What is Composition?

Simply put, I think that overall, in this class I have learned that there is no single definition of what composition truly is. It may span from persuasive rhetoric to the physical process of writing, from writing papers as a student to grading papers as a teacher. I think that what composition does most effectively is challenging people to be innovative, persuasive, and understood.

As we learned in James Miles’s “Born Cannibal,” language is the reason that humans can be good and love to overcome inherent evil, and language is a form of composition. Yet, we also learned that language alone is not enough to make humans what they are; language must be abstract. Joseph, a feral child, lived without any abstract language, and so although he was not a cannibal, he was not on the same developed level as other humans. We then learned that language works through rhetoric, which Aristotle states is persuasion, encompassing logos, ethos, and pathos. Toulmin argues that logos, ethos, and pathos still are not substantive enough to thrust humans into their upper intelligence because they simply explain why people do things and are convinced; we still need to understand how. Toulmin claims that you must have a claim and data that cannot be challenged, but that a warrant can be made, and must be challenged. This cognitive challenge of ideas is another progression into composition, but we as students still have not reached that point.

We were then told that language is a technique for changing people, but writing is the technique used for shaping and changing an entire civilization. (Enter composition.) At this point, the combination of simple language, abstract language, rhetoric, persuasion, and the Toulmin model have all progressed into what composition really does: challenges the mind. Yet, composition on its own is not powerful enough to provoke change; the composition must somehow be shared with the world, and so the printing press was invented. Printing produces powerful ideas, yet students and people in general still claim to hate English. Why? Because the subject matter is abstract, teachers should try to teach thinking instead of teaching to the grade, which so many people learn to hate.

Jim Berlin states that “we’re not just teaching to write, we’re teaching epistemology,” the search for truth. There are three basic ways to know something: the objective, the subjective, and the ideal rhetorical. Composition offers this rhetorical way to know things in that it offers interaction between individuals, so long as it is used effectively. One way that we have learned to effectively communicate this knowledge is with the internet and most specifically the idea of “Web 2.0,” which enables interaction across mass media. Yet, even still, it is not always effective, as we have seen with Texas Tech’s own TOPIC/ICON program for first-year “composition” students.

So if we have overcome the barrier of physical communication, how can composition be as effective as possible in challenging thought? Lanham proposes that writing should be a fun activity, and that we should look at language, rather than through it. We should learn to enjoy playing with words, and we should encourage our students to do the same. As future composition teachers, we must understand that innovation leads to learning, and so we cannot confine our students to predetermined standards of how to run a classroom, or even write a paper. We must rise to the challenge of teaching something that cannot be defined. We must teach our students how to think, so that perhaps they can challenge our ideas, and what it means to truly compose a poem, an essay, a book, or even a blog.

What This Class Means to Me

I think that I can definitely apply the more practical teaching theories to my future pedagogy. I think that it is important to consider different writing styles, and I think that it is imperative to get students interested in reading and writing again. I absolutely believe that writing is crucial to thought development, and no matter what the students' future profession will be, he or she WILL use some form of writing.

In my discussion about my final paper, Kevin and I discussed the importance of writing. I briefly mentioned that even writing your name is saying something. By writing your name on something, anything, you are claiming it. You are taking responsibility for it. We stated that if it was possible, someone could, in theory, go back and collect everything you had ever written your name on to create a sort of biography or life history. Why, then, are people so quick to sign papers, to write their name, to sign into class, but they claim that they hate writing. I think that people too often underestimate the importance of writing, and I think that it is our job as teachers of composition to reinstate this interest and importance of writing to our students.

"Clarity"

I know I mentioned this in class as being inaccurate, but I wanted to actually talk about WHY more, since most of the people in our class (if not everyone) does not understand/speak French.

Lanham says: "D'abord la clarte," Anatole France exhorts us, "puis encore la clarte, et enfin la clarte"---clarity first, last, and always.

I cannot get past this "translation" because it is so incredibly inaccurate! The LITERAL translation of this quote is "To begin clarity, then again clarity, and finally clarity." That absolutely does not mean the same thing as "clarity first, last and always."

"Then again" is not a translation of "always," and so for Lanham to try to translate this French phrase to illustrate clarity, he is making a mockery of his own argument. I agree that it is bad to encourage students to write in a transparent manner, where their writing doesn't have a true purpose. However, without any sense of clarity, the argument makes no sense. He cannot argue that "clarity" is inadvisable when students should write with a voice. But while he is trying to find weaknesses in Anatole France's argument, he himself loses all credibility.

**For those of you wondering, or even if you don't really care, the correct way to say "clarity first, last, and always" would actually be "Premiere, enfin, et toujours, la clarte."

