Category: Uncategorized

Nick Carbone posted a link to the WPA mailing list that leads to a flash demo of software designed to “solve” your writing problems, “Whitesmoke.” I personally think that the (non) usefulness of this software kind of speaks for itself, but the thing that really gets me is the name of this product. Unless you’re talking about the election of a pope, I don’t see how this name has positive connotations. Sounds like “white wash” and/or “smoke screen” to me.

I’m kind of surprised that the only blogger I regularly read who has commented on Stanley Fish’s May 31 New York Times op-ed piece “Devoid of Content” is Jeff Rice. I don’t know; maybe it’s partly the season and the weather. I mean, I’ve been a lot more interested in recovering from Memorial day weekend and golfing this week than posting to this blog too.

This isn’t to say that there hasn’t been a lot of commentary in the comp/rhet community; it’s just all taking place (or so it seems) on the WPA-L mailing list. Follow this link to the May 2005 archives, look at the May 31 or so entries, and look for the subject line “NYTimes.com: Devoid of Content.”

Here’s my take on the piece and my effort at explaining why Fish is (mostly) wrong in it.

Fish’s first paragraph is a bang and a whole bunch of unsubstantiated claims:

We are at that time of year when millions of American college and high school students will stride across the stage, take diploma in hand and set out to the wider world, most of them utterly unable to write a clear and coherent English sentence. How is this possible? The answer is simple and even obvious: Students can’t write clean English sentences because they are not being taught what sentences are.

If this were the intro to an essay in my first year composition class, I’d write in the margins “Says who? If you’re going to make such bold claims, you need some evidence to support this, Stanley.”

But okay; I’ll let him get away with this, I guess. I mean, hey, it’s Stanley freakin’ Fish we’re talking about here– which is one of the problems I’ll get back to later.

In his second paragraph, he says:

Most composition courses that American students take today emphasize content rather than form, on the theory that if you chew over big ideas long enough, the ability to write about them will (mysteriously) follow. The theory is wrong. Content is a lure and a delusion, and it should be banished from the classroom. Form is the way.

Now, to a certain extent, I kind of agree with this. Kind of. Of course, you can’t completely separate content from form, and one of the reasons why composition studies has been seen by many in and outside the academy (like Stanley Fish, by the way) as “nonsense” is because of a (so-called) lack of content. But I must say I have a hunch/sense/perception (which might be entirely inaccurate) that a lot of people who teach first year composition have turned their classes into mini “current events” seminars or into classes about TV or classes about web page production or multimedia or whatever and have inappropriately de-emphasized the form part of the equation.

I sympathize with what Fish is talking about here, sort of, because of my resistance to the incorporation of “visual rhetoric(s)” into first year writing classes. Besides the fact that language (and rhetoric, for that matter) has always had a “visual” component to it, shouldn’t the written word be interesting enough? I think so, but in some ways, I think a lot of the folks who teach first year composition and the students who take the course don’t agree with me. Instead of working with words, they want to work with pictures and sounds and movies. It’s more “fun,” whatever that means.

I had lunch with Kathi Yancey and Linda Adler-Kassner at this conference thing at Michigan State a couple weeks ago, and while they thought I was way off base with my doubting of visual rhetoric (most sensible people do think I’m off base on this one), Kathi did talk about an interesting “what if,” one that has kind of come up on the WPA mailing list lately. What if the “content” of a first year composition class was “composition?” What would that look like? Hypothetically, would that mean teaching some of the more accessible essays in our field, things by Elbow, Rose, Lunsford and Connors, etc., getting students to write and research about “the writing process?” I don’t know; it might be interesting.

Anyway, back to Fish: I really get pretty jazzed up as a teacher when I get students to pay careful attention to form and shape and style in their writing, so, like I said, I kind of agree with what he’s saying there.

But then things take an unexpected and bizarre kind of turn in the third paragraph:

On the first day of my freshman writing class I give the students this assignment: You will be divided into groups and by the end of the semester each group will be expected to have created its own language, complete with a syntax, a lexicon, a text, rules for translating the text and strategies for teaching your language to fellow students. The language you create cannot be English or a slightly coded version of English, but it must be capable of indicating the distinctions – between tense, number, manner, mood, agency and the like – that English enables us to make.

