Composition Instructor--the appellation once struck fear and loathing in the hearts of young Ph.D.s fresh from the tomes of intellectualism and off to seek their apprenticeships as Literature Professors. But things change. Whether symptomatic of an ever-narrowing job market, of medical breakthroughs in health care, or of guilt feelings brought on by weekly reams of over-generalized babble, English educators are teaching less literary analysis and are embracing composition, rhetoric, and technical communication as long-lost friends.
Within the last two years, the computer has begun replacing the typewriter as a seminal component of the writing process' love triangle (student/thesis/method of dissemination). Word processing and text analysis afford students and teachers an intellectual and editorial dynamic unattainable a decade ago. Readibility [sic] statistics can be sorted, merged, graphed, and printed in moments. Spelling, punctuation, and usage suggestions can be integrated with original text on disk. Synonyms, antonyms, and gender-specific terms can be highlighted for immediate or later action. Words, phrases, clauses, paragraphs, and pages of text can be inserted or deleted at the touch of a button. Tables of content, footnotes, bibliographies, and indices can be created effortlessly.
With all of this editing ease and power, it seems inconceivable that writers and teachers of writing would ignore a technology that overtly encourages creativity by decreasing the time needed to accomplish, among other things, repetitious editorial tasks. Nevertheless, today there appears to be as strong an opposition to the introduction of computer technology into the writing process as there was over four hundred years ago to the introduction of the printing press into the bookmaking process.
Why all the buzz and ruckus?
A misplaced belief in tradition may be partly the cause. The legendary clashes between science and humanities titans have nurtured a contemporary apathy among some English teachers for anything overflowing from the caldrons of empirical inquiry. Then there are the demon utility companies! Shocking newspaper horror stories abound that call to our attention the welfare recipient who froze to death in her one-room apartment because the "insensitive, heartless computer" said she was two dollars short on last month's electric bill.
Yet, could 1984 be the year Orwell's provocative, nightmarish visions of a world dominated by the computer (and those who "think like one")? Are intellectually chaste, unassuming scholars being manipulated body and soul--Barth and Shakespeare--by the malevolent microprocessor? (Egad, what melodrama!)
Maybe the reason for our less-than-enthusiastic welcoming of the computer into the compositional fold has its roots in purely procedural protocol. Some academic traditionalists, particularly in the humanities, call for a return to the "good old days" of liberal learning when the most significant mechanical device invented to foster intellectuation evolution was the electric light bulb. But did Edison have research scholars or English teachers in mind while he was working in his laboratory?
Nevertheless, it is difficult to discover from those who staunchly defend tactile tradition exactly what constitutes the "good old days." How far must one devolve? Are fountain pens the answer? What about goose quills? Maybe wax tablets and wooden stylii?
Those who condemn the computer's use in the compositional process fail to see its primary value (and the primary value of machines in general): to facilitate our work. "It's just a typewriter with a TV screen," some say. True, it is--if you want to perceive it as such. But the rationale behind embracing such a limited understanding of computer technology doesn't lessen the inherent mechanical potential of the technology. It only limits user applications.
Most teachers of writing, whether in composition or literature courses, attempt to guide their students into expressive, concise, and logical pathways of communication. To infer that technology only retards and, in some cases, destroys the liberal learning process--that a computer stifles creativity by seducing the student Everywriter into a brothel of mechanical, repetitious behavior--holds about as much ink as an argument favoring goose quills over ball points.
A possible monologue: "you appreciate words and their creation more when you have to stop and reflect as you put quill to fountain. A ball point fosters a scattershot approach; the writer's ideas will flow unchecked, hastened toward uninformed rationalization by the godless Jotter." Sounds absurd, doesn't it? But try mentioning the use of the computer in composition to some English teachers. Their anti-technological rationalizations contain similar bizarre argumentative logistics.
All teachers of writing should see the computer for what it truly is: a tool. Granted, there are those technological mainliners (including, on occasion, yours truly) who insist that word-processing and text-analysis programs have the potential to revolutionize writing, changing forever the way we analyze, synthesize, and disseminate knowledge. But don't let this overabundance of energy alienate you. Not all of us need or want to become computer afficionados: the old Smith Corona serves our purposes nicely, thank you! However, what's good for the parent isn't necessarily what's good for the child. Does your stereo take away from the beauty of a symphony performance just because it reproduces the sound? See what I mean about fallacious arguments?
It is our students who will shape the 21st century. Without the
tools to tackle the job--including mechanical tools such as the computer--they will find themselves ill-fitted for tomorrow.
In this time of student apathy toward learning for its own sake, the fountain of creativity has run dry
for many of them. The computer awaits, a fountain of possibilities for Composition Instructors, Literature
Professors, and--most importantly, our students.