ENGL 402 - Week 7
taylorcate opened this issue · comments
Reading Response - Week 7
I was in, what I now realize was probably the minority of composition classrooms, a literature driven freshman composition class. We read 60s literature; Betty Friedan, Bukowski, Ginsberg, and more written in various styles each grappling with themes of counterculture, female empowerment, and war. I realize now that the historical element of the class served the social justice/democratic citizen angle, allowing room for the readings to hedge on the side of abstraction and the highly imaginative. I wouldn't go so far as to say it was an ineffective teaching model, however, I feel I would have benefited from engaging early on with a more relevant and modern corpus that utilizes discourses I would have to use later in life to navigate adulthood. For many students, as each of the readings states, the freshman composition class is their only mandatory class which requires them to write. I agree with Tate in that this class should, to some degree, facilitate students engagement with human processes so that they may develop empathy and a faceted understanding of many forms of life (321). I'm not sure literature is the best means to demonstrate these processes. Much of what literature is taught in classrooms was composed by the extremely privileged and most represented figures in history. Privileged individuals—most, I would say attending the majority of private and public US universities—do not need more examples of themselves to study, but rather experiences and lives so diverse from their own or so separate that they reevaluate their privilege. I feel a historical approach to grappling with these themes is not as effective as asking students to argue and contend with current events and modern discourse—both print and digital.
Lindemann's model is a bit too extreme for me as well. Why does a composition classroom void of literature automatically have to be a service course designed to teach students how to write for other non-humanities disciplines? I say, literature is not the best mode of introducing students to a holistic representation of life or argument. Literature is most often a description of or false persona of a single person's perception of the world and that does not do enough to convey the infinite variety that is the human population. However, the writing that we teach in freshman comp should not simply serve the academic discourses, but rather public discourse more broadly. Our students should enter the world with the language tools to approach writing with ease, i.e. through practice in the classroom, and with early exposure to multiple points of view and modern histories. They should enter their non-academic lives with confidence in their critical thinking abilities, able to discern false arguments from real ones. True humanists would agree that the single mandatory class remaining for students with any angle fixed on humanities should do more than simply indulge the professor's love affair with Byron. While I’m not sure yet what I'll teach, one thing's for sure, it won't be Bukowski.
Think and Write:
I do not think I would attempt to teach literature in my composition classroom. I feel that it is important to encourage students to find and source content to read that they will then respond to in various forms of critical argument. If, for instance, a student wanted to study and analyze, explicate, and synthesize some of Milton's works I wouldn't deny them that, however, they would only be required to do so if that is what they desire to study in the class. Forcing students to grapple with material they are not connected to meaningfully simply pigeonholes students into believing they are not able to do so.
In Class Exercise Based on "The Possessive" by Sharon Olds:
WISPY
positive - X
negative -
synonym - frayed, floating, ethereal, breezy
FRAYED
positive -
negative - X
synonym - flimsy, tattered, worn
SHARPENED
positive - X
negative -
synonym - pointed, accurate, ready
BRIGHT
positive - X
negative -
synonym - warm, light, illumined
CURTAIN
positive -
negative - X
synonym - closed, sheltered, hidden, obscured
LITTLE
positive - X
negative -
synonym - small, feeble, innocent
HELMET
positive- X
negative -
synonym - protection, armor
POSSESSIVE
positive -
negative - X
synonym - jealous, repressive