Ostrom, Hans. "Introduction: Of Radishes and Shadows, Theory and Pedagogy." Colors of a Different Horse: Rethinking Creative Writing Theory & Pedagogy

Ostrom, Hans. "Introduction: Of Radishes and Shadows, Theory and Pedagogy." Colors of a Different Horse: Rethinking Creative Writing Theory and Pedagogy. Wendy Bishop and Hans Ostrom, eds. Urbana, Ill: National Council of Teaching English, 1994.

Ostrom points out that teachers of creative writing "may well make up a disproportionate share of those who retreat from theory" (xii). His belief is that the "retreat from -- or at least resistance to -- theory may spring in part from teachers seeing themselves as writers first and teachers second: a distance second, as in 'it (teaching) pays the bills'" (xii). This goes again to the common belief that most creative writing teachers are published authors, not scholars -- perhaps one of the reasons why the MFA degree is scoffed at as not as prestigious as the Ph.D. in the academic world. (Although I think my MFA work is ten times harder than my Ph.D. studies, but anyway...)

"Most probably, those who retreat from theory and pedagogy are likely to fall back on the workshop in its simplest form: 'going over' poems and stories in a big circle, holding forth from time to time, pretending to have read the material carefully, breaking up squabbles like a hall monitor, marking time ...

"The writer is perceived to be an isolated author whose spirit breathes life into an organic art form, and when native talent or 'genius' meets solitude, good artistic things happen. Pedagogy and theory become incidental at best in the egotistically sublime pedagogy of the self. The author, as defined in Romantic terms, has no particular use for teachers or workshops:'he' was born with author-ity, with authorizing talent, with genius, with a potency ... he is gifted and blessed; he's got what it takes" (xiv-xv).

Well, wow. If I hadn't read that Ostrom has written creative works, I would wonder if he even likes creative writers. Surely there are some instructors of creative writing that adhere to his drawn stereotype, but I think he's relied on some heavy ethos here to try to sway the reader into thinking that creative writing teachers are ego-driven and find theory to be beneath them. I don't feel this is the case at all; if anything, we are taught to be craft driven and not presented with much theory in our classes, but that doesn't mean we aren't interested in it.

I think he might be falling into the ranks he describes himself: "Meanwhile, a growing rank of research- and theory-trained rhetoricians may be widening old divisions, perhaps unwittingly: Those who study 'writing' without adjectives (just plain writing processes, not 'creative' or 'imaginative' or 'art' writing) are eager to study creative writers -- in part to determine whether 'creative' is a useful adjective. With their very attitude toward the writing they wish to study, they thereby threaten to demystify an entire domain, or at least to demystify that crucial adjective, 'creative'" (xvi).

This again speaks to why there is a clear divide between creative and composition teaching: creative allows for the "mystical" quality of writing to occur, while those pushed by theory or research backgrouns very much want to be able to describe it away. There is no real way to describe what happens during the creative process, at least to my knowledge. I'm sure there's some sort of medical research that shows the right brain a clickin' or something, but we can't pinpoint what enables creativity to kick in. Methinks the straight-brained people are jealous of those creatives who are most comfortable living with their heads in the clouds.

"Directors of writing programs often -- and understandably, given university politics -- put most of their energy into training graduate students to teach first-yeare writing; directors may tolerate the presence of undergraduate creative writing courses, but training someone to teach the courses or reconceptualizing the role of creative writing is rarely a priority" (xvi).

And again, perhaps that's why workshopping has been around for so long; Iowa seems to have put its mark on workshopping as its own idea, and no one has bothered to figure out if there's a better way to teach creative writing, so we're still at it.

Ostrom points to the possibile fallacies of workshopping: "What do we know about group dynamics, and what should we know? Who gets silenced in our workshops and why? How often do we/should we revise our workshop methods? When are the conversations in our workshops most productive and why? What might be gained by dismantling the workshop method altogether and starting from scratch?" (xx). I still feel workshopping has its place in the creative writing classroom, but on feedback forms I've received from students in these classes, they sometimes seemed to value the workshopping less and creative exercises more, which to me speaks of planning, or a jumping-off point.

I like this section of the introduction very much: "In reexamining how we teach the subject, we should probably let ourselves be guided in part by the idea that connecting theory and pedagogy in itself suggests that students are worth the trouble -- that, to a certain extent, theorizing pedagogy honors the students and our profession. As we pursue the reeexamination, we might also consider the function of creative writing in universities of the twenty-first century. The subjects/concepts of 'basic writing' and 'composition' have unergone and continue to undergo close scrutiny and redefinition in our profession and at institutions. It may well be that (so-called) imaginative writing has a greater role to play in (so-called) basic and first-year writing; one old assumption is that students had to master skills before they produced literary art, but increasingly it seems as if the connections among skills, mastery, creativity, and so forth are more complicated and less linear than we have assumed. Such phenomena as computer-assisted writing and the ever-evolving ethnic and linguistic make-up of American society only complicate the connections further.

"We might also ponder the 'uselessness' of creative writing. That is, if courses in creative writing do not serve the university or the economy in the same wayfirst-year writing or business writing courses do, then why are they so popular, what are students drawing from them, how do administrators view them, what kinds of treatment do they get in curricular debates, and what will happen to them if the society demands with increasing insistence that universities concentrate on 'educating the workforce' and 'keeping America competitive'? In other words, what is the status of creative writing in the evolving political economy of American universities, and how is that status determined?" (xxi)

There is much to consider in this passage. First, Ostrom points out that the differences between creative and first-year writing might not be as crucial as theorists or practitioners of composition make them out to be. Secondly, creative writing might be considered artsy, and so in this culture, useless, in this society. Perhaps there is a need for theorists to draw a firm line between their work and creative writing in order to show academia that there is no correlation between them and this "useless" art of being creative -- even though students clamor to these classes, according to this passage.