Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century more or less presents two views of composition pedagogy using the articles of other authors; one from the 80’s and another which is more contemporary. What I found to be the most interesting part of this was the actual concepts and how they differ from past to present, and what I find to be true not only in my own classroom but in others.
I definitely agree with the author that too often the ends (product) and not the means (process) is prized. But I’ve been in classes that have allowed for the writing process to unfold with certain things built in to the class, such as portfolio options and re-write options. In these classes, each attempt at writing was a training event for the writer to learn something to use the next time they sat down to write. We’d bring our drafts in to class, get feedback, and shuffle away to our computers and return to our papers again and again. These experiences created a creative and scholastic freedom in the feeling of being allowed to try again. These drafts were not graded on the whole; the feedback was simply given by peers, and occasionally by the teacher. Only the final portfolio was graded. The teacher required students to include all major drafts of the paper, from brainstorming sheets to final product. This taught us two important things: first, it forced me to look at the evolution of my paper because I had to keep all of my drafts. These drafts were literal mile-markers of my writing process. Secondly, it allowed me the freedom to try new things without the pressure of a grade associated with it. If an experiment failed, then it was corrected, and that was the end of it. I think too often students play it safe because a grade is riding on the line, when if they would step outside of the 5 paragraph essay they might find a whole new talent, thought, or conclusion. But if they knew that they had chances to resubmit their work, they might be more likely to try new things and think in new ways without fear of penalty.
My initial reaction to What Are English Majors For? was the general impression that the authors used a discussion of the state of the English department as a forum for espousing their ideas on college curriculum. The general feeling I got from this article was that the college Freshman cannot survive on composition alone – that literature, rhetoric, and English were other things that students needed for their ‘English’ education to be complete. Certainly the authors discuss the decline of English as a major in favor of more specific subjects – such as speech. But there seems to be something lacking, like a solution to the problem. The consideration of curriculum isn’t likely to make people jump on the English bandwagon. Yes, there’s been a decline because of social changes. When society changes so, too, must the University. I agree that English on the whole is undervalued, and it will continue to be marginalized. Education is no longer just for the wealthy intellectual men of well-to-do families. Because of the economic diversity of students today, the University must respond in ways that will make English relevant to a society that is becoming more vocationally minded with every day.
In the article the following questions are posed: “‘What are we trying to teach?...What do we want our students to know and be able to do at the end of a course?’” Answering these questions will act as the first step towards becoming relevant in a student’s life. But the tricky thing is the questions that those answers will spawn. Cut off one head and three more will grow, but plunge your sword into the heart and you kill the source – so it is with questions of pedagogy. If we want English to become more relevant to our Freshman, we must seek the heart – the reason why it is not.
Such are my ponderings of the reading.