A Mystifying History...Tasker and Holt-Underwood's "Feminist Research Methodologies in Historic Rhetoric and Composition"

The first thing I learned in picking up this article was how much I have yet to learn. I felt buried in the terminology that was used to describe various research practices. Even now after looking up historiography I am not certain exactly how the text is meant to be understood in its use of the word. I fear that I am not well versed in research methodologies.

I will choose then one of the points that I am sure I understood from the text. I found the question of how best to anthologize female writers an interesting one, in part because I have taken issue with what seems a bizarre abberration within the American Literature textbook that I use here at Peyton High. In this textbook, one encounters women in nearly every chapter, beginning with Anne Bradstreet and continuing in various quantities and qualities throughout the text. However, in an otherwise historically organized text, the chapters covering 19th Century Literature are devoid of female writers so that all the writers considered by the editors to be major enough for inclusion in a highschool text can be gathered in a single half chapter that stretches from Dickinson through the turn of the century, with a single exception for Willa Cather's "A Wagner Matinee."

I really detest this arrangment in this particular text. It removes the women from their context, deprives them of their rightful place among their peers and movements, and makes it seem, that the only way they would be included is to have a special chapter for women. As if, without that "female chapter" they wouldn't make the cut. In an otherwise historically based text, and in a year long survey of American Literature, I feel the arrangement is inappropriate. I have, as I have the liberty to do, taken the option of reinserting the women into their contexts and places, emphasizing all they accomplished and discussing their ideas in concert with the male thinkers of the time as equals. Even if some of these women (Emily Dickinson) for example were removed from their time by various circumstances as later discoveries, they were writing at the time and bring a new and important perspective to American thought/literature in their various periods. In discussing American Romanticism for example it would be criminal to leave Emily Dickinson out or to treat her as a separate artifact.

I recognize the role of anthologies made up entirely of female writers for courses that focus on the female writer, or as one of several texts within a survey course to provide a balancing feminine perspective to the dominant male discourse. However, the segregation of women into a room of their own within a survey course of the type I teach reflects all the evils implied by my very conscious use of segregation. To separate women writers (or rhetors) into their own space within an otherwise historical course seems to me to marginalize their contribution to their specific time and context, and to inihibit a full understanding of their achievement.

Oops! There it is..."Peer Review From the Students' Perspective: Invaluable or Invalid?"

This article seemed far more practical than the first.  

While I would not have had the data - or any data - to back me up before reading this article, I could certainly have argued for the claims made by Brammer and Rees based upon my own experience.

It was only later in college that I learned that peer review was even supposed to be something more than grammar, mechanics, and spellchecking.  And only later still, in classes provided by Garfield Re2 School District after I started teaching there (and later here at gradschool in one of Professor Morales' workshops) that I felt I had learned how I could really contribute to someone else's paper through the peer review process.  

While I am loquacious to a fault, I think the most effective peer comments I have received - and probably the most effective I have given - have come in the form of simple questions: questions that indicate points where the writing lacks clarity by expressing confusion, for example.  However, I wasn't introduced to this form of commenting until these professional development and graduate courses.  I was one of the students who would have questioned the value of peer reviews unless I was certain the student I was paired with "knew what they were doing" and unfortuantely was probably not of much use to anyone else.  

As Brammar and Rees suggest in their analysis of their results, the difference in these classes was a specfiic forthright discussion of the peer review process, the theory behind it, and the goals it was meant to accomplish.  Without this grounding, and without the practice of those skills required, the process remains opaque, students resent it, and most go along with it only because the teacher is insisting that they do so.  

One of the more interesting activities that we did with the Teacher's as Writers course in Garfield County was to practice our peer revision/workshop techniques by practicing techniques of critical analysis.  When students realize that peer review is based on the same how and why questions that shape critical analysis perhaps a better understanding of both activities will occurr.  Certainly as I discussed how and why a given poet was using the techniques she was using as an prelude to workshopping papers with a small group, I approached the papers with a more critical eye, with my mind prepped to ask analytical questions of the text.

While we treat the writing process as important, perhaps our undervaluing the final product prevents us from fully applying hte critical apparatus at our fingertips to revision and peer review.  "I can't analyze a student paper!" one might say.  "They just don't do enough."  However, until we convince ourselves and our students that the papers are in fact worthy of the same analytical treatment as a major literary text (at least for pedagogical purposes), the value of time spent in peer review will continue to be minimal, and the value of the results shallow, and literally superficial: focused upon the surface elements of grammar, mechanics, spelling, and usage.  

