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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