"Personal Writing Assignments" Response

"The question persists as to what place telling personal stories and citing personal observations should have in the process of teaching writing."

[and]

"For many teachers, literature and literary analysis provided a way out of the world of personal writing that made them uncomfortable."

I think that the second quote offers a very viable reason as to why the first quote is such a hot issue in the world of teaching writing. Teachers feel much more comfortable dealing with literary analyses than they do dealing with personal essays. Why is this? It is because the English teachers, the English "experts," the products of our current English education system, are well versed in the way of literature. They, however, are not well read regarding the personal histories of each and every students. In other words, they are not the experts of the personal experience of the students. If they are not the experts of what the students are writing about, then where do they stand in relation to the students on the "totem pole." This, I think, is at the crux of the issue in deciding what method of writing is better for students: it is a power struggle. Without power, or authority over what the student produces, what is the purpose of the teacher? How can she effectively grade a paper? In arguing that the conversation on what to teach is simply based in an egocentric power struggle, I am not submitting that personal writing is the only form of writing in which students should engage. I am simply offering a reason as to why such a conflict could be rather avoidable. I believe that students should be taught to write in the many different forms (maybe not the research--at least as it currently is taught) because all of the different forms together make the English curriculum, just as statistics, algebra, and calculus all form the mathematical curriculum. However, I think that personal experience is a powerful tool upon which the students should be instructed to call on a more frequent basis in the other forms of writing (expository, literary analysis, and research).

The text also speaks of writing topics such as "Why I Came to School" as coming a long way since topics like "Joy" were given. These two forms of writing topics are presented as binbaries, abstract vs. specific. And the specific is privileged. I think, however, that the text misses the ball in this respect. The best personal essays are those that move from a very specific topic/experience and then somehow relate the specific topic/experience to "the big picture," that broad concept of "Joy," that greater human truth to which many can relate. Those pieces of writing that place the small in the big are the ones that supercede the more simplistic pieces.