As I read Maxine’s article, I wondered why her winds of change haven’t blown across freshman composition classes yet. Perhaps some of the resistance to her “revolution” is rooted in larger perceptions about the role of the university in society. I read an article for foundations of technical communication this week that illuminates a possible reason why freshman writing courses have been so bastardized within the English department and within academia.
According to a book by Merrill Whitburn called “Rhetorical Scope and Performance,” the ancient Greeks conceived of a university as an institution that pursued Higher Truth. Results and utility were the concerns of the peasants, and these concepts hindered the search for Truth. Teaching something “practical” was considered lowbrow and outside the responsibility of the university. People learned practical skills by working in apprenticeships or out of sheer necessity.
This divide still exists today. Universities still require students to fulfill a certain number of general education classes so that students can graduate with some sense of Truth. If a university does not have general education requirements, then it’s a trade school, and trade schools don’t have the ethos of a university.
Within the humanities, the attitudes fostered by Platonic and Aristotelian models of the university still softly exist. Teaching freshman composition forces teachers to abandon their quest for Truth. Perhaps this is one of the reasons nobody wants to teach it, and why writing instruction has remained so stagnant over the years, and why poor, poor Maxine never saw the winds of change ruffle her crisp sails. I liked the cut of that woman’s jib, I really did.
It really is a shame that change still hasn't come. I think you are getting at a really good point here in that the university is kind of split between fulfilling the role of heightening character through education and educating people with knowledge that will earn them a job. I think a lot of it still boils down to the university being run like a business, and monetary reasons determining a lot if not all decisions about freshman comp and other foundational courses.
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