1.In Bartholomae’s article, he mentions the way in which
composition, literature, and theory work together in an English department and
are yet at odds with one another, due to financial reasons or faculty issues.
Do you think this tension between subgroups is inherent to the discipline or
perhaps born of the bureaucracy of higher education? How can this tension be
reconciled, if at all?
2. The WPA stresses many areas of student enhancement, and
the two that strike me are the idea of “critical thinking” and “conventions.”
It seems that having a firm grasp of both is an important part of being a successful
communicator—that is, having the ability to critically reason out the best “convention”
to employ to communicate an idea most effectively. Do you think there are any
projects or assignments that may help students hone their critical thinking
skills when it comes to determining the best mode of communication for a
particular idea?
Hi Rosalyn!
ReplyDeleteI found the tension that Bartholomae pointed out to be interesting, as it seems like these sections should not be in conflict at all. But, in a world of limited resources and ever shrinking budgets for English departments around the country, they'll almsot be forced to fight over what resources there are. But I think that at least part of it is simply inherent to all such disciplines. Even in a world of infinite resources, I can still imagine these three subgroups fighting each other for prestige. That's just how humans operate. I think the only way to genuinely reconcile things would be to intermingle the practices and faculty more in order to blur the lines between the subgroups, that way they are more supporting one another than in their own groups, standing alone and fighting one another. But, that is a far off ideal, and would likely come with tons of inefficiencies and confusions of its own.
I can't say I'm qualified to answer your second question, but it did get me thinking about advertisements - as they are short, easily digestible forms of messages, and are highly varied in their modes of marketing and communicating (though they are not without their own genres). Perhaps some sort of critical study of ads would do students well in how to communicate an idea.