1. My first question stems from Bartholomae's discussion of industry and its effects on employment and teaching practices within institutions (English departments) with respect to the critique of student compositions. I wonder about the relationship between capitalism and a lot of the problems he identifies in his larger essay. I'm always hearing about how universities are being pushed toward a customer service model, which seems to put the largest strain on the liberal arts, and so I wonder how much of our new and developing theories regarding effective teaching practices with respect to composition are created under the strain of that customer service model?
2. I really like how Tobin's essay acknowledged that process pedagogy necessitates an examination of the interior. I always try to find ways to make my students develop a greater awareness of their interior selves in any given assignment. I once had my students examine their favorite or least favorite article of clothing in a short essay rather than a more conventional text. Their thesis statement had to make a claim about themselves or their priorities or perhaps societal influence over their particular demographic. Have others taken this kind of approach, and if so, how?
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ReplyDelete(Note: I had to resubmit my comment. I couldn't deal with the typos, etc.) Overall, I would not be surprised if many of the current theories being developed are a direct reaction to this customer service model. Just as Bartholomae described the culture of the '70s influencing theorists who wanted to move away from dogma and dominate militaristic teaching styles, I believe composition is still reacting to current academic culture. The growth in composition mirroring the growth in the size of graduate programs with composition according to Bartholomae, often used "to justify or to front the widespread support of graduate study in English" is something to keep in mind in regards to how we treat our programs develop our teaching methods.
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