Tuesday, September 30, 2014

What should teachers teach, and how should they grade when it comes to organization?


In Victor Villanueva Jr.’s article “Maybe a Colony: And Still Another Critique of the Comp Community,” he develops an analogy between the United States’ colonization of Puerto Rico with the Eurocentric “colonization” of composition.  For example, latina and latino culture value repetition, poetic diction, and apparent digressions from the dominant line of reasoning (Villanueva 184).  However, due to the high status of Eurocentric principals in composition theory, these techniques are considered improper tools to include in a composition class.  This astute observation begs the question: if there should not be a single organizational form to composing essays, what should the teacher teach in terms of organization?  On the one hand, should the teacher include multiple forms and have students decide on which forms and/or combination of forms they wish to use?  Keep in mind, it will take extra time for students to learn new organizational methods as well as to practice and employ them.  On the other hand, teachers could make vague suggestions when it comes to teaching organization and allow students to express themselves as they see fit.  This conundrum doesn’t merely affect what teachers teach in terms of organization, but it also affects how teachers grade.  Should teachers factor the category of organization in determining a student’s grade?  Should organization be graded on a binary or sliding scale?  In other words, do students either have it or they don’t, or do students have more or less organization in their writing?  If so, is the teacher required to learn all of the possible forms of accepted organization in writing such as appropriate essay organization in Ethiopia, Crete, Norway, Greenland, and Russia?  Although I agree with Villanueva’s assertion that teachers should not teach only one form of organization, it opens a Pandora’s box as to what organizational techniques (if any) the teacher should teach as well as how the teacher should (if at all) grade students on the organization of their ideas.  These are important as well as practical questions that Villanueva fails to address in his article.   

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