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A Short History of Writing Instruction: From Ancient Greece To Modern America
This volume provides a systematic historical survey of the methods and purposes of writing instruction in Western culture. The book traces the development of writing curricula from the earliest stages in ancient Greece to the standardization processes of the Roman period which dominated Western schools up to the 18th century. The next major sections outline the shift away from inherited European methods and the emergence of many competing purposes and methods in contemporary America.
While some other studies look at particular time periods or at certain issues, this book covers the entire development of writing instruction over a period of 2,500 years up to the present day. The longitudinal approach used enables the reader to track the recurrence over time of not only specific teaching methods but also such major issues as social purpose, writing as power, the effect of technologies, the rise of vernaculars, and writing as a force for democratization. The book concludes with 10 suggestions for further research to deepen understanding of the history of writing instruction.
While some other studies look at particular time periods or at certain issues, this book covers the entire development of writing instruction over a period of 2,500 years up to the present day. The longitudinal approach used enables the reader to track the recurrence over time of not only specific teaching methods but also such major issues as social purpose, writing as power, the effect of technologies, the rise of vernaculars, and writing as a force for democratization. The book concludes with 10 suggestions for further research to deepen understanding of the history of writing instruction.
344 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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About the author
James J. Murphy
31 books7 followersDr. Murphy spent his career studying the history and pedagogy of language use, with scholarly work exploring rhetoricians from the Classical Period, the Middle Ages, through the Renaissance, and on to modernity. His work extended to the pedagogy of teaching rhetoric, writing, and debate, including texts that have been published in numerous editions and multiple languages including Korean, Chinese, Spanish, Italian, and Polish. Before settling at UC Davis in 1965, he taught at St. Mary’s College, Stanford, and Princeton. During his career, he published 75 journal articles and book chapters and edited numerous volumes.
Dr. James J. Murphy, (Ph.D., Stanford University, 1957), Professor Emeritus at UC Davis, passed away in 2021, at the age of 98. He remained alert and intellectually engaged until just a few days before his death. His final publication, The Oxford Handbook of Quintilian, which he co-edited, arrived exactly one week before he died.
Dr. James J. Murphy, (Ph.D., Stanford University, 1957), Professor Emeritus at UC Davis, passed away in 2021, at the age of 98. He remained alert and intellectually engaged until just a few days before his death. His final publication, The Oxford Handbook of Quintilian, which he co-edited, arrived exactly one week before he died.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 31, 2021
Excellent, 5-stars across the board for the early chapters, Carol Dana Lanham's chapter surveying writing from antiquity through the twelfth century. She is hilarious, and her witty, winking approach is a stylistic paragon for all historians to consider.
Somewhat ironically, the closer the history nears our present era, the worse the histories become. A lot of political bias creeps in, a lot of pet theories and identity politics, a lot of cynicism about instructors from the past. I think the debates for these authors are still too fresh to write about coolly, and you can see the cracks throughout: Berlin's chapter pushes his vague "current traditional rhetoric" (of course, never clearly defined in concrete terms — especially not to distinguish it from the past, chronicled only pages away, which also focused on grammar, standards, and correct logic...), and he buries Varnum's chapters-long critique of his theory in a footnote. I consider this blatantly unethical history (253). The authors gloss way too quickly over the many competing theories on the purpose of education (see Kliebard), choosing instead a Marxist critique that regularly poses industry, science, and capitalism as the enemies of composition. C'mon. But these authors illuminate so much of value: the past 100 years saw interest group after interest group, movement after movement, theory after theory compete for prominence, and I've come away from chapter 8 (Hobbs and Berlin) inspired — possibly angered — to learn more.
Chapter 7 (writing in America up to 1900), however, by Wright and Halloran, should be deleted and rewritten by Nan Johnson. These authors see demons around every historical corner, pushing the importance of rhetoric at the cost of their subject: what did writing teachers actually do, and what actually worked? Nearly every theoretical frame they apply simply doesn't make sense as explanatory frameworks; they aren't running coherent orders through chaos ("the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw a growth of individualism that manifested itself, for example, in the American Declaration of Independence " [229]. How much do you have to squint your eyes, hop on one foot, and spin around to make this claim work?). To salvage is their interesting discussion about how much cheap and reliable writing materials may account for the old "think it through, then write" method of composing. Now, if only they can explore that without dismissing the educators of the past: think it through and write may have been a perfectly legitimate and effective way of composing for thousands of years prior, but you won't find such a suggestion from process historians.
