Don Bushman

In his essay, "The Recovery of Practical Philosophy," Stephen Toulmin explains that the contemporary interest in practical philosophy is related to the fact that the most pressing issues of the past half of the century-things like nuclear war, medical technology, and the environment--are such that they cannot be adequately addressed "without bringing back to the questions of the significance of human life" (343). In short, they're issues that make us aware of potential perils to human existence and hence demand that we address them with respect to human experience. Practical debates over these sorts of issues, Toulmin insists, "are no longer 'applied philosophy': they are philosophy itself" (345). And within such a pragmatic philosophical milieu, experience holds a central place: "Set everyday practical experience beside the 'sense experiences' of perceptual theory . . . and 'sense data' surely appear to be fictious, dreamed up after the event, to make good missing links between epistemological theory and practical life" (346). Toulmin sees practical or pragmatic philosophy, then, as a central "contribution to the reflective of quandaries that face us in enterprises with high stakes--even [issues of] life and death"(352).

To writing instructors like William Coles, Peter Elbow, and Ken Macrorie, the world of higher education in the 1960s and 1970s was a high stakes enterprise. When, for example, a failing student could find himself kicked out of college one day and ordered to the draft office the next, it was important that teachers find methods to help students succeed. These so-called expressivist teachers sought to address these quandaries by bringing their own classroom experiences to bear on them. Coles, for instance, says that he wrote The Plural I because, despite the proliferation of "how to" material on writing instruction, "there is surprisingly little . . . on the actual doing, on how a given theory of rhetoric or approach to the teaching of writing feels as an action" ( 3 - 4 ). So rather than offer a book applying a static theory of writing--a theory disconnected from an actual classroom context--his purpose in The Plural I is to offer . . . a presentation of my situation as a teacher at a certain time and in a certain place, which can serve as an illuminating metaphor for all the situations of all teachers in all classrooms dealing with writing as a creative process--whatever . . . techniques or approaches a particular teacher happens to be using. My intention, in other words, is to illuminate what is involved in the teaching (and learning) of writing however one approaches it, in hopes that this will enable other teachers to take a fresh hold on whatever they choose to do. ( 2 )

In the tradition of the pragmatists, Coles rejects what might disparagingly be referred to as a "spectator theory"--a sort of "God's-eye view" of reality that purports to show things "as they really are" ( Rorty3). Instead, Coles sets out to analyze his own experience in his local setting, doing so with a clear sense of the limits to the conclusions he has drawn. Toulmin would thus find praiseworthy in Coles's approach that which he praises in the essays of Montaigne and Bacon: their foregrounding of "individual self-examination" and their offering the account of that self-examination as a possible "method" for others to address the issue at question: ¹ "They viewed themselves as 'sample' humans," Toulmin explains, and they intended their self-theorizing to be germane to others in the same way it was germane to themselves (350). Likewise, Coles views himself as a sort of sample teacher: "[T]his book is a way of offering other teachers of writing something similar to the best I think I have to offer to my students: a style performed in such a way as to enable others to make for themselves, or to make better, styles of their own" ( 1 - 2 ).

To many, the theorizing of personal experience seems almost to be a contradiction in terms. Indeed, as Thomas McLaughlin notes, the more popular sense of "theorizing" is "the act of distancing [or] abstracting the mind away from lived experience and personal engagement" ( 163 ). As I have suggested above, though, personal experience is central to pragmatic theorizing; hence, the experience-centered works of expressivists like Coles, Macrorie, Elbow, and others can be illuminated by considering them in relationship to pragmatist philosophy. I will develop the associations between expressivism and pragmatism more completely in the course of this chapter, and in doing so I will argue the importance of composition studies' return to the pragmatist mindset that is reflected in the works of expressivists. First, however, I will consider expressivist theories through the lens of McLaughlin's discussion of "vernacular theory" as a way of further explaining the pragmatic nature of expressivists theories, the nature of the criticisms waged against them, and the importance of the pragmatic mindset--a concern for the specific contexts and personal experiences in our theorizing about writing--to the future of composition studies.

