College English Articles

In David Wallace's article "Unwelcome Stories, Identity Matters, and Strategies for Engaging in Cross-Boundary Discourses," the author argues that the identity of both the writer AND the reader matters, and that no matter what people will write about, they will always cross a boundary.  Similar to the concept that all writing is political according to Paulo Friere, Wallace argues that all writing crosses boundaries.  Thus, writing, by its very nature, is inherently offensive.  There is not one piece of writing that will not offend someone in the world.  Thus, people must learn to interact and engage with those they do not agree with.

However, I found Matthew Heard's article "Repositioning Curriculum Design: Broadening the Who and How of Curricular Invention" to be more interesting.  Heard argues that simplified curriculum design stagnates student thinking and engagement.  Instead, he advocates that instructors should design curriculum around open-ended questions about the real world; ideally, this is a field that students can participate and contribute in.  He centers around the notions of creativity and inquiry; students should be expected to think creatively about real-life issues and ask thought-provoking questions.  I am glad that Heard addresses the "culture of assessment" that dominates education (especially high school: SAT, PSAT, AP, ACT, CAHSEE, District Benchmarks, CELDT, and Grading Periods).  His concern is that such open-ended questions and creativity don't lend themselves too well to traditional forms of assessment (328).  However, I believe that instructors could use the "Bloom's Taxonomy of Higher Order Thinking" to rank students.  For example, if students ask higher order questions, then they should receive a higher grade.  It could be argued that developing higher order questions also requires a certain degree of creativity.  Overall, I agree with Heard that curricula should be meaningful and centered around inquiry and creativity.  However, how would you design a mode of inquiry that all students would want to participate in?  For example, I would not want to participate in an inquiry about which are the best tires for my car, but I might find the inquiry fascinating if I was a car guy or amateur mechanic.  Thus, inquiries run the risk of alienating individual students.  However, if the course is designed so that everyone can choose their own topic, then there is a limited opportunity for collaboration since every body's topic is unique.  Heard does not address whether inquiry topics should be set or unique to the individual, only that they should be open-ended.  Although, the examples he uses of previous inquiry topics all appear to be pre-determined by the instructor.  Thus, this is another area that needs further exploration and/or elaboration.  All in all, Heard makes some interesting points, and I hope that teachers as well as districts will attempt to implement his suggestions for curriculum design.

Crosswhite - Introduction; Chapter 1

In James Crosswhite's book, The Rhetoric of Reason, he begins with an attempt to reconcile rhetoric with postmodernism.   A large portion of postmodern philosophies focus on the limitations of language and its inherent inability to arrive at any ultimate truth.  Hence, this inability has given rise to infamous phrase: the end of philosophy.  Although some interpret postmodernism as depressing given its stance on absolute truth, others find it freeing.  However, linguistic philosophers from Wittgenstein to Derrida acknowledge the ability of language to increase one's knowledge and understanding; in other words, although we cannot achieve an ultimate truth, we can achieve some semblance of it.  Crosswhite reframes the subject of rhetoric into the background of postmodernism.  He addresses those who believe that we should give up any attempt at obtaining truth through language.  He also addresses skeptics who refuse to acknowledge the findings of postmodernism; on page 30, he imagines a scenario where a philosopher quibbles over whether a couple is married or not.  This points to the heart of philosophy: is philosophy helpful in a practical, ordinary sense?  Crosswhite's answer would be yes: though rhetoric.  Rhetoric is where philosophy and the ordinary converge according to Crosswhite.  Argumentation is at the heart of both philosophy and real-world experiences, and it is with argumentation that Crosswhite lays the foundation for the rest of his book.