266).
“The way we make sense of the world is to see something with respect to, in terms of, in relation to something else” (266).
“The New Rhetoric sees the writer as a creator of meaning, a shaper of reality, rather than a passive receptor of the immutably given” (267).
“Structure and language are a part of the formation of meaning, are at the center of the discovery of truth, not simply the dress of thought” (267).
“In teaching writing we are not simply offering training in a useful technical skill that is meant as a simple complement to the more important studies of other areas. We are teaching a way of experiencing the world, a way of ordering and making sense of it” (268).
Everyone teaches the process of writing, but everyone does not teach the same process. The test of one’s competence as a composition instructor, it seems to me, resides in being able to recognize and justify the version of the process being taught, complete with all of its significance for the student” (269).
It is in the fact that we all teach writing differently that we in turn get progressively differing theories of the pedagogy.