To the Editor:
The exchange between Teller, Shearer Stewart, and Hesse about writing pedagogy gave me déjà vu (“Are We Teaching Composition All Wrong?” The Chronicle, October 3, 2016), (“No, We’re Not Teaching Composition ‘All Wrong’,” The Chronicle, November 21, 2016), (“We Know What Works in Teaching Composition,” The Chronicle, January 3). It’s worth noting some patterns among Chronicle critics of writing instruction.
Chronicle critics question course outcomes. In 2009, Prince argued that the WPA outcomes “load composition/rhetoric with an elaborate vocabulary... [and so] rhetorical knowledge trumps content knowledge.” Prince claimed that ”the omissions are also glaring... grammar, imitation, preìcis writing, explication, recitation, reading great works in their entirety — have quietly dropped from view.”
In 2009, Scheck claimed that “composition books talk around the subject; they never get at the heart of it.” Scheck admits that he “can’t recall knowing a writer who did the things printed in composition books.” The research-based textbooks of the discipline are devalued.
Chronicle critics question research. In 2008, Bauerlein claimed that composition has no “workable strategy for building respect for composition across the campus... A little less talk about racism, sexuality, and injustice, and a little more about productivity and workplaces, would serve the field.” According to Bauerlein: Research in writing should “make students better business communicators, more efficient readers and writers, more productive workers.”
Chronicle critics offer faulty visions for the course. Prince claimed that writing courses “should be about what all other college courses are about — not writing itself, but a learnable body of information.” Joseph Teller used hyperbole: His students “just might leave my class able to write a sentence.” Neither Prince nor Teller want the course that reflects what decades of intellectual work in rhetoric have created.
Chronicle critics question whether the course should exist. Scheck claimed that “I’m generally confident that writing is a craft that can be learned. I grow less confident that it is a craft that can be taught.” And yet he collected a paycheck for teaching it. Many institutions employ the underprepared to teach writing. Some of these underprepared publish their reflections in The Chronicle.
Chronicle critics volunteer that they lack expertise in the teaching of writing. Adams (2009) laments that “I participated in academic fraud:... teaching first-year composition.” Art Scheck confesses that “I feel like a fraud and worry that everything I tell students about writing is a lie wrapped in academic double talk.” Scheck admits that his “biggest problem with teaching composition” is that he has “no idea where good sentences come from.”
Across the United States, hundreds of faculty teach writing without passion or knowledge. Some elect to write about the experience for The Chronicle. Why does The Chronicle elect to publish their words?
David Beard
Associate Professor of Rhetoric
University of Minnesota at Duluth