Somewhat ironically, the closer the history nears our present era, the worse the histories become. A lot of political bias creeps in, a lot of pet theories and identity politics, a lot of cynicism about instructors from the past. I think the debates for these authors are still too fresh to write about coolly, and you can see the cracks throughout: Berlin's chapter pushes his vague "current traditional rhetoric" (of course, never clearly defined in concrete terms — especially not to distinguish it from the past, chronicled only pages away, which also focused on grammar, standards, and correct logic...), and he buries Varnum's chapters-long critique of his theory in a footnote. I consider this blatantly unethical history (253). The authors gloss way too quickly over the many competing theories on the purpose of education (see Kliebard), choosing instead a Marxist critique that regularly poses industry, science, and capitalism as the enemies of composition. C'mon. But these authors illuminate so much of value: the past 100 years saw interest group after interest group, movement after movement, theory after theory compete for prominence, and I've come away from chapter 8 (Hobbs and Berlin) inspired — possibly angered — to learn more.
Chapter 7 (writing in America up to 1900), however, by Wright and Halloran, should be deleted and rewritten by Nan Johnson. These authors see demons around every historical corner, pushing the importance of rhetoric at the cost of their subject: what did writing teachers actually do, and what actually worked? Nearly every theoretical frame they apply simply doesn't make sense as explanatory frameworks; they aren't running coherent orders through chaos ("the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw a growth of individualism that manifested itself, for example, in the American Declaration of Independence " [229]. How much do you have to squint your eyes, hop on one foot, and spin around to make this claim work?). To salvage is their interesting discussion about how much cheap and reliable writing materials may account for the old "think it through, then write" method of composing. Now, if only they can explore that without dismissing the educators of the past: think it through and write may have been a perfectly legitimate and effective way of composing for thousands of years prior, but you won't find such a suggestion from process historians.
July 5, 2018
This was hard to get through. Yes, it was for a grad class on theories of teaching writing, so maybe I struggled as I am getting back into grad studies, but struggle I did. It felt dry and repetitive; I kept having to re-read paragraphs because I would drift off.
July 29, 2021
Three thousands years. A short history. And the subject is so much over the head of the writers, they had to gang up to write a few pages each. A disgusting waste of paper.
November 17, 2013
What follows covers the contents of the first edition of this book.
Murphy’s collection consists of seven articles, covering writing pedagogy’s history from ancient Athens to the twentieth century. Kathleen Welch’s opening piece on Athens is particularly focused on the literate aspects of the sophists’, Plato’s, and Isocrates’ educational programs. Welch especially notes the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition’s hegemony in histories of education and writing, the psycho-social changes brought about by the greater degree of abstract thinking writing allowed, and the similarities between the aforementioned programs. She especially notes the shift from the private education of aristocratic (male) youth by often enslaved pedagogues and teachers to more public models. Murphy’s own selection on Quintilian’s educational system emphasizes that system’s interrelation of speaking, writing, and reading, outlines the major steps of precept, imitation, and exercise (progymnasmata and declamation), and situates its end goal as a rhetor with an aptitude for situational improvisation. He notes that the public, highly iterable nature of the system indicates some broadening in access to education despite the persistent exclusion of women and the less affluent.
Marjorie Curry Woods (in what is perhaps, and unexpectedly, my favorite essay in the collection) argues for the significance of rhetoric and writing instruction in the oft-overlooked medieval period. She argues that writing instruction in the Middle Ages was frequently characterized by a focus on literature and a decentering of rhetor’s rhetorical agency rather than the creation of public rhetors with high degrees of control over language. Noting that the Iliad ends with the moving laments of the defeated Trojans, she suggests that such an approach is actually characteristic of rhetoric in many periods, offering a sort of polemic against George Kennedy’s privileging of public and agent-centered classical rhetoric. Don Paul Abbott offers a humanistic and neoclassical picture of writing instruction in the Renaissance, especially noting the importance of imitation and the influence of Erasmus’s De copia in English grammar schools.