Huh?

And the rest of the essay is basically his reflections/recollections/imaginary memories of how this supposedly “content-free” approach teaches his charges to write that elusive coherent sentence, the one that he claims they were unable to accomplish before him.

Now, as the folks on the WPA mailing list have pointed out (a bit too much, arguably), there are many many holes in this logic. The “content” of this course, clearly, is linguistics, and for Fish to claim that what he is doing is “free” of content either suggests he is surprisingly ignorant of this entire field or he’s just flat-out kidding himself.

But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Fish was right, that the way composition ought to be taught is as a mini linguistics seminar. The reason why this would (almost certainly) not work is that most of the people who teach composition classes do not know enough about linguistics to effectively construct such an approach. And, as Jeff points out in his post, here is the larger problem with Fish’s argument: in harping on this “content-free” approach to teaching writing (that really isn’t content-free, of course), he is side-stepping the real issues involved in teaching the course: under-prepared students, under-prepared/under-supported instructors, a whole host of issues in English departments and writing programs about the not so simple question of the nature of “writing,” and larger and schizophrenic institutional views of first year composition. At most universities and colleges, first year composition is a course many faculty and students see as a “joke” and, simultaneously, it is absolutely essential, oftentimes the only required course in an undergraduate’s education.

Nope, Fish skips all that. He just talks about how his own content-free approach helps him reach “pedagogical bliss.” Good for you, Stanley, but I suspect the “bliss” is not universally shared by your students.

Now, a lot of folks on the WPA mailing list suggest that we shouldn’t be making that big of a deal out of this. After all, the argument goes, we all know that Fish is wrong, so what’s the point in responding to it?

Well, I for one think the reason we ought to be responding to and making a big deal about this (beyond our mailing lists, of course) is because Fish is so off-base and because it is Stanley Fish we’re talking about.If you were to ask an educated (but not a professional academic) person in this world to name two American literary critics, my guess is that most common names you would get would be Harold Bloom first and Stanley Fish second. (Well, assuming you didn’t get an answer l
ike “I don’t know”). Fish is a guy who has a column in The Chronicle of Higher Education, who publishes in the mainstream media at will, and who even pops up as a talking head on cable news once in a while. I’ll bet anyone a doughnut that Fish got this essay published by calling someone up at The New York Times and saying something like “Hey, I’ve got some thoughts on the way composition ought to be taught– would you like to publish it?” and the NYTimes said “Sure! Heck, you’re Stanley Fish!”

Fish is an extremely influential writer and educator, deservedly so (for the most part). People listen to what he has to say, even when he says things that are clearly clearly wrong. If we give Fish a pass on this, then it will become “conventional wisdom” in the popular culture, and that, obviously, would be bad.

Anyway, this is my effort to at least slow that down a bit.

Update (June 3):
The New York Times ran letters in response to Fish today. Check out the link, while it lasts. On the one hand, I am heartened by the fact that all of the letters written by people who decried Fish are identified as some sort of English professor, while all the letters in support of Fish are just identified by name, presumably as “non-experts.” On the other hand, I am also bothered by this, because it means that despite all of our efforts, people “out there” still think that what we academic-types ought to be doing is teaching grammar grammar grammar, because, really, that’s what “good writing” is, right? Agh.

I have a pretty long “to do” list for this Memorial Day weekend, a combination of stuff around the house and more “professional” activities (writing, web work, planning for teaching, etc.). On that “to do” list is a belated update to a post I had a few weeks ago, “Xanga fears come local!” In that post, I quoted and talked quite a bit about a passage from Karel Graham, who is an eighth-grade counselor at Tappan Middle School in Ann Arbor. In the Ann Arbor News article, Graham came across as thinking that Xanga in particular and blogs in general were the work of the devil.

