dark shadows the fateof writers at the bottom (haswell)

8/9/2019 Dark Shadows the Fateof Writers at the Bottom (Haswell)

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Dark Shadows: The Fate of Writersat the Bottom

Richard H. HaswellThe number of categories in holistic rating scales varies a good deal, from asfew as three to as many as fifteen. What remains constant is the uniform wayscorersconceive of the bottom-most cubicle. Essayssettled there almost alwayshave the highest concordance of scores assigned independently by raters, high-er even than have the topmost essays. Apparently those performing holisticratings-usually teachers of writing-agree better on who are bad writers thanon who are good. This strikes me as a curiosity worth a closer look.

Organizational Preferences of WritersRecently in this journal I reported on an analysis of the logical organizationofimpromptu essays written by freshmen, sophomores, and juniors in collegeand by workplace writers eight years or more out of college ("Organization").The essays had been rated on a holistic scale of 1 up to 8 by seven young uni-versity writing instructors, averaging two-and-a-half years teaching composi-tion in college and two years in the schools. Their assessment is a typical ex-ample of the way independent scorers tend to agree most on those essays theyrate lowest. Out of ninety-six student essays, the nine with an averagerate of2 or lower had very little spread among their seven rates: three of these bot-tom-most essays received rates only of 1 and 2, five received rates of 1 to 3,and one rates of 1 to 4 (the mean standard deviation of their rates is 0.75). Bycomparison, of the nine top essays, all with an averagerate of 7 or higher, fivereceived rates of 6 to 8, three of 5 to 8, and one of 3 to 8 (the mean standarddeviation of their rates is 1.06).It takes no more than a glance at the bottom nine essays to see one possibleexplanation for this difference of concurrence in assessment. The writing sam-ple had tapped all composition classes at a land-grant university which, at thetime, offered no special courses for students with severe writing problems. Soit is no surprise to find these bottom essays displaying the characteristicfea-

RichardH. Haswell is a professorof Englishat WashingtonStateUniversity.He is cur-rentlyworkingon a book-length tudyof writingdevelopmentduringthe college years.College Composition and Communication, Vol. 39, No. 3, October 1988 303

Copyright 1988 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.


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College Composition nd Communication 9 (October1988)tures of that kind of writing still sometimes labeled "remedial" or "incompe-tent." They are halt with mechanical errors, quirky in paragraphing, scant oftitle and topic sentence and introduction and supportive elaboration and otherreader amenities, and backward in production, averaging 196 words comparedto 364 for the higher-rated student essays. Perhaps "remedial" writing is easyfor evaluators to categorize because it bears, or bares, its earmarks flagrantly,on the surface.

What is totally a surprise is the showing of these "incompetent" essays interms of my original analysis of organizational patterns. As Table 1 shows,compared to the eighty-seven student essays higher up in the scale, these ninebasement essays performed more like the working-world essays, which hadbeen authored by employees chosen precisely because their supervisors haddeemed them "competent" writers.

Table 1Analysis of Organizational Patterns

Student StudentWriters Writers WorkplacePattern Logical Parts of Pattern Rated 3-8 Rated 1-2 WritersCollection Overlapping categories 10 0 0Classification Mutually exclusive categories 12 0 1Degree Categories that rank 5 0 1Development Stages that evolve chronologi-cally 10 0 2Comparison Categories that compare orcontrast 6 2 2Causation Cause and effect 13 0 3Process Procedure and goal 0 0 0Inference Premise and conclusion 4 2 5Choice Options and final choice 10 1 2Solution Problem and resolution 2 0 3Dialectic Antitheses and synthesis 6 1 2Causal Chain Chaining of cause and effect 2 0 2Sorites Chaining of premise and con-clusion 2 1 2Sequence Chaining of parts of differentpatterns 5 2 787 9 32

My earlier paper explains this particular measure of organization fully. As-pects relevant to the present discussion will become clearer as I analyze sometexts later, but for the moment it is enough to notice how the higher-ratedstudents tended to gravitate toward the first seven patterns and the "incompe-tent" students and "competent" employees toward the last seven. A fourth of

