Focusing
I think I loathe being one of the last in the group to post (even though it's only Sunday) because I read everyone's posts and then want to respond to so many different topics. I will try to focus.
When I read Gilles, I wasn't as offended by his ideas as Faith apparently was. Yes, he was sometimes vague and yes, some of his points were only shakily supported at best (I'm still having trouble figuring out how, precisely, an ideal composition program " 'serves' its students, the faculty throughout campus, the institution itself, and the larger democratic society" (9)). However, I find many of his points about the goals of composition courses to be fairly commonsensical and practical, such as his assertion that comp courses "should provide students with the opportunity to practice the craft of writing" (5), for only with "regular, informal practice" will they begin to develop smoothness and "flow" in their writing. I think Gilles is saying that we don't have to teach comp courses as service courses in the sense that we are to provide a fix-it service for students, telling them what's wrong about their writing and then sending them on their way; rather, we can teach comp courses as service classes in the sense that we provide them with opportunities to practice and learn things that will help them develop as writers and thinkers, whether those "things" are conventions, drafting techniques, revision strategies, idea formulation activities, etc. I certainly don't think that providing a valuable educational service to students means you have to revert back to the banking concept of education, as Faith fears.
I was actually more irritated by Geoffrey Chase's "Letter to New Composition Teachers" than by Gilles' article. In his letter, seemingly written to encourage new composition teachers to "think beyond the borders of their classes" (12) and recognize that the goal of "helping students become better writers" is "too broad and too vague" (13). Well, Chase's ideas struck me as vague and unsupported;he mentioned ideas like the need to understand curriculum relationships, how teachers must become part of two "communities" (scholars and teachers), and how "developing a more connected, coherent vision" of his teaching contributed to the "educational enterprise" (13). But he doesn't give any specifics about these ideas. He mentions how engineering students wrote better when writing engineering-related assignments and that the same idea should be applied in comp classes. Well, how? They're in English class writing English-related assignments. He just keeps mentioning expectations, goals, answers, and relationships without ever clearly iterating the terms of those terms. I wasn't inspired.
And finally: Amy, I could write for days in response to your question about how we all view high school English courses, but for now, here's what I know:
1. Despite being a straight-A student my entire life, I didn't write a true academic paper until English professors taught me how to do so during my sophomore year of college.
2. When I was a teacher (sorry, Faith), many of my high school juniors and seniors in my "regular" classes didn't even know how to write a paper that contained any sort of argument, much less a thesis. My AP students knew how, but many of them needed a great deal of coaxing to feel "okay" about abandoning the 5-paragraph form they had been taught for so many years.
3. I'm tired now, but I will think more about this discussion for future posts.
When I read Gilles, I wasn't as offended by his ideas as Faith apparently was. Yes, he was sometimes vague and yes, some of his points were only shakily supported at best (I'm still having trouble figuring out how, precisely, an ideal composition program " 'serves' its students, the faculty throughout campus, the institution itself, and the larger democratic society" (9)). However, I find many of his points about the goals of composition courses to be fairly commonsensical and practical, such as his assertion that comp courses "should provide students with the opportunity to practice the craft of writing" (5), for only with "regular, informal practice" will they begin to develop smoothness and "flow" in their writing. I think Gilles is saying that we don't have to teach comp courses as service courses in the sense that we are to provide a fix-it service for students, telling them what's wrong about their writing and then sending them on their way; rather, we can teach comp courses as service classes in the sense that we provide them with opportunities to practice and learn things that will help them develop as writers and thinkers, whether those "things" are conventions, drafting techniques, revision strategies, idea formulation activities, etc. I certainly don't think that providing a valuable educational service to students means you have to revert back to the banking concept of education, as Faith fears.
I was actually more irritated by Geoffrey Chase's "Letter to New Composition Teachers" than by Gilles' article. In his letter, seemingly written to encourage new composition teachers to "think beyond the borders of their classes" (12) and recognize that the goal of "helping students become better writers" is "too broad and too vague" (13). Well, Chase's ideas struck me as vague and unsupported;he mentioned ideas like the need to understand curriculum relationships, how teachers must become part of two "communities" (scholars and teachers), and how "developing a more connected, coherent vision" of his teaching contributed to the "educational enterprise" (13). But he doesn't give any specifics about these ideas. He mentions how engineering students wrote better when writing engineering-related assignments and that the same idea should be applied in comp classes. Well, how? They're in English class writing English-related assignments. He just keeps mentioning expectations, goals, answers, and relationships without ever clearly iterating the terms of those terms. I wasn't inspired.
And finally: Amy, I could write for days in response to your question about how we all view high school English courses, but for now, here's what I know:
1. Despite being a straight-A student my entire life, I didn't write a true academic paper until English professors taught me how to do so during my sophomore year of college.
2. When I was a teacher (sorry, Faith), many of my high school juniors and seniors in my "regular" classes didn't even know how to write a paper that contained any sort of argument, much less a thesis. My AP students knew how, but many of them needed a great deal of coaxing to feel "okay" about abandoning the 5-paragraph form they had been taught for so many years.
3. I'm tired now, but I will think more about this discussion for future posts.
posted by K. | 10:12 PM
1 Comments:
I think one of the things that he is saying is that composition teachers might want to consider talking to professors in other departments and finding out what sort of writing students have to do in those other disciplines. Then, I think he is advocating what some would call "double-dipping" where students work on the same writing in more than one class but receive credit for it in both classes. Specifically, "[s]tudents worked on projects in other classes, wrote reports on those projects fo rmy class, revised the reports further, and then turned them in again for the class in which they were doing the project" (13). I think this is a very provacative idea. Usually professors frown on this idea, but I really think Chase means we should intentionally form learning communities across disciplines. This concept is reflected in his statement, "[t]eaching is fundamentally about community, about the relationships between individuals and the larger groups of which they are a part. In terms of composition, this means helping students write more effectively so that they become more fully contributing members of the communities in which they live and work" (15). This reminds me of Vico who thought that students must be educated to become members of the "sensus communis."
If we put Chase's idea into practice, it has the potential to make education much more holistic. Further, if we require students to do writing in and of service to the communities where they live, then we might really begin to approach the traditonal goals and mission of a liberal education.
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