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Date:         Mon, 4 Jan 1993 08:57:38 CST
From:         Irvin Peckham <peckham@CWIS.UNOMAHA.EDU>
Subject:      deconstructing FE

I returned to the onslaught of after-Christmas mail (having
mistakingly thought I had signed off) and skimmed through
the interesting during-Christmas threads.  I don't know
whether the conversation is still going, but I wanted
to make a couple of observations (after thinking overnight
about Grinch's suggestion that we should institutionally
organize to get rid of firstyear English).

I have heard this proposal from other sources and with other
justifications than Grinch offers--most notably that firstyear
students are not advanced enough to write the kinds of essays
required of college students.  I have tended to dismiss these
arguments without even considering them--anymore than I have
considered the Johnny-Can't-Write syndrome, or I would have
considered Eliot's wholescale condemnation of his Harvard students
in the late 19th.  But Grinch put the argument in a different
perspective.  I note that she is not asking that we get rid
of firstyear writing courses but rather than we simply get rid
of them as requirements.  Her reasons seems to sound and obvious
that they do not need further comment.  To buy into required
firstyear English is to buy into that old them-dumb-kids-can't-
write rhetoric that plays well in Peoria (excuse me, Peoria).  It
clearly makes good newspaper copy and makes money for A&S people.
I think either Berlin or North had a good few pages on how the
English depts. in the early 60's (was that Project English?)
bought into this argument in order to get some of the money that
was floating around in the aftermath of the Russians-got-the-
satellite-up-before-us paranoia.


I want to add a "but . . ."  But since we do have these firstyear
students in all of our writing classes, let's make the most of it.
I think that most students, in fact, come into my classes knowing
full well that it will not hurt them to learn how to improve their
writing.  Even with the "forced" students, I think we can do a wonderful
job by putting into practice some of the pedagogical strategies that
have been developed in the last twenty years and that have been
repeatedly described on this forum.  And for those who are so minded,
we can even help them to move their "thinking" ahead as they
concomitantly move their writing (and, I hope, as we move our
thinking and writing).  We can bewail that students have been forced
to take our courses, but those of us who have been high school teachers
are used to this kind of compulsory education.  We can still create
a damn good learning environment even if the students have been
marched into our classes at gunpoint.

I know that Larson excoriated the state of firstyear instruction.
But I think we should remember where we were in the fifties and
note how far we've come.  I would, therefore, urge us to keep
traveling, on the one hand, and to join Grinch's (and others') call
for unrequiring firstyear English, on the other.
Irv
--
Irvin Peckham
University of Nebraska at Omaha
peckham@unomaha.edu
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