[Teaching_Composition] Re politics and writing

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 16:35:14 -0400

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Hello all,
I'm going to chime in here in response to Kathy's post about politics in the classroom.  I'm with you all the way, and I agree with the distinction between endorsing a questioning, inquiring attitude towards knowledge vs. proposing that students must agree with our asertions about race or gender or whatever because they are the correct ones.  
And yet, I'm also very self conscious (as I'm in the midst of reading Sharon Crowley's Towards a Civil Discourse in which she analyzes the discourse of Apocalpytic Christians) that this very view of the purpose of education--and the value of writing--is itself a political position.  George Lakoff's Moral Politics makes a similar point that the moral imperative for questioning and for nurturing questioning is itself a political position (as opposed to teaching self-control and obedience to moral imperatives).  
I'm quite willing, then, to say that I as an academic have a responsibility to teach this value as a fixed one: the value of inquiry and exploration and listening to many positions before I take one.  I'm also quite willing to keep putting pressure on students to keep looking around and reading and questioning as they are arriving at their positions.  
Yet I must do so with an awareness that the Horowitz's of the world, and many others, might consider this a trip towards moral relativism and a dangerous path towards hell.  They might believe that a University professor should be doing more to bolster a particular moral view so that all might rise up with the Rapture.
Phyllis 
University Writing Program
The George Washington University
(who also writes with many parenthesis and dashes.)

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<BODY>Hello all,
I'm going to chime in here in response to Kathy's post about politics in the classroom.&nbsp; I'm with you all the way, and I agree with the distinction between endorsing a questioning, inquiring attitude towards knowledge vs. proposing that students must agree with our asertions about race or gender or whatever because they are the correct ones.&nbsp; 
And yet, I'm also very self conscious (as I'm in the midst of reading Sharon Crowley's Towards a Civil Discourse in which she analyzes the discourse of Apocalpytic Christians) that this very view of the purpose of education--and the value of writing--is itself a political position.&nbsp; George Lakoff's Moral Politics makes a similar point that the moral imperative for questioning and for nurturing questioning is itself a political position (as opposed to teaching self-control and obedience to moral imperatives).&nbsp; 
I'm quite willing, then, to say that I as an academic have a responsibility to teach this value as a fixed one: the value of inquiry and exploration and listening to many positions before I take one.&nbsp; I'm also quite willing to keep putting pressure on students to keep looking around and reading and questioning as they are arriving at their positions.&nbsp; 
Yet I must do so with an awareness that the Horowitz's of the world, and many others, might consider this a trip towards moral relativism and a dangerous path towards hell.&nbsp; They might believe that a University professor should be doing more to bolster a particular moral view so that all might rise up with the Rapture.
Phyllis University Writing Program The George Washington University (who also writes with many parenthesis and dashes.)</BODY>

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