[Teaching_Composition] Critical vs Radical

[Irvin Peckham]

I can't afford to get into this conversation too deeply--but let me suggest
a different perspective: Let's imagine ourselves as students (or perhaps
remember when we were students): what values do we see most often in
teachers that we would like to change?
Irv 

-----Original Message-----
From: teaching_composition-admin@mailman.eppg.com
[mailto:teaching_composition-admin@mailman.eppg.com] On Behalf Of Doug Downs
Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 3:21 PM
To: teaching_composition@mailman.eppg.com
Subject: Re: [Teaching_Composition] Critical vs Radical

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
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