By forefronting these issues in an area as taken for granted as peer review Brammar and Rees succeed in both reaffirming peer review's value and place in composition pedagogy and delineating for us the importance of approaching it thoroughly and thoughfully if it is to achieve its potential as a learning experience for our students.  

"Recopying to Revise: Composition in an Old Key"

I am not certain what to make of Kratzke's loosely organized article.  Half a dirge for the failing standards of literacy in America and half a vague discussion of the role of computers in that failure "Recopying to Revise" left me frustrated with its lack of discussion of its title subject.  While Kratzke dispenses paeans to revision such as "we need to tell our students to slow down and double back, if only for a moment,"  (10) there is very little on the actual process of recopying and its effects or benefits.  

Instead Kratzke bemoans student thoughtlessness, the ease with which computers encourage students to dispense with revision altogether, the loss of literacy as a cognitive activity in world increasingly dominated by the image rather than the word.  

When I encountered the rhetorical question "How can we, without sounding like machine-smashing Luddites, convince our students that something as tedious as recopying can be beneficial to their abilities with technology?", I hope Kratzke might begin addressing recopying to revise in a practical manner, as an applicable classroom strategy.  Normally, when one poses a rhetorical question one answers it.  Ah, but not this time!  Instead, the reader is set up for an answer to one of the key questions of the text only to be diverted to a discussion of "recopying to revise suggests as much about technology in our lives as it does about the writing process"  (10).  To my knowledge Kratzke never returns to the rhetorical question ending the paragraph before.  There is a later reference to telling students that "it is all about the benjamins," but I fail to see how students could be convinced that recopying will drive them towards monetary rewards, except in the vague sense that we use monetary rewards to justify all education.  

When the practical aspects of the technique are finally addressed at the end of the article Kratzke says that "implementing recopying in the classroom might involve exchanging single paragraphs or using a sample paragraph as a common source."  While this cut down approach does make sense in light of all the objections (including the threat to one's job of student boredom with/resentment of teaching techniques which he acknowledges on pg. 19) he raises through various naysayers he's planted in the text, it seems to defeat his principle reason for suggesting the technique: that the act of recopying one's own paper is "revising in the truest sense of the word - to re-see expressions and ideas" and that "it [is] painfully obvious that the recopied version [is] superior to the original."  

While I know from my own experience that recopying the text can lead to the very opportunities for improvement that Kratzke indicates and appreciate his desire to inspire students to true, old fashioned re-vision, in which multiple drafts of a paper are created in order to develop the best possible product, I find this loose, periphrastic discussion of the topic confusing and can only wish that Kratzke had delivered a more practical, practice based discussion of the issue at hand.  

Bartholomae: the Academic Argument

I found Emily's presentation of the sides of the Bartholomae/Elbow debate in her side by side chart very enlightening.  It seems sad that two obviously brilliant men should become so locked in their positions that they fail to see how much ground they share.  

I enjoyed much of what Bartholomae's side of the argument had to offer.  I believe that composition courses (especially at the college level) have the primary responsibility of introducing students to the world of academic argument, that they need to teach students to place their work within the academic context already extant, and that the introduction of criticism is important because it is criticism, not literature that provides the basis of what we are asking/teaching students to do as academics.

That said, I think that Elbow's methodology in terms of basic process, the freewrite/edit/freewrite process of developing and finding ideas can be made to work with the production of the high level academic discourse that Bartholomae wants from his students. 

Elbow hits on a very powerful point that I've never encountered from another academic theorist speaking about academic writing when he talks about separating the critical and generative functions, and employing them in recursive cycles to develop the finished product.  While no process works for everyone, Elbow's does work for a heck of a lot of people.  

Rediscovering Elbow's specific version of free writing and encouraging my students to take that freedom in writing some of their papers this year was liberating.  The students looked at me like it was a trick.  "Really?"  "Whatever we want?"  "Grammar doesn't matter?  At all?  No Punctuation?"  I've never emphasized these things in first draft, as I'm sure none of us have.  However, I had, over a long period, failed to emphasize how much they don't matter in the process of generating ideas and in drafting anything but a final copy, and the net effect was to make a large portion of my students think that they mattered all the time.  

In fact, employing Elbow's recursive, creative writing process seems to me so natural that I can't believe I had let it slip out of my own pedagogy.  This more than any other academic approach I've encountered helps teach the process of writing.  

Now then, before I seem to lose myself entirely in Elbow, let me take this back to Bartholomae.  None of these aspects of Elbow's work contradict Bartholomae's academic focus.  One can follow this recursive process in the pursuit of academic, rhetorical prose as well as personal writing.  In fact, by separating the critical and generative faculties during the drafting process as Elbow suggests while maintaining the academic goals and focus that Bartholomae demands I would argue that better papers may be found than would be generated by either gentleman's approach alone.   