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Dark Shadows: The Fate of Writersat the Bottomthe higher-rated students chose to divide their subject into static, categoricalparts (collectionand classification), a decision made by none of the bottom nineand only one of the older employees. Only around a third of the higher-ratedstudent essays followed what could be called progressive or argumentative for-mats (inference through sequence), strategies adopted by three-fourths of thelowest-rated and three-fourths of the employee essays.Of course, my measure does not claim to describe anything definitive orprivileged in discourse organization (texts are shaped many more ways than byjust the logical), nor does it assign any necessary rhetorical value to any partic-ular pattern or patterns here. But still it offers one systematic and concreteway to chart organizational performance, a way of seeing that uncovers logicalstructures which often underlie extended pieces of writing, and that discoverslogical connections which teachers sometimes overlook. Its primary value isdiagnostic. So if initially the measure found that, in one kind of organization,lowest-rated student writers stand closer to professional writers than to better-rated students, then we may be justified in looking with some suspicion onthat uniform holistic rating of "lowest" and in looking, beneath the surface oferror and ineptitude, a second time at the way these nine bottom essays are or-ganized.

Here is one of the nine, exactly as written. I have diagrammed what I taketo be the main logical organization.Physical appearance or attractiveness needs to be down

INTRO- played in todays thinking. The obsession of people worryingDUCTION about their physical appearancecreates prejudices. Many peo-ple through out time have been caught in the appearance trap.Many jobs requir some physical attractiveness, such as:Stewards; stewardesses; and models. Some employers will nothire over weight people, short people, or tall people with outLOGICAL judging their ability to produce the work which is required ofCON- the job. Many of the people which are rejected for work be-CLUSION cause of their physical shape or uglyness might be just the peo-ple suited for that particular job. JTakefor instance an overweight woman wants a job as a stewardess. Many over weightpeople have found that to over come their social block of theirshape, they have to be more out going, more talkitive andhave more general knowledge. A person who does not havethis disability and on the other hand is pleaseing to the eyewould not have this maturing strugle. The poudgy stewardessSUMMARY might make a better personality that the thin attractive one.

The top-level pattern is inference: SINCE struggle forges talent, and SINCEunattractive people struggle more than attractive, THEN unattractive peoplemay be best for a job. The writer has made this logical construct remarkably

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CollegeCompositionnd Communication9 (October988)difficult to see. The premises, mislabelled as an "instance," follow the conclu-sion, the introduction misleads (do the "people" of the third sentence turn outto be the employers, the applicants, or both?), and there is no paragraphingtograph logical boundaries. Yet when the logical sense is finally made explicit,one peculiar behavior of this short piece becomes evident, how rapidly andhow far the writer's thinking presses on: There is a social block against over-weight people; Thereforemployers worry about physical appearance;Also there-fore many jobs require attractive employees; Also therefore verweight peoplemust struggle harder; As a resultthey are often talented; Converselynd com-parativelyattractive people are often less talented; As a combinedesultsome em-ployers reject people without testing their worth; As a resultthe best person isnot hired; Thereforeenerallypeople should downplay physical appearance.So analysis by logical organization reveals a characterwhich distinguishesthis piece from much impromptu student writing: highly compressed sequen-tial logical meditation. This is certainly not a characterone expects to find in"remedial"writing, yet other of the nine bottom essays divulge a similar de-meanor. For the moment, let's avoid terms connoting deficiency or proficiencyand call this a "lean"style. Obviously, when carriedto an extreme, as in thiscase, lean writing will generate excesses in need of remediation.Such an extreme encourages one to look for its opposite, a stylistic exorbi-tance, one presumes, equally in need of remediation. In my sample it is the500-word impromptu theme based on a gimcrack partition of the subject,typically an unconsidered enumeration of parts (collection)or a division intosimplistic stages (developmentY-with op-heavy introduction, truckling sum-mary, restatements and examples of every common point, boxy paragraphsallof a size. It seems to have everything but ideas that spring one from the otherin a fecund sequence. Let's call it extreme "stout" writing. It is concerned notwith the following out of ideas but with the settling in of ideas, not withsearchbut with insertion.At the other end of the holistic spectrum, among the nine top-rated stu-dent essays, is one I would call an extreme of stout writing. In five paragraphsand 521 words, this essay argues that physical appearanceplays "an importantrole in people's attitudes"-not an argument, it seems, the writer has manydoubts about, or expects the readerto have many. Analysis of logical orderingagain locates the excess. The essay sorts its subject into three main cabinets:"youth and dating," "males and females," and "society." Collections the rightname for this method of arrangement. The categories seem erected indepen-dently of one another (they are taken verbatim from a list of suggested topicsin the essay prompt). And the way they so blatantly overlap suggests they areserving essentially as preset catch-alls, not as a sequence where one categorylogically evolves from another.

