Writing Across the Curriculum and The Appeals

Should our schools - and the state of Colorado - require proficiency in belletristic writing?
A question I've had after perusing our assigned readings, and especially David Russel's American Origins of the Writing-across-the-Curriculum Movement, is why do our schools - and our states - require that our students write in belletristic modes? Not only is it required that students write in descriptive, narrative, and fictional genres, but it is required by the No Child Left Behind legislation that they be proficient. Mandates also require that students be proficient in expository writing (typically persuasive and research writing), but those are genres which are more conducive to writing about real world situations.

Writing in education, as our authors have shown, has not always been what it is today. Education and the evidence of what was learned was oral. And as our readings have pointed out, various types of writing, which have included rhetorical writing, have ebbed and flowed in our universities and in our schools. Writing was once stictly rhetorical. Responses to reading were once written as well. Educational institutions have required combiniations of both. As David Russell relates, writing was once seen as a "central function of the emerging disciplines." Most writing done by students and professionals was "real world" writing. Belletristic writing, that which was "the product of genius or inspiration," was left to humanities departments.

I teach writing to middle school students. I teach students how to properly respond to literature. how to use transitions, techniques for adding voice, improving their word choice in descriptive and narrative essays, how to build character development in fictional writing, how to organize research papers, and how to incorporate the three modes in persuasive writing. Without fully comprehending the Latin terms, students learn how to appeal to the logos, pathos, and ethos of their audience. There is value in learning the appeals, because while they are students and after they are not, students' arguments throughout their lives will be more persuasive if they effectively use rhetorical appeals. There is value in writing in many different modes, but is it necessary that they do so? Must they write proficiently in all of them?

It is true that most of my students, and many students who share similar demographics of my school district in southeastern Colorado, are not proficient in Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP) writing. Interestingly, not one group collectively, grades three through tenth statewide, exceeds 49% proficiency. Singularly, districts may have higher or lower rates of proficiency. When districts with high poverty rates, such as many of those in southeastern Colorado, are compared with districts which have higher incomes, the proficiency rates are much lower. Perhaps if we returned to the "real world" writing that David Russell describes, our pre-secondary students might be able to focus on the basics of writing. Students need to learn how to respond to literature and how to simply write coherently and correctly before they can write in the more belletristic modes.