[Teaching_Composition] Critical vs Radical

Irvin Peckham teaching_composition@mailman.eppg.com
Wed, 4 Oct 2006 11:32:28 -0500




For firstyear students, we also have a responsibility to help them with
their writing--for my money, to help them to know how to use writing to
meet the kinds of writing tasks they may face in other university writing
courses.    It's possible that we might slight that responsibilty in our
desire to teach them how writing works in culture.


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Irvin Peckham
Louisiana State University
Director of the University Writing Program
http://members.cox.net/ipeckham
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|         |           "Laura D Card"                  |
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  |       To:       teaching_composition@mailman.eppg.com                                                                        |
  |       cc:       (bcc: Irvin Peckham/ipeckh1/LSU)                                                                             |
  |       Subject:  Re: RE: [Teaching_Composition] Critical vs Radical                                                           |
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Doug--that's kind of what I've been noticing that we do--what we have to
do--is teach what we know to be effective in writing and then give students
different ways of looking at what they write about.

The more we're discussing, the more I'm seeing that we all have similar
ways of going about both teaching about writing and teaching about
thinking, probably because we have to do both, within the limits of a
classroom and a class period and expectations of what comprises each
course, just to get through a course.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Downs <downsdo@uvsc.edu>
To: teaching_composition@mailman.eppg.com
Date: Tue, 03 Oct 2006 16:01:28 -0600
Subject: RE: [Teaching_Composition] Critical vs Radical

Why is it okay for history teachers to teach students what to think but
not okay for writing teachers to?

By which I mean, history teachers teach students what to think about
history; writing teachers should teach students what to think about
writing, yes?  I mean, people who specialize in researching about
writing and discourse have found out an awful lot about how writing
works and how texts get the way they are; it seems reasonable to teach
this knowledge to students.

So perhaps we teach students what to think about writing, and teach
toward thinking about other subjects?
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
>>> "Kathy Fitch" <kfitch@kafkaz.net> 10/03/06 3:09 PM >>>
Teaching toward thinking and teaching what to think are not, I think,
the same.


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