Because Marilyn went to the trouble of printing Stanley Fish's blog entry and creating an in-class exercise for us, and because we ran out of time to do it in class, I decided to make it my topic for this week's blog. Here are her questions:
1) What is the premise of Fish's blog,"What Should Colleges Teach?"?
2) Does his argument persuade you? Why?
3) Does his final sentence challenge your pedagogy?
Quite simply, Fish's blog entry says that if the title of a class is "Composition," the curriculum for that class should be composition-oriented. He was appalled when, while grading his graduate students' papers, he noticed that most couldn't construct a proper sentence to save their lives. He investigated the causes of this phenomena (because these students were composition teachers) and discovered that their classes were not true composition classes, but classes devoted instead to social studies. Rather than learning the nuts and bolts of the English language, students debated hot-button topics like politics, sexism, racism, etc. When Fish campaigned to change this painfully lacking curriculum, he was shunned and called a reactionary.
I am in Fish's camp because like him, I have been labeled closed-minded, antiquated, and reactionary, and for the exact same reason. I agree that in a composition class, students must learn composition. "Truth in advertising" as Fish put it. Anything else is irrelevant.
My reasoning, like Fish's, is largely anecdotal. I was fortunate (and now grateful) that my Composition 101 class was solely dedicated to composition. My class learned how to write different types of essays, construct proper outlines to manage our essays' organization, and conduct appropriate research. When we discussed controversial subjects, the conversations were relevant to the papers we were writing; we had to learn how to incorporate our heated ideas into our papers in a clear and fair manner. In addition, our teacher gave us a strong working knowledge of grammar and syntax. I truly feel that my teacher, Professor Lewis, expanded the quality of my writing, or at least provided the tools for me to do it myself.
But it seems to me, and perhaps I'm wrong, that my experience was unique. As an undergraduate in numerous writing workshops, I was amazed at the inability of many of my fellow students to write well. I could almost forgive the non-English majors for this, but not my comrades in literature and writing. Their problems composing encompassed more than just grammar and syntax. Coherent thoughts and arguments frequently eluded them. Organization was a four-letter word. How those students passed Comp 101 and made it to the upper 300-400 level classes - Hell, how they graduated high school - was a complete mystery to me. I know I'm not perfect, especially in grammar (I'm sure I've made some errors in this paragraph alone), but what I witnessed was flat-out ridiculous! Where was their Professor Lewis showing them the ropes?
When Fish said, "....students spent much of their time discussing novels, movies, TV shows and essays on a variety of hot-button issues....," I was reminded of my earlier blog post where I ranted about a teacher who used Spongebob to teach English fundamentals. She is still very certain that her way is the right way, and that thinkers like me and Fish are antiquated old farts who stifle education by catering to the "reigning elite" instead of to the students we (or Fish, rather) teach. Maybe this teacher's way is the new composition; among my classmates, I certainly seem to be the lone wolf in the grammar-syntax camp. But I hope that solely using pop-culture to teach budding students the basics is not what passes for scholarly work in this day and age.
I am fond of saying that English is the most important subject because it gives a voice to all the others. Here's some proof: When I was in Careers for English Majors with Dr. Sheidley, our class had to research what kinds of jobs English majors could get. To my surprise, I discovered that the American Bar Association strongly recommends that all aspiring lawyers get their undergraduate degrees in English due to the complex comprehension skills required in order to read, write, and interpret law. The American Medical Association also recommends aspiring doctors to double-major in English and some discipline of science to prepare for medical school. The reason is the same as it is for lawyers; doctors have an inordinate amount of complicated reading and writing to do. But what if these students' composition foundation is built on clay?
My dad always taught me that it is prudent to know at least the fundamentals of every subject imaginable, if for no other reason than to be a well-rounded person. But in composition's case, I think it takes a position of the utmost importance. All students, not just English majors, have to write papers for different schools of study (history, philosophy, psychology, etc.), and I'm certain that if undergraduates don't learn how to write well, they have no chance of succeeding in their chosen disciplines.
Are we English scholars really so proud that we think we don't have to learn the basics first? I would never waltz into the math department and expect to whip out theories like I was Pythagoras or Archimedes without first having a solid foundation to build on. Even now, as someone who is not mathematically inclined, I may not be able to invent new formulas, but I've got Please-Excuse-My-Dear-Aunt-Sally branded onto my heart for all eternity. And believe it or not, the Pythagorean Theorem has proven useful to me on more than one occasion, as has the biochemical structure of DNA, the Spanish alphabet, and the fall of the Roman Empire, okay? My point is that students need to learn the basics first, and then they can sit around and play at being armchair scholars talking about social issues until the cows come home. And Spongebob, as funny as he may be, is not a good English teacher.
Fish finally concludes his blog entry by saying, "Please let it (a curriculum) include a writing course that teaches writing and not everything under the sun. That should be the real core of any curriculum." I, like Fish, don't believe students can have a good education without learning how to write well first. So I say to Fish: "Amen, brother. Preach on."
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