Well, Karel actually read my post and emailed me (and, in a subsequent email, she gave me permission to quote her). This is what she said:

Thanks for your feedback regarding the blog article, in the Ann Arbor News. I agree with a lot of what you shared on your site. You would never know it, however, from the few negative comments the A2 reporter chose to publish from our 1/2 hour conversation. I too pointed out all of the benefits of self-expression that blogs offer. This is a good lesson in humility and I will be much more selective in agreeing to future interviews.

I wrote back and told her what I have found to be true: whenever you talk to the press, you cannot be subtle. You have to focus on the story that you want to tell them, only that story and nothing else. The minute you try to complicate things, as Karel says she did, you are likely to not get your real story told right.

Who says that print newspapers run by “professional” journalist are automatically “right” and reliable sources, while individual “amateur” bloggers are automatically “biased” and unreliable sources? (And how am I going to explain that in my textbook?!)

Anyway, like I said in my original post, I do have some sympathy with the situation that Karel and her junior high/high school colleagues are in. As a college professor, I have the luxury of working with adults– well, at least almost always people who are over 18 years old and thus technically “adults”– which means I don’t have to worry that much about a whole host of issues. Colleges and universities seem a lot more willing to serve in the role of “in loco parentis” than they were when I was an undergraduate in the mid-1980s, probably because the legal drinking age was different (in Iowa, it was 19), this was before the “just say no” message of Nancy Reagan, and we weren’t as conservative of a country back then. Nonetheless, there’s nothing I can really do to stop an 18 year old from writing about drugs, sex, and rock ‘n roll on their Xanga blog (and I wouldn’t want to if I could).

On the other hand, if you are teaching students who are literally and technically “children” (especially children who think they’re “adults”– you remember being 14 vaguely, don’t you?), teachers have a whole different kind of obligation. I mean, it’s one thing if an 18 year old first year composition student is posting to her or his blog about the “totally awesome” house party (complete with pictures of drunken young people); it’s another thing entirely if a 13 or a 14 year old does this. And if those 13 or 14 year olds are posting this kind of thing to their blogs at school, teachers are pretty much obligated to get involved in a much different and more direct way.

In any event, I was glad to hear that Karel wasn’t completely against blogging. And I’m guessing she’ll be a lot more careful the next time someone from the Ann Arbor News calls for a quote.

I had a post back in the middle of May that started out like this:

I’m doing a little spring cleaning of my email in-box, and I found a message that Charlie Lowe sent to tech-rhet a month or so ago about “RSS Quick Start Guide for Educators,” a “how-to” sort of document created and maintained by Will “Weblogg-ed” Richardson.

For one reason or another, I kept getting spammed on this post, and only this post. I don’t know why– maybe the RSS reference, maybe the mention of Xanga– but I kept getting poker messages. Weird. Anyway, sorry for the deletion, but I am guessing most won’t miss it too much.

There’s been an interesting series on NPR “All Things Considered” this week about how people can pay for college. The usual sorts of problems are here, problems that are all too common here at EMU, where most of our students work to pay for their school, and even then, they frequently can only afford to go part-time. It’s hard, no question about it.

But the thing that really caught my ear was this afternoon’s story. Part of the story including them talking with a woman who was working on her PhD in English at Howard University. She seemed normal enough, but then she said something that made me wonder, well, what things were like in her dream world. I don’t know if this is an exact quote, but it’s something like this:

“Right now, I’m about $60,000 in debt. But I’m planning on getting a professorship and I am planning on paying that all off in my first year.”

As John Stewart might say, “WHHHHHAAAAAHAAAAAA?????!!!!!!?????”

I really REALLY hope that this quote sounded as ridiculous as it did because of something NPR did when they put the story together (like this woman said right after saying that “yeah, right! ha-ha!”). Because otherwise, this person is either getting some incredibly bad advise or she’s just self-deluded. Or maybe I’ve just been applying for the wrong kind of jobs teaching English….

I found out via Kairos News this morning that there’s a blog conference going on in Australia right now called Blogtalk Downunder. The web site/blog (yet another WordPress site, I might add!) includes talk about the conference and, perhaps more importantly for me, links to papers given at the conference.