Patricia Bizzel: E Unum Pluribus?

I enjoyed learning about Patricia Bizzel's work and found many aspects of the presentation fascinating.  The idea that most appealed to me was Bizzel's blunt statement that students have to be taught how to think.  it is assumed that they have something to say, that they know how to think about literature to generate a response, that the problem is teaching them to formulate the response in the desired written form, not teaching them how to think.

Bizzel's boldfaced statement that we must teach students how to think belies the teacher's perception that student's don't answer because they are apathetic.  Instead, following this format, the students literally have nothing to say because they don't know how to think about literature so as to generate a response of the type the teacher is looking for.  

My question then is how do we teach them to think?  What is the practical how to approach to this aspect of pedagogy?  I'm sure if I puzzle through I could come up with some answer of my own, but what does Bizzel, who points out this failing, have to say about addressing it?  

The point that struck me most in my small contact with Patricia Bizzel was a side remark made during this week's presentation.  Shaynee indicated that Bizzel believes that once students leave the academic environment they will abandon the skills/methods of the academic discourse community to return to their native discourse community.

I find this disheartening.  As Graff indicates, I believe that the academic discourse community is foreign to all of our students at one point or another, and as such is a learned discourse one of the outer circles of other, nonnative discourse communities that we enter throughout our lives.  However, because all of the children in this nation are brought into this discourse community, might we not attempt something more than giving them a tool to use for college that they will then set aside?  Couldn't this academic discourse community be privileged in that it becomes a unifying point for Americans?

If it needs work (and it has needed work and continues to need work in order to avoid being exclusionary) than let's fix it and use it as a starting point for a discourse community in which we can all participate with ease, thus facilitating the kind of critical thinking and debate that are so integral to our public lives inside and outside of academe.  Or, if it is so rotten as to be unsalvageable as the source for a unifying discourse community, can we find another?

I think that at times in our haste to acknowledge each other's individuality we sacrifice the chance to communicate as effectively as we might be able to.  I find it saddening that we will have this chance to produce a more unifying discourse community and that after the time requried we'll all separate and go off back to our own private clubs.  

They Say/I Say

I wanted to find a way to contribute something new to my presentation through this blog on Graff.  After spending the time I have, the point I felt was covered slightly less than ideally in either presentation or handout was his latest book, They Say/I Say.  Carrying out a theory from Clueless in Academe  to its logical conclusion, Graff and Birkenstein create a writing textbook based around the instruction of rhetoric (argumentation) and employ a plethora of templates as the basis of their method.  In addition to presenting templates, they discuss how to tie the paper together, using metacommentary to shape reading, and the role of the vernacular, personal voice in academic writing.  

Now it must first be stated that there are several things that Graff is not trying to do, at least as I see it.  Graff is not interested in teaching writing in general.  He goal for this text, and for composition courses at the university level, is based in the idea that argumentation is the foundation of the academic conversation, and so his text focuses exclusively on the give and take, dialectical texts generally (if not universally) required of academics.  While he surely privileges academic writing and criticism in his approach, (Bartholomae) he explicitly quotes Elb0w on the importance of the "believing/doubting game."  Very much a pragmatist whose own early dislike for reading and academic pursuits has - by his own admittance - shaped his thinking somewhat,  (although neither as difficult nor as powerful as Elbow's or Murray's) Graff seems to worry very little about exactly how one arrives at his or her product, provided it is dialectical in nature, and takes a stance in the ongoing academic conversation around a given topic.  There is no debate about whether Elbow's authentic self or Bartholomae's socially constructed individual is the "truer" vision of the student writer, for example.  It seems one might freewrite and then add the argument templates to help shape the "mess" as one went through subsequent drafts, or begin immediately, after reading critical arguments, with filling in the templates as a generative exercise.  

Instead, Graff focuses on giving the students the tools he considers essential to entering the academic conversation.  To his mind, this means a rhetorical approach, focused on the basics of argumentation.  To put these basics in front of the students in an immediately usable form Graff believes in employing templates that allow students to borrow generic phrasing to construct arguments by plugging their own information/research in the blank.  

While some commenting on Graff's initial use of templates in Clueless in Academe were very critical (see Pedagogy Volume 5,Number 2, 2005), the issues raised seem to have been clearly addressed in They Say/I Say.  For example, in her contribution to the roundtable, Ann Jurecic complains that by using templates Graff limits the life of the mind to "Where as X argues _____, I claim ___."  She accuses him of presenting the life of the mind and the work of the academic as arguing primarily by staking a claim against another person.  

