Assessing creative writing in a postmodern era

Abstract

How to teach creative writing at school? If the procedures inherited from writing workshops have undoubtedly proved efficient as regards text production, it is also clear that in Switzerland, as elsewhere in Europe and in the Anglo-Saxon world, the present use of evaluation grids with their numerous items prevents secondary school pupils from adopting the stance of an author. Why? Simply because the most innovative and 'literary' texts are always surprising: they are 'different', and could not possibly result from writing guidelines devised only to facilitate a mechanical evaluation itself conceived for the sake of some illusory objectivity... Now, in our postmodern age with its rejection of models, what is more difficult than assessing the quality of creative writing? In our approach we suggest restoring confidence in the teacher, an expert reader if any, who, acting as a publisher, dramaturge or mere aesthete, knows how to take his pupils’ texts seriously, acknowledging their aesthetic value and looking at apparent clumsiness as a possible promise of innovation. The teaching of creative writing lies both in this specific reception of budding works and in the teacher's performative utterances that, then and there, make the pupil a writer.