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05/31/2005 Archived Entry: "Diversion"

Diversion
I made a comment a few days ago that the S.A.T. nonsense which circulates in our profession and earns all kinds of outcries is really a diversion tactic, one not unlike moves the Bush administration often makes to displace attention regarding the war or some other issue ("marriage" being one such gesture). We see more composition diversion in a NY Times Op-Ed from the Fish, who has made a good living getting attention for being conservative lately. The Op-Ed has already been sent out to the field's main listserv where folks will no doubt engage in this very trite topic once again without any real resolve (content vs form – now there’s a new issue to debate!). Resolve is not Fish's desire (his argument is quite weak and can be easily deconstructed or disproved with just a tiny bit of comp theory, or it can be turned back on itself - his own class has the so-called "content" he says he disapproves of: the content is language acquisition and construction). But that's not what's up. What's up is this odd, non-conspiratorial move, to keep us focused on non-issues. It’s not a conspiracy per se, but rather an overall move within education to always keep the important issues to the side: labor practices, the legacy of print culture on how we organize curricula and the work we do, the emergence of new communicative technologies and how to teach with them, the over abundance of PhDs in English, the need to revitalize our objects of study, etc. Instead of dealing with these issues, the very esteemed one time Dean is worried about content in a writing course. Is he? I doubt it. I doubt that all of his experiences really project this to the foreground. Instead, this topic, like “Can Johnny Write,” “Our students Are Behind the Rest of the World,” “Kids Watch Too Much TV/Kids Don’t Read Enough” etc. are much catchier topics, cliché as they are. But clichés have always dominated first year writing instruction, from the textbooks to the popular perception of argumentation. So why should Fish rock that boat? Why indeed since the popular media has always been good to him and his image. Nah. Better to dig up a cliché and toss it out there where folks will eat it up (is this really any different than “being for family values?” in American culture during voting time?) than address what needs to be addressed.

Posted by joanna @ 06/03/2005 08:10 AM EST

Why the binary? Why not. There's way too much binary thinking on WPA-L, like the assumption that rhet-comp is an impoverished discipline because we can't agree, or don't yet know, "the best way to teach writing" as well as other issues of disciplinarity that came up over the past week or so. There's a whole group who want simple answers, who don't want to engage complexity, who don't like things messy.

And I think this gets to the larger issue you've raised with this post. Non-issues are easy to talk/bitch/whine about. The important issues use list above -- labor practices, the legacy of print culture, the emergence of new communicative technologies, the over abundance of PhDs in English, the need to revitalize our objects of study -- are difficult issues without clear-cut answers and can't be solved with binary thinking.

Posted by John @ 06/01/2005 06:21 PM EST

But why the binary? My point is that the binary itself is a cliche (teach grammar! teach ideas!), a trope circulated not so that we find solution to a given problem, but because of the very familiarity the trope encourages. This discussion (content vs form) is the composition equivalent of freshmen writing about parking on campus or gun control. The writing is not to contribute to knowledge but rather to circulate cliches we have grown familiar with hearing. Any real issues regarding writing (or the copmlexity of a given issue) are ignored in favor of the cliches. Politics (right or left) is also very good at this kind of practice.

Posted by jeff @ 06/01/2005 02:00 PM EST

I would say the real issue underlying the non-issue of Fish's content-less content is the public perception/understanding of writing. As Fish reaffirms the general NYT reader's idea that writing is grammar, he reaffirms the idea that an application letter with a misspelling (but whose meaning is clear) should be chucked in the garbage, and thus forces the pragmatists among us to consider, again, our approach to grammar at some level. In other words, what disservice do I do to students when I teach them to write ideas and ignore their comprehensible yet non-standard dialect?

Our reading group has been wrestling with this as one of the big issues we (compositionists) should be talking about. My thinking about WPA comes down to this: one list member wrote something like "I have no ideological objection to teaching grammar...." My response was, "shouldn't you have one?"

Posted by Brendan @ 06/01/2005 01:42 PM EST

Heh. I noticed that remark, too. As Jeff sez, Fish and SAT aren't really all that different.

WPA is mostly defensive; I'm not sure that's a bad thing. We just need some sort of counterpart on offense as well.

Posted by Mike @ 05/31/2005 06:41 PM EST

I guess we should be happy that Fish's editorial, itself devoid of (original) content, practices what he preaches?

At least one or two folks on WPA have realized the list is spinning its wheels. Though I nominate the "let's talk about the SAT instead" person for this month's drink-winner.

Posted by cbd @ 05/31/2005 06:10 PM EST