Perhaps this is a fair impression from the earlier text, however, in They Say/I Say  it becomes immediately clear that Graff is playing a much more complex game than Jurecic accuses him of. Instead of focusing only on staking a position in opposition to another critic (as he is accused of doing) he begins the text by making the point that one of the principal reasons for the "they say" half of the equation is to establish a context for one's paper, and a reason for the writing.  As he points out, launching into your own position without framing it in terms of other possibilities leaves the audience wondering why the claim is being argued.  

Furthermore, Graff continues from that point to focus on (in order) summarizing the views of others, quoting others, and then agreeing with others before he gets to "staking a position of opposition."  In addition, the portion of these rhetorical moves that he considers the most advanced is not that of directly opposing, but what he calls "agreeing with a difference."  Furthermore in this section of his text, Graff explicitly states the applicability of his templates to a paper in which one "weigh[s] a position's pros and cons rather than come out decisively either for or against."  Here Graff argues for the They Say/I Say templates in a context that is explicitly not engaged in direct argument with someone else.  Clearly this use of templates is far more complex and more thought out than some critics initially claimed.  

Andrea Lunsford Intellectual Property, and Collaborative Writing

It should come as no surprise that one who is as engaged with collaborative creative/scholarly efforst as Lunsford is would argue for a newer and looser understanding of intellectual property that allows for a loosening of copyright laws, and a greater sharing of ownership.  As someone whose aspirations (whether justified or not) include publishing in many genres, I am troubled by the idea that loosening copyright laws may lessen the incentive for artists to produce, and perhaps move the starving artist myth that much closer to an objective reality.  

I appreciate the idea of collaboration that Lunsford addresses, and indeed was sufficiently impressed by Albertson's presentation of Lunsford's thought on the subject to consider how I might apply the collaborative writing process to my classroom beyond the process of peer tutoring/peer review/workshop.  

I have never had what I always considered the dubious privilege of creating a shared paper (creative or scholarly).  Prior to the presentation this was something I was extremely grateful for, because for someone as perfectionistic as I am, as opinionated and outspoken, group work has always been something to be dreaded.  I have two alternating approaches to most group work:  try (and usually fail) to keep my head down and just do what I am told without causing a fuss, professing little or no preference for anything, or stick myself as far into every aspect as possible (again perfectionist, although there's probably a control freak aspect to that that is manifest as well) to ensure that I am comfortable with how the whole paper/project etc. plays out.  This is especially true of any group project where there is a one grade fits all grading policy.  This always made me particularly uncomfortable, receiving a grade for something overwhich I did not have final control.  It felt like (and I would argue it is to a large extent) being graded on someone else's work, an unpleasant feeling at best.  

Despite my reservations, Lunsford, who seems so intelligent and so capable in so many areas, made me question my own thought and practice, and I admit that much of my prejudice is based in fear rather than experience.  I would like to apply this creative solution to many interesting aspects of writing in my classroom.  The question is, how exactly?  Do I just adapt a writing assignment I already have for development by two or more students as a group project, or is this a large enough shift that it requires a more thorough reworking/recreation than adapting an existing project provides?  I'm not sure.  But for the first time in this teacher's experience I am curious enough to try finding out.  

To Wait or Not to Wait, That is the Question...

Over the years I have spent far more time looking at the processes of creative writing than academic writing.  (I still don't like that distinction, as if any act of organizing thought into text were not an act of creation!)  One of the debates that I see there that I found oddly reflected in Tony's presentation on Murray (and in the notes in our source book) was the strange combination of wait and dive in that Murray endorses.  

I found the pre-vision, vision and re-vision description of the writing process fascinating.  The Pre-vision process in particular interested me, because it was here that I find Murray's thought seems to embody a contradiction that I have run into in studying the writing process from a creative perspective.  In discussing pre-vision Tony indicated that Murray held the work in his head until he had a solic mental picture of it, in fact waiting for the presence of one of eight (Was it eight?  I think it was eight) mental clues that one is prepared to begin the physical process of putting words on paper, or - as the case is much more likely to be in modern times - on the screen.  The writer wrestles the piece around mentally, until one of the listed triggers arrives indicating a readiness to move from pre-vision to vision.  

Here is where I found that Murray seems to embody a contradiction that I have long pondered.  In reading any number of writing texts written strictly from a practioner's perspective (as opposed to a scholarly or theoretical approach like the texts used for this course) such as the previously mentioned Stephen Koch text, I have encountered the debate from various writers (with varying degrees of extreme prescriptivist answers and abstemious middle ways)of whether one must write daily - "Treat it as work.  You can't wait to get in the mood.  To be a professional writer, you must treat writing as a profession, something that you are always doing whether you are in the mood or not," seems to capture the extreme end of this attitude here - or whether one should wait until one is feeling inspired, or in the mood.  

