[Teaching_Composition] Rhetorical analysis of scientific research report

[Russ Hunt]

Like Irv, I suspect, I've really been trying to find a way to avoid 
this fascinating and powerful discussion . . . and I've now 
capitulated, partly because yesterday in the hard mail I got copies of 
an essay I wrote which ends by describing an incident that seems to me 
at the dead center of what we're talking about. I didn't know what to 
do then (though I made a decision) and I still don't.

It's at the end of a piece I wrote about "authentic" teaching.  It 
recounts an incident where a group of students were investigating a 
historical incident where people's beliefs were challenged or changed. 
They'd started by looking at John Kerry's testimony about Vietnam in 
1971, but their progress was (I thought) derailed by the Swift Boat 
Veterans' Web presence. I resisted telling them what I thought of the 
Swift Boat Veterans, preferring to try to create a situation in which 
they'd discover the "truth" (as I saw it). They never did.

A fuller account is here:

http://www.stu.ca/~hunt/authcons.htm#knot

I've been thinking hard about this in the light of this discussion. 
 Any thoughts anybody has will be welcome.

-- Russ

Russell Hunt
Department of English
St. Thomas University
http://www.stu.ca/~hunt/