A Couple Questions...No Answers

I was drawn to the excerpts from Bain and Hill early in the semester as I am interested in the transition from oral to written composition. Since I did not end up presenting on the matter, I'll take this opportunity to explore a couple of the areas I intended to discuss. Bizzell and Herzberg mention that the shift to writing "tended to be a shift from public to private discourse" (1142). This view of writing as a generally private experience is one that persists to this day and can pose a problem in the classroom as it goes against the goal of making communication more public (which seems to be a common theme in teaching). For example, in my Creative Writing classes I want the students to become more comfortable with the idea of people (real people, not just me) reading their work. This is an ongoing battle. Apparently most, if not all, of their past writing experiences have been addressed to themselves or only one other person. Their hesitance is noticeable in a variety of ways - "forgetting" drafts on peer review days, refusing to read work aloud or allowing me to do so, not participating in the class book project, etc. I'm not sure it would help if our academic world were still more saturated in orality, but certainly the problem of private vs. public composition is something worth contemplating.

The work of Hill points to a problem that is seemingly without solution. This is "the conflict between descriptive linguistics and the need to teach usage" (1143). In high school Language Arts classes I remember the prescriptivist drills and was relieved when the concept of descriptive grammar was revealed to me in college. But the fact remains that popular usage isn't always the best language for writing. Or at least formal writing. Or really any writing that has a broader audience in mind than the group of people who understand and use language the same as the writer. I suppose this is somewhat related to the public/private thing. If one is writing for a public audience (whether it's actual publication or just something out of the range of peers), the composition has to be seen by the audience as acceptable. I am certainly not a die-hard supporter of prescriptive grammar only, but do see that there needs to be a line drawn somewhere. I mean, no matter what some things just can't change with common usage. I'm sorry, but I don't think that all of my students who think they are going to "collage" after high school are going to make it. There's just not enough demand for that kind of art. The implications for teaching language, however, I'm still not sure about.

Vico Response

Overall, I thought Giambattista Vico's On the Study Methods of Our Time was a fairly interesting comparison of the differences between the education methods of the two time periods. I was particularly struck by the statement that "young scholars should not be admitted to the study of eloquence unless they had previously studied their way through the whole curriculum of learning" (877). This goes against the educational system I found in college and now the high school in which I teach. At both levels students are encouraged to take public speaking as soon as possible, usually within the first two years of a four year program. At first glance, this seems logical. Not only do students who jump right into Speech class get that graduation requirement out of the way, they also are gaining skills to utilize through the rest of their educational career. From the perspective of the instructor it is in some ways useful to get the younger students. Their attendance is usually better and, quite frankly, it's typically a lot easier to keep younger students in line (this may be true at the college level as well, although I don't know for certain). With reasoning along these lines, I have believed that getting students in Speech earlier was better for the past three years.

Seeing Vico's words and thinking of the students that I currently have in Speech, my position is now shifting. This year, the course itself is 90 minutes long, every other day. There are currently 20 students, although I often have a few more than that. Most of these are ninth-graders, as per recommended by the counselor. With the exception being the first time I ever taught Speech, this class has been a constant struggle. I don't know how many days have ended with me wondering if any of the students draw anything useful from the class (which I feel could be most useful to them). And I'm beginning to think it's because they haven't mastered "the whole curriculum of learning." (Although they could just be yahoos; I'm not completely dismissing that.) Concepts I see as basic are elusive to them, things I assume to be prior knowledge are mysteries, and in all reality they can't handle being in the same room for more than an hour. Silly little kids. In past years, when the upper-class students were extremely rare, it was easy to dismiss it as kids having no appreciation for communication skills. This year, however, I have a handful of juniors and seniors. And they are brilliant. That, of course, is a lie. But they do have a broad base of knowledge from which to work (which does seem to be one of the important things to Vico), but also, and perhaps more importantly, they are closer to that "real life" I keep warning students about. They can actually name possible situations where they may use their newly developed speaking skills and they ask for focused instruction in the specific areas they know are necessary for their future lives.

So, perhaps I am teaching only four or five students last block. Perhaps these are the only few that should actually be there. With any luck we'll all survive and the other yahoos will still have their notes when they grow up enough to realize that I'm not completely full of crap.