EXPRESSIVISMS AS "VERNACULAR THEORIES"

Apologists for expressivism, such as Christopher Burnham and Thomas O'Donnell, have pointed out that expressivist theories are often worked out in less academically rigid fashions than other theories of composing, and that expressivisms are sometimes developed in works intended for wider, sometimes nonacademic, audiences. Thomas McLaughlin would say of expressivist theories that their departure from typical scholarly forms and forums make them instances of "theory in the vernacular mode." In Street Smarts and Critical Theory: Listening to the Vernacular, McLaughlin explains that vernacular theories "arise out of intensely local issues" and are undertaken by individuals "who do not come out of the tradition of philosophical critique" ( 5 - 6 ). As examples of such informal theorizing, McLaughlin explores texts from the world of advertising, the writings of a Christian anti-pornography activist, and a variety of independently published 'zines addressing popular culture issues. He explains that while these forms of theorizing often fail to "transcend ideologies," they "manage in spite of their complicity [with those ideologies] to ask fundamental questions about culture" ( 5 ). McLaughlin argues that the practice of vernacular theory "is widespread in the culture," that it "does not differ in kind from academic theory," and that, since theorizing is a commonplace phenomenon, we should see academic theory "not as an elitist and totalizing activity, but as a rigorous and scholarly version of a widely practiced analytical strategy" ( 6 ). In other words, theoretical practice can be seen as existing on a continuum, from the not-so-scholarly to the exceedingly scholarly, and the way we must distinguish one form of theoretical practice from another is with reference to the "status and style and scholarly rigor" of a practice, not to its "goals and strategies" ( 6 ).

Few would argue that the rigorous, scholarly theorizing and taxonomizing done by James Berlin and others helped to enhance the disciplinary respectability of composition studies over the course of the last twenty years. As a result of this theorizing, though, a hierarchy has developed within the discipline of composition studies, and an undeniable dismissiveness has been directed toward expressivist theories, primarily because of their lack of compliance with the meticulous standards of academic theorizing. Some of the now-familiar criticisms waged against expressivisms are that such views of writing and pedagogy hold an unsound "commitment to an epistemology that locates all truth within a personal construct arising from one's unique selfhood" ( Berlin153) and that by committing to such an epistemology we and our students are engaged in a form of self delusion ( Bartholomae128-29). During the early 1980s when the field of composition was finding its place in the academy, these are the sorts of critiques, with their insistence on the rigorous union of rhetorical theories and epistemological assumptions, that succeeded in diminishing the importance of expressivist works. O'Donnell believes these criticisms were influential because expressivist "practitioners seem (and perhaps are) unconcerned about the task of articulating a theory of knowledge and meaning, and even when they have done so, their efforts are ignored" (432). It is O'Donnell's contention that these attacks were made on "caricatured expressivist epistemologies" rather than on fairminded representations of expressivisms (432; see also Gradin91-124; Fishman and McCarthy).

