There Is No Process Without The Product

There Is No Future Without The Present
There Is No Present Without The Product
There Is No Future Without The Process
There Is No Process Without The Product

Donald Murray Wished He Said It, But All He Did Was Think Of It.

I figured that since I did a presentation on Murray’s groundbreaking pedagogy and even defended him against baseless and erroneous attacks from my writing center colleagues I figured that it would be good to do a reading response to the article in Crosstalk. Additional motivation came from the fact that it is required for class.

Teaching writing as a process rather than a product is a pioneering pedagogy that took students away from things like grammar mapping and toward things like outlines and acknowledged that in the developed world everyone must write and that each person should develop a process that help them produce better writing.

Not only does Murray believe that the writing as process should be taught to students, but also he offers some innovative ideas about how to evaluate the deliverables in the various stages of writing. Murray seeks to look beyond giving a typical grade or score to the in-processes writing. He is an advocate for peer-review as well as teacher/student reviews that offers feedback and discussion. This is how Murray feels as though writing as a process can best be taught.

Murray doesn’t totally disavow the importance of writing as a product, but he has long been the advocate that the product is best served by minding the process. Murray was probably down with the notion that there is no future without the present; he himself could have said ‘there is no product without the process’. But he didn’t say that, I did. Just now. In a sense, I am better than writing education pioneer Donald Murray, aren’t I? The debate continues.