We keep hearing that America’s colleges and universities are the envy of the world, which seems to imply that they impart to students an extremely high level of knowledge and deep, refined skills necessary for success in today’s world. The trouble with that idea is the fact that many students manage to obtain college degrees despite the fact that they don’t even have the basic language and math skills that would have been taken for granted among high school students fifty years ago. Last year’s National Assessment of Adult Literacy report showed that basic literacy of college graduates is low and falling and a new paper released this week by the Pope Center shows that college graduates also have weak writing skills and explains why that is the case.
In “English 101: Prologue to Literacy or Postmodern Moonshine?” retired English professor Nan Miller, who taught writing for twenty-six years, examines the changes in the typical freshman composition course. She laments that those crucial courses are now dominated by “composition theorists.” Miller writes that “Composition is now taught according to their vision, in spite of evidence that shows a sharp decline in literacy among college graduates.” The ideas of the theorists, she contends, “hold students hostage to a bad idea.”
Miller identifies six fallacies that embedded in the composition revolution.
The first fallacy is that the purpose of composition courses is to “empower writers to membership in other discourse communities.” What that means is that instructors don’t aim just for competence in writing simple, basic English, but rather try to get students ready for the kind of writing that is done in science, business, and other fields. Miller forcefully states her objection, stating that this idea “asks freshmen to learn language that is foreign to them before they have learned the basics of clear writing.”
The second fallacy is that colleges need to have composition instructors who are trained in “composition theory.” Unfortunately, that gives us writing instructors who have been steeped in the all the postmodern notions about education, but don’t have a clue about how to help freshmen – who often enter college with woeful writing skills, thanks to years of K-12 neglect – learn how to organize and express their thoughts. Instead of hiring young theorists, Miller would rather see composition instructors who have “a love for great works, a knack for writing clear sentences, and a yen for having both rub off on a class of sometimes reluctant eighteen-year olds.”
Miller’s third fallacy is that good writing isn’t enhanced by having students concentrate on grammar and usage. According to the theorists, students have a “right to their own patterns and varieties of language,” and therefore it’s oppressive for instructors to insist that there are rules for proper writing in English. That idea, no doubt, warms the heart of multiculturalists, but when students and graduates discover that employers are not impressed by people who don’t write the maligned “standard English” all the theorizing is useless.
Fallacy four is that writing is best taught in a “student-centered” classroom. The idea here is that it’s better for students to learn from each other since too much “teacher talk” tends to stifle the student’s “authentic voice.” According to the theorists, good teaching practice is to put students into groups and have them discuss their drafts among themselves. The instructor, usually a grad student, is supposed to act as a “facilitator” for the small groups. Work is also graded by the groups, although the instructor can step in and override. In practice, that hardly ever happens. Miller comments trenchantly, “An inherent contradiction in this arrangement is that students with SAT scores not high enough to place out of freshman composition are presumed qualified to critique the work of their peers.”
The fifth fallacy is that the theorists’ model is about teaching writing when it’s actually about promoting their philosophy. A key tenet of that philosophy is that education needs to be “democratized.” Miller quotes one theorist who favors the creation of “antifoundational” classrooms that will “encourage students to write in a way that interacts critically with the ideological formations of their world and take action to change them.” If English professors want to change the world, they ought to do that on their own time and not use helpless freshmen as pawns in their efforts.
Fallacy number six is that it’s bad for instructors to have students read and then write about great literature. Almost anything else is all right, but literature is forbidden. Why? Supposedly, students might feel “intimidated” by such work and therefore “dismiss their own texts as unworthy by comparison,” as one theorist opines. By similar reasoning, I suppose that piano students should not listen to recordings by Rubinstein lest they get discouraged. Miller thinks that students are being robbed: “Composition courses would be greatly improved if literature were reinstated, but for students to benefit from studying literature, it will also be necessary to reinstate teachers who hold art sacred, who love great works for their timelessness and for their perfectly wrought passages – teachers who aim to cultivate in students an appreciation for both.”
Alas, the theorists are firmly entrenched at NC State, UNC, and many other schools. If you’re the parent of a college student, you should not expect that your son or daughter will graduate with good writing skills unless you see to it yourself.