Literature versus Writing

Reading about the development of English as a discipline by any of the authors that have tackled the subject is quite an interesting journey.  One part that is interesting is that once the department of English was finally formed, it has essentially remained the same since the turn of the 20th Century.  So, for over 100 years, the English department has looked and acted in essentially the same way.  Part of this development was taking literature as it's domain.  There professors would teach students how to interpret the words of others, as was handed down to them by their professors, and so on, and so on.

Part of this dichotomy became the literature/writing split.  Often the professors would teach the literature and the graduate students would be given the writing courses.  Again, this is something that has continued to this day.  It seems like many writing courses are relegated to the lower ranks because it is not perceived as important as literature.

This brings to my mind another question: What is the role of writing?  I often wondered this when I taught. Was writing in the service of other disciplines?  Was writing a subject to itself?  This was an especially daunting question when I taught introductory composition courses.  The purpose of the course really eluded me.  Many others feel this way too. Looking at the debate by many colleges as to whether to keep the undergraduate freshman composition courses shows that the purpose of these courses is up for debate.  Other disciplines like the course because that is where students are supposed to learn to write, thus relieving them of the obligation.  However, much research shows that writing is learned in context, through apprenticeships in a discipline, and not through these classes.  I believe some transfer skills are usable, but not all of them.  Learning to write like a literary critic is not going to help you learn to write a science lab report.

I have really come to appreciate the Writing Across the Curriculum movement that began in the 1990's.  It makes writing important in every discipline but I think it is still given second class status.  Writing can be a powerful and important way to learn information in any discipline if utilized well and often.