TOPIC/ICON

I personally have had no experience with TOPIC/ICON, but frankly, I'm terrified to teach it. Kevin said that he had a good experience with this as a teacher, but everyone I have ever talked to hated actually taking the class. I'm a tutor for Tech students, and I honestly hate the program from what I have seen as well. Thus far, comments on my students' papers are generic, impersonal, and overall not thought-out.

I think that the best thing that I can do as a future teacher under this program, albeit I am very worried about my students hating me for making them work under this program, is for me to try to make my experience as a Classroom Instructor AND Distance Instructor, or grader, or whatever the term is, as positive and personal as possible.

I think that this program would be much more manageable if the students were somehow ensured that their comments and grades would be personal, instead of simply being handed shortcut responses. I do think that it will be a struggle for me to read and analyze every paper that I am handed, but isn't that my responsibility when I take on this assistantship as a Graduate student?

I think that this program will give me a great experience that I can use when I teach high school in the future, but I think that I have to be very careful to manage my time well. The English program I am working on will only take me a year and a half, so everything will be pretty rushed. However, I believe that if I can effectively manage my time and responsibilities, I can put forth the required effort in grading students' papers so that hopefully they can have a more positive experience in TOPIC/ICON.

Technology and Education

I absolutely hated the MOO online class. No one got to speak coherently, and no one could follow the discussion. I think that yes, technology should be integrated into the classroom, but if we used that system in our high school classrooms, it would never work. As 20-something-year-olds, we couldn't keep on task on the discussion, so how could we possibly expect high school students to?

Once people are in an online chat room, people are able to control the floor whenever they want, and it becomes virtually impossible to follow what anyone is saying. I think that this could be a good idea if people were able to monitor who spoke, and how often, but with this program, people are not able to do this.

I think that online classes are pointless and there is still a reason that books are around. They have survived this many centuries because they offer academic value and worth, and that will not change any time soon, regardless of the advancing technology. We still read books today, when computers and the internet are available to everyone, so why would that change 20, 50 years from now?

Philosophy vs Rhetoric

I absolutely disagree with Lanham's idea of the progression from philosophers to rhetoricians with the advent of the internet. I think that the physical written word (i.e. in books) is imperative to knowledge and learning for many reasons. I think that we should preserve communication on paper, and books aren't going anywhere with their widespread use. Yes, people communicate more rapidly through the internet, but does that really make communication more effective?

With books, a sense of grammar is required, and it helps teach and remind people of the grammatical rules that have been invented and preserved throughout time. No, maybe not every person off of the street can write a paragraph using commas exactly correctly. However, people do, or should, know that a period comes at the end of a sentence to separate ideas.

The internet, on the other hand, makes grammar rules nonessential, which I think is a mistake. Even within this blog, I could spell every word wrong, use no punctuation or capitalization, and there would not be anything telling me that I had done something wrong unless I clicked the spell-check button.

I do see that the internet is extremely helpful and invaluable in many ways, but I also believe that it is often misused, overused, and that it has no comparative worth against books.

There are still philosophers today, and there were philosophers even before the advent of standardized writing. Likewise, rhetoric and rhetoricicans have existed, and will continue to do so. Like the internet and books, I do not think that the two can be compared against one another, but that they maintain two separate identities and characteristics.

I believe that philosophers do search for the more abstract and rhetoricians look more within interpersonal ideas. However, I do not think that there would even be a such thing as rhetoricians without philosophers, who develop their ideas on their own, and who must have created a uniform language in the first place for rhetoricians to use.

Humanism

In my opinion, humanism is searching for the ultimate "good" life, but that can never actually be attained. If you are supposed to be working towards a better life, then there is no way to actually achieve the "best" life, because there is always something better.

I do not believe that humanism is possible among entire societies. I do believe that humanism can exist within individual people trying to better their lives, but there are even restraints to that perspective. If a person is constantly trying to be a better person, there is only so much he or she can do, regardless of the resources they have at hand. Too much in society is dependent upon others, and so it is impossible to try to objectively make life better.

I believe that everyone should try to live by humanism, to a degree. I think that if people were more determined to make their lives, as well as the lives of others, better collectively, then the world would, in turn, be better. I think that people should try to commit random acts of kindness whenever they can, which I personally try to live by as well. I think that by making other people happy, you can make yourself happier, and if everyone lived by that, then everyone would be happier.

However, even though I am an optimist, I am also realistic. I know that most people do care about themselves first, and others second, if (sadly) at all. But I believe that even caring a little bit about others and going out of your way just a little bit could help to propel the idea of humanism throughout our society.