This essay shows its stoutness not only in its main logical pattern, but alsoin embedded patterns. Here is its fourth paragraph(the third cabinet):

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Dark Shadows: The Fate of Writersat the BottomAnd last, we must deal with physical beauty and it's effecton society.lAs you all know, outward appearanceand charm is

PART #1 very important in the political scene. As was true in the Presi-A dential election of 1960, the candidate with the most charm,T best image, and best physical appearanceoften wins.[People goon ridiculous diets and spend money hand over foot in order toPART #2 lose weight and be "beautiful" again.lAnd even more sadly,people with physical handicaps are often stared at or rejected as

if they were some kind of monster carrying a communicable3 disease. |It often seems as though BrittaniaJeans, Pierre Cardinindustries, Clairol, Faberge, and Vidal Sassoon have completecontrol over the minds and bodies of the United States ofAmerica. Evidence of this can be found in all of us.The paragraph builds up another collection, encasing again three items takenfrom the prompt. Of its seven sentences, three serve as introduction and re-statement. On even further embedded levels, it generates, by my count, sixmore logically overlapping collections("stared at or rejected"), one feeble degree("even more sadly"), and two causations. Rhetorically the paragraph feels solid,but part of that feeling owes to the extreme simplicity and stasis of the logicalrelationships.

By contrast here is a paragraph of about the same length from one of thebottom nine essays. It functions as the entire body of the essay, accompaniedonly by a two-sentence introductory paragraph.

Girls in Highschool that are overweight neverget asked to go to a dance. Although these girlsmay have the appearance of having a pretty face itis just because they are overweight. To the guy hemay think of being laughed at by his friends.Even when these girls come to college thing willnever change. When these girls go out with theirfriends to get picked up in a single bar, usuallythe girls that are not overweight will get pickedup, whereas the girl that is overweight will not.You'll never find an overweight girl competing forthe Miss America or Miss Universe. There is a lotof drawbacks for these girls. They may think it issome kind of handicap.j Girls must have special

w clothing to fit themselves. When they go out to OPTION #1SOLUTION eat or just standing in a lunch line, they asked for .the calorie-cutter. Even for blind dates, girls over- Tweight are turned down.jThere's no other alter- OPTION #2THESIS native but for these girls to stay home. But I un- 4r

t derstand that these girls try there best to compete CHOICEANTITHESIS with girls that aren't overweight and beautiful. [V I

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CollegeCompositionnd Communication9 (October988)This paragraph s anything but static, forging on from a problem with a failedsolutionthrough a choiceof options to an unresolved dialectic.The logical rest-lessness spreads to embedded levels, where I count two degrees, ix comparisons,four causations,and two inferences.Both paragraphssuffer in a sense from the same problem, a radical sketch-iness in conveying a complex reality. But I think it may now be clear why, interms of the organization of these two attempts, the method of the lean para-graph has more appeal to older, more competent writers. There is simplymore interest and potentially more reward(even if more difficulty) in workingout the implications of an idea than in merely storing in support for it.Mapped out by my analysis of organization, the employee essays tend to lookmore like the lean paragraph, only with the logical segments filled out. Nowonder. Imagine having to expand the stout paragraph, retaining its mainlogical compartments.I am not going to hypothesize a motive for extreme stout writing (althoughit is tempting to do so by citing the second sentence of the example above:"As you all know, outward appearanceand charm is very important in the po-litical scene"). But I am going to hypothesize a modus or rationale for extremelean, since this student style has been little recognized. First and last the writ-er wants to work out the logical ramificationsof an idea set by a teacher. Buttracking logical trails and inferring where they lead takes time. Minutes passbetween the writing of one proposition and the acceptance of its implications.Flow is lost, sometimes even grammatical and syntactic linkage. Most easilyleft behind unrecorded are logical steps because it is the logical end itself thatis being most ardently pursued. The writer certainly does not want to be side-tracked with information tangential to the main logical path, such as back-ground, definitions, restatements, summary, illustrative examples, rhetoricalcolor, or emphasis.Holistically, the essay providing the example of stout writing above gotnearly the top combined score from my seven teachers, with rates of 8, 8, 8,8, 7, 6, and 5 (standard deviation = 1.21). The essay providing the exampleof lean writing got the very lowest, with rates of 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, and 2 (stan-dard deviation = 0.49). The curiosity here is not the judgmental gap in over-all quality between the two. The piece of stout writing surpassesthe other inenough ways-in mechanics, cohesion, emphasis, support, etc.-to warrantthe difference. What is curious is that the individual rates of the lean piece areso uniform. With the stout essay, some raters may have sensed the weaknessof the organization, but no one seems to have been aware of the organizationalstrength of the lean.We are back to our original curiosity. If the nine bottom essays and theirlean style were truly written by "disabled" students, then apparently one oftheir disabilities is in getting teachers to see such abilities as they have.

