Kathleen Yancey's "Writing in the 21st Century"

Kathleen Yancey is NCTE Past President, and she submits this report to NCTE members with a call to support writing in the 21st Century. She gives us three challenges:

• Develop new models of writing
• Design a new curriculum supporting those models
• Create models of teaching that curriculum

Yancey begins with a historical perspective of themes and writing instruction in 20th Century America. She claims:

1. “Writing has never been accorded the cultural respect or the support that reading has enjoyed, in part because through reading, society could control its citizens, whereas through writing, citizens might exercise their own control.”

2. “Reading—in part because of its central location in family and church life—tended to produce feelings of intimacy and warmth, while writing, by way of contrast, was associated with unpleasantness—with unsatisfying work and episodes of despair—and thus evoked a good deal of ambivalence.”

3. “In school and out, writing required a good deal of labor.”

4. “Writing has historically and inextricably been linked to testing.”

5. “Without a research base or a planned curriculum—which were the central components of reading, and, likewise, the central components of all disciplines—composition tended to take on the colors of the time, primarily its identification as a rudimentary skill and its predominant role in the test of students.”

She continues her historical perspective by explaining in the 20th Century writing instruction was greatly influenced by science (writing could be researched and studied), progressivism (curriculum focused on the student and everyday writing), process writing (the recursive nature of the writing process through pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing), and personal computers.

Yancey then articulates Writing in the 21st Century. She claims “with digital technology and, especially Web 2.0 it seems writers are ‘everywhere” with what Deborah Brandt calls “self-sponsored writing.” Yancey suggests further than much of this new composing, writers wish to share, to encourage dialogue, but most to participate. She calls the 21st Century the Age of Composition where writers write not through formal instruction alone but through non-academic social “co-apprenticeship” where there is less emphasis on experts and more on peers sharing knowledge [such as WikipediaI, blogs, FaceBook, texting, emails, etc.].

Yancey suggests, “first, we have moved beyond a pyramid-like sequential model of literacy development in which print literacy comes first and digital literacy comes second and networked literacy practices, if they come at all, come third and last.” And “second, we have multiple models of composing operating simultaneously, each informed by new publication practices, new materials and new vocabulary.”

She concludes with her three challenges for writing instructors in the 21st Century:

“Articulate the new models of composing developing right in front of our eyes.”

“Design a new model of writing curriculum K-graduate school.”

“Create new models of teaching.”

As I read this article, I continued to think of our articulated BYU-Idaho Learning Model and our mantra of “Rethinking Education.” Many at the university continue to examine, refine, and reinvent our writing instruction to meet the many demands and growing changes our students will face in the future through rhetoric and technology.

Yancey, Kathleen Blake. “Writing in the 21st Century.” February 2009. NCTE. http://www.ncte.org/library