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O u r H i s t o r y, O u r s e l v e s
Blueprints or Houses? Lou LaBrant and the Writing Debate P. L. THOMAS
W
hen Lou LaBrant was a fifth grader at the turn of the century, her teacher took a moment to integrate grammar instruction with Bible study. The teacher read from a King James version of the Bible—a passage concerning Jesus walking on the water. As the teacher read about Jesus addressing his frightened followers
with “It is I; be not afraid,” she paused and complemented Jesus on his grammar—his choosing “I” instead of the nonstandard “me.” LaBrant laughed to herself over the moralistic, but misinformed, implication of the lesson; the teacher appeared to be completely unaware that the wording reflected the translator’s, not Jesus’ knowledge of English grammar. By the time she became president of NCTE in 1954, LaBrant had established herself as one of the foremost progressive practitioners of reading and writing instruction, as well as a moral guardian of the language—though with a decidedly different stance than her fifth grade teacher. In “Writing Is More than Structure,” LaBrant says that “an inherent quality in writing is responsibility for what is said. There is therefore a moral quality in the composition of any piece” (256). For LaBrant, the integrity of the content of a student’s writing outweighs considerably any surface features. In that same article, she offeres a metaphor that captures precisely her view of the debate surrounding the teaching of writing—a debate that has persisted in the English field throughout this century: “Knowing about writing and its parts does not bring it about, just as owning a blueprint does not give you a house” (256). In other words, she began to question whether direct and isolated grammar instruction actually improved the writing abilities of students, and her answer was that it did not. Students had to write to become writers. Throughout her life, LaBrant would challenge those who appeared to accept the English
language as a frozen form, those who seemed to believe that English grammar rules had been passed down from above and chiseled in stone. Born in 1888, she lived to be 102, after spending nearly seven decades as a progressive English teacher and a teacher of teachers. She practiced concepts and held beliefs associated with John Dewey—espousing learning by doing for both reading and writing, while persistently refuting simplistic either/or thinking—but LaBrant was always her own self, an assertive and faithful lover of the language that she taught others to cherish.
Practicing What She Preached—LaBrant and the Writing Debate LaBrant is most commonly associated with her free reading programs—notably her work at the University School of The Ohio State University in the 1930s and early 1940s. Later, she continued her progressive practices at New York University in the 1940s (where she was a colleague of Louise Rosenblatt) and at Dillard University in the 1960s. But LaBrant’s body of writing reveals that she was also one of the pioneers in the fight to help students become writers by having them write; through that
English Journal
Copyright © 2000 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.
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process she knew they would discover the convenstructure, and power of words. Further, LaBrant tions of an ever changing language and uncover called for English classes free of “prejudices and meaning for themselves. snobberies” about language that dulled the desire Repeatedly, LaBrant lamented the tento learn (“Language Teaching” 94); she again urged dency of English teachers to resist abundant rethat students be allowed to write their own ideas search disputing the effectiveness of traditional while being guided in the polishing of work that methods, such as isolated grammar drills. In had meaning. “Teaching High School Students to Write,” LaBrant notes “the considerable gap between the Laying Aside the Blueprints, research currently available and the utilization of Building Houses that research in school programs and methods” Lou LaBrant entered education around 1906, but (87). She embraces a perpetual state of reflection her commitment to teaching was delayed until the and discovery for both teachers and students; the 1920s and 1930s. She struggled during those teaching of writing, or of any field, would always be decades with the lack of autonomy in teachin a state of flux, she contends, because that is the ing, with much of the details of nature of knowledge, that is the teaching that she viewed as foolnature of language. “The day ishness; then, after she entered when knowledge will be comgraduate school, she discovered plete, when what we teach and a progressive, experimental how we teach it will be movement of which she became smoothly planned, that day will a significant, though now mostly be only when our civilization forgotten, part. From the 1930s ends,” LaBrant announced in until the end of the 1950s, she her assertive manner that won practiced and wrote about a her both ardent supporters and dominant dilemma in the dedetractors (“Teaching English” bate swirling around the teach36). At one of her earliest ing of writing: “Is it possible to teaching jobs, in fact, LaBrant teach our changing population a and her roommate created false changing language and still give year-long lesson plans over one them something they can use, weekend to free themselves to something they can cherish— teach as they liked throughout standards, if you will?” she asks the year; knowing what she Lou LaBrant (“New Bottles” 346). Much of was doing and meticulously Photo courtesy of NCTE Archives. LaBrant as writing teacher was planning and outlining it all revealed in that question. were two divergent things to Early in her career as a professor, LaBrant LaBrant. How could she possibly know what a child berated the failure in English education to impleneeded tomorrow or next week? ment research findings in daily classroom practices. Along with her concern for the language In one of her early quantitative research articles, she and her liberal philosophies, LaBrant maintained a documented the connection she found between focus on the child, the student as a person. She cauunderstanding and surface feature errors. She tions teachers about the thin line between teaching identified “a large gap between natural expresand imposing: “We must be careful in criticizing sion and the stilted performance which passes as the writing of the young . . . not to superimpose our school composition” (“The Changing Sentence own experience on [students] . . . [W]e should not, Structure” 62). Foreshadowing later work by Mina under the guise of developing literary standards, Shaughnessy and connecting expression with exmerely pass along adult weariness” (“Analysis of perience, LaBrant argued that nonstandard writClichés” 275–76). Imposing and indoctrinating, she ing by students—what in the classroom was seen believed, were counter-educational—turning stuas “error”—often sprang from artificial assigndents away from the language instead of allowing ments and partial understanding by students, not children to discover for themselves the beauty, 86
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from any grammatical weaknesses: “[W]hen the child writes or speaks of an experience which has become clear, he can manage the construction,” she says. (64) In this study, LaBrant found that virtually no fragments occurred in writing samples when students understood their own points. She concluded that fragments, for example, appeared when students’ thinking was unclear and partial; she added that teachers failed to distinguish between purposeful fragments, which writers use all the time, and careless fragments, which young writers need to have identified for revision.
Born in 1888, she lived to be 102, after spending nearly seven decades as a progressive English teacher and a teacher of teachers. Realizing the power of terms, the power of naming, LaBrant offered her own category for writing; essentially all writing in schools fell either into assigned writing or “creative writing”—writing “for which the writer has determined his own subject, the form in which he presents it, and the length of the product” (“Psychological Basis” 293). Just as she argued about reading, LaBrant stressed the need for student writing to be free writing, creative writing—predating Atwell’s emphasis on ownership by fifty years. Here she challenged many traditional ideas and practices—refuting the effectiveness of grammar exercises and the oversimplifying of language conventions into rules. “We have spent years teaching platitudes about sincerity in composition, sincerity in literature, [yet] we have defeated our teaching by telling children what to say and how to say it. Let no one think I am advocating shoddy, arty writing; I am merely suggesting sincere writing,” she concludes (298). LaBrant asked English teachers to reverse many of their strategies, relinquishing to student choice that which they had traditionally assigned. She admonishes, “Let’s not tell them what to write” (301). Free writing would cultivate in students a sincere concern for their words; thus, students themselves would seek to conform to the
conventions of language, students themselves would seek to capture the power of words to make their ideas more powerful. The reversal, the shifting of focus by teachers that LaBrant called for was from surface features to meaning. “I am not willing to teach the polishing and adornment of irresponsible, unimportant writing,” she explains as she emphasizes the need for teachers to stress writer responsibility first, with purposeful conforming to conventions as a final step (“Teaching High School Students” 123). She fought throughout her career to convince English teachers that “purpose, meaning, basis for opinion, [and] value of the idea presented” are paramount (124). Since many progressive ideas were challenged by the educational establishment, LaBrant began anticipating her detractors. She denied “that [she was] advocating no correction, no emphasis on form” (126). She also countered by referring to the abundance of research that showed no correlation between grammar drills and improved use of conventions in student writing; in 1946 she identified “hundreds of studies” that refuted the transfer of grammar drills to written work (127). The workbook or grammar text exercise could never target the many and varying differences among the population of any classroom; for LaBrant, writing instruction had to spring from each student’s own work, each student’s own incomplete understandings. Yet, despite references to studies and her own continuing research, LaBrant acknowledged the difficulty in proving “that doing careful writing is the best device for understanding careful writing and the best device for teaching critical and understanding reading” [sic] (“The Individual and His Writing” 187). Intuitively, she believed in the intricate relationship between reading and writing. Her primary concern was with teaching students to “discover the power and pitfalls of language,” but she adds an increasingly important belief: “You may say this is the opportunity for the gifted only. I do not think so” (188). A decade later, LaBrant was working with African American education at Dillard University, showing that progressive strategies could bridge the gap left by failed traditional methodologies. For LaBrant, education was for all; it was an integral part of a democracy, a free nation. “[C]omposition as a method of clarifying thought or of expanding understanding” continued to be LaBrant’s focus concerning the key feature of English Journal
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student work, and her emphasis on the moral aspects of language use and sincere content gained more and more significance during the McCarthy years (“Some Implications” 125). Further, she dealt with research that suggested nonstandard usages in writing were a reflection of “the fear of writing,” which grew out of “a continuance of too early and too rigid demands” (128). LaBrant pondered the delicate balance between fluency and conventional usage. Teaching writing required teachers to consider the hesitancy in young students—students who had to take chances in order to learn—and the social norms against which those children would be measured. LaBrant concludes, though, “we have in our schools too careless handling of corrections, and too unvarying requirements for oral composition” (129). Carelessness and rigidity were qualities in teaching that LaBrant could never tolerate, ever.
Since many progressive ideas were challenged by the educational establishment, LaBrant began anticipating her detractors. Despite decades of championing her progressive methodologies, LaBrant recognized that “thousands of teachers seem to resent or refuse to recognize change” (“New Bottles” 341). In fact, she knew that students still had “done everything but the writing of many complete papers” (“Writing Is Learned by Writing” 417). She maintained her refrains, though, arguing for having students learn to write by writing, with a teacher there to guide them through the polishing of meaning and form. Students and teachers would find time to implement LaBrant’s methodologies when the grammar exercises were put aside—when the ineffective was abandoned. LaBrant recognized that the Deweyan “learning by doing” was too simplistic by itself, as did Dewey and most progressives; teaching writing and the writing act itself were far too complicated to be undirected. As a consequence, LaBrant turned to the experimental nature of both writing and teach88
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ing writing. First, writing teachers had to be writers themselves. “[T]he teacher should know the agony of putting words on paper [since] . . . [w]riting is hard work,” LaBrant says (“Inducing Students to Write” 71). Teachers then must create an environment of fair and sincere evaluation of student writing in the classroom; writing that is “scorned or ridiculed or ignored” leaves students unmotivated (73). If the teacher was prepared and the students were willing, or even eager, LaBrant recognized the need for prewriting strategies, here suggesting those supported by Hillocks some thirty years later: “[C]onversation and discussion are frequently the best preliminary to writing,” she says (73). Further she emphasized time, ownership, and response—as Atwell did in the 1980s during a renaissance of free reading and writing instruction at the middle school level. LaBrant then began to explain classroom practices more fully—suggesting that grammar exercises be set aside, that time be allowed for prewriting, that revision be preceded by reading papers aloud in class. While many progressives suffered criticism for withholding details as they avoided prescribing, as they avoided limiting instructional practices— Dewey experienced such criticism, for example— LaBrant saw that teachers wanted guidelines, wanted detailed lesson plans, and she was willing to offer sketches, although she always emphasized the flexibility, the flux inherent in both teaching and learning. She maintained throughout, however, an attitude that teachers had to discover it all for themselves first, then implement; she was quick to tell teachers who appeared incompetent to quit teaching until they mastered the vast amount of understanding and skills that she felt were essential. As the McCarthy era drew to a close, LaBrant began to hear a criticism that sounds familiar today—the failure of education. She writes, “Suddenly the public believes we have not taught reading and writing well enough” (“As of Now” 299). Her conclusion was that traditional methods had indeed failed, although the conservative majority of society was blaming John Dewey and liberal educators. As LaBrant noted throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, educators had actually changed little; progressive methodologies were still rare across the US. LaBrant on several occasions had shown that the weaknesses identified had developed while under the most traditional systems. Again, she calls for a focus on the content of student writing:
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I would want my students to recognize the difference between fact and judgment; between feeling and demonstrable truth. I would want them to understand the fallacy of the yes-no, black-white statement or inference; the dangers of overgeneralizing; the multiple meanings of words. (301)
As the McCarthy era drew to a close, LaBrant began to hear a criticism that sounds familiar today—the failure of education. In short, LaBrant sought ultimately through writing instruction the self-actualized literate adult, the sophisticated thinker. She never wavered in her demand that writing instruction was primarily concerned with making sincere and valuable meaning— not as a means to inculcate a set of arbitrary and misleading rules, rules that were static yet being imposed on a language in flux. Lou LaBrant remained paradoxically rigid in her stance: The writing curriculum had to be openended and child-centered; the content of writing came first, followed by conforming to the conventions; and English teachers had to be master writers, master descriptive grammarians, and historians of the language. It all seemed quite obvious to her, since she personified those qualities that she demanded. LaBrant was one of many who embodied the debates that surround the field of teaching English, and she left writing teachers with one lingering question: Do we want our students drawing blueprints or building houses? The answer is obvious.
Works Cited Atwell, Nancie. In the Middle. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1987. Gerlach, Jeanne Marcum, and Virginia R. Monseau. Missing Chapters: Ten Pioneering Women in NCTE and English Education. Urbana: NCTE, 1991. Hillocks, George Jr. Teaching Writing as Reflective Practice. New York: Teachers College Press, 1995. LaBrant, Lou. “Analysis of Cliches and Abstractions.” English Journal 38.5 (1949): 275–78. ———. “As of Now.” English Journal 48.6 (1959) 295–303. ———. “The Changing Sentence Structure of Children.” The Elementary English Review 11.3 (1934): 59–65, 86. ———. “The Individual and His Writing.” English Journal 39.4 (1950): 185–89. ———. “Inducing Students to Write.” English Journal 44.2 (1955): 70–74, 116. ———. “Language Teaching in a Changing World.” The Elementary English Review 20.3 (1943): 93–97. ———. “New Bottles for New Wine.” English Journal 41.7 (1952): 341–47. ———. “The Psychological Basis for Creative Writing.” English Journal 25.4 (1936): 292–301. ———. “Some Implications of Research for the Teaching of Oral and Written Composition.” Education in a Period of National Preparedness. Ed. Arthur E. Traxler. American Council on Education Studies, Ser. 1, Reports of Conferences, No. 53. Washington, DC: American Council on Education, 1952. 123–31. ———. “Teaching English: A Choice.” Louisiana English Journal 5.1 (1964): 34–37. ———. “Teaching High-school Students to Write.” English Journal 35.3 (1946): 123–28. ———. Vita: Lou LaBrant. Columbia: The Museum of Education at the University of South Carolina, 1987. ———. “Writing Is Learned by Writing.” Elementary English 30.7 (1953): 417–20. ———. “Writing Is More Than Structure.” English Journal 46.5 (1957): 252–56, 293.
P. L. THOMAS teaches at Woodruff High School, Woodruff, South Carolina.
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