In his examination of writing instruction in 18th- and 19th-century Britain, Winifred Bryan Horner argues that, due to the religious and aristocratic conservatism of England, Scotland was much more responsible for educational innovation during the period. He notes the gradual shift in writing instruction from Latin to English, as well as the rise of English literature as a subject. In addition to such canonical figures as Blair and Whately, he notes the influences of Alexander Bain--as a progenitor of what is now called “current-traditional” writing instruction--and George Jardine--as a more “enlightened” educator--on contemporary methods for teaching composition. He points out that writing instruction took place in all classes in Scotland’s “Dissenting Academies” and is thus somewhat hard to trace. An untheorized predecessor of WAC or WID?
S. Michael Halloran’s essay turns to American education before 1900, arguing that the popularity of belletristic rhetoric, the rise of the middle class, and new writing technologies were all central to changes in both writing instruction and the social role of writing during this period. These three factors, respectively, led writing instruction to emphasize style and aesthetics (with morals collapsed under aesthetic judgments and concerns), to focus more on sorting and credentialing students within an atmosphere of competitive individualism, and--haltingly and reluctantly--to move away from seeing thinking as invention and writing as articulation to seeing writing itself as invention. This latter realization was made possible by the rise of reliable pens and cheap paper, which made it physically possible for students to draft copiously. Within this milieu, Halloran also argues that contemporary rhet/comp scholars are perhaps too hard on the current-traditional pedagogy that arose in this milieu, as many of its features may have been practical responses to the exigencies of the aforementioned shifts.
The collection concludes with James Berlin examining twentieth-century writing pedagogy. He specifically notes the political and social variables that shaped pedagogy during this period: the rise in school and university enrollment, Harvard’s current-traditionalism and Yale’s privileging of literature and “liberal culture,” Fred Newton Scott’s and John Dewey’s more “progressive” and socially situated approaches to rhetoric, the rise of “communication” courses after World War II, the return of rhetoric and the establishment of the CCCC, and finally the dominance of the expressionist, cognitivist, and social constructionist or epistemic paradigms within rhetoric-composition as of 1985.
Murphy’s collection consists of seven articles, covering writing pedagogy’s history from ancient Athens to the twentieth century. Kathleen Welch’s opening piece on Athens is particularly focused on the literate aspects of the sophists’, Plato’s, and Isocrates’ educational programs. Welch especially notes the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition’s hegemony in histories of education and writing, the psycho-social changes brought about by the greater degree of abstract thinking writing allowed, and the similarities between the aforementioned programs. She especially notes the shift from the private education of aristocratic (male) youth by often enslaved pedagogues and teachers to more public models. Murphy’s own selection on Quintilian’s educational system emphasizes that system’s interrelation of speaking, writing, and reading, outlines the major steps of precept, imitation, and exercise (progymnasmata and declamation), and situates its end goal as a rhetor with an aptitude for situational improvisation. He notes that the public, highly iterable nature of the system indicates some broadening in access to education despite the persistent exclusion of women and the less affluent.
Marjorie Curry Woods (in what is perhaps, and unexpectedly, my favorite essay in the collection) argues for the significance of rhetoric and writing instruction in the oft-overlooked medieval period. She argues that writing instruction in the Middle Ages was frequently characterized by a focus on literature and a decentering of rhetor’s rhetorical agency rather than the creation of public rhetors with high degrees of control over language. Noting that the Iliad ends with the moving laments of the defeated Trojans, she suggests that such an approach is actually characteristic of rhetoric in many periods, offering a sort of polemic against George Kennedy’s privileging of public and agent-centered classical rhetoric. Don Paul Abbott offers a humanistic and neoclassical picture of writing instruction in the Renaissance, especially noting the importance of imitation and the influence of Erasmus’s De copia in English grammar schools.
In his examination of writing instruction in 18th- and 19th-century Britain, Winifred Bryan Horner argues that, due to the religious and aristocratic conservatism of England, Scotland was much more responsible for educational innovation during the period. He notes the gradual shift in writing instruction from Latin to English, as well as the rise of English literature as a subject. In addition to such canonical figures as Blair and Whately, he notes the influences of Alexander Bain--as a progenitor of what is now called “current-traditional” writing instruction--and George Jardine--as a more “enlightened” educator--on contemporary methods for teaching composition. He points out that writing instruction took place in all classes in Scotland’s “Dissenting Academies” and is thus somewhat hard to trace. An untheorized predecessor of WAC or WID?
