Looking at question #3, tracing Genung, Young, Manly/Rickert, Strunk.
Textbooks showed either a strong lean toward correctness, grammar, arrangement (Strunk) OR toward invention and personal/self-expression (M/R). We saw both of these tendencies as present in Genung: "The study of rhetoric contemplates presentation: in pursuing it the student's mind, though equally occupied with facts, principles, discipline, is set predominantly in the attitude of construction, creation" (BR 135).
This narrative, then, presents Genung as a bridge, both as in Brereton between German and American models of academic rhetorical instruction, and between the practical/personal rhetorical pedagogies that developed in the American model during the early twentieth century.
If Genung is a theoretical bridge between these two models, Young is a contemporary bridge based in practice. Young, as an administrator, is trying to get as many students as possible through the university. He suggests that students need more training in oratory and interdisciplinary writing, but we wonder if he was also concerned with workload in a valuation of highly structural pedagogy.
24 November 2009
Lavinia - Jeff - Q. 4
The primary focus of our texts was on the writing course content: assignments, samples and syllabi that set up the mass-production model of Freshman composition. What lacks from the picture and from Brereton's account as well is a more elaborate discussion of the following issues:
- relationship of writing to audience. Students seem to write just to accomplish a writing task, instead of envisioning a larger purpose/rationale/context
- relationship of writing to truth/knowledge/reality. Students seem to approach the tasks in a closed circle, i.e., they get through the task in a rather arbitrary way (topics seem randomly selected, e.g., sample on art, Thanksgiving, church attendance, the value of intercollegiate athletics)
The samples and course descriptions oftentimes reveal mechanical presentation.
- relationship of writing to audience. Students seem to write just to accomplish a writing task, instead of envisioning a larger purpose/rationale/context
- relationship of writing to truth/knowledge/reality. Students seem to approach the tasks in a closed circle, i.e., they get through the task in a rather arbitrary way (topics seem randomly selected, e.g., sample on art, Thanksgiving, church attendance, the value of intercollegiate athletics)
The samples and course descriptions oftentimes reveal mechanical presentation.
Harvard Tradition
Question 1: These texts, from the Harvard tradition, focus primarily on adherence to certain rules of style. Style is not something independent of the writer, but rather the writer must depend upon the set rules and traditions. One of the complications of this simple understanding is that what the Harvard tradition wants is to build off of early adherence to rules. As Wooley says, "the student, in order to progress in the art, must for a certain time treat the rules as stringent and invariable; the variations and exceptions are studied only at a later state of progress" (360).
Emphasis on valuation of student-writing: "more practice, more daily drill, and severe discipline are required" (113). This should happen in preparatory schools. Blame is clearly shifted from universities to preparatory schools, as the Harvard committee attempts to unpack the problems of the teaching of composition.
3. Rhetoric as tied to the rising-middle class. Mostly preparing for office work and other non-academic disciplines. For example, Carson puts a heavy emphasis on using the right kind of paper, ink, how to address an envelope, etc. Thus, composition in these texts is often seen as preparing and developing members of this rising middle-class.
Emphasis on valuation of student-writing: "more practice, more daily drill, and severe discipline are required" (113). This should happen in preparatory schools. Blame is clearly shifted from universities to preparatory schools, as the Harvard committee attempts to unpack the problems of the teaching of composition.
3. Rhetoric as tied to the rising-middle class. Mostly preparing for office work and other non-academic disciplines. For example, Carson puts a heavy emphasis on using the right kind of paper, ink, how to address an envelope, etc. Thus, composition in these texts is often seen as preparing and developing members of this rising middle-class.
the Brereton post
So that we can realize (together) the reason we are in class today, please compose a collaborative post on the following questions, based on your grid work with the Brereton excerpts:
1) (How) do your excerpts support and/or complicate the stories about texts of this era?
2) (How) are your excerpts useful for testing Carr, Carr, and Schultz's "watersheds" (pp. 202-203)?
3) If only your texts survived from this era, how would you view the teaching of writing in late 19th-century American colleges? What stories would you construct, or did you construct in your grid, that might get taken up?
4) What questions do your excerpts raise, complicate, or not take up according to how Brereton employs them in his book?
Good luck and have fun,
Tarez
1) (How) do your excerpts support and/or complicate the stories about texts of this era?
2) (How) are your excerpts useful for testing Carr, Carr, and Schultz's "watersheds" (pp. 202-203)?
3) If only your texts survived from this era, how would you view the teaching of writing in late 19th-century American colleges? What stories would you construct, or did you construct in your grid, that might get taken up?
4) What questions do your excerpts raise, complicate, or not take up according to how Brereton employs them in his book?
Good luck and have fun,
Tarez
05 November 2009
Ida B. Wells and Female Faculty 1888
Hi, everyone. If this works, you can link to Jeff's and Jerrell's google maps project, which starts to landscape Ida B. Wells' writing activity and concurrent geographical locations of female faculty in English or rhetoric in 1888.
-Tarez
-Tarez
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