Elbow, Peter. "The Pedagogy of the Bamboozled." Embracing Contraries: Explorations in Learning and Teaching.

"The teacher must work as a collaborating ally of the student, not as a supervisor" (87). I'm beginning to see why Peter Elbow and the concept of expressivism is connected so closely to creative writing. I've met very few creative writing professors who believe in imposing their own ideas of "what works" on a student, wanting instead for a student to focus on creating their own voice and style. Voice and style can sometimes get lost in composition, where we can be more concerned with keeping a focus and organization.

"The object of study is the actual lives of the students and their perception of their lives -- always reflected back as problems to be solved and sources of contradiction" (88).

"When we order books and set up themes whic we decide (or publishers decide, or even past students decide) are relevant to the real lives of the students, we are often pretending to make our subject the lives and perception-of-lives of our students, but are actually falling short in a bamboozling way" (89). This is why I agree so much with the pedagogy where we allow our students to decide on a topic for themselves, based on a large theme like "relationships" or "issues in groups." If we force our students to write about topics like technology, or something else in which they might not be invested, the writing begins to become a chore again -- and composition writing feels more like work rather than a fun process.

"The process is primarily rational and cognitive (rather than affective): critical thinking, problem-posing, looking for contradictions, and achieving greater awareness of one's own awareness and thinking" (90). I feel this can work for both composition and creative writing. While creative writing allows us to flounder, we must ultimately decide what our theme is -- what is our work about? -- and focus on telling that story, leading our readers where we want them to go.