Indeed, a questioning spirit is at the heart of expressivist thinking. Coles, for instance, makes clear that "unless [any] fundamental question is being seen freshly, it isn't being seen as a question at all," noting that we should distrust any "teacher of composition who claimed to know the Answers" to the fundamental questions that we ask about teaching and learning ( 2 - 3 ). ² The same dissatisfaction with the status quo that McLaughlin says drives any theoretical action can also be said to drive expressivist works. The concern for an awareness of "voice" in writing can be said to constitute one method by which expressivists seek change--both in the classroom and in the world beyond. According to Burnham, "Voice is important for the value system it symbolizes" ( 168 ). Burnham compares Elbow and the other expressivists to those involved in feminist and liberatory pedagogies, all of whom are "working to subvert the pedagogical practices and institutional structures that oppress, silence, or appropriate individual voice" ( 168 ). This liberatory impulse is apparent in Coles's desire for his students to discontinue the practice of "Themewriting" ( 19 ) and the use of "Englishclassese" ( 23 ). Macrorie calls this institutional language "Engfish"--the language students use when writing "themes" or any other sort of "teachers' exercises [which are] not really a kind of communication" ( Telling 1-2). By being critical of "school writing" and "Engfish," Macrorie suggests, we resist the impersonality and hegemony of institutions and reclaim writing for the purposes of real communication. Elbow proposes freewriting activities precisely because of the institutional power school possesses to make us "obsessed with the 'mistakes' we make in writing": "Almost everybody interposes a massive and complicated series of editings between the time words start to be born into consciousness and when they finally come . . . onto the page"; thus we need strategies to help us overcome the impediments that schooling has placed on our abilities to express our thoughts ( 5 ). In this way, expressivist pedagogies are like vernacular theories in that they are "survival tactic[s]" aimed at "producing a livable personal and social negotiation with the rules in force" ( McLaughlin 164). And since these negotiations are personal, they may appear in as many forms and contexts as there are persons to produce them.

By placing importance on experience and the individual perspective of the person involved in that experience, expressivisms share similarities to pragmatism. According to Hephzibah Roskelly and Kate Ronald, "pragmatic philosophy is constantly on the lookout for new experience to test past conclusions, including in that experience a reexamination of old experience . . . acknowledging that the inquirer is always faced with the possibility not only of being wrong but the certainty of being not completely right" ( 89 ). This is the stance toward his subject matter we see in Coles: that his book is an expression of his method and that, while he hopes others find it useful, he knows it won't be completely applicable to every teacher everywhere: "Part of what it means to develop a style as a teacher is to begin to find ways for one's self," he says, adding that "my way of dealing with [Themewriting and Englishclassese] may be only one way of confronting the problem, but it is my way for me" ( 19 ). His hope, to be sure, is that others will find his way of use, but no way exists to know for sure.

EXPRESSIVISMS AS PRAGMATIC THEORIES

Pragmatist philosophy's belief in the contingency of knowledge--explained by Roskelly and Ronald above--is an indication of its rejection of a "God's-eye view" of reality. John Dewey describes the pragmatist view of knowledge as an affair of making sure, not of grasping antecedently given sureties. What is already known, what is accepted as truth, is of immense importance; inquiry could not proceed a step without it. But it is held subject to use, and is at the mercy of the discoveries that make it possible. . . . When things are defined as instruments, their value and validity reside in what proceeds from them; consequences, not antecedents supply meaning and verity. ( Experience154)

The idea that knowledge "is held subject to use" is key to the pragmatists' way of thinking. Because we use knowledge in order to adapt our environment to our needs, ideas are seen as "instruments" whose "value and validity" are determined by how effectively they may be put to use in the world. For pragmatists, knowledge is not an end in itself, not a thing to be attained, but rather, as Dewey's contemporary George Herbert Mead puts it, "knowledge is an expression of the intelligence by which animals meet the problems with which life surrounds them" (383-84). I would argue that this pragmatic definition of knowledge provides a worthwhile way of viewing the knowledge generated by expressivist theorists. When we read Coles The Plural I, for example (and to a lesser extent, Macrorie Uptaught), we see the author "making sure": he invites us to experience his interactions with his students, meeting the problems that surround him and his students, and through his reflections on those experiences, we are able to see the circumstances that lead to his discoveries about those students and those classroom practices. Coles's rejection of the "how to" book form reveals his pragmatic intent.

