Critical Expressivism- Theory and Practice in the Composition Classroom, 2014a

Expressive Pedagogies
“telling facts.” Additional evidence in this passage—Bramhall’s phrase “I guess
the main thing stressed in the … chapter” suggests Bramhall is uncertain about
his reading of Macrorie, understandable given his professional training is in economics,
not writing.
The most significant point at which Bramhall’s syllabus diverges from Macrorie’s
approach is when Bramhall explains the purpose of journaling. Unlike
Macrorie, who argues that “all good journals observe one fundamental: they do
not speak privately” (1970, p. 123), Bramhall tells students they can share their
journals with others after the fact, but they’ll have more success keeping a journal
if they think of it as private. (See Daniel Collins’ essay in this collection for
a further explanation of the social dimension behind Macrorie’s pedagogy.) The
journal, according to the course description, “is your continuing dialogue with
yourself—that’s the purpose and you won’t make it if you try to write it for anyone
else—a teacher, posterity, or even a loved one.” It remains unclear whether
this disagreement with Macrorie was conscious on Bramhall’s part. Especially
given his summary of Macrorie’s chapter, it could be that Bramhall overlooked
or misunderstood this part of Macrorie’s argument, and/or it could be that this
sense of the journal as an engine of private reflection better fit Bramhall’s teaching
philosophy, which was described in a profile of Bramhall that appeared in
the fall 1974 issue of the AC Newsletter. An important aspect of Bramhall’s
pedagogy, according to the unnamed student writer, is reflection: “Finally there
is reflectiveness. Dave feels we must keep looking at the process of learning,
and at what is happening to human relations.” Even though the latter part this
comment suggests that there was a social dimension to Bramhall’s teaching, it
appears that an even more important goal of Bramhall’s teaching was to have
students better understand themselves as learners, which could help explain the
syllabus’ definition of the journal as a “continuing dialogue with yourself.”
The course file also contains model student journals that Bramhall distributed
to the class, and these texts further reveal the complex manner in which
Bramhall appropriated Macrorie’s work. This is especially the case with the first
journal in the file, which was written by an unnamed young woman enrolled in
the program during its first semester. The journal consists of a handful of entries,
all of which focus on the writer’s attempt to figure out who she is. One particular
entry discusses the writer’s realization that she has no discernible self:
I want to write something about myself but I don’t know
what because I don’t know myself. I’m not even sure I have
a “myself” any more at this point. Right before I went home
for Thanksgiving I felt as though I really had things straight in
my mind and that I was happy with me. Maybe I was justified
197