Before being introduced to these philosophies, I would say I fell under the expressivist philosophy. After reading Fulkerson’s pieces on the four philosophies of composition, I agree that all of the philosophies are important, but it is also critical to know which one you fall under and plan on utilizing in the classroom. In our free-write in class on what makes good writing, I wrote when writing encourages connection. By this I mean that writing forms a connection within the reader’s mind. Whether it is to another piece of writing, thought, feeling, anything. This leads me to the rhetorical philosophy. The writing accomplished its goal and therefore it was successful. I feel that currently in the school system, the formalist philosophy is held in the highest regard. Many times, teachers look to grade punctuation, sentence structure, spelling, and overall structure of the writing versus the actual content. Fulkerson’s sections on formalism and mimeticism in Composition Theory in the Eighties” Axiological Consensus and Paradigmatic Diversity loosely mimics my experience in the classroom or at least that’s what I remember from my experience.
An interesting point by Fulkerson reads as follows: “The most obvious inconsistency is subscribing overtly to one axiology and then evaluating writing from another.” (422). I think when teachers go into the profession without a clear idea of which philosophy they subscribe to this is the outcome. I also feel fairly confident in saying that this happens more than we think. This creates such a confusing message to all students but specifically to writing students. When an educator is ignorant to the philosophies, the student can feel like there is no order in the classroom. In my experience, whenever I would get ambiguous feedback on a piece of writing and met with the teacher about it, I always felt blind to what exactly they expected other than proper form and grammar. In the Berlin reading, I appreciated his notion about the writing process. The writing process has its functions but not necessarily a proper order. We are forced into a formula of writing that feels so restricting. If we teach the process but not in a linear fashion, we may encourage a newer generation of writers to create identity in their writing.
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