Fall term starts on Monday (six days) and I’m excited to be teaching four sections of Writing 214: Writing for Business. If you had told me years ago that I’d ever be teaching this class for college, I would have said you had been smoking something terribly bad for you. This is, honestly, the last writing class I would have taken as an undergraduate. But now, I’m super excited. It’s amazing what studying writing and learning about rhetoric does to your interests.
It took me a while to work on my syllabus, partially because I was trying to tweak the schedule to work in everything in an order that satisfied me, and partially because I was a bit worried about… well, writing and ideology. What if my syllabus states something that I don’t agree with? What if the implications of how I describe this course imply something about writing and pedagogy that if I took more time to interrogate, I’d find appalling? Most of these self-doubts or skepticisms come from reading Lisa Ede’s Situating Composition for Current Composition Theory a year ago, where she studies her own syllabi, and then, more recently the excellent College English article “The Stakes of Not Staking Our Claim: Academic Freedom and the Subject of Composition” by Mary R. Boland (70.1, September 2007).
I suppose that last paragraph sounds a bit melodramatic. I wasn’t paralyzed by fear — once I sat down and worked, I came up with a syllabus that I’m pretty satisfied with. But Boland’s article made me think about syllabi and the subject of composition (and about a lot of other things). She suggests “Reframing our subject” (49):
I would suggest that we move away from speaking primarily about “how to write” and “how to teach writing” and talk instead in terms of “what (conceptual knowledge) writing entails” and “what we teaching about writing and why.” (47)
So I’m thinking about my goals in teaching this course, and am I teaching “how to write a memo” or am I teaching conceptual knowledge about writing: understanding rhetorical and social situations, developing agency?
Goodness. I would suggest that you teach how to write well. Start with clarity and honesty. Dwell on honesty for a while. How do you know what you claim to know? Are your sources and reasoning good enough?
Move on to kindness and optimism and humility. What is your real purpose? Is it a good enough purpose? Are there better purposes?
Throw in some ideas on the profound connection between love and courage. Suggest there is a war on, and those who side with truth will find their voices becoming more powerful, more compelling, and more full of goodness.
But then, I’m quite simple and becoming more so.
I suppose you could deconstruct your syllabus and descend in endless circles the solipsistic depths of self-awe, etc.
Thank you for your comment. I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that a goal of the course (and any writing course I teach) wasn’t for students to write more effectively in certain discourses or for certain audiences. I certainly want my students to be more effective writers.
My concerns in this post revolved around fearing falling into a formalist trap of “this is what a memo looks like” and merely following a form instead of understanding writing as a social endeavor that involves audience expectations and conventions of certain discourses — especially as I look forward to the following ten weeks and how easy it is to fall into simplistic views of writing and teaching when one is busy.
I agree with you that clarity is a aspect of effective writing in most discourses, but it’s also important to understand that clarity means something different in different discourses. As I worked with faculty in different disciplines last year, I began to realize that the conventions of various disciplines required a different “version” or “vision” of clarity. Writing that seems clear in one discipline might be obtuse or esoteric in another.
You use a lot of powerful words in your comment, words that have great affective connotations, but also words that I am more hesitant to use. I love honesty, and try to be as honest as possible, and wish my students to be so as well. But an implication of “honesty” is transparency — something that I am suspect of, following the work of theorists such as Iris Marion Young, because it implies a transparency of language that I feel we should question.
Similarly, I am hesitant to advocate “kindness.” In “From Cruelty to Goodness,” Philip Hallie makes the case that kindness is not the opposite of cruelty (or oppression) because kindness can be a tool of oppression (think of the slave-owner who is kind and coddles his slaves). Rather, hospitality might be a stronger concept. I certainly hope that I teach hospitality when I teach about ways of reading and writing.
I also eschew “optimism” in favor of hope. See this post for why.
Do people who side with truth find their voices more powerful, compelling, and full of goodness? I suppose the answer to this rests on what one means by “powerful” and “compelling.” Powerful to do what? Compelling to whom? A voice can’t simply be compelling in and of itself because someone’s claims are informed by justice — though I wish everyone would find them compelling.
Lastly, I didn’t mean to imply that I was becoming self-absorbed (solipsistic) in my syllabus, but rather desiring to think about my course and my assumptions (whether conscious or unconscious) so that my course will meet the needs of my students and also align with my pedagogical philosophies. I don’t find anything wrong with reflection and analysis. Certainly, too much can be incapacitating — and I think that is your point in your last sentence — that I can either act or be incapacitated. I think, however, that one can both act and reflect — indeed, one must.
Thank you again for your comment here. I agree that there is a connection between love and courage — I am reminded of Hallie’s concept of hospitality, which he defines as “unsentimental efficacious love,“ meaning that it is not romantic love and that it is effective in restoring dignity and self-respect. I certainly think it takes courage to be loving in our society.
I also hope that you continue to engage in dialogue here, and I look forward to any further ideas you wish to share.
Yes, I know. All the old verities can be seen through. And yet they remain.
I won’t give up on kindness because some clever fellow managed to link it to oppression in his discourse.
Hospitality is fine and sometimes great, but often it’s one of the lesser virtues, like graciousness, which one can practice without sincerity. Though it sounds as though you mean it in much the way I mean kindness. I think to be kind is to try to give others what they need, or as close as you can get in whatever circumstances you find yourself in.
I think if the discipline is truth then the power that comes is power to do good. Power used for other reasons undermines itself. I would define good as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, ministering to the sick, and liberating the capitve. Lately, liberating the captive has seemed the work nearest at hand, where I am.
This I disagree with. A voice informed by justice will be compelling in and of itself in the realms that matter and to any who is ready to hear. That’s enough.
Hope works. I practice optimism in the spirit I heard in Desmond Tutu’s discourse: “We live in a moral universe. Righteousness will prevail.” This will persuade no one who doesn’t want to believe it, but it tends to give heart to those who feel at some level what he means.
I enjoyed reading your thoughts. Thanks.
I’m amazed with where this dialogue has gone from my original post. 🙂 Thanks for your response.
I have a few other things I have to get to tonight, but I felt compelled (haha) to respond to your response to my thoughts on compelling voice — primarily because from what I read, I think we agree. You write, “A voice informed by justice will be compelling in and of itself in the realms that matter and to any who is ready to hear” (my emphasis). This is what I stated, in different words: that to be compelling, writing has to be compelling to someone, and I would agree that this someone is “any who is ready to hear.” I am advocating for understanding language as social, and thus, for something to compelling, there has to be an audience that finds it compelling. Passionate arguments against war aren’t compelling to George Bush, for example, but are compelling to those ready to listen.
I have difficulty imagining Bush would be unmoved by an argument against war that dealt with the problem he’s looking at: what to do about Iran, Syria and Korea.
He’s engaged in a sort of dialogue with them.
You’re right–passionate arguments wouldn’t do it, but I think well-reasoned ones that dealt adequately with the world he thinks is out there. But then, my night job puts me in the presence of violent bullies on the street from time to time, and the need to use force to keep them from having their way with all the gentle folk seems obvious.
I rarely attack or defend Bush. When I meet people who do attack him (which happens frequently) I either move on to something more interesting or I ask them not to talk at all about him, but to tell me what action they think America should take, and what they believe the consequence would be. I think it tends to keep the discourse a bit more honest and clear.
Last week I mentioned to a class in passing that I thought the main event in American history, if I had to pick one, would be the Civil War. A student nearly erupted in fury: “What about the fact that we’ve killed a million civilians in Iraq! Think about that!”
And of course, I did. He might find the passionate argument against war compelling. So there is an audience and it seems quite a large one.