I am Matthew Williams and You are Not

These two questions are why does writing happen and where does writing happen. When I ask why does writing happen, I do not mean the whole issue of communication and the history of literacy. I mean something much more immediate and under our noses. What I mean when I ask the question why does writing happen is what conditions and circumstances give cause for an individual to begin arranging words into meaningful ideas. That is, what causes us to write? What is the impetus for our desire to communicate?

This notion struck me today as I was looking through many old composition text books. One thing was the same in every single textbook: writing prompts. The only thing that changed was the nature of these prompts. Some were more conventional. Some where downright culturally leveling. Some were wacky. But they all revolved around this one idea: for students to write you must tell them to write and provide the inspiration for that writing.

This is a folk pedagogy. This assumes that writing does not or cannot happen on its own. Writing requires the instructor's approval and direction to happen. To answer the question of why does writing happen, comp theory simply tells us "writing happens because we say so."

But there is a great danger in this. By placing the cause or impetus to write within the instructor's structure of authority, all writing that is done in a class becomes external to students. They are not writing for their own reasons; they are writing because an instructor has given them a prompt that either invites them to write or forces them to write for a grade. This simple fact remains the same no matter how hip, cool, or sexy your writing prompt may be. They belong to the instructor, not the students.

But why are we assuming there is only one way to answer why does writing happen? Obviously, this assumption serves the traditional grade as product, education as cultural leveling mentality. It promotes and reinforces the traditional notion of instructor/student. It makes "grading" easy. Every student is assumed to be at the same starting line when the prompt is given, and the instructor need only to measure how far they have gone from this starting point to determine a grade. Some will go far and receive good marks. Others will not.

But the problem with asking a student to write about Kurt Cobain is not every student feels a connection to his music or his words. By asking someone to analyze his lyrics, a student may get the impression that Cobain is a major figure that smart people like. Further, if this student doesn't feel a personal connection to Nirvana's music, they may feel alienated and outside the classroom culture of those who do connect with Cobain.

To return to the question, we have to treat it as a question. Why does writing happen? Maybe there are other ways to make writing happen. Maybe writing happens due to deep personal connection to ideas. Maybe writing happens as a way to realize knowledge. Maybe writing happens to express a personal idea or to share a passion with others.

These are concepts that are not new to any writing classroom. However, the traditional assumption has always been that these concepts cannot be approached unless the instructor forces students to work through them. But this is the assumption that I question. Must we force students to write for them to write?

We know that learning, in a larger sense, does not necessarily occur because an instructor forces it to happen. In fact, we know this is a very inefficient way to go about producing learning. We know that certain situations, certain environments, certain conditions can be conducive to learning happening simply due to the nature of these situations, environments, and conditions. Why must writing be any different?

What we need is a discussion on why people write when they are not in the classroom, and then find ways to replicate or mimic these real-world situations in our classrooms. The notion that writing happens because someone says to write is not a concept that holds any sort of validity in the real world and in the personal lives of students.

This brings me to the other question, where does writing occur? Far too often only a very specific, narrow, and naive idea of writing passes the test for what qualifies as writing. This, of course, is the traditional expository essay that can be graded in a class. However, for those who have been asleep for the past 10 years, we are turning into a society that relies heavily on written communication. Writing happens all over the place, from cell phones to profiles on TheFacebook.com. And this is writing that happens with no authoritarian instruction at all. It happens organically and authentically for intrinsic reasons on the part of the person who writes.

It begs the question, who is to say this writing is of no value? A great deal is being accomplished in these "fringe" forms of composition. However, students are being told time and time again that this sort of writing holds no value to anyone simply because it does not superficially look like what composition instructors have been drilling into the heads of students for the past 100 years.

To start to understand why writing happens, we have to start finding where writing happens in the real world under no external pressure. If we can understand why people spend hours posting responses on message boards or taking hours to craft a simple "profile," we can begin to understand what motivates people to write in an organic and authentic fashion. It is only then that we can begin to use these concepts in the classroom, and to return the value of writing to the student.