I have seen writers who refuse to write without some sign of their own readiness similar to those described by Murray and those who prescribe a given number of words per-diem as the cure all for writing woes.  Murray seems to embody both.  I wonder how the practice of waiting for the metnal dialogue to reach the readiness point meshes with the encouraged practice of writing every day, presumably whether inspired or not as I have never met anyone who feels inspired all the time.  

Elbow: Bringing "Creative Writing" into the Academic Sphere

In presenting Elbow to the class, Tim Wenger focused primarily (and rightly I think) on Elbow's push for varying degrees and methods of applying freewriting at the beginning of the writing process.

One of the most interesting aspects of this presentation (and I've run into Elbow before as an undergraduate and very much like what he had to say then as well), is how much the varying degrees and methods of freewriting promoted by Elbow echo what I've encountered in recent ventures into a more formal study of "creative writing."

Tim Wenger outlined the process of freewriting employed by Elbow, which, depending on the specific adaptation described, amounts to either an exceptionally rough first draft or a long period of idea generating prior to a first formal attempt at an organized fully wrought draft of the piece.

In The Modern Library's Writers Workshop Stephen Koch, who taught in the creative writing and MFA programs at UNY-Stonybrook and Princeton University, and then spent twenty years in the program at the Columbia School of the Arts, repeatedly describes the process of discovering your story as a fiction writer in much the same way Elbow describes finding the arguments and essays of academic writing through his various freewriting processes. Koch argues for the necessity of discovering the story through a "closed door" first draft that delays taking notice of the audience (another Elbow tenet) and discovers the story as it goes along, without trying to outline it/plot it out first. He quotes writers from Eudora Welty to Stephen King in support of this idea of closing the door and diving in on that first situation, idea, character, etc. that is the first germ of the story.

I found it fascinating that the creative writing process so often divorced from the academic process in my experience. It seems, sadly, that they are treated like first cousins who shouldn't get too close lest they fall in love and have deformed offspring in which the writers analyze themselves mid-story/novel/poem. The reality, as echoed by the commonalities in approach of Elbow and these various fiction writers, is that a marraige of processes that already echo one another may lead to insights beneficial to both styles. Even in a place as seemingly unlikely as Graff and Berkenstein's They Say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in Persuasive Writing," one can find the following quote emphasizing the connections between the genres: "It is our belief, that the "they say/I say" pattern cuts across different disciplines and genres of writing, including creative writing" (XIX). While, the argument is not directed as precisely at process as are the commonalities between Elbow and Koch et al that I am describing, it serves to underline the closeness of the genres.

Further along in the presentation, I found the idea Tim introduced as "planting seeds," and which Elbow described in the youtube video shown in the presentation as taking down notes and jotting ideas as soon as they come to you when you are in the first stages of a project are also echoed in Koch's text, where the enouragement to keep a writer's notebook and to instantly record story ideas and insights is echoed by Koch himself and a veritable army of professional literary figures.

In closing Tim addressed Elbow's critics by pointing out that he (that is Elbow) felt that they tended to ignore the other end of his process, the refining and critical aspect in favor of the beginning, where he comes off as an extreme expressivist with quotes like "make a mess." I agree. Elbow when fully studied argues as much for a polished and finished final product by applying tough critiquing and thorough reworking to any given piece before presenting it as a finished product. To reduce his thought to freewriting is a distortion along the lines of those discussed in Matsuda's "Process and Post Process: a Discursive History." As Matsuda indicates the variuos movements promoters have done, such a reductin exaggerates Elbow's ideas to cartoon like bubbles easily popped. They do no justice to the fullness of his practice and thought.

Finally, I remember the most powerful piece I encountered from Elbow focused not on the act of writing but the act of instruction. I don't have access to the piece itself and so I cannot quote from it, but in it, Elbow argues for the same separation of creator and critic in the teaching process that he promotes in the writing process. He suggests that if we (teachers) will prepare a final, in whatever form it takes, as difficult as justifiable, (being the critic first) we can then turn around in class and nurture and cheer and give everything to helping the students without fear that they will become to reliant on us or that we are giving some advantage that will make the assessment to easy, as we know that the students are going to need all they can do and all we can do for them to prepare for it. Then, switching from switching back to the critic (or from nurturer to gatekeeper as a colleague of mine calls it) we can grade the tests with out worrying about whether it is too difficult or an accurate assessment because we know that we have done everything possible to prepare out students for it. I loved this idea when I first encountered it, and it seems to me a brilliant and obvious extension of his writing process to instruction.

