Writing is communication. If you’re trying to convey a specific message to a specific audience to fulfill a specific purpose, you’re writing
Warner, John. The Writer’s Practice: Building Confidence in Your Nonfiction Writing (p. 6). Penguin Publishing Group.
[W]e should teach unfinished writing and glory in its unfinishedness. We work with language in action… The writer, as he writes… uses language to reveal the truth to himself so that he can tell it to others.
Teach Writing as a Process Not Product, Murray, D. M. (1972). The Leaflet, November, 11-14.
Instead of teaching finished writing, we should teach unfinished writing, and glory in its unfinishedness. We work with language in action. We share with our students the continual excitement of choosing one word instead of another, of searching for the one true word.
This is not a question of correct or incorrect, of etiquette or custom. This is a matter of far higher importance. The writer, as he writes, is making ethical decisions. He doesn’t test his words by a rule book, but by life. He uses language to reveal the truth to himself so that he can tell it to others. It is an exciting, eventful, evolving process.
This process of discovery through language we call writing can be introduced to your classroom as soon as you have a very simple understanding of that process, and as soon as you accept the full implications of teaching process, not product.
Teach Writing as a Process Not Product, Murray, D. M. (1972). The Leaflet, November, 11-14.
Writing is too important because, though forms and structures will differ, writing is the path to power for those born without power. This importance lies not in how to write a “five‐paragraph essay” or a “compare and contrast” book review but in the capability to clearly communicate visions both personal and collaborative. Whether the work is a tweet that generates action when that is needed, or a text message to an employer, or the ability to convince others in the political realm, or the expression of one’s identity in a form that evokes empathy in those without similar experience, “communicating” “well” is a social leveler of supreme importance.
Timeless Learning: How Imagination, Observation, and Zero-Based Thinking Change Schools.
But there was one scenario in which the Autistic people left a positive first impression: when people read a transcript of their words instead of seeing and hearing the Autistic people saying those words, observers rated them as more likable and more intelligent. In fact, in the scenario where observers just read the written words of Autistic and non-autistic people, they rated both groups the same. For non-autistic people, the written transcripts were their lowest-rated mode of communication, although only by a small amount. For Autistic people, the written transcripts were their highest-rated mode of communication by a very significant margin.
Written communication is the great social equalizer.
Autism and the Burden of Social Reciprocity — THINKING PERSON’S GUIDE TO AUTISM
Thus we begin by moving the teaching of writing from the training of a specific skill set toward an interpersonal art form that flows from students and builds communities. Then, through the reimagining of teaching places into “learning spaces,” we craft “studios” where all the technologies of school – time, space, tools, pedagogies – liberate and inspire rather than deliver and test. Then, using those recrafted technologies, we allow communication learning to flow.
Timeless Learning: How Imagination, Observation, and Zero-Based Thinking Change Schools.
We need to become better at being humans. Learning to use symbols and knowledge in new ways, across groups, across cultures, is a powerful, valuable, and very human goal. And it is also one that is obtainable, if we only begin to open our minds to full, complete use of computers to augment our most human of capabilities.
Douglas C. Engelbart, Improving our Ability to Improve – 2002 – (AUGMENT,133320,) – Doug Engelbart Institute
Therefore, the Future Of Text lies in the re-definition of text “craftsmanship”, focused on enabling and facilitating a text-mediated access and interaction with the relationships, functions and actors of the reality we live in.
The Future Is Text: The Universal Interface, The Future of Text
Reading the world always precedes reading the word, and reading the word implies continually reading the world. As I suggested earlier, this movement from the world to the word and from the word to the world is always present; even the spoken word flows from our reading of the world. In a way, however, we can go further, and say that reading the word is not preceded merely by reading the world, but by a certain form of writing it or re-writing it, that is, of transforming it by means of conscious practical work. For me, this dynamic movement is central to the literacy process.
The Importance of the Act of Reading, Paulo Freire
