Process vs. Mimesis
[1,025 words]
At the conclusion of a recent reading weblog entry entitled “The Logic of Reading and Writing,” I offered up a theoretical classroom research unit. Here are the relevant paragraphs:
"How did students from the past learn to write? How could the reading public during the founding of our republic have picked up the daily newspaper and read the Federalist Papers by Publius (Hamilton, Jay and Madison)? Have you ever tried to read a Federalist Paper? Who taught the union soldiers to write such beautiful letters home during the Civil War? How could they have done so in the absence of what we think we know today about learning to write?
"Prior to the current revolution in writing theory, most of us learned to write by mimesis, that is by imitation. We studied models and tried our best to produce them. In the world of art it is called ‘tracing the masters.’ That is how Benjamin Franklin taught himself to write, by reading issues of Addison and Steele’s The Spectator, and then trying to reproduce the brilliance of their thoughts in the patterns of their prose.
"I would love to see a research study of two groups: one would be a control group, utilizing the latest methods; the second would be an experimental group, where students would be encouraged to write and write and write, and then handed solid and multiple models of what good writing looks like. After a few weeks, give both groups the same assessment. I would double-down on group two.'
This writing unit, utilizing a control group and an experimental group, seems like a worthy classroom research assignment. I have always encouraged my colleagues to use their classrooms as ‘think tanks’ and do primary research. Students make wonderful subjects and studying their work, not just assessing it, can profoundly affect the way we do our jobs.
I have since contacted a high school Language Arts teacher and we are preparing to implement such an experimental design to see if we can discover which method of teaching written discourse is the more effective, the one used for over two millennia, which I will call ‘mimesis,’ the Greek word for imitation, or the modern method, in vogue for the past 30 years, which I will call process writing. To the extent possible we will differentiate between these methods and present them to students as distinct approaches. In practice, however, a teacher would more likely use a blended method. Our research may then serve to illuminate which approach would receive priority in the blending.
In describing and differentiating between these two methods, let’s begin with the mimetic approach, the more ancient and traditional of the two. Here is a useful definition I located on a web-site:
"Imitation was a fundamental method of instruction in ancient Roman and in Renaissance humanist curricula, the practical counterpart ("exercitatio") to rhetorical theory ("ars"; see rhetorical ability)."
Imitation took place on many levels and through many methods. At an elementary level students used imitation in learning the rudiments of Greek or Latin (spelling, grammar), copying the purity of speech of a given author. As they progressed, they were taught parsing (finding the parts of speech), which led to various kinds of rhetorical analysis of their models (finding figures of speech, argumentative strategies, patterns of arrangement). Students were instructed to use copybooks to record passages from their reading that exemplified noteworthy content or form, which they would then quote or imitate within their own speeches or compositions.
Most students, for the past 2,500 years, have learned to write, and to produce works of art, by studying models and copying both their content and style. This approach is associated with Platonic and Aristotelian thought and is closely aligned with Aristotle’s scientific method. If you want to learn something, you study it closely. The current writing theory, what I will term process writing, is, ironically, associated with an older philosopher, Socrates, but only in one particular. Socrates did not see humans as vessels into which teachers would place knowledge. Rather, he saw humans as already possessing all knowledge. It was the role of the teacher to draw that knowledge out of students and the best way to do so was by questioning. The Socratic method of questioning still has strong support within the educational community, especially in some law schools and in the work of the Great Books Foundation. The process method appears to assume that an essay is inside a student and can be drawn out of him using various devices, such as brainstorming activities and graphic organizers. Given enough pre-writing activities, and multiple drafting opportunities, an excellent polished final essay will emerge. Alas, most teachers, given the choice to teach both ways, will find that Aristotle trumps Socrates; that is, strong models defeat graphic organizers every time.
There is another problem with process writing. The underlying assumption is that students think associatively, not logically. It then becomes the teacher’s job to harness the randomness of student thought and, by means of strategies, activities and exercises, super-impose a logical structure. This, however, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Students asked to brainstorm before they even know what they are doing will produce the randomness the process calls for and justify the activities that follow.
The mimetic approach stresses the power of modeling and the instruction becomes much less focused on the underlying structure, thus reducing the need for arbitrarily restrictive approaches, like the 5 paragraph essay, the location of the thesis sentence in a specific spot, and formulas like two commentary sentences for every concrete detail. Powerful models were not produced by writers relying on such an artificial system. The thesis sentence may often come without a label and find itself more organically located. It may only be implied. There will likely be a free flow between assumptions, assertions and evidence in authentic models and students will actually write more powerfully if they are not constrained by the artificiality of the process model.
This all remains to be proved, or disproved. I will report after the students have written and the methods have been studied. I may also report along the way as the unit takes shape.