In the day to day of teaching, it is easy to fall into old ruts and run through the textbook without much thought and with little variation, to let the textbook become the defacto teacher of the course if we are too lazy, busy, or unaware. I think actively engaging in this bifurcated approach to course creation and instruction helps prevent that. I need to apply it more explicitly and effectively in my own teaching.

Kinneavy and Composition

The idea about writing that I found most engaging, most intriguing about Dr. Kinneavy as ties to our specific Comp theory discussions is that he sought to use rhetoric, and his theory of discourse as a means to "empower students" otherwise unprepared for college compared to those who had traditionally attended pre-G.I.  (pre-G.I. bill that is).

It seems to me that teaching the students the rhetorical basics that lie behind all argument in the western tradition (even the arguments of courses designed to liberate us from traditional academic discourse and its various evils) is far more empowering than the alternatives we've encountered.  

The power of this rhetorical approach is derived from the fact that, rather than merely critiquing the "dominant discourse" or learning to recognize its flaws, one learns to recognize its strengths and how to use them.  The ability to take on entrenched powers on their own ground, to take the fight to them in their own words and language isn't a weakness, it's the very definition of power through language.  

Furthermore, a focus on the tools of argument allows the composition course to be more broadly useful to students prepping for any of the various fields of the university.  Through generalization?  Absolutely!  But we (the various disciplines of academia personified as a group) are strongest when we stand together, and it is much harder to stand together if we lack a common tongue.  

I have stated in earlier posts that I view the very purpose of education as a providing of tools to others for the purpose of shaping themselves into the people they want to become.  I firmly believe that the critical thinking and communication skills provided by a course of study in this method are some of these essential tools.  The years have not dimmed the challenge to know thyself, and the critical thought reflected in the rhetorical tradition born out of the ancients is as good a tool for self-knowledge as we've yet found.

Thus I feel Kinneavy's rhetorical approach empowers students by accomplishing the primary educational purpose of providing students with the tools necessary to pursue and apply learning on their own.  

An Argument for Generalists

I love the minutiae of English.  I am quite interested in linguistics in addition to literature and composition.  I think diagramming sentences is, in some incredibly wierd and nerdy way, fun.  I love the detail found in college courses focusing on a single writer.  My 495 Senior Seminar Yeats class being the prime example for me.  

That said, I loved the survey courses I took in college as well.  

I truly believe that the greatest sign of education and learning is the ability to make connections between disciplines, to find the arcing themes that join all learning together.  The kind of themes that Klayton has indicated Kinneavy pursued over long years in the creation of A Theory of Discourse.  In describing the book, and perhaps (to an extent) Kinneavy himself, Klayton referred to it as "inspiring" and "impossible."  Inspiring because of its amazing breadth, and impossible because such a breadth would be, supposedly, impossible today.  

I grant that there is no way for one person, in one lifetime to have a specialist's knowledge of all fields.  In fact, it is impossible for even a generalist in a single field to have a specialist's knowledge of any more than a small portion of her own field with the ever multiplying number of specialities nad disciplines.  Soon we'll have people who are Hamlet Act IV Scholars, so specialized that they've never bothered with the rest of the play, never mind the rest of Shakespeare.  Shirley, I jest.  But, in the midst of my hyperbole, I want to stand and scream that even then, in the long ago dark ages of the 1970s, or further back in the stoneaged '50s when Kinneavy received his doctorate that it was already impossible to have a specialist's knowledge of all the fields that in which Kinneavy was learned and drew upon for his book.

The cost of being a generalist in any sense, and despite the fact that Kinneavy was first and foremost a rhetorician and writer I would argue a theory attempting to unite all discourse makes him a generalist, is the ire of the specialists who will argue that you just don't get it.  You're ignoring this or that tidbit.  Unfortunately, the cost of any systematic approach is generalizations.  And, as was thoroughly and correctly addressed generaliziations were made in order for Kinneavy's system to work.  (I agree in particular with the placement of that Declaration of Independence which I would argue is primarily based in the persuasive intent located on the Decoder corner of Kinneavy's triangle.)  However, this generalization is also a fact of life in providing context and context is essential to the understanding of what we're doing, where we came from and where we are going.  We need big picture thinkers like Kinneavy who are unafraid to take on such Herculean tasks, because without the larger context, it seems pretty petty to exchange arguments within our private academic club about the meaning of Hamlet.II.iii.124 (I'm ad libbing.  Such a line may not even exist in Hamlet.II.iii, and if it does, I have no idea what it says).  

