In order to avoid working on my prospectus, I’ve spent some time perusing other blogs or incessantly checking my Facebook page. Since she is now working in a new setting a friend (Italian at Heart)started a new blog about her teaching. I understand her joy at being in a new department, but I want to point out something.
In her blog the IaH mentioned that at her new school composition is clearly labeled as, and clearly understood to be, a service course. She also said that everyone here at her old school “was so caught up in making sure tat the course wasn’t designated ‘service,’ they really lost focus that it WAS A SERVICE COURSE!”
The IaH used to teach at the junior high level. Her experience with the requirements made of teachers and students at that level would make teaching writing seem like a service course. I mean that when the goal of a course is meeting certain benchmarks any course becomes a service course.
However, at the University teaching writing (composition) carries both a different function and a different history. The failure of this department does not lie in the desire to make sure that composition is not a service course, but the failure of the department to really explain why composition should not be seen as a service course.
There are several reasons for not thinking of composition as a service course, which I have to note does not mean that grammar or writing basics are ignored. The easiest place for me to start is to ask you to step back for a moment and imagine a general education course in mathematics. No one would expect that if you took Math 101 you were ready for Accounting 201 or Chemistry 320. Why is that? Well, because while both Accounting and Chemistry require math, they require different types of math. Math 101 just cannot do it all, which is why Accounting and Chemistry have their own beginning courses.
Since writing is such an integral part of so many disciplines it becomes easy for the history professor to say, “I can’t believe these kids can’t write. What do they learn in Composition?” In that moment the History professor forgets that History as a discipline actually asks students to write in a very different way from English. The DH and I cannot read each others papers because the way our disciplines (History & English respectively) use verbs and voice is so vastly different. I tell him to take out all the passive voice and he tells me to put it back in. The same is true of the writing in Chemistry, Dance, Theatre, etc. It boils down to the same problem as the fictional Math 101. Composition cannot teach every kind of writing.
So, what does composition teach?
Well, I believe that composition should teach critical thinking. I don’t teach my student about the rhetorical triangle in a vacuum. I teach them about the rhetorical triangle because it is a tool for them to use when reading anything – Math, History, Dance, and more importantly the assignments they receive in those courses. When they leave my composition class, they are not ready to write in any discipline; however, they are, hopefully, ready to read and understand any discipline.
Isn’t that a service to other disciplines? Why does labeling composition as a service course matter?
The history of Composition and its place within the University are an element of this discussion as well. If you are really interested in this topic you should check out the work of Eileen Schell, Nell Noddings, Gary A. Olson and Susan Miller. Historically, Composition has functioned as an underling to “English” which stood for Literature. Historically, Composition has been taught by women and graduate students. These are groups who would do such intensive work to free-up the tenured faculty to teach courses in their specialty and/or research; they would also do the work at a much cheaper rate. Keeping women in these “service” courses was one way to allow women into the academy, but not allow them to participate fully in all of its functions.
As Kenneth Burke taught us, we view the world through terministic screens. The language we use to build those screens matters. When we label one particular course subservient to others, it keeps the people who teach those courses also subservient. The movement to recognize Composition as a field was a movement to remove that subservient status. When we continue to think of Composition as a service course it is a disservice to all of those who worked long and hard to make sure that what we do in the classroom matters as much as anyone else in the field of English.
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