Into The Void
(*I am going to provide a brief narrative that situates part of my argument, this is “not” academic, yet this genre of writing (hyper-text essay) is meant to encompass a larger audience in which such conventions might be welcome*)
To break away from the traditional hierarchical model of learning (Platonic model really), in which the instructor maintains complete control of knowledge production and standards, I decided to assign works that bridged the gap between expressivist writing and academic writing. For my students final essay in English 114B, I decided to assign them a hyper-text essay (similar to this project), yet my prompt simply asked “Write about an issues that other freshmen should be concerned about. Why is this issue important?” While this prompt sounds exceedingly reductive and simplistic, it actually requires the students to think rhetorically about what their peers should know about, it also forces them to be meta-cognitive about what subjects their peers already know about, why they know about such subjects, and how such knowledge is produced. Returning to Aristotle and Gorgias, they both suggested that to be a successful orator/writer, you must also be aware of your “appropriateness” or fit. |
Voice & Writing |
The students also unknowingly framed their websites to fit into Cicero’s three offices of rhetoric, instruction, pleasure, and persuasion. One student decided to focus on mental health services/curriculum should be intergraded into mandatory curriculum for first year students. The student used instruction to explain why such a program should exist, and where it already has been put into place, practiced pleasure, by showcasing the positive effects on the student body, and used pathos and logos (via statistics and videos) to persuade her peers that this is an important issue to their demographic.
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Before I Die |
As part of Chicano Studies final essay/portfolio, their department had students construct a video and an essay responding to the prompt “before I die, I want to.” Once again, the students unknowingly tackled Cicero’s three offices of rhetoric. The students instructed their audience as the premise of the project, found “pleasure” in the fact that they could think about their dreams, and used persuasion in their essays to explain to the reader why they wanted to perform such actions prior to dying.
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Stitching Up Loose Ends
The question that came to mind once these assignments were complete surrounded evaluation and grading. Based upon the scenario or prompts provided, the students certainly met the rhetorical expectations, yet the writing itself wasn’t always “clear”. There is a misconception that had somehow entrenched itself into my own teaching philosophy, that students needed to be at a certain level of “proficiency,” yet this had not been defined in my syllabus, in the various textbooks, workbooks, or guides to teaching composition. Downs and Wardle suggest that the idea that FYC courses situate such standards unconsciously within instructors:
“When we continue to pursue the goal of teaching students “how to write in college” in one or two semesters—despite the fact that our own scholarship extensively calls this possibility into question—we silently support the misconceptions that writing is not a real subject, that writing courses do not require expert instructors, and that rhetoric and composition are not genuine research areas or legitimate intellectual pursuits.”
The rigidity of FYC as an attempt to legitimize writing courses or the study of writing, seems to be haphazard as it effects the assignments, grading, and overall ideology of the classroom. This attempt to legitimize writing courses leads to the issue of “good” versus “bad” writing and a top down approach to education. The attempt to separate students from their writing and making it a more sterile/scientific method of exploration harkens back to Foucault’s Birth of The Clinic in which patients were often perceived, identified, or given agency, based upon their illness (they were their illness). In the same regard, students’ are often perceived/evaluated based solely upon the product of their writing, but not the process or inventive nature in which they enter the space of writing. For the extension of this project, I seek to look at ways in which student can further gain agency in FYC courses, maybe through:
“When we continue to pursue the goal of teaching students “how to write in college” in one or two semesters—despite the fact that our own scholarship extensively calls this possibility into question—we silently support the misconceptions that writing is not a real subject, that writing courses do not require expert instructors, and that rhetoric and composition are not genuine research areas or legitimate intellectual pursuits.”
The rigidity of FYC as an attempt to legitimize writing courses or the study of writing, seems to be haphazard as it effects the assignments, grading, and overall ideology of the classroom. This attempt to legitimize writing courses leads to the issue of “good” versus “bad” writing and a top down approach to education. The attempt to separate students from their writing and making it a more sterile/scientific method of exploration harkens back to Foucault’s Birth of The Clinic in which patients were often perceived, identified, or given agency, based upon their illness (they were their illness). In the same regard, students’ are often perceived/evaluated based solely upon the product of their writing, but not the process or inventive nature in which they enter the space of writing. For the extension of this project, I seek to look at ways in which student can further gain agency in FYC courses, maybe through:
- Selecting their own textbooks
- Creating a reading list
- Leading discussions
- Work-shopping essay prompts with their instructors