Writing in the 21rst Century -- NCTE web site and PDF

The other Session 7 readings:

The National Council of Teachers of English website discusses the importance of validating all of the different types of writing that students do both in and out of class. At the same time, one article talks about "writing about literature" as an excellent way to foster deep reading and analytical thought, even though that sort of reading might seem to have limited practical applications at first.

PDF:

Historical background: Reading, historically in our culture, has "warm fuzzy" associations to communal activities such as church services. Also, reading was a way that the government could influence people (or so the article asserts). Writing, on the other hand, was associated with hard work, "episodes of despair", testing, etc. Through writing the common person might ASSERT control rather than BEING controlled, so the powers-that-be had less of an incentive to make sure everyone learned to write well.

From the 1960s through the 1980s, the "writing process" model came to have a big influence on writing instruction, with mostly positive results.

The invention of the personal computer added some other dimensions, such as being able to explore how visual and verbal elements of a piece work together.

21rst Century writing is EVERYWHERE, and a big part of the appeal may be just the sense of participation. Writing and reading on sites such as Facebook may be providing an electronic "commons", much like the village green of yore, and in ways that work to overcome the social isolation that Robert Putnam described in _Bowling Alone_. [What about those of us who don't WANT to replace our face-to-face communities with electronic ones, though?]

Right now could be called an "Age of Composition", where people learn to write partly through an "extracurricular social co-apprenticeship". (This is like what we talked about early in the course -- learning by playing on the edges of a community of practice, at first, and then building skills and an awareness of norms while gradually diving in more and more.)

Two interesting examples: (1) A teenager in Florida sent out email and photos of her neighbors, some disabled, trapped in their trailer park homes after a hurricane came through. All were rescued from the rising waters. (2) 30,000 high school students organized over Facebook to write "THIS IS SPARTA" or "THIS IS MADNESS" in cross-outs on their AP tests, worked into their answers in clever ways -- thus managing to relate to the graders (some of whom were amused) as human beings, not just as graders.

Summary: Seek a new theory of teaching writing; validate all of the various types of writing that people do; etc.