williams and contemporary rhetoric

My opinion about James D. Williams's writing has changed for the better since the first chapter. At first, I felt like his writing was just like mine. His voice sounded like that of a college student with the way he introduced direct quotes and judged his research. However, Williams seems to write better about the history of rhetoric from this century.

At first, the way Williams describes writing pedagogy, and then refutes it for one reason or another, made me a little uneasy. By the end of the chapter, I was afraid that I would feel unconvinced and hopeless-- as if Williams would finally end up revealing the "best" method of teaching writing, but I would feel skeptical. After all, who's to say another Williams will not come along and disprove everything that this author believes?

But I wound up agreeing with the author as he traced the improvements of writing education over time. And by the 1960's, with James Kinneavy's A Theory of Discourse, I was hopeful.

This was my favorite method of both teaching (hypothetically) and learning writing. However, I noticed a peculiar pattern in my own education as I read over the history. In my elementary school, we first used the process principle (I still remember the construction paper chart on the wall with the steps laid out and illustrated), then in middle school we seemed to revert back to current-traditional methods. In high school, these methods continued for some classes, and other writing classes, like the more creative ones, were taught by a particular free-spirited and flighty instructor.

My own shaky history of learning writing helped me to understand this chapter, especially when William's references, "the plague of American public education."