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Dark Shadows:The Fate of Writersat the BottomThe Wit of Bottom WritersLogical organizing is not the only area where the bottom essays as a groupmatched more nearly the performanceof the competent non-academicwritersthan did the higher-rated essays. Another area I can only designate by a termsomewhat outmoded today: verbal wit. Here the bottom nine ally with theemployees in a style of shrewd or worldly practicality. This again is perhapsasurprise. Not only impromptu essay tests but also quick-answer, SAT-like ex-aminations tend to put bottom writers down. When juniorsor seniors in highschool, these particularnine writers earnedan averagescoreon the verbal partsof a state-wide diagnostic which placed them in the bottom 15% of theirclass. But wit has more to do than with the semi-colons, spelling demons, andlearned words of such high-pressure, verbal competition, and the stylistic out-put of shrewdness and practicality may take forms below the habitualizedthreshold of the composition-teachervision.It does not take much re-reading of these nine short essays to catch theirpeculiar verbal intelligence. They appreciate the power of street-wise, face-slapping words: "Your just not good looking enough so bug off." Their sen-tences can be refreshingly brisk: "Conduct codes are created to protect peoplefrom criminals." Their ideas are often more compressed than one is used toseeing in student writing, in class or out: "The obsession of people worryingabout their physical appearance creates prejudices." (Clauses in their essaysaverage 10.3 words, equal to the achievement of the older writers and a fullword higher than that of the other students.) They relish the thrust of syntac-tic parallelism: "The age has little to do with the fact, but much to do withthe morals of society." (Their parallelism rate is 20% higher than in the otherstudent essays.) They often attempt a dry, sardonic humor: "Even for blinddates, girls overweight are turned down," or "Quite often these people areoverlooked because they are fat." Their metaphoric language stands close tolife: "Young adults clinging to their family," or "Caught in the appearancetrap," or "Some overweight people are like dark shadows, they are there, butare never really noticed." And throughout they show an unusual honesty, notthe fact-slinging of one power at another, but the disinterested sooth-saying ofthe outsider with little to lose: "Am I so ugly I can't get dates?" or "We areall criminals." All in all, the mark of the individual is maintained more tena-ciously in these nine essays than in the other eighty-seven.I am going to hypothesize a modus or rationale for this kind of verbal wit.First and last the writer feels noncompetitive. Thinking oneself out of com-petition prompts the freedom and devil-may-care unhurriedness from whichflow writing characterizedby introspection, humor, laconism, and that pithyirony with which the rustic jives the city-goer. "The recklessness which makesfor originality," writes Edward Hoagland, who not incidentally is a stam-merer, "often grows out of despair" (188). Or, in reverse order, the idling

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CollegeComposition nd Communication 9 (October1988)anomie of the noncompetitor may produce good patches of writing and poorscores on verbal tests, both through a refusal to reck-to reck convention andconsequence.Both noncompetition and competition are deep motivations for writers.The second, of course, is much more familiar to most of us. We assume ourwriting vies, not necessarily is better than that of others, just in the sameleague. We first get accepted by a journal in our profession, then look to seewhether we made lead article-and the first step is entirely distinct from thesecond, for the second is to see if we have made a certain grade, the first is tohave made thegrade. But with bottom students, noncompetition may be morefamiliar. Even if they have not been put out of the regular classroomsand intospecial cubicles, they still know they do not compete with their peers. Thecoach can't fool the player at the far end of the bench, who probably regretsthe effort of having suited up and adopts that distrait, cut-off, sitting-in-the-audience slouch of those who are inside but not in. This is the vital and some-times deadly meaning of "competence"- if you have it you are allowed tocompete. If you don't, you live beyond the pale, outside the normalgrades ofsociety, in a bottom-most category so different it forms a class of its own andcannot be judged by the same standards. Students in special classes for bottomdwellers do not get grades, or the grades do not mean the same as normalones. They are there because they did not make the grade in the first place. Sowhat they write is slovenly, broken, and graceless, humorous, involuted, andhonest.