S. Michael Halloran’s essay turns to American education before 1900, arguing that the popularity of belletristic rhetoric, the rise of the middle class, and new writing technologies were all central to changes in both writing instruction and the social role of writing during this period. These three factors, respectively, led writing instruction to emphasize style and aesthetics (with morals collapsed under aesthetic judgments and concerns), to focus more on sorting and credentialing students within an atmosphere of competitive individualism, and--haltingly and reluctantly--to move away from seeing thinking as invention and writing as articulation to seeing writing itself as invention. This latter realization was made possible by the rise of reliable pens and cheap paper, which made it physically possible for students to draft copiously. Within this milieu, Halloran also argues that contemporary rhet/comp scholars are perhaps too hard on the current-traditional pedagogy that arose in this milieu, as many of its features may have been practical responses to the exigencies of the aforementioned shifts.
The collection concludes with James Berlin examining twentieth-century writing pedagogy. He specifically notes the political and social variables that shaped pedagogy during this period: the rise in school and university enrollment, Harvard’s current-traditionalism and Yale’s privileging of literature and “liberal culture,” Fred Newton Scott’s and John Dewey’s more “progressive” and socially situated approaches to rhetoric, the rise of “communication” courses after World War II, the return of rhetoric and the establishment of the CCCC, and finally the dominance of the expressionist, cognitivist, and social constructionist or epistemic paradigms within rhetoric-composition as of 1985.
November 6, 2011
It may well be that my enjoyment of this book was over-inflated by how lovely it was to read something academic that wasn't about reading or collecting, and was (instead) about writing. Of course, it didn't take much reading to draw parallels between the two realms (indeed, many of this book's selections did it for me), but what was more interesting was seeing how writing instruction has evolved across cultures and times -- most dramatically, it seems, during the 20th century in America. It was interesting to think about how the way I was taught to read and write is less than a century-old, and that even more salient aspects of my writing education (e.g., writing as a process of self-discovery) are only a few decades old. Even more interesting was the thought experiment involved with wondering the extent to which material constraints influence writing -- from the expense and difficulty of using paper and pens in earlier times to the relative ease with which prose can be composed on a computer now. This book doesn't delve very far into the history of these things, but the extent to which it brings them up at all poses fascinating questions about the relationship between writing tools and content.
December 1, 2013
The history of writing, but this was more interesting than I thought it would be. Seriously, does the history of writing sound that interesting to anyone?
I mainly used
Gold, D., Hobbs, C. L., & Berlin, J. A. (2012.). Writing instruction in school and college English. J. Murphy (Ed.). A short history of writing instruction from ancient Greece to contemporary America (3rd ed., pp. 232-272). New York, NY: Routledge.
n 1874, when Harvard decided to give a writing test to all applicants to ensure that incoming students would have the necessary writing, over half of them failed it (Gold, Hobbs, and Berlin, 2012, p. 236).
At this time, as many universities instituted open enrollment and the GI Bill encouraged returning veterans to attend college, the number of students attending college doubled (Gold, Hobbs, & Berlin, 2012, p. 244)
I mainly used
Gold, D., Hobbs, C. L., & Berlin, J. A. (2012.). Writing instruction in school and college English. J. Murphy (Ed.). A short history of writing instruction from ancient Greece to contemporary America (3rd ed., pp. 232-272). New York, NY: Routledge.
n 1874, when Harvard decided to give a writing test to all applicants to ensure that incoming students would have the necessary writing, over half of them failed it (Gold, Hobbs, and Berlin, 2012, p. 236).
At this time, as many universities instituted open enrollment and the GI Bill encouraged returning veterans to attend college, the number of students attending college doubled (Gold, Hobbs, & Berlin, 2012, p. 244)
April 5, 2012
Fantastic book about the history of, well, writing! This was a required book for a Theories in Teaching Writing class which I am taking as I work towards my masters degree in English. I had been dreading this class, but seriously, this book pulled me through and opened my eyes to how writing has evolved in terms of society and education, but also this focus on writing has moved us away from a focus on other forms of teaching/educating, which the Ancient Greeks warned against (well some of them!) A must read for a composition/rhetoric teacher, in my opinion anyways!
May 19, 2011
Plenty of good chapters, but my favorite, actually is J. Murphy's excellent treatment of Roman rhetoric, focusing on Quintilian, mostly. Q. was such a well loved figure. I love him, too. He seems to have been a caring and careful teacher. A good whiz-bang tour of the theory and art of teaching writing.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews