Lerner, Neal. The Idea of a Writing Laboratory.

Singh-Corcoran, Nathalie

LERNER, NEAL. THE IDEA OF A WRITING LABORATORY. CARBONDALE: SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UP, 2009. (272 PP., PAPERBACK, $35)

Neal Lerner's new book, The Idea of a Writing Laboratory, surprised me. As a long-time reader of Lerner's writing center scholarship, I had expected something more akin to his other historical pieces such as "Searching for Robert Moore" (Writing Center Journal) or "Time Warp: Historical Representations of Writing Centers" (Writing Center Director's Resource Book). In these articles, Lerner identifies the political, economic, and educational forces that affect writing centers and the teaching of writing, and he shows us that our writing center past is much more complex, layered, and nuanced than we might assume.

The Idea of a Writing Laboratory is also a history, and it touches on the same themes and issues as his previous work, but it does and is something more. Lerner's Idea is a book about teaching writing within writing centers, within the composition classroom, and within the sciences. It's a book about identifying common ground, crossing disciplinary boundaries, and realizing the value of experiential learning.

The title for his new book is a deliberate nod to Stephen North's highly influential College English article, "The Idea of a Writing Center." In his piece, North rejects the concept of a writing lab or clinic because of its association with skills, drills, and remediation. He asks that we instead embrace another idea: a student centered, better-writer-creating, writing center. Lerner, however, reclaims the laboratory and asserts that when we moved towards a writing center and away from a writing laboratory, we lost the pedagogical ideals that laboratories represent: experimentation and experiential, situated learning. This however, is not Lerner's only assertion. He believes, and compellingly argues, that laboratory methods for writing instruction have an appeal beyond the walls of the writing center.

In the first six chapters of Lerner's Idea, he knits together several histories, moving back and forth between writing labs, science labs, and science and composition curricular reform movements. Chapter 1--"The Secret Origin of Writing Centers"--is an attempt to trace the first writing center. Lerner identifies several contenders, including the 1922 Dalton Laboratory Plan, a design for a student-centered, self-paced pedagogy that "appealed to students' interests and supported students' autonomy" (18); he finds even earlier evidence of lab methods in educational literature from the late 1800s. While he does not identify the locus, he does discover that centers, labs, and lab methods followed boom and bust periods that coincided with the push and pull of equity (e.g. open admission) and excellence (e.g. admission standards) and that writing labs were difficult to sustain because they put a drain on human resources.

In Chapter 2--"Writing in the Science Laboratory: Opportunities Lost"--he draws interesting parallels between histories of teaching writing in a science lab and teaching in a writing lab. He explains that while writing to learn, in the form of a lab report or a scientific article, was an impetus in the science classroom, it did not have wide appeal. Science instructors, like their composition instructor cohorts, were overworked and underpaid. Even as writing assignments like the lab report became more common, students were not being asked to demonstrate their discovery of knowledge, only to write out their experiments and record their observations.

Subsequent chapters, namely Chapter 4, "The Two Poles of Writing Lab History: Minnesota and Dartmouth" and Chapter 6, "Drawing to Learn Science: Lessons from Agassiz," serve as illustrations of points he raises earlier: writing or drawing in the sciences and lab methods of instruction have the potential to be generative and transformative for learners, but learning is often reduced to skills-and-drills instruction, and writing is only used to show a mastery of content.

Of all the chapters that provide a historical overview, I found Chapter 5--"Project English and the Quest for Federal Funding"--the most problematic. It describes a little known and defunct federal funding program in the humanities--Project English--that was designed to improve curriculum and teaching methods. The funding was not designated for other pertinent issues such as improving the working conditions of composition instructors. Several institutions received funding and produced tests, audio-visual materials that emphasized grammar, and curricula that stressed World, American, and British literature. But Project English did not lead to substantive reform, and the program eventually died.

