[Teaching_Composition] Irv, Hairston, and Citation

[Doug Downs]

So there's no interpretation in your reading, Bill?  You're just telling
us what the text *undeniably* "says"?  Your reading of the text is
perfectly objective, not at all shaped by your own ideologies?  

So, the meaning of directly quoted texts is not debatable, they
concretely and undeniably say particular things, and readers'
pre-existing lenses have nothing to do with texts' meaning -- isn't this
precisely the understanding of texts that we try to convince our
students isn't true (true in the sense of what's actually going on with
texts)?

I've never been disturbed by Hairston's article taken as a whole, and
I'm not particularly disturbed by the bits you quote; I read them much
differently than you.  I do find problematic what I read as her nod to a
sort of classically expressivist notion of what students should be
writing about (whatever they bring to class with them); it seems far too
romantic and in conflict with the rest of what we know about where good
writing comes from.  But that's a much different discomfort than that
which you're expressing; I see neither the intention or effect you
specify as inherent in what you're quoting from Hairston.  

Why is it so easy to forget how readers work with texts?
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
>>> "Thelin,William" <wthelin@uakron.edu> 10/08/06 8:05 AM >>>
Since I quoted Hairson directly, it's hard for me to see how you can
accuse my post of having "flying straw."  You can't just take out the
bits and pieces from Hairston you like without acknowledging the rest. 
Or I guess you can, as we all do, and use it for your purposes, but you
cannot deny the rest is there and that her words are very disturbing.
 
Bill

________________________________

From: teaching_composition-admin@mailman.eppg.com on behalf of Kathy
Fitch
Sent: Sat 10/7/2006 8:56 PM
To: teaching_composition@mailman.eppg.com
Subject: [Teaching_Composition] Irv, Hairston, and Citation



I like this bit from Hairston:

 

<< It's a model that puts dogma before diversity, politics before craft,
ideology before critical thinking, and the social goals of the teacher
before the educational needs of the student.  It's a regressive model
that undermines the progress we've made in teaching writing, one that
threatens to silence student voices and jeopardize the process-oriented,
low-risk, student-centered classroom we've worked so hard to establish
as the norm.  It's a model that doesn't take freshman English seriously
in its own right but conceives of it as a tool, something to be used. 
The new model envisions required writing courses as vehicles for social
reform rather than as student-centered workshops designed to build
students' confidence and competence as writers.>>

 

Rather than casting students as too fragile to encounter new ideas,
she's building a case for making student writing the cynosure of the
composition classroom.  It's a big stretch to construe her as dismissive
of students-a ridiculously bigger one to cast her as promoting racial
stereotyping.  I can't seem to work up even a smidge of fear over her
arguing in favor of making student writing the source for practicing,
illustrating, and reinforcing writing skills-and this even though I
don't think student writing necessarily needs to be the only kind of
text ever encountered in FYC.

 

I saw a whole lot of flying straw, there.

 

Anyway, I think the  _Chronicle_ article appeared on January 23, 1991,
if that helps.

 

Kathy