The vision of the classroom provided by expressivists such as Coles and Macrorie is that of an active teacher and active students engaged in the process of discovery. Such classrooms are informed by the same sense of discovery as those advocated by Dewey, whose own "laboratory school" at the University of Chicago is considered the birthplace of an active pedagogy based on the experimental or scientific method. The aim of Dewey's progressive pedagogy, according to Darnell Rucker, was to promote knowledge "by leading the child into scientific inquiry, in the sense that 'scientific' is opposed to authoritarian" ( 99 ). This same dissatisfaction with traditional, teacher-centered instruction motivates expressivists like Macrorie, who describes his "Third Way" of teaching in contrast to the accepted methods of his day:

In the First Way the teacher hands out a package of information and tests to see whether students can remember its content . . . . In the Second Way, the teacher provides complete freedom and no direction at all. . . . In the Third Way, which I stumbled onto, students operate with freedom and discipline. They are given real choices and encouraged to learn the way of experts. ( Uptaught27)

Central to Macrorie's Third Way of teaching is what he calls "the here principle," which is how he describes an education that proceeds from students' own experiences. As an example, he suggests that a student in a political science course can better understand the material being discussed in class by relating it to his own daily activities, such as "dorm meetings or committees of some student organization where he observed how real and pseudo power contend with each other. Somewhere in campus life around him . . . lies a here for the student to investigate" ( Uptaught168). Here again is a concern for real communicative acts--learning "the way of experts"--rather than non-communicative "themewriting." And Macrorie follows his own "here principle" while writing his texts, essentially engaging in a form of experience-based "I-search" to develop his ideas about the writing classroom. In the end, his texts re-enact for his readers the very same knowledge he discovered in his classroom.

Both the pragmatists and the expressivists subscribe to the notion that the way to learn things that are worthwhile is through doing those things. And since the process paradigm has been around, writing teachers have adhered to this pragmatic principle: the understanding has been that students learn to write by writing. Nowhere is this idea expressed more clearly than in expressivist texts. Coles, for instance, claims that neither writing nor teaching writing is something that can be taught; rather, "the most that would seem possible is for someone to enact his notion of what is involved in the activity in such a way as to demand that others respond with an enactment of what for them is involved in it" ( 1 ). Elbow, too, believes that writing is such a complex of "contrasting but interdependent skills" that "no one yet has succeeded in making" the teaching of writing an "orderly, hierarchical progression that works" ( 135 ). Expressivist ideas about writing and the teaching of writing, then, are in line with the pragmatist notion that verifiability "rests in experience, in tested conclusions" ( Roskelly and Ronald86). Pragmatism "is therefore scientific, or technical, in its approach to the possibility of knowledge and truth" ( 86 ). Although the popular use of the term "scientific" doesn't provide a fitting description of expressivist texts, the term "experimental" is more apt, since such texts walk us through specific procedures for dealing with student writing problems in the "laboratory" of the classroom. And the authors of these studies are basing their results on many years of experience performing these same sorts of classroom activities.

Both pragmatists and expressivists then can be seen as attempting to employ more humane, student-centered ways of teaching. The teacher illustrated in expressivist texts is less like an institutional authority and more like an interested fellow communicator. Conscious of the oppressive nature of "Engfish" and "Englishclassese," Macrorie and Coles sought to show students that they need not be ruled by these forms of discourse, that they could be linguistic agents instead of victims of Engfish. Getting that message across required treating students differently, breaking from traditional student-teacher hierarchies in a way that mirrored other societal changes of the time. The 1960s and 1970s, when early expressivist texts were written, found America undergoing significant social and political changes; meanwhile, institutions of higher education were adapting to vast new populations of students, to student war protests, and to other such irregularities. ³ Macrorie actually begins Uptaught by telling about a student protest on his campus and his institution's brutal and "irrational" response to it by bringing in "about thirty white-helmeted policemen carrying clubs and marching in tight formation" ( 2 ). Such is the social and educational environment within which expressivist theorists were writing. Wary of an institution's ability to trample individuals, Macrorie wanted students to learn to write in ways that didn't mirror the voiceless language of the academy or other faceless institutions. The student who writes "Engfish," he says, attempts to communicate in " a language thaty prevents him from working towark truths,and [as a result] he tells lies"( 4 ).good writing must above all else speak to a reader; it must have an effect on another (Telling 3)--as such it is "instrumental."

Dewey,too, says that communication is "instrumental";this is so because it "liberat[es] us from the otherwise overwhelming pressure of events and enable[es] us to live in a world of things that have meanng" ( 204 ). In other words, communication heps us get ideas right with ourselves so that we are then able to ariculate those ideas to others. ⁴ Dewey and his fellow pragmatists saw effective communication as just one of the ways humans dealt with the prblems they encountered in the world, and in the spirit of the pragmatists, expressivist theorists sought to engage students in real-world communicative acts and to stress the pragmatic necessity of connessity of connecting with one's reader, In order to promote this human connection, expressivist embrace group feedback in the classroom. O'Donnell points out that expressivists text"have always emphasized communal responses to a writer's words and the value of exploring those regions of self-knowledge that call attention to themselves in the rhetorical acts of naming, defining, describing,and adducing, and the interpretive acts of doubting and believing" (436-37). This is another way of saying that expressivists espouse as central to the act of communicating the notions of self-awareness and agency, for when we connect with another in writing it is imerative that we take responsibility for the effects of that connection.

CONCLUSION

McLaughlin says of the vernacular theorists he explores that "[a]ll cultural practices have their self-conscious operators, those who have reflected on the premises that make the practice possible. . . . There are theorists everywhere in our culture . . . [and we] need to know as much about each other's methods as we can" ( 165 ). McLaughlin's call for such understanding mirrors the one Stephen North made to the emerging field of Composition twelve years ago in The Making of Knowledge in Composition. North believes that "a spirit of methodological egalitarianism" is necessary in order for Composition to become a coherent discipline (372). North also called for "the re-establishment of Practice as inquiry," but an impediment to this way of thinking, North explains, is that practitioners tend to set a different set of priorities than those who exist in the other communities North constructs (e.g., Historians, Philosophers, Formalists, and so forth). That is:

[Practitioners'] first allegiance, rightly, is to their classrooms, their second to their immediate colleagues, and then their third--often a distant third, at that--to their profession . . . . The other communities' traditional response to these different priorities has been to try and strengthen their relationship with Practitioners by creating a dependency: selling a brand of knowledge that Practitioners cannot produce for themselves, and at the same time ignoring or devaluing [Practitioner] lore. (372)

When composition's epistemological theorists of the 1980s spoke to the theoretical shortcomings of the works of expressivist practitioners, that form of academic theory spoke more loudly and persuasively than did the vernacular theory of expressivists.

McLaughlin's discussion of vernacular theory, however much it helps to clarify the level of theorizing that inheres in the works of expressivists, confirms that there is, indeed, a difference between academic theory and vernacular theory. And within the walls of academia, certain priorities exist (and will likely continue to exist) that are reflected in, for example, the way scholarship is favored over teaching and service. Yet within the classroom those institutional priorities need not matter, as North suggests they typically don't for practitioners. Working and learning within an institution does not necessitate speaking and writing the voiceless language of an institution. As Thomas Newkirk points out, "the truly subversive move" in Donald Murray's work was "to claim that the professional writer (and not the academician) should be the model for the student" ( 104 ). To one degree or another, this subversive move was made by each of the expressivists I have mentioned here. The peer editorial methods of professional writers have continued to be a commonplace pedagogical tool in our classrooms, but too often they are employed in the service of academic papers--not essays that ask a student to attend to his or her voice as an individual in the world addressing a specific topic. Newkirk's recommendation that we assign personal essay topics because of the pragmatic importance of such writing can have in developing writers' lives seems especially important ( 85 ). By giving students the opportunity to explore topics of importance to them and their own lives in the process, we are encouraging the sort of self-awareness that both pragmatists and expressivists see as essential to being human. Writing thus becomes an "instrument" for achieving this self-awareness, which is itself an instrument for personal growth and change.

NOTES