Writing across the curriculum can no longer be called a new idea. Early in the 1970’s federal and corporate grants began to support research investigating the relationship between writing and learning and to provide start-up money to implement programs designed to improve student performance in both areas. Since then the movement has taken several directions. Most interesting has been the basic research. Colleagues have begun to examine the forms discourse assumes in various disciplines and the relationship between particular discourse forms and the patterns of thought within a discipline. Colleagues have begun to investigate the composing processes of scientists and engineers to determine whether there are differences in the manner of writing in science and technology and the humanities, Colleagues have begun to survey the various types and purposes of writing in the workplace. This research, reported regularly in our scholarly journals, has not yet reached a stage allowing confident, wide-ranging assertions. There have been some important discoveries, but our conclusions must remain tentative.

The real impact of writing across the curriculum, in fact, has been the various faculty development schemes designed to imple­ment this promising but as yet unproven research. Anyone who keeps even slightly in touch with developments in composition has read one of the many program descriptions appearing in our journals or seen one of the “dog and pony shows” that too frequently dominate conference programs. Even the Sunday newspaper will include a feature story describing yet another cross-curricular writing program which seems to have raised the standardized test scores at the local highschool. And those who do not read or attend conferences aren’t spared exposure to writing across the curriculum. Sitting innocently in their offices, doors cracked, they wait diligently for a student to came by for some counsel until a book vendor intrudes, selling this or that new text based on this or that writing across the curriculum program headed by this or that famous researcher. We have been swamped by writing across the curriculum during the last several years. We ought to take a break and let the basic research catch up with and inform the proliferation of applications. Much of what we are doing may be of questionable value.

Given the need to improve student (and faculty) writing and learning, and given the continuing presence of money earmarked by administrators for “outcomes oriented” programs, a respite is not likely. At best we may be able to identify and avoid less than helpful practices while advertising and emulating positive ones. Such is my purpose here in reviewing two relatively recent texts dealing with writing across the curriculum. The Rites of Writing suffers a theoreti­cal naivetee and failure of direction. It continues the dubious anecdotal tradition in composition research. Teaching Writing in All Disciplines’ provides a useful, thorough and balanced exposition of theory and practice, including techniques developed at various institutions to improve teaching and student writing and learning.

The Rites of Writing includes a few god ideas but does not as a whole contribute to writing across the curriculum. As the title suggests, the book is a celebration of the efforts made by the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point to respond to the “Why Johnny Can’t Write” dilemma of the 1970’s. Each spring the Writing Laboratory sponsors a conference to discuss writing in all variety. Mary Croft, in the “Introduction,” sets the scene: “And every spring for two days our campus here at Stevens Point becomes a one-room schoolhouse as over twenty-five hundred gradeschoolers, highschoolers, community writers, teachers, students, people from everywhere gather to talk about writing. No charge, no registration, just an interest in writing” (p. 1). In fact, the text is a collection of essays by keynote speakers and participants in the conferences. The nature of the collection causes it to be generally uneven and sometimes self-contradictory. Among the seventeen essays collected are tributes to creative writing, verse speeches, exhortations on the importance of revision, and assessments of the current state of affairs in writing and the teaching of writing. Contributors include Denis Levertov, Richard Lloyd-Jones, Donald Murray, Steven Judy, and Thomas Pearsall.

The major problem with the collection is its shotgun approach to the topic. Plenty of lead gets out of the barrel but little hits the target. There is no central organizing principle beyond the assertion that we all write and ought to love writing. The text scrupulously avoids the theoretical and provides little efficient information; i.e., information I as a writer, a writing program director, or writing instructor could abstract and put to work. Too often contributors throw out pet peeves about English teachers and common errors. At the same time these essayists frequently fail to treat their topic with any depth or comprehensibility. Too many essays report gossip rather than provide instruction.

The best (or worst) example of a dubious contribution is a short series of anecdotes by Frances Hamerstrom, a wildlife researcher and author of children’s books. In ‘The Need For Revision?” she recounts her memories of learning to write. Her governess (!) worked hard and taught her that revision was an admission of failure to be avoided whenever possible. And, of course, the value of this lesson is borne out by Ms. Hamerstrom’s subsequent success as a writer. The anecdotes continue. Her granddaughter recently had to revise a story six times for a school assignment. Hamerstrom comments: “What I object to is that she was forced to produce a sloppy first draft” (p. 53, emphasis mine). She continues her diatribe, asking if our current interest in revision is a fetish—not only obscuring the final good, but also forcing poor work habits? (p. 54).

While this may be an interesting if somewhat iconoclastic claim, she chooses neither to elaborate her criticism nor to provide workable alternatives. Her anecdotes can lead only to ad hoc solutions: “Flow and mood require psychological preparation and timing. So my rule is never start a book until you are prepared to see time enough clear to finish without major interruptions . . ., and then write it” (p. 55). For me, both as a writer who must live with interruptions and as a teacher of writing who knows the life of my undergraduate students to be one continuous interruption, this is not helpful information. Ms. Hamerstrom may be an ally of those teaching writing in the trenches, but her advice is not helpful. Too many of the essays collected in The Rites of Writing fall into the same category.

There are a few helpful articles. “Effective Outline Preparation and Use” by Dolores Landreman presents a useful procedure to help students plan and manage common types of technical writing. Donald Murray’s “Conference Guidelines” and Richard Lloyd-Jones’ “A Garden of Error” both present systematic and useful treatments of the topics they address. However, both have completed more elabo­rate work elsewhere. In short, there is nothing really new in this collection and much which may be counterproductive.

Teaching Writing in All Disciplines, part of the New Directions For Teaching and Learning Series from Jossey-Bass, represents the other side of the coin in terms of comprehensibility and usefulness. This text collects essays by both writing across the curriculum theoreticians and practitioners. Their primary aim is helping readers understand important concepts like writing as process, and the relations between writing and learning, and enabling readers to implement these by describing working projects in classes as diverse as mathematics and finance.

The contributors are familiar writing across the curriculum names. Toby Fulwiler’s ‘Writing: An Act of Cognition” digests much writing and learning theory and presents Britton’s concept of expressive language in a manner understandable to any intelligent and interested reader. In “Microtheme Strategies for Developing Cognitive Skills,” John Bean and his colleagues Dean Drenk and F. D. Lee describe a program using short writings of varying degrees of cogni­tive sophistication to teach humanities, science, and business. They present a hierarchy of cognitive skills and a sequence of assignments to allow students to move effectively through the hierarchy. Their points are clear; their examples are sensible and easily adaptable to a variety of content areas and institutions. The microtheme concept represents a significant application of sound research.

Christopher Thaiss and Elaine Maimon both addrss programmatic concerns. In “The Virginia Consortium of Faculty Writing Programs: A Variety of Practices,” Thaiss provides descriptions of working projects in various disciplines.² In “Writing Across the Curriculum: Past, Present, and Future,” Maimon places contemporary developments in rhetoric and epistemology within the framework of the history of education. Each article includes a bibliography. Bruce Petersen collects and provides helpful annotations for “Additional Resources in the Practice of Writing Across the Curriculum.”

Teaching Writing in All Disciplines is an effective writing across the curriculum manual including theoreticl, practical, historical, and bibliographical information useful to writing program directors, writing teachers, interested administrators and non-English faculty. It is a significant contribution, an excellent interim text while writing across the curriculum awaits the further contributions promised by ongoing basic research.