"The Making of Knowledge in Composition"

The beginnings of this book was very interesting. It brought many thoughts to my mind and though I take issue with many of the statements (the teaching of novels and poems is insane, possibly un-American [North, 12], are you kidding me?!) I'll focus on the article's dealings with the teaching of Composition.

The "tripod" of English studies, language, literature, and composition (North, 10) makes a lot of sense. I have never really thought through the breakdown of English, but that's as great a place to start as any. I understand why academic programs and professors leaned toward teaching language and literature (though un-American) and shied away from teaching composition. Language is very concrete, black and white, based on prescriptive rules of grammar, usage, spelling and all the other fun stuff. There are right answers and there are wrong answers. Literature, insane and in all its glory, is the reading of already written pieces, the dissecting, analyzing, and criticizing of written pieces. And though it is not always concrete (somebody please tell that to an undergraduate British Literature professor I had) it is concrete enough to come up with satisfying answers to assuage the ever-analyzing minds of literature buffs.

Composition, as I am beginning to understand from our readings and our class discussions, is an all together different beast. We discussed theorists and at least 14 aims of discourse (scientific, dialectic, rhetorical, poetic, rational, emotional, ethical, technical, creative, expository, descriptive, persuasive, narrative, analysis... and I didn't start taking notes until about 20 minutes in). Try fitting that into a freshman composition class (or a fifth grade writing curriculum). Teaching writing is not easy. I love to write and I love to teach writing, but I reflect a lot on my teaching and wonder often how effective I am. I'm not talking about test scores either, I'm talking about teaching my student to write. There is no concrete answer for writing (outside of the language aspects). Writing is subjective, personal, emotive, in the moment, opinionated, and countless other adjectives. "Composition...provide second class academic citizens with a way out of their academic 'ghetto'" (North, 14). You can't fit those on a rubric and the state sure as heck cannot authentically assess those qualities.

I can understand why there has been trouble defining Composition and its aim and I agree that "in English teacher we have relied too long on our best guesses" (North, 16). I am taking this class to find my definition of the aims of Composition and I am tired of guessing.