Complexity at the BottomWe return again to our initial curiosity. Bottom-most writing-either thewriting itself or the teachers' conception of it or both-seems to reside in akind of tidy world apart, unendowed with the lively ambiguities of higherbeings. One of the curiosities here, then, is why so unstratified a block of ourpopulation has attracted such a diversity of labels: "slow," "remedial," "dis-abled," "deficient," "developmental," "basic," "novice," even sometimes (sot-to voce) "blockhead." Of course our culture also cannot agree on one name forthe sorts of people who show up at unemployment centers. Yet the two popu-lations do not entirely compare. Perhaps we may hesitate as little in decidingwho should be sent to the writing centers, but we are apparently still fuzzyabout the essential condition that leads writers to such a fate. Are they laggardin need of prodding ("slow"), lame in need of prosthesis ("disabled"), lackingin need of supplies ("deficient"), sick in need of cure ("remedial"), under-developed in need of catching up ("developmental"), well-based but in need ofcultural refinement ("basic"), or new to writing in need of experience("novice")?Or, sotto voce, just dumb?

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Dark Shadows:The Fate of Writers at the BottomThe answer is that bottom writers may not be any of these, or may be anycombination of them. Many teachers have offered a rationale or modus for the

kind of writer who ends up at the bottom of verbal tests or holistic ratings:lack of confidence, fear of writing, confusion with an unfamiliar culture, fixa-tion in the security of a pre-formal cognitive stage. Surely where these nega-tive motivations obtain in the ordinarybottom student, they are mingled, andare further mingled with positive motivations, such as the two we have beenlooking at, a devotion to the pursuit of ideas, a fondness for the play of verbalwit. But as we have seen, the ordinary bottom holistic score does not reflectsuch a mingle. For teachers the danger lies in the fact that a single analyticalapproach-whether it be a measure of logical organization, a count of clauselength, a writing anxiety test, a spoken protocol, a Piaget or Perry scheme-will tend to discover a single motivation. Compounding this danger is theother fact that the error-ridden and unstylish surfaceof bottom writing glares,shields the depths where the complexities are. Teachers agree on what consti-tutes the worst student writing not primarily because they recognize it easily.They recognize it easily because they have simplified it.And that has something to say about the academic fate of writers who havepenned themselves into the bottom stall, through whatever excesses of fear orconfusion or thoughtfulness or honesty.

What Fate for Bottom Writers?Montaigne, the least competitive of all the great outsiders, noted that thehonest is more lovable than the useful. Still my fondness for bottom prosemust admit its ineffectiveness under the set conditions. Noncompetitive maynot mean incompetent, or lean mean lacking, but they certainly mean a rottengrade. Selective quotes, and a deliberate setting aside of skills like punctua-tion and coherence, cannot hide the fact that, in the end, these writers havemore to learn than the other students do about sharing thought. They mutter,stutter, mislead, skim, and omit, often wretchedly.My analysis suggests a little-used pedagogy, that a teacher can help themalong by pointing to those skills they already have where they actually surpassthe student above-their grasp of concrete language, their effective compres-sion of syntax, their truthfulness, their wit, their feeling for metaphor, theirfinding out and tracking down trails of thought. Students at the bottom mustthink of themselves not only as "shadows"but as "dark shadows," as worsewriters than they really are. If they can be shown that they top other studentsin some ways, they may regain that vital sense of competition.But therein lurks a vitiating cajolery. With the competition come therules, with the rules the compromises, with the compromises losses. The lei-surely and time-consuming search for logical ramificationswill have a difficult

