Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/06/26

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Subject: [Leica] declining quality of writing
From: ljkapner at cox.net (Leonard J Kapner)
Date: Sat Jun 26 11:38:17 2004

Karen et al,

Pardon me for wading into a discussion into which I've not been invited
explicitly, but my sense of the situation is that your academic overseers
are about 180? off the mark in having each academic discipline teach
outcome-directed basic writing skills.

If we, as caretakers of the academy, continue to ignore the practical value
of getting our student bodies to a least common denominator core set of
prerequisite knowledge and skills, we are very likely to wind up producing
state-of-the-art specialty communities whose members are unable to
communicate with one another beyond their community in any manner other than
conversational, social discourse. That result produces misunderstanding,
error and distrust - not good for the maintenance of the social contract.

The idea that each discipline deserves to teach its own set of exclusive
basic skills, rather than having a basic core set taught to
interdisciplinary standards by a general-purpose faculty, sounds like a
not-so-subtle land-grab by power-hungry, budget-starved deans against an
ineffective senior administration.

If I were teaching in such an environment, you better bet I'd be making all
kinds of noise at faculty colloquies about such a wrong-headed strategy.

Then again, this is just my opinion; I could be wrong! :-)

Len

-- 

-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces+ljkapner=cox.net@leica-users.org
[mailto:lug-bounces+ljkapner=cox.net@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of Karen
Nakamura
Sent: Saturday, June 26, 2004 9:42 AM
To: Leica Users Group
Subject: Re: [Leica] declining quality of writing

>Your comment above caught my eye. This is a very strong statement, 
>perhaps you meant something  weaker?  I may have led a sheltered
>academic life, but I am utterly baffled by this concept. How on 
>Earth can anyone teach basic writing and fully cover their own
>course syllabus at the same time? Something is very wrong with this
picture.

Yes, it's a bit nuts and I'm not particularly in favor of it. It's 
made worse by the lack of a unified curriculum for freshman writing 
-- we don't  all share the same textbook (Zinnser is recommended but 
not required).

The administration might give all sorts of pedagogic reasons* for 
doing it this way, but the reality is that it's because the English 
department doesn't want to teach basic comp. unless they get a major 
infusion of faculty, which isn't what the rest of the faculty want 
(since this is the era of zero-sum faculty hires).

So we all share the burden of teaching basic writing.

Karen

* One excuse is that each discipline has its own writing styles: 
anthropologists write ethnographies, political scientists write 
briefing papers, and computer scientists write comprehensive and 
understandable C++ comments.  So each discipline should teach to its 
strengths. Right.

-- 
Karen Nakamura
http://www.photoethnography.com/ClassicCameras/
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Replies: Reply from jls at runbox.com (Jeffery Smith) ([Leica] declining quality of writing)
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