[Teaching_Composition] Critical vs Radical

[Irvin Peckham]

Bill
I don't think you are characterizing Hairston quite accurately there.  I
didn't read her saying that students were incapable of dealing with
political realities.  Republicans, maybe, but not all young people.
irv



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I’m not sure you are representing my views accurately, Kathy.  It seems to
me that the change in students you want is driven by a political ethos as
much as mine is, but somehow you view your goals as not crossing a line
while mine do.  There’s too much of an either/or mentality for me to
penetrate, so I’ll just leave this be.  Let me just say that I do not find
students lazy.  I think they have been socialized into viewing education as
a game, and when they see they can get an “A” by not thinking critically—or
when they hear from their roommate how easy a certain class is—they will
gravitate toward the demands that are easier.  I don’t think they actually
like it this way.  It’s just that they have been trained to judge success
in education by the extrinsic reward of grades rather than the intrinsic
reward of knowledge.  And, of course, much of the curriculum did not matter
to them in high school and was not made relevant, so who can blame them for
doing as little as possible?  The view of students that I find
condescending, one propagated by Maxine Hairston years ago, among others,
is that students cannot handle the politics that come with writing, that
somehow they’re not ready.  If we view students as wilting when faced with
political challenges, we obviously must consider them much too fragile to
take on the responsibilities of higher education.

Bill

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Irvin Peckham
Louisiana State University
Director of the University Writing Program
http://members.cox.net/ipeckham
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