Learning from History and Donald C. Stewart

"A writing teacher's development can be measured by the degree to which that person has become liberated from current-traditional rhetoric" (Stewart 134); luckily, I have yet to be in the field of teaching composition long enough to be mired in current, or any other, traditions; with a little luck, and readings such as Donald C. Stewart's "Some History Lessons for Composition Teachers" behind me, I will manage to stave off such trappings as long as possible.


Long before thinking of teaching, I wrote. As a writer, I am a firm believer in process - I tend to see my writing as expression rather than "product" (135). Before I returned to school at the age of 42, I journaled, wrote poetry, short stories, and even started a novel - all with the barest sense of "superficial mechanical correctness" (135). I wrote the way I spoke and felt, and believed being bound by syntax and grammatical rules would be the kiss of death for any artistic life I might be trying to achieve. I later learned, of course, the power of the grammatical tools that would help me carve and whittle, and sand the edges of my writing, bringing it to another level - one I could not have reached without those rules and boundaries. Even still, I believe in reaching down deep to find the bones of a composition before revising for punctuation and spelling. I learned the true craft was in the revision, but there is still a need for freewriting while searching for the outline of whatever picture we are trying to bring to life with our words. This does not happen all at once; it is a process.


I resonated with Stewart's (or Socrates') "organic conception of discourse" (137). Unless, you are creating a technical manual, "mechanical" thinking will always be a hindrance until your first draft is written. Writing is thinking. It focuses your mind and your thoughts, forcing them down your arm, through your fingers, and out the pen (or onto the keyboard under your fingertips).


The only idea Stewart spoke of that I am still turning over in my mind his (apparent) dismissal of the five-paragraph essay as a teaching tool (137). It certainly can, and should, be discarded as the student's comfort level and grasp of composition as a whole "organic" entity becomes more sophisticated; however; as a tutor-turned-teacher of composition, I have found that one of the most difficult concepts to get across is the idea of what Stewart calls "unity" (138). The most interesting writing is undoubtedly going to be that which doesn't simply move form point to point, but develops an idea - maybe unfolds is an even better word. But, in order to grasp this complexity, beginning students often need an understanding of the process of developing an idea and carrying it through a composition as a complete dialogue containing specific thoughts surrounding a central theme. New writers may take the disjointed thinking we all share as composers and not know how to order and transition from thought to thought in a way that allows the reader to follow. It seems to me that starting out with a five-paragraph form enables them to visualize the way a piece can flow without rambling, that is pulling in needless, unrelated details, as "logic and coherence are defined in terms of particular kins of relationships between ideas and the structures which carry them" (140).