Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository

eflecting writing and those questions that need to be put to it
is the second thing Jones deems crucial for the founding of a
“Deweyan” writing course. This second requirement acknowledges
the “influence of language” and is supposed to “teach students
to be cognizant of the tremendous effect of language upon
thought” (92). For Jones, this is done through peer response,
explaining:
A Deweyan instructor would use peer response to
encourage student writers and their responders to
realize their immersion in these large and small
discursive currents. […][W]hen a writer and a
responder disagree, they may risk being pulled under
if they fail to realize the danger of crossing
discursive riptides. A Deweyan instructor would
encourage students to consider whether a contentious
counterstatement in analytical responding, for
example, represents more than “just someone else’s
opinion.” (93)
It would seem that, for Jones, this peer response is almost more
significant for would-be “Deweyan instructors” who would urge
their students to undertake that process of “reconstructive
collaboration.” The “contentious counterstatements” offered by
student’s peers can represent, perhaps more immediately,
evidence of the same “cultural assumptions,” as one student’s
“truth” does not represent another’s, thus the response group
witnessing those “discursive riptides” first hand. While Jones’
essay for JAC is not what I would call “heavy” research, not
unlike his other explications of the significance of Dewey’s
philosophy to the field of composition and rhetoric, throughout
it he does reference his experiences from “a process-oriented
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