Linderman seems like an interesting and focused woman. While I truly enjoyed Rebecca’s presentation, I don’t think Erika and I will be going out for beers and time soon; I’ll get to why in a moment. Linderman is concerned with three issues regarding the teaching of writing: she wishes to establish that students have always had difficulty with writing; she doesn’t use literature in composition classes; and she feels that composition should be taught as a system, rather than a process or product; two out of the three of these are good ideas.
The validation of the freshman composition course is a noble endeavor. As Linderman points out, it is often a dumping ground for new teachers and a place where new students find out whether or not they will be continuing toward a post-secondary degree. Liderman states that one of the opinions driving these two previous actions is that the current population of students possesses an extraordinary number of poor writers. As Rebecca proved so clearly, a large number of the population has always been comprised of poor writers; claiming that these students are simply too terrible to teach is not the answer, nor is dumping them on unproven teachers to weed through. The class itself must be altered to meet the needs of the students.
One of the ways Linderman claims composition instruction can be improved is by eliminating literature from the classes. Wow. (it’s a fragment, I know.) Her reasoning seems to make sense; students need to master writing before they are introduced to literary analysis, but what are they going to talk and write about? Now I know what was said in class; they read wonderfully crafted essays and beautifully written peer work. I love reading, and I love writing, and I would fall on my pencil if all I had to read were these dry, nonfiction deserts of fun. I can only imagine the horror a freshman, who has none of the love for reading and writing I have, going through a class with nothing enjoyable to read.
Linderman’s other solution is an obvious one; find a middle ground between Elbow and Bartholomae. Linderman’s “system” works by maintaining a balance between personal expression and academic rule. For example, rather than focusing only on “forms” and “’correctness’” at the word or sentence level,” or looking at the “most important text is students writing,” Linderman states that “’good writing’ requires making effective choices in juggling demands of task, language, rhetoric, and audience.” It is this idea of “juggling” that makes Linderman’s idea sound appealing to me. Rather than an either/or system, she enables her classes to pick the best from either side to fit their needs.
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Thanks Tony, for your comments. When I worked at a bookstore a few years ago, I marveled that so many people came in deliberately to buy nonfiction of their own free will. I just couldn’t imagine spending the time when there were so many good novels to enjoy. I met my husband in the bookstore when he came in to buy books on science and architecture and missile systems. A blue-collar worker who didn’t go to college, he spent most of his book dollars to educate himself. He reads every book carefully and, unlike me, remembers everything he reads. He has introduced me to essays and writers I would never have ventured near, and I have discovered pleasure in sources as disparate as Richard Feynman’s physics talks and Tom and Ray Magliozzi’s Car Talk clatter.
ReplyDeleteWhen I read Lindemann’s argument, I realized that we do a disservice to students when we only introduce them to one type of writing without considering other possibilities, especially for those students who don’t intend to major in English. Not all nonfiction is dry as dust, so we are challenged to choose pieces that have classroom value in different ways, as a means of examining various rhetorical situations.