Reflection: Composition and What We Need To Know

The running trend in my growth on the subject of composition seems to be consider all the arguments and sit somewhere in the middle. At some point, it all starts to feel like semantics and point of view; I believe that a heuristic is closer to scientific than humanistic, but how can I argue against someone who points out a heuristic that isn't applicable to every situation? Doesn't that necessarily undermine the universal nature of the heuristic and therefore the scientific nature of it? Does that even matter in the end?

Part of me feels a comfort in the idea that there are concrete structures and conventions that a student can be taught that will outright make them better at composition. It is simple and straightforward; I teach you this and now you can do that. That comfort is eroded, however, by the looming shadow of variability, that little devil on the shoulder that constantly chirps "but what about...?"

• But what about the student who doesn't write expressively?
• But what about the different social origins of even one class of students?
• But what about the heuristic that has variable success among students?
• But what about the never-ending "but what about" comments you can come up with?

It is apparent that teaching is a malleable ball of good intentions that needs to be general enough to not exclude any students but somehow specific enough to push the students to the next level of writing. It is the general, outer-directed, humanistic side that points out the social variance and community aspects of writing while it is the specific, inner-directed, scientific side that prays for something universal to teach all students a useful skill regardless of the social context they bring.