[Englecturers] RE: Devoid of Content--Form and Function (part 2)

[englecturers at lists.ucr.edu]

No, 
I meant Scan-tron finals, not finals held in Pennsylvania (however 
entertaining that might be) and I meant those capital S Sirens instead of 
those odious wailing devices atop emergency vehicles. Any other errors you can 
decipher for yourself...

And just for fun, check out this sentence I picked up somewhere:
"I hit him in his eye yesterday." 
The trick is to insert the word "only" at every possible position in the 
sentence (begin with "Only I hit him in his eye yesterday" and end with "I hit 
him in his eye yesterday only") to lead into a discussion about modifier 
placement and its impact on meaning.

Devon Hackelton

>===== Original Message From englecturers at lists.ucr.edu =====
>I just swam through Fish after dinner and was immediately attracted to the
>bait of his line: "Content is a lure and a delusion, and it should be 
banished
>from the classroom. Form is the way." So now the bite and I'm hooked...reel
>this in!
>
>Enough of the puns already.
>
>Fish offers a semi-provocative assignment, it seems, to reject a shift over
>the last 30 or so years in composition classes (at this number, I defer to
>research and the voices of more seasoned composition teachers) away from a
>focus on form, modes, syntax and such and toward a more experiential,
>process-driven, egalitarian (we might say voice-giving) approach that latches
>on to common humanist themes and current events as a vehicle for diverse
>expression in our students. Although I have suspected that our discipline is
>often seen by other academics as one void of meaningful content (I have heard
>the College Composition and Communication Convention or "4Cs" called the
>"blue-collar convention" by my fellow attendees and faculty outside of the
>discipline), and although I have secretly lamented this barrenness myself, we
>should consider what we might be giving up by refocusing our energies on 
forms
>of any types; one issue that immediately comes to mind is the re-centering of
>the instructor in the classroom and in the composition process, as the
>instructor in Fish's assignment seems to be the sounding board that students
>are using for approval. That is, Fish has the answers (i.e., knowledge) that
>the students are fishing for.
>
>Not that there is anything inherently evil with this approach and I suppose
>that many of us balance the depositing of our knowledge into our students 
with
>the posing of problems for students to analyze and develop on their own (to
>borrow some of Friere's language) in the classroom. It's a matter of the
>distribution of the balance that seems in question.
>
>I can say that there is strong allure in focusing on form; ultimately we 
might
>be able to reduce the language and syntactical arrangements into equations, 
or
>as Fish calls them, "structure[s] of logical relationships." Maybe then, we
>can measure a student's proficiency with language in a scientific and
>mathematical way--Scranton finals, everybody!--that would lessen our
>tremendous workload and give us purchase with the rest of academia. The 
sirens
>are singing; the song is tempting.
>
>But what would we have to give up? I think team-teaching a logic and grammar
>class might work, an interesting pairing for 1C perhaps. By the way, this
>assignment is not new: I remember doing something similar in junior high
>school (albeit, probably with much more sophomoric results). Now, if we had
>fewer students, fewer classes, and spent more hours each week with said
>students, many things might be possible that currently are not. Until then, 
my
>focus will remain: some discussion on syntax, some on modes, and some on
>critical thinking by exploring concepts in depth, all for what I believe is
>the greater good of my school of students (I couldn't resist).
>
>
>Devon Hackelton
>
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