Writing as Inquiry: Some Questions for Teachers

ricula, searching for alternatives the systems of distribution installed in the sixties.' Some institutions have returned required courses guarantee a broad exposure the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Others are beginning view the goal of liberal education as the development of powers, arts, and skills.2 Among the powers being considered for this kind of core is that of inquiry, the ability go beyond the known. Its advocates argue that well-educated persons should be able add the world's store of knowledge. Its opponents contend that basic literacy or acquisition of the known has greater priority in a crowded undergraduate curriculum. They further object that including inquiry would require adding or revising courses, because most existing general education courses primarily try expose students the known, the best that has been thought and said in a given discipline. But these debates overlook the fact that most core curricula already possess courses with potential for helping students develop the power of inquiry-the composition courses. During the last twenty years, a number of theorists have pointed out this potential. Young, Becker, and Pike have shown how the practice of writing can prepare for the discovery of insight.3 Emig has argued for the uniqueness of writing as a way of learning.4 Odell has contended that the ability write sensitively and thoughtfully presupposes the ability formulate and solve problems.5 Booth has stressed that the supreme purpose of rhetoric is not talk someone else into a preconceived view; rather it must be engage in mutual inquiry or exploration, to make each other in symbolic interchange.'6 Flower and Hayes have found that the writer's chief task is define appropriately the rhetorical problem be solved rather than simply arrange ideas in some sort of order.' These views of writing as epistemic suggest that when students raise meaningful questions about incongruities in