Re: one's own students and everyone else's too

[diepenbrock@UHCL4.CL.UH.EDU]

Margaret--yes you are reading me correctly about required visits.  Once 
we get em in, they keep on coming.  In fact, we have an expression here 
we find ourselves forced to apply to at least one student a semester: 
"Writing Center junkie."  I have had to tell several students that they 
must limit their visits to the Center because of excessive overuse.  We 
find that coming more than once or twice a week creates a writing 
dependency that is hard to break.  Does anyone else have this problem?


As for academic writing--
I'm sorry for being rather vague about Herzberg's comment.  I think he 
means that our belief that we (compositionists) hold a benevolent position 
"above" or "outside" of disciplinary thought is a mythical belief--we 
want to be non-judgemental about the various disciplines, and we want 
to believe that we teach our students to consider all viewpoints (one 
of the features of academic discourse), but in reality we are 
indoctrinating our students into academic discourse in general, which 
does represent an ideology (even holding all points of view to be 
valuable is an ideology--i.e. it's hard to believe this and maintain a 
belief in clear-cut "rights" and "wrongs."  In another essay by Bizzell, "What 
Happens When Basic Writers Come to College," this problem is debated.  
Bizzell asks whether students can assume an academic point of view 
without losing their former understanding of the world.  She wonders if 
they can ever truly fit back into their former discourse communities 
once they have become academically oriented.  I pose this question to my 
graduate students and get both yes and no answers, but in my experience, 
a higher education of the type we provide changes people forever.  (I 
agree with you that teaching students to be academically and 
critically literate is exactly what we are supposed to be doing.  I 
just have a lot of fun debating whether these types of literacy are 
"better" than others and necessary for everyone.)
Chloe

On Fri, 8 Nov 1996, Margaret Clark wrote:
> 
> I envy you your relationship with professors. We are rarely so 
> fortunate. I think you are saying that even with the complaints, the 
> required visit does more good than no visit at all; if I am reading you 
> correctly, I couldn't agree more. If I'm not reading correctly, will you 
> fine tune a little?
>  
> 
> Sounds like required reading, Chloe, with the same benefits as required 
> lab visits..... Is Herzberg saying that this indoctrination is mythical? 
> I've always thought that that indoctrination, the training in the 
> critical process is what we're supposed to do -- it's what distinguishes 
> us from secondary schools and maybe from 2-year programs that focus on 
> professional certification. 
> 
> > Well--I'd love to hear what others think about this issue.
> 
> Yeah, me too.
> 
> > Chloe Diepenbrock
> > UH-Clear Lake
> > Houston, Texas
> 
> Margaret Clark
> clark@dt.uh.edu
> 
> 
>