#the pen is mightier...

[shindeagan]

Congratulations, you found ‘The Book of Doom’! That's amazing. And you read it. That wasn't so smart, but still.

Fable 3

[shindeagan]

If you read this book you are doomed. Don't read another line. Not another word, all right? You're still reading, aren't you? What part of 'Don't read another line' do you not understand? Well, it's too late now, you've read it. You're doomed! You never should have read this. And I probably shouldn't have written it, actually.

Fable 3

[compmachines]

"Inventing the University"

1985: David Bartholomae's article is so influential that, if you're reading this blog, you're probably familiar with it already.  If you haven't, go read it now.  Don't worry, I'll wait.  

Back now?  I think we can both agree that it's big, complex, and focused on academic discourse writing itself through students.  The best students can make themselves stand out from the background discourse, but they all must learn to imitate it.

High Point: "The writer continually audits and pushes against a language that would render him 'like everyone else' and mimics the language and interpretive systems of the privileged community" (645).

[compmachines]

"The Language of Exclusion: Writing Instruction at the University"

1985: Mike Rose tracks a depressing history.  Not only are composition teachers under-payed, overworked and under-respected, most of us aren't even teaching in a beneficial way.  The common emphasis on error tabulation and correction (looking at you, SMH "Top Twenty") is an easy way to classify and subjugate students.  The classification of writing as a skill was a defense mechanism for the department, but turned against its teachers.  Rose points out similar problems with the notions of illiteracy, and he caps the article with the claim that these issues will always be with us, so we may as well stop lying to ourselves that they'll improve.

High Point: "A reduction of complexity has a great appeal in institutional decision making, especially in difficult times: a scientific-atomistic approach to language, with its attendant tallies and charts, nicely fits an economic/political decision-making model. When in doubt or when scared or when pressed, count" (552).

[compmachines]

"Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar"

1985: Patrick Hartwell has an elementary-but-crucial point: teaching grammar doesn't help anything.  He breaks the notion of "grammar" down into five categories, and claims that the one we try to teach (number two, if you're counting) is the least helpful to students.  According to Hartwell, most grammar rules are "incantations," ideas incomprehensible to all except those who already know them.

High Point: "At no point in the English curriculum is the question of power more blatantly posed than in the issue of formal grammar instruction" (228).

[compmachines]

"Collaborative Learning and the 'Conversation of Mankind'"

1984: Kenneth Bruffee has an elementary point to make: collaborative learning works, and you should try it.  His reasoning for this is a bit deeper, having to do with discourse communities (quite the hot theoretical item in the mid-to-late-80s) and overlapping knowledge fields.

High Point: "Teachers are defined in this instance as those members of a knowledge community who accept the responsibility for inducting new members into the community" (431).

[compmachines]

"Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories"

1982: James Berlin is biased, and he knows it.  There are four pedagogical theories he says--Neo-Aristotelians, Current Traditionalists, Neo-Platonists, and New Rhetoricians--but the last is best.  His definitions may be reductive, and he may be a little unclear on Aristotelian rhetoric, but it's a useful and clearly written starting place.

High Point: "To teach writing is to argue for a version of reality, and the best way of knowing and communicating it" (256).

[compmachines]

"Diving In: An Introduction to Basic Writing"

1976: Mina Shaughnessy, in her work with basic writers at the City College of New York, went through a series of four stages, which she sets out here.  The stages, without translation or elaboration, are "Guarding the Tower," "Converting the Natives," "Sounding the Depths," and finally, "Diving In."  The article should be read outside of BW circles, of course; the four stages could be experienced by any writing teacher.

High Point: "But by underestimating the sophistication of our students and by ignoring the complexity of the tasks we set before them, we have failed to locate in precise ways where to begin and what follows what" (317).