I don’t mean to be excessively platonic. That is, I don’t want to over-state the idea that our ideas come before our sense of reality. But it does seem that most of us function through assumptions, and those come from our ideas, or our models, of how things work.
Simply because we can’t possibly know everything, we carry with us assumptions about what we call “the real world.” This influences how we think about everything, from other races and religions to whether or not we should spend our time with new hobbies. Sometimes we say that other people just aren’t living in the real world. We mean, apparently, that they aren’t living in the world we know.
Models are especially important in learning. If we hold to what are called traditional banking metaphors of how we learn, we will argue that the best way to teach is to lecture students, fill their accounts with money (facts, statistics, whatever), and then test them to see that they learned our lectures. If we recognize that students are not empty accounts but engaged agents with experiences and knowledge already, and they actively add to their understanding, piecing and constructing new connections to old ones, then we will do more than just lecture. We will think about learning in more complex terms. We will run our classrooms by using different methods. Sometimes a lecture will be called for, but more often, discussion, writing, or group work will be needed.
Where the teaching of writing is concerned, models tend to predominate any of our discussions. There are basically two models today that people speak from when they think about good writing practices. The first, old, traditional model is linear and, as many compositionists argue (see Sommers), is based on teaching speech. In essence, it emphasizes the final product and therefore has many of its proponents teaching lessons in style and conciseness. Courses based on this linear model will not even mention invention, other than telling students to draw up an outline, and also offer little advice about audience, developing ideas, or general processes like revision. Probably at the center of a class like this will be textbooks like Strunk and White’s Elements of Style.
The second model, which focuses on process instead of product, follows a recursive model of composing. We do not simply pass one stage and finish with it. We constantly return to beginnings, revising our ideas and language. This model requires more time, from students and from teachers. It is a model that seems more closely based on what writers in the real world do.
An example seems appropriate here. I have been teaching two writing classes now for five weeks. In both classes, I have been teaching process, the second model. I have engaged my students in the writing of multiple drafts. And in both classes, I have had many students who have waited weeks until the deadline, this Monday, to begin working on their papers. I know this because they have emailed me about possible topics. That means that they haven’t even started the invention process.
Waiting until the last minute to do your essay is old school. It is based on the old model. It shows me that for the most part, my students came to college having learned the old model of writing.
This might seem okay to us until we realize that we are working with a model of writing that is as outdated as 19th Century models of the brain or the solar system.
Then it seems like there might be something wrong with our models.
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WORK CITED
Sommers, Nancy. “The Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers.” College Composition and Communication, 31.4 (Dec., 1980): 378-388.
Maybe, at some level, all models are suspect.
David, I think so, especially if we are not open to revising them. Models are to be made conscious and revised.