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.