The two things that strike me about this for the time-being:

• While I could easily fall into looking through this site right now as a procrastination activity from things I have to be doing (short term: grading essays; medium term: revising a textbook), I am going to have to check this out later, maybe when I start again thinking about teaching stuff having to do with blogs.
• I wouldn’t mind an excuse to go to Australia, an excuse (for example) like presenting at a conference there. Of course, I’d have to find someone to contribute the arm and/or leg I’d have to pay to get there….

Via the Humanist discussion group, I came across the new web site for Electronic Literature Organization. It looks like an interesting site to me, especially something for my grad class. I included a unit/week in there last time around on “Hypertext fictions,” which I thought was fun and interesting.

Incidentally, it’s a site that’s powered by WordPress. I continue to experiment with WP with my unofficial web site and I’ve been pretty pleased. It looks good, it’s been easy to work with, and so far, no spam (and I need to install the spam blocking software that folks have talked about). I don’t know exactly when it’s going to happen, but I see my official blog moving to WP soon.

I saw my department head today for the first time in a couple of weeks (he was on vacation). On his first day back, he learned of the severe budget cuts that are apparently in the works for EMU this coming year. There’s still a lot up in the air, of course. One report on the news just the other day suggested that the state had decided it wasn’t going to cut public universities by as much as it had originally suggested. Still, there has been concern here among administrators.

And then, in a bitter study in contrast, I came across this story in the Ann Arbor News, “U-M endowment allows for extra programs.” Just one relevant quote:

It was only in 1994 when U-M hit the $1 billion landmark. Yet by the end of the fiscal year last June, U-M’s endowment funds stood at $4.2 billion, making Michigan’s the 11th largest in the country. That growth continues this fiscal year: As of the end of March, the funds had shot up to almost $4.9 billion.

Hmm. Hey neighbor; can I borrow $20 million or so?

I received an email today from a colleague in the field who wrote to ask about an article I published in the CCCs Online in September 2002, “Where Do I List This on My CV? Considering the Values of Self-Published Web Sites.” The link for the page, http://archive.ncte.org/ccc/2/54.1/krause_copy.html, doesn’t work. So I wrote to the “NCTE people” (and, of course, finding someone to actually complain to at NCTE wasn’t too easy), and the answer I received was less than satisfying. The NCTE person suggested I log into my NCTE account and get a PDF version of the file. The problem though is that the article in question was not published in the paper journal but as a web site in the online version of the journal. And just to make matters worse, the article is part of a special joint Ejournal issue which included articles about (ironically enough) publishing on the web. Which means that taking down this link messes up these other publications’ links, too.

On the one hand, I don’t want to make too big of a deal out of this, and I’m guessing that someone somewhere somehow will get this all sorted out. On the other hand, it isn’t just my article– try any of the articles linked via http://archive.ncte.org/ccc/ and see what happens. 404. I had assumed that NCTE was a bit more responsible about its web publishing responsibilities, but apparently, I assumed wrong.

I guess this just reminds me of something I’ve been thinking about a bit lately. As more publishing goes online (a good thing), we have a greater potential of losing texts that disappear more or less forever when someone decides to turn off a server (a bad thing). If that article was in print, I could refer my colleague to her or his library, or I could easily enough send them a photocopy or something. With the web site gone, I’m SOL.

After looking around my computer a bit, I was able to find what I think is the same version of the article that originally appeared in the CCCs Online, and I am going to make it available via my own web site at http://www.stevendkrause.com/academic/2002CCC. . I don’t really know what NCTE will think of this move, but considering the fact that they decided to just turn off all of the materials they had on the CCCs Online, I suspect they don’t care.

And I think I’ve learned a lesson that I will apply to my other online publications past and present: put them in multiple places in multiple formats. I don’t have time to mess with this today, but I think I’ll need to burn some CDs and print out some web pages sooner than later. I hope others in my field who have been publishing online lately do the same.

Follow this link to a Tom Toles cartoon in The Washington Post. I would post the cartoon directly and I’ll probably download it to keep a copy of it if this link goes bad….