My assessment of Chapter 5 as problematic has nothing to do with its content but rather with its placement. Prior to "Project English," I had gotten used to the rhythm of Lerner's Idea and had come to anticipate the explicit parallels he draws between themes in each chapter. Chapter 5 does illustrate an idea that is pertinent to Lerner's larger discussion: major curricular change requires resources, but funding alone does not lead to significant change. However, the chapter isn't as neatly connected as the content that comes before and after it.

Some of the most exciting and inspiring material comes in the latter parts of The Idea of a Writing Laboratory. Here the lab ideal is brought to light through an examination of the present and a look toward future possibilities. Lerner shows readers that laboratory methods of instruction within and outside of the writing center can foster deep learning. In Chapter 7--"The Lab in Theory: From Mental Discipline to Situated Learning"--he identifies two theories that have affected the teaching of writing and the teaching of science. Mental discipline emphasizes exercising the mind; through memorization, recitation and repetition, one can acquire knowledge. Situated learning emphasizes the knowledge gained through an active, hands-on, experiential, real-world curriculum, one that encourages students to observe, to play, to experiment, to ask questions, and to test and extend the limits of their knowledge.

Lerner makes it clear that within the writing center, within the writing classroom, and within the sciences, the push and pull between mental discipline and situated learning has deep roots. In previous chapters, he offers readers a glimpse of both theories in practice but suggests that mental discipline often takes precedence--even within our Post-Process composition classrooms (e.g. teaching the modes of writing). In Chapter 8--"The Laboratory in Practice: A Study of a Biological Engineering Class"--he shows us a version of a lab that emphasizes situated learning. He follows two students in "Laboratory Fundamentals of Biological Engineering," a class at MIT that introduces students to the "techniques and intellectual framework of biological engineering" (166). The course is also an "introduction to the discursive practices (writing, speaking, visualizing) of professionals in that field" (166). The two students he follows, Maxine and Noel, share their writing and describe their experiences with various assignments that ask them to think, write, and talk like a biological engineer. During the course, the students are not passive recipients of a prescribed curriculum but rather active knowledge makers who engage "in research and discursive tasks common to professionals in the field" (115), practice real disciplinary problem solving, and consult and collabo with professional members of the biological engineering community.

In theory, if not in practice, writing centers aim to be writing laboratories as Neal Lerner conceives them. If we look at defining documents like Muriel Harris' "SLATE Statement on the Concept of a Writing Center," we see lab methods endorsed in sections such as "Tutors are Coaches and Collaborators not Teachers," "Each Students' Individual Needs are the Focus of the Tutorial," and "Experimentation and Practice are Endorsed." The Idea of a Writing Laboratory is not about changing our practice. Nor is it just about exposing the false binary between the writing center as concept and the writing lab as concept; rather, it is a book about teaching writing more broadly. As Lerner states at the beginning of his ambitious work, it's about how "the teaching of writing and the teaching of science can find common ground in the idea of a writing laboratory" (6).

Lerner does something that few writing center scholars have thus far accomplished: The book responds to the charge regarding the wider appeal of writing center scholarship. Many of us believe writing center praxis is relevant to composition studies as a whole, but few of our publications have reached beyond our community. And truthfully, when we write, we most often write for each other. The Idea of a Writing Laboratory has broad appeal and belongs in the hands of many: WPAs, writing center directors, WAC coordinators, composition instructors, teachers in the sciences, and really anyone who is involved in the teaching of writing across college and university campuses.

Works Cited

Harris, Muriel. "SLATE Statement on the Concept of a Writing Center." International Writing Centers Association. Web. 20 Jan 2010.

Lerner, Neal. "Searching for Robert Moore." Writing Center Journal 22.1 (2001): 9-32. Print.

--. "Time Warp: Historical Representations of Writing Centers." The Writing Center Director's Resource Book. Ed. Christina Murphy and Bryon L. Stay. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006. 3-12. Print.

North, Stephen. "The Idea of a Writing Center." College English 46 (1984): 433-46. Print.

Reviewed by Nathalie Singh-Corcoran

West Virginia University

Morgantown, WV