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312 College Composition nd Communication 9 (October1988)time fending off the academic demands for bulk, high readability, and orderlypigeonholing. Even more bleak looks the fate of the down-turned wit underthe gaze of academic solemnity, or the worldly slang against the Latin legionsof polysyllables, or patient and compressed syntax caught in the rush forlength. Surely the fate of bottom writers during the first years of college isoften a retreat from familiar impediments and an advance toward uncomfort-able accommodations.I cannot think of any more difficult task of a teacher than to find ways toblock this retreat while still advancing the writing of these students. Themost direct way would show them how competent adults use some of the con-ventions that assist readability and production, yet still maintain the wit, thehonesty, the gritty vernacular, the progressive organization-as in this piecefrom a 458-word employee essay:

Momalwayssaidyou had to suffer f you wantedto lookgood. So wetorturedourselves with girdles, outrageouspointed-toedshoes, smellypadded bras, overbakedperms. We even went aroundfor a few yearslookinglike the bridesof Draculawith ourwhite lipstickand nailpolish.And then came bee-hivehairdos,sprayedbrittle. No wonder ashionre-belled and went natural n the 70's. What a relief!And yet I and my beautyvaluessystemcan'tgo "natural." have toforcemyselfto find the "beauty"n the "beast,"and whenit happens,asit so oftendoes,onceagainI walkthe treadmillof beingashamed.The bottom skills could be identified and praised along with titles, examples,and correct spelling. Sequential logical structures hidden in lean in-class writ-ing could be diagrammed and, while the writers continue such exploration ofideas in impromptu essays, the diagram could be used as a plan for a morefully elaborated out-of-class essay. Sophisticated sentences and patterns couldbe taken from the "basic" writers and taught to the others. Truly "develop-mental" students might need to regress-to go back, begin over, and practiceelementary techniques that they somehow bypassed, as in the psychotherapythat had adult patients crawling around in diapers. For my bottom students Isuspect more would be gained with the older, nondiscriminatory therapy ofleading from strength.

Actually, prior to instruction, in one way teachers ought to discriminate.They ought to further sort apart the unfortunate who have been sorted intothe bottom, to distinguish lean from noncompetitive from second-languagedfrom dialect-languaged from culture-shocked from what Janice N. Hays calls"suburban basic" (145), and so on. Annette N. Bradford suggests tests inthinking to screen the "cognitively immature," a procedure that at leastmight keep teachersfrom confusing "slow" minds with what is just slow writ-ing. Actually, what I suspect such a testing would show- assuming it hassome workablevalidity- is little or no correlation between "backward"writ-ing and "immature" thinking. Against the number of studies which have ar-gued that basic writers lag in cognitive maturity (see Patricia Bizzell's 1982


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Dark Shadows:The Fate of Writers at the Bottomreview), one ought to set the caution of two researcherswho ironically did somuch to further the very notion of cognitive maturity, Inhelder and Piaget:"Verbalproductions can by no means fully account for the structures of intel-ligence" (246, fn. 1). One ought also to ask how closely the verbal produc-tions of writers deemed basic have been scrutinized for structures of intel-ligence. As we have seen, my "remedial" writers here, in terms of logicalordering structures, compare better with matured post-graduates than withtheir college peers. The paragraph of lean writing (bottom of p. 307) mayseem innocent of nearly every writing convention, but its final position of un-certain, unresolved dialectic is unusually sophisticated for a college student, atleast according to some studies of post-formal adult development (e.g.,Basseches; Labouvie-Vief;Murphy and Gilligan). As teachers, we should deep-ly question any inference about intellectual maturity based only on skill in fol-lowing writing conventions.The conventions themselves, in fact, could stand some questioning. MinaP. Shaughnessy, Mike Rose, and others recommend teaching university con-ventions to "novice" students openly and systematically. There is a healthypragmatism in this, but such pragmatism could use an equally healthy dollopof skepticism, or at least an awarenessof the price paid. Should stoutness, forinstance, be a necessary convention of in-class writing? Richard Ohmann hasshown how "specific details close off analysis"(391), and I would add that inthe confines of an hour or two-hour placement essay, extended analogies, re-statements, clever introductions, and other of our beloved crutches for thereader, even perfect spelling and punctuation, may also disable good explora-tory thinking. In her observation of revision practices, Glynda Hull noted thather "less skilled" writers, compared to her "more skilled," focused more onerrors of meaning and less on errors of surface form, and that they more often"expresseda concern for making a text literally true or accurate"(25). If, asshe suggests, writers with such a focus and concern show less skill becausethey have "not yet learned to distinguish between matters of necessity andmatters of choice," then maybe university writing teachers ought to startmaking truth and accuracy in writing more of a necessity and surface formmore of a choice. Andrea Lunsfordfound "basic"writers using the first-personmore often than "skilled" writers do, Sandra Stotsky found "poor" writerscreating subjects of sentences simpler than those of "good" writers, and DavidBartholomae found "developmental"writers often attempting "syntax that ismore omplex than convention requires"(254). But greater use of the first per-son and simpler subjects and more complex syntax all characterizethe writingof my "competent" workplace writers in comparison with my undergraduatesas a whole (Change).Maybe we should start encouraging different conventions,ones that more nearly match those of the non-academic world, even if theyproduce lower inter-rater reliability coefficients on holistic assessments.We return a last time to the odd conformity among teacher ratings of bot-tom essays. Without any doubt, changing of the standards by which English

