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6. What is good writing? Or, is writing an art, a science, a knack? None of the above? A bit of each? Can we even teach writing?
A Social Constructionist would perhaps argue that good writing is not necessarily an art, a science, or a knack. Instead, good writing is a result of interaction among students, social interaction within the discourse community, and the students' material condition, using language as the medium (Berlin 692). Good writing is critical, academic, analytical, and contextual; but it is not necessarily correct! Academic writing and critical thinking are paramount to Social Constructionists--grammar alone is not. As David Bartholomae notes in "Writing with Teachers," Social Constructionists are willing to let things like style or word choice go in favor of more important things--such as critical thinking (479-488). As he explains further in "Inventing the University," a student essay which is technically correct and eloquently worded does not always rank above less technically correct or less eloquently written essays. An essay demonstrating critical thinking is always better because it shows how the writer has successfully interacted with his/her social and material environment. It is, in effect, more academic (589-616).To get back to the original question, writing, theoretically, can be mastered by just about anyone. Because writing is a product of social interaction and the individual, anyone who successfully interacts in this context and examines it closely should be able to produce academic writing. Because good writing is no longer about punctuation, spelling or even stylistic rhetoric, it is not about teaching students rules. As Patricia Bizzell argues in "Cognition, Convention and Certainty: What We Need to Know about Writing," we do need to teach our students convention, however. As she puts it, "Groups of society members can become accustomed to modifying each other's reasoning and language use in certain ways. Eventually, these familiar ways achieve the status of conventions that bind the group in a discourse community, at work together on some project of interaction with the material world" (366). Social Constructionists work to teach those conventions to students.
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