Bizzell - "Cognition, Convention, and Certainty"

Patricia Bizzell introduces her essay with the question "what do we need to know about writing?" I find this to be a vaild question, and while she provides an attempt to answer this question, I am not confident that I understand what her answer is. There are a few aspects she notes in relation to thought and writing that resonate with me.

Bizzell writes that theorists "now see the 'writing problem' as a thinking problem primarily because we used to take our students' thinking for granted". While she seems to later acknowledge that it is now important to understanding students thinking process as much as their writing process, I am offended by her implication that students today don't know how to think. (I mean, seriously, isn't 13 the age to be a know-it-all?)

As Bizzell goes on to describe inner and outer directored theorists and their beliefs as related to writing, it was the argument of outer-directed theorists she summarized that caught my attention. "Outer directed theorists would argue that we have no reason to believe, and no convincing way to determine, that our students can't think ouruse language in complex ways. It's just that they can't think our use language in the ways we want them to."

My response to this theory is "YES"! I can see where people would disagree with this theory, however I would argue that they are simply resistant to change. I mean, of course people are not thinking/writing/processing in the same way today as we were thirty, twenty, ten or in some instances even five years ago. And I argue it's not our fault either. Times change. Each generation grows up with new technology and new philosophies with which they are raised. It should be clearly evident this fact would have a profound impact on thinking/writing/processing etc.

But back to Bizzell.

The grad student essay by Linda helped me to better understand how Bizzell was using innter and outer-directed theorists to answer her initial question. Linda writes, "Bizzell claims the answer to the question of what we most need to know about writing comes from both camps. She uses the example of Linda Flowers and John R. Hayes' inner-directed model of the composing process. Though Bizzell admits it works as an effective model of what to do (it is hierarchical and recursive), it falls short in that it doesn't tell us how to do it. Bizzell proposes that it needs the help of the outer-directed theorists to fill in those holes."

Collaboration is a value of mine, so if Linda is right and Bizzell truly is arguing for a collaboration of the theories as the answer to what we need to know about writing, I would ultimately agree. Flower and Hayes (and inner-directed theorists) focus on discourse and how to be involved and part of the discourse communities, while outer-directed theorists for me imply the need to adapt the discourse communities to changing times opposed to individuals adapting to old models of the discourse community.

Though I don't think I have exactly followed what Bizzell outlines, I do think there are some interesting things I have deciphered from her essay.