Thanks, Chris, Michael, Tharon, and Donna – you've made me think harder than is comfortable – which is a good thing. If permitted, I get to be comfortable with my own thoughts. You've given me any number of salutary jolts, opened up so many trains of thought. And I wish I'd thought to ask you-all to call me "Charlie" – whenever I'm called "Charles" I expect shortly to be punished for bad behavior!
The question of the relationship between the class community and the 'public' – this is a real issue. And I find myself wanting to waffle, or at least be allowed more than one place on the continuum! Michael has framed the issue beautifully, asking, really, whether our writing classes, or classes generally, should have boundaries. Should what we say in class be public? Should what our students say in class be public?
There's a piece of me that agrees with what I said in the first position-paper: that the Web is a new 'scene' for writing and we should take advantage of it. There's another piece of me that says that one of the virtues of F2F education is that all of us, students and teachers, can try on ideas and opinions in a protected space – that the classroom-forum is an air-lock into the public forum and that it should be private, to the class. We're just now designing an on-line writing course here at our university, and what I find myself wanting from the system is several levels of privacy: I'd like the class to be itself protected; I'd like work-groups to have their own privacy; and I'd like to have students able to write one-to-one, for my eyes, or a peer's eyes, only. I'd like, too, to have the class present a face to the public, so that students can, by their own choice, post their works on a home-page that is open to any and all readers. So: levels of privacy, and students' able to choose their audience.
In our writing programs we've fought long and hard (I think of Britton & Martin here) for the inclusion of 'expressive' writing, writing where writers compose their worlds, make sense of their experiences – social, intellectual, psychological. We've also pushed hard for writers to experiment in their writing. Writers need a safe place if they are to do this. We've read a lot about how women and children are at risk on-line. I'd hate to see us lose what we've, in my view, gained in the past 30 years, and return to a pedagogy that considers all writing-in-the academy to be public performance – the epideictic.
Michael's "world-wide wastebasket" metaphor reminds me: I sometimes think of the on-line world as the Grand Central Station of my childhood. I grew up in "the city" and as a small boy took subways and trains by myself. I was told by my parents not to go into the mens' room at the station, not to talk to anyone, certainly not to go off with anyone, even for candy. Yet the station itself was huge, alive, filled with amazing interesting-looking people, huge Kodak illuminated billboard-scenes, train-screeches, and the frequent possibility of ice-cream. And there were so many people, each intent on a private itinerary. Who would see me in this swirl of substance and energy? I was safe, private, because I was one, small, inconspicuous dot in this grand carnival. And, of course, I was at risk. My parents had advised me well.
Britton, J. (1970). Language and learning. London: Penguin Books.
Britton, J., Burgess T., Martin N., McLeod A., & Rosen H. (1975). The development of writing abilities (11-18). London: Macmillan Education.
Martin, N. (1983). Mostly about writing. London: Heinemann Educational Books.
– Charles Moran
cmoran@english.umass.edu