Writing, Schooling, and Deconstruction

Originally published in 1989, Pam Gilbert presents an intelligent and clear critique of popular assumptions about the teaching of writing and literature. In their stead she proposes alternative positions to reading and writing derived from post-structuralist theories of textuality. Drawing on her long association with the teaching of English in secondary schools, she questions the claim that writing is natural, spontaneous, or original, and reappraises the relationship between writing and speech. She makes a close and detailed examination of a writing classroom of sixteen-year-olds, and explores the confusing and contradictory assumptions that have guided the school writing programme, the student writers, and the English teacher. Her analysis of what it means to ‘read as a teacher’ – constructed from the teacher’s and students’ perceptions of this role – provides a rare discussion of this perplexing aspect of teaching.

Readable and stimulating, Writing, Schooling, and Deconstruction makes post-structuralist argument accessible and relevant to researchers and teachers involved in English education, and will also be of value to those interested in the application of such theories to education in general.