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College Composition nd Communication 9 (October1988)teachers judge student writing is a political matter of growing urgency as theimport of writing itself grows more and more beyond departments of English,across the curriculum and into the marketplace. But if it is a matter I will notbroach here, that does not mean that the phenomenon I have been looking atis an idle curiosity. Let me be blunt and say that high concordanceon low ho-listic scores looks awfully like stereotyping, which is never an idle phenome-non. So there is another change English departments ought to encourage, andcontinue to encourage regardlessof what writing standardswe operate under,and that is to put less weight on accuracyof assessment and more weight onkeenness of diagnosis. Diagnosis of writing is an act richly intuitive, distur-bingly complex, and fateful. For the student's sake, we ought to study everyturn we take there. When we notice one lack, do we sometimes create an-other, deficiencies hiding proficiencies? Does the very act of seeing an objectas complex as writing require categorizations which belie that very complex-ity? What tacit operations does the judicious discrimination of diagnosis sharewith the prejudicial discrimination of bigotry?A Counter-AssessmentIn the 1830's in England, the epithet "pauper" usually carried with it a one-dimensional meaning and often a more unpleasant fate. To be a "pauper"wasto be placed in a time-honored, almost mythic journeyto ruin: rich man, poorman, beggar man, thief. As "rats" and "parasitesof the state," "paupers"wereassigned to workhouses to pick oakum and cobble roads, were separatedfromspouses and children if married, were jailed if in debt, and if dying weresometimes carted by night to be discarded beyond the bourns of their homeparish. In that decade journalist William Cobbett (another great outsider) reg-istered a telling protestation: "What is a pauper? Only a very poor man." InCobbett's line, it is important to see, the word "Only" simplifies in order toallow for the multi-dimensionality of the word "man."

What is a student at the bottom? Only someone who needs to learn a lot.But not everything. "Poor" writers do not deserve to be stripped of the pecu-liar skills they already have, nor enrolled in some imaginary one-way intellec-tual journey. The group in the nether cubicle is not sui generis or unstratified,but is as eccentric as any other. No doubt teachers with more experience thanthe ones who rated my bottom essays recognize more variety in bottom stu-dents, and English teachers in general certainly recognize more variety therethan does anyone else in society. It seems unfair to compare the conceptionand treatment of writing students at the academic bottom today in the UnitedStates with that of people at the economic bottom in England in 1830. Butthen it may be unwise not to compare the two. Let's take that piece of historyas a measure both of how far we have come and of how perilously near westand, and take Cobbett's protestation as a kind of assessment, or counter-assessment, we must keep making over and over.

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Dark Shadows.: The Fate of Writers at the BottomWorks CitedBartholomae, David. "The Study of Error." College Composition nd Communication31 (Oct.1980): 253-69.Basseches, Michael A. "Dialectical Thinking as a Metasystematic Form of Cognitive Organiza-tion." BeyondFormalOperations: ate Adolescent nd Adult CognitiveDevelopment.Ed. MichaelL. Commons, Francis A. Richards, and Cheryl Armon. New York: Praeger, 1983. 216-38.Bizzell, Patricia. "Cognition, Convention, and Certainty: What We Need to Know aboutWriting." PrelText3 (Fall 1982): 213-44.Bradford, Annette N. "Cognitive Immaturity and Remedial College Writers." The Writer'sMind: Writing as a Modeof Thinking. Ed. Janice N. Hays et al. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1983.15-24.Haswell, Richard H. Changein Undergraduate nd Post-GraduateWriting Performance: uantifiedFindings. ERIC, 1986. ED 269 780.

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