In Situating Composition, Lisa refers to a few sources I might want to check out sometime regarding first-year composition programs, and whether we should have them or not:
Sharon Crowley, Composition in the University: “The traditional function of the required first-year course is increasingly hard to reconcile with professionalization and specialization that now characterize the Amerian academy” (10, qtd in Ede 108). Crowley is also “concerned with the failutre of the writing process movement to consitute itself as ‘a truly paradigmatic alternative to current-traditionalism’ (212) and with the ‘disciplining function’ (10) that the first-year requirement exters on students.” (Ede 108).
Francis Sullivan, Arabella Lyon, Dennis Leboffsky, Susan Wells, and Eli Goldblatt. “Student Needs and Strong Composition: The Dialectics of Writing Program Reform.”
Bruce Horner. “Resisting Academics”: “abolitionist arguments make the functionalist mistake of taking the historical effects of, or official purposes assigned to, first-year composition programs for their inevitable and complete functions” (177, qtd in Ede 109).
Keith Gilyard. “Basic Writing, Cost Effectiveness, and Ideology”: “Sure required writing courses reproduc dominant ideologies, serve regulatory ends, and stifle creativity, but that is not all they do. The possibility for challenge and chagne, which could mean sustained access and opportunity for many students, is undeniably present” (41, qtd in Ede 109).
Robert Connors. “The Abolition Debate in Composition: A Short History.”
