The idea that writing is action is not theoretical in the world of the Army. Army bureaucracy and hierarchy functions in large part as a result of written communication, which often takes place in specified formats. This does not mean that Army writing doesn’t have some fluidity or that writers are not perceived as having agency—Erin Hadlock and Sue Doe’s research of Army genres has demonstrated the opposite, and is complemented by Corrine Hinton’s ethnographic work with Marines and their writing experiences. But what it does mean is that my participants were hopeful of producing writers whose mastery of clarity and concision had reached an analytical level and a level of familiarity with Army genres that they could manipulate constrained writing opportunities in order to advance their leadership interests effectively. This is an advanced skill set for younger writers, and cannot realistically be learned without a significant degree of contextualized writing experience, something students can’t actually attain until they have graduated. Instructors filled this gap between students’ status as
Army novices and their need for sophisticated communication by relying significantly on their own writing histories as Army officers. Their personal stories, written artifacts, and input for revision was a constant feature of classroom writing instruction.
For this reason, instructors rarely described their processes or pedagogy without connecting it to their own Army experiences. Features of Army life and leadership were often given as grounds for the design of writing assignments. The team mindset of the Army was recalled to some degree in almost every assignment that was described to me. The assumption was that since the Army is a team, writing is a team activity:
As a soldier I’ve never had to do my own work, it was always, “How well am I bringing a team together, to get a team to do the work?” We wanted to focus on a little taste of what it’s like to write a paper with everyone else when everyone has their own agendas and timelines and writing styles, and then how do you bring it all together and merge everything so that the writing flows, so that it’s not apparent that this paragraph was written by one person and this paragraph is written by another person, etc. (LTC Rubin)
Composition instructors rarely brave the notion of true “team writing” as this instructor describes, for the very reason that individual students have their own “agendas, timelines, and writing styles.” We generally do not like to impose students’ differences on each other. This instructor’s pedagogy assumed that the problems inherent in group writing were the same problems inherent in other team challenges, and therefore students should and could find ways to negotiate their differences to work together. The process inherent in having to negotiate that group project was important grounding for the “real life” of the Army. That pedagogical decision
was made from recalling how he had been evaluated as a leader, and how he had experienced the need for effective group work during his career.
The assumption inherent in connecting work place evaluation with writing assignment design is that writing is an activity, and that it is subject to the same situational realities that other activities are subject to. Those “situational realities” of writing as an activity included both positive and negative aspects. Instructors recalled the team mentality of the Army both as a directive for how pedagogy should be practiced (“I need to have them work in teams as preparation for all the teamwork they will have to do”) but also as a perk of Army life and writing. One of my participants connected the Army team mentality to his writing pedagogy this way: “The Army is all about a team. We never do things alone. You’ve always got a buddy. So I’m a big fan of group writing assignments” (LTC Armstrong).
Instructors didn’t fail to mention some of the same problems with having students write together that composition instructors notice, but ROTC instructors solve these pedagogical problems in different ways. Because the ROTC program is seen as “practice” or “transition” from student life to the world of being a second lieutenant, assessment is far more holistic and consequences—both positive and negative—are more complex. For example, one instructor said that when a group had a student fail to do their part in a writing assignment, he warned the other group members not to let the grade slip due to one person’s negligence. In effect, the students that wanted the project to be a success would have to do more than their fair share. “There’s always evaluation time,” the instructor said, laughingly. “It’s okay to be honest on evaluations.” (Rubin). Instructors frequently pointed out that part of their job was to be a first “commander” and “evaluator” for students, and that that evaluation included written work but was never
Part of the writing pedagogy of the group project introduces the real-world problems of teams: at times team members can shift their responsibilities and their roles, and at times they can’t. At times, working harder goes unacknowledged, and at times it doesn’t. Ultimately, instructors saw the way that group writing assignments played out to be both a learning opportunity for cadets about real-world leadership problems, and also an opportunity for them to get to know their cadets better and assess who could be given other leadership roles in the program. One instructor even pointed out that part of the value of group writing was that it taught students to deal pragmatically with the fact that, while Army life requires a lot of writing, not everyone is good at it. In group writing projects, students can contribute to the project in a way that leverages their particular skills. He argued that some students are more skilled at
understanding structure, some are more skilled at condensing research, some are more skilled at putting the brief together (LTC Parks). The goal of group work is to bring out a group’s internal direction, character, and energy. The expectation that this can be done through collaborative writing work is an indication of how important an activity writing is considered to be, and how communication heavy the Army work environment is:
We really wanted to find a way to go toward more collaborative thinking [for the students]. One of the things I complain about is the teaching [styles that emphasize] to regurgitate what you know, and don’t cheat and don’t look at your partner…we wanted to better enable that collaborative group thinking that reflects how they’re going to work in civilian world or military world. (LTC Rubin)
The use of group writing as an important element of ROTC instructor writing pedagogy emphasizes the development of horizontal teamwork/community, not just vertical instruction. When LTC Rubin states that a team has to “do the work,” that he’s been tasked with overseeing,
his job is not to tell others exactly how to do something as much as it is to “bring a group together” that can figure out how to do a task. The Army is hierarchical, but like other complex organizations (corporations, governments) that hierarchy is reliant on horizontal teams in order to function. Unlike other complex organizations, writing is considered a task that teaches group cohesion and group writing practice is an important way that groups learn to problem-solve together.
While pedagogy that uses group writing is often described as “helping students learn to work together,” or helping students to see other perspectives in their writing, or even as helping students with weaker skills to have exposure to the work of students with stronger skills, Army writing pedagogy is more intentional when it comes to the development of a group identity. Kevin Roozen has pointed out that disciplinary writing is “not so much about using a particular set of skills as it is about becoming a particular kind of person,” and that this means both developing an identity “in relation to the interests, beliefs, and values” of the community but also “understanding the possibilities for selfhood available” within the community (50-51). Clifford Geertz has also described this same interrelation between the group and the self: there are “patterns of meaning” that are culturally significant and can feel like a “group mind,” (as V. William Balthrop calls it) but that “group mind” is a socialized pattern that allows individuals to function together in a meaningful way (The Interpretation of Cultures, 89). It is not “groupthink” as much as it is a social group’s reservoir of interpretation. There are variations allowed for individual preferences or idiosyncrasies, but the overall pattern of behavior is still intact because the individuals impute the same general meaning to the activity.
It is apparent from my participants’ comments that the development of a group identity for Army individuals is important, and there is no activity that isn’t a pedagogical opportunity for
development of the group identity. It isn’t necessary that each member of a group do the same thing, but it is necessary for the group to achieve the end goal of writing the assignment together. This aspect of Army writing pedagogy assumes that writing is an activity that develops identity as much and in the same way as other activities, and also underscores the way that writing is understood as involving the identities of individuals. When LTC Rubin complains that writing assignments shouldn’t include “regurgitation” of what the instructor thinks, and that “looking at your partner” should not be considered cheating, he is arguing for a writing pedagogy that aims to integrate individuals into a pattern of group work that reflects the Army’s approach to all activities, not just writing.