The generalist is necessary despite the inevitable flaws as details are lost when providing big picture perspective and context through simplification necessary to the endeavor.  The generalist is necessary because it is precisely this big picture that gives meaning to our academic pursuits beyond mere intellectual gamesplaying and curiosity.  

More of us should have the courage and intellectual drive to attempt the inspiring and the impossible.  

Teaching in a Brave New World - "The not-so-distant future: Composition studies in the culture of biotechnology"

I have to admit that I have doubts about the entire premise of this article.  I'm not certain that discussion/studies of composition and technology or the study of intellectual property rights makes one a logical source of expertise in dealing with the future presented here.  

Granted the information contained in the human genetic code is treated and expressed like a language, but that is because as human beings language is our only means of communication.  The transferral of knowledge or information of any kind is impossible or nearly so, without some kind of language, even if it is a primitive sign language of grunts, pointing and head nods.  So the identification of the language like qualities and the rhetorical elements of genetic code seem trivial to me.  I hardly feel that I would be qualified as an expert in any way, even if I were pursue a terminal degree in exactly the areas of compositional studies that Dr. Sidler promotes as the source of our field's expertise.  

This seems a much more basic human question.  Certainly the tie to the humanities, where we are studying mankind's efforts to create and preserve meaning throughout our existance, the study of what it means to be human must be far more relevant to this question than our knowledge of intellecual property and copyright issues.  As Sidler so thoroughly points out we are moving into a time where the idea of a cyborg is not so strange, and where some thinkers are apparently already publishing and referring to certain elements of humanity as such.  A new thing, a combination of technology (in whichever form it may take, biological or otherwise) and, for lack of a better term, natural humanity.  

I have to admit skepticism about her time table as well.  While we have progressed to a level of technology that would befuddle and bewilder our ancestors, these changes have not equalled what was hoped for or predicted even fifty years ago when we were also "on the verge."  There will always be a new technology which promises that we are "on the verge" of something.  We have not developed the technology they predicted in the ways they predicted nor do I expect these things being predicted here will play out so thoroughly as to make this article or anything written today a cogent guide to this biotechnological wonderland of the future.  

The impact on the classroom and on pedagogical practice of such developments, were they to occur in the fashion she is describing, are of real concerns, but certainly must be extended to the field of educators in general, with no special bearing upon us as composition scholars/educators any more than any other educator.  But to an extent, the acceptance of such a regime of enhancements means a reinforcing of the haves and have nots as is always the case.  Those with the means to be "early adopters" will gain an advantage they will never relinquish to the mere mortals, the mere humans they leave behind.  The concerns about equality and political correctness that now concern classroom rhetoric and our studies and pedagogy to such an extent will be rendered irrelevant by the massive inequities raised by such technologies.  

Perhaps I am a cave man.  Certainly as a father, if such a situation arose while I was still in the situation to be having children, I would have to consider what would provide the best possible future for my children.  At the same time, I can say with thorough going confidence that I will never of my own free will accept any mechanical or biological enhancements.  Medical treatments or prosthetics in the result of some horrible accident is one thing, but enhancements?  No thank you.  Simplify, Simplify!  No matter how much more day there is to dawn that is one day that will never dawn for me.    

Deciphering Discursiveness - "Process and post-process: A discursive history"

This was an interesting historical article. Matsuda, following a deconstructionist approach to meaning in ways that would do any proponent of the theory proud, points out that the meaning of both "process" and "post-process" are constructed as rebellions against paper targets first established and defined to make it easier to knock them down.

I was at first confused in reading the article by the term L2. In hindsight, Matsuda was reasonably clear about an implied definition for the term. But it does not necessarily lend itself to immediate recognition as a symbolic way of writing "second language" or "language two" and was, I thought, an ironically confusing aspect of a paper supposedly focusing on clarifying the definitions/histories of important comp/rhet theory terms, even if doing so in a discursive, undermining fashion.

Matsuda points out the oft pointed out folly of assuming any group at any given period of history is monolithic in thought and practice. His tracing of the discursive construction of supposedly dominant or uniform pedagogies such as "current traditional," "process," and "post process," reveals the periods they describe to be as complex as any others one might study, including (gasp!) one's own. They are not reducible to the labels we place on except with a great allowance for a vast variety of understandings of said labels, or a strong generalization of thought and practice into what is necessarily a hyperbolic stereotype developed from a very general snapshot of "current thought/practice" at any given moment.

Knowing this discursive nature of the construction of these terms is helpful because it is a reminder to avoid embracing any dogmas in the teaching of writing. Being aware of the discursive nature of the history of comp/rhet theory allows the teacher of composition to draw at their leisure on what they feel are the best of the best practices without suffering from some delusion that there is some monolith against which they are rebelling, or to which they are conforming. This knowledge it would seem should create willingness to search for the best of the best practices for application in the classroom, and a greater willingness to experiment and find a combination that works for one's self and the students one has at a given moment.

