[Teaching_Composition] Critical vs Radical

[Doug Downs]

Come to think of it, y'know a value of most of my students' that I would
really like to change?  Being in college for a degree instead of an
education.  For a variety of reasons, some of them legit (most of the
students at my college have families and children and a full-time job or
two) and some of them not, we increasingly face the tendency of students
to "buy a degree" rather than to become educated.  That's a value I'd
love to change.

Writing courses don't make an obvious or easy venue for such a focus, if
one is (as I would maintain we should be) primarily focused on teaching
about writing -- although more and less expedient approaches to doing
research can be a way into it.  

Anyway, it just occurred to me, thinking about whether education should
*try to* change values, or what values it should try to change, that one
of the stories I most love hearing students tell is that shift from a
focus on degree to a focus on education.  In almost every case, that
shift is spurred by courses that upset, in some way, their status quo --
that make them realize there is more to think about, more to their
worlds, than they realized.  The trick, of course, is to create from
that upset engagement rather than alienation.

Cheers --
Doug


Dr. Doug Downs
Asst. Professor, Composition & Rhetoric
Writing Program Coordinator
Dept. of English and Literature
Utah Valley State College
800 W University Pkwy, Orem UT 84058
LA 114w
801-863-8572