act1

Act 1: Allegory (Five Easy Pieces)
If you have made it to this point, you have discovered the NJIT iTunesU podcast series [|“The End of the Essay.”] You have, we hope, listened to the introductory interview, the Prologue, and Act 1: Allegory. And so now you are here. Welcome.

Let’s begin with a question: What would happen if the essay were abolished in education?

The series is intended to be a trial balloon, so let’s unpack that concept to get started.

We want to see, with your help, what way the wind is blowing.

However, we do not mean, in any way, to diminish the contributions made over the years by the community of writing instructors associated with organizations such as the [|National Council of Teachers of English], the [|Conference on College Composition and Communication], the [|National Writing Project], the [|Council of Writing Program Administrators], the Association [|of Teachers of Technical Writing], or the [|Council for Programs in Scientific and Technical Communication]. The work of those dedicated to [|Writing Across the Curriculum], [|Writing Across the Disciplines], and [|Writing as Process] has transformed the teaching of writing in the nation. The enduring contribution of the members of those organizations is inestimable.

But is it incorrect to identify the essay as the dominant reporting structure in American education? We can certainly look to the [|Writing Section of SAT Reasoning Test] for evidence that the essay form remains a dominant reporting structure in education. And while the [|NAEP Writing Assessment] does ask for more diverse discourse forms, the timed nature of the sample does lend itself to a formulaic approach, the kind associated with the five paragraph format of the essay. It is, as the series suggests, the reductionistic and formulaic structure of the essay that is objectionable. Why? Because of the impact.

And here, sadly, is the impact: what gets tested gets taught. Hence, when high school students come to college, many of the formulaic approaches to writing are. . . ? Reified with even more essays? Radically questioned? The answer, of course, is that it depends—on the orientation of the teacher (a graduate student writing essays in a literature program or a graduate student designing web sites while pursuing a doctorate in rhetoric), on the level of her support (an adjunct with subsistence level pay or a supported tenure-track member of a department).

What, we may even ask, is the orientation of the department? Is the department itself associated with one of the organizations listed above, or is the department oriented toward a timed exit exam required to pass the course?

Thus, at any given moment, there are multiple variables at play: curricular level, instructional orientation, and community support are dominant. What we might call the realistic rhetorical context of the student in the classroom is complex indeed.

As someone deeply involved with empirical assessment throughout his career, even [|Norbert] recognizes that the task of coming to terms with what is really happening in our nation’s classrooms is very difficult to capture. The research of those who do that work best is to be found with the [|Council of Writing Program Administrators] and the [|National Survey of Student Engagement].

Now, to return to our question at hand: What would happen if the essay were to be abolished? This is the question of the trail balloon—the imagined situation that is posed in Act 1.


 * What are the rhetorical and cognitive structures associated with the teaching of writing?
 * What are the rhetorical and cognitive structures associated with the essay?
 * What other forms of reporting structures exist in education that might better serve the rhetorical and cognitive structures associated with the teaching of writing.

Three questions to get us started. Onward!

Norbert and Ken