At the same time it is a slightly disheartening reminder that one can never be certain that best practice won't be found to be worst practice in a few year's time, and then reinvented/re-introduced as best practice yet again a few years after that. Depressingly, this is true of all aspects of the teacher's profession that I have encountered.

While I find the merry-go-round rather infuriating (wouldn't it be nice to make some progress that wasn't immediately undermined by someone, somewhere, who is smarter than you?) it is also freeing (like the discursive development of these theoretical pedagogy labels Matsuda has shown us). One is left with the option to proceed as best they are able to determine is effective for a given set of kids in a given circumstance. Isn't that one true tenet of best practice that seems to hold on anyway?

So THAT'S Why I Hate It! - "The Politics of the Program: MSWORD as the Invisible Grammarian."

"The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it" (as quoted in McGee and Ericsson pg. 453). This is certainly true of my experience with MSWORD for all practical purposes. In fact, most of the time I have spent working with the program has been spent wishing that it was more invisible so that I could more effectively ignore it! However, such an approach, trying to ignore the program myself because of all of its annoying prescriptions and inconsistencies while never addressing those same issues in class (except to warn the students not to settle for polishing via computer on a final draft) is not a particularly effective way of teaching writing.

While the program is incessantly annoying to me as an informed user who encounters the program primarily in its most annoyingly prescriptivist or glaringly inaccurate moments ("long-sentence," anyone?), I have for the most part ignored it as a minor inconvenience except when its autoformatting kicks in in strange - and strangely stubborn - ways (never an issue with essay writing, but a real pain in the butt for creating anything not in a straight, traditional prose format). As such, the most involvement I've given the darn thing when teaching writing is to warn students not to rely on it too heavily because it is often inaccurate. Even spell checker - which should be much easier and therefore more effective I would think - fails to offer accurate options with misspelled words far more often than it provides correct choices. While I have made my students aware of these failings, I have failed them myself by not considering the impact of this program on the writing process. The technology, while not invisible to me (I wish it were!) as a user, was invisible to me as a teacher. I had never considered its impact on writing or the teaching of writing beyond the situations/manners outlined above.

In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense to tell the students to turn the darned thing off, especially during drafting stages. (I'll have to get a student to show me how this is done so that I can inform the 1 - 2% of students who might actually rely on me to know something about computers.) I heartily agree with Mike Rose (and I believe Elbow argues the same point) that bringing in grammar too early in the process contributes to blocking our students. If the lines are popping up all over the place telling the students that they are messing up, that they're in error right from the get go, how can they ever get a draft out to reach the polishing stage that MSWORD is trying to assist them with? The appearance of red and green lines on the page as a student is in the initial phases of composition is, I believe, a pernicious thing. It contributes actively to the worst fears of our students by disciplining them in the area most of them are least confident, often before a full sentence - let alone a full paragraph - is completed (McGee/Ericsson 464).

To me, this attack on process is the primary evil of the program. The presentation of traditional rules of grammar/usage/style may even be a blessing, if it arrives at the appropriate time. I disagree to an extent with the unnamed research cited on the usefullness of direct grammar instruction as I believe that taught correctly the different aspects of grammar provide the students with writing tools for varied expression.

To make a culturally relevant argument, the presentation of the various grammars and their varying degrees of acceptance with various audiences is nice theoretically, but I don't think that a long discussion of such matters is important for the teaching of writing. The sociopolitical implications may be important to the students on a theoretical level eventually, but on a practical level the discussion of the social underpinnings will not break them into the academic conversation, prepare them as writers for college and academic discourse, nor prepare them to function in the language of privilege and power. If the traditional grammar underlies the existing power structure and I want to provide my students access to that structure through as many tools as possible, (and I DO) than it is more important to help them effectively use the language acceptable in that environment than it is to teach them the politics of it. That can come later.

All of this is to say that I have no inherent objection to a computerized assistant to my students' grammar and usage. In fact I would find it a useful tool under the following conditions:
1. Students should be instructed/encouraged to turn it off until they are ready to work on a polishing draft.
2. Students are sufficiently informed in the subject to understand what the computer is suggesting and why, and/or, even better, students have enough knowledge of the subject to make informed decisions about whether or not to accept the programs suggestions in a given instance.
3. The program was far more accurate a far greater percentage of the time than the current program is.

Until we get such a program, my intention, newly formed upon the reading of this article, is to have my students turn the darn thing off.