The Lure of Literacy

Michael Harker

Description

"…readers of LiCS will find a strong argument for how understandings of literacy are fundamental to the work that compositionists do, making this book useful not only to those doing similar work but also to be shared with colleagues who have less familiarity with literacy studies. The Lure of Literacy presents a model of how theories of literacy can be applied to the debates that beset compositionists again and again, offering a way out of their unproductive cycles." — Literacy in Composition

The Lure of Literacy promises to transcend the stale and unproductive debate on freshman composition that has gripped English studies for more than a century. It is the first book to chart the origin of the discussion from the early twentieth century to the advent of the New Literacy Studies. Michael Harker recontextualizes proposals to abolish compulsory composition and reimagines pedagogical conditions in English studies in order to present a different model for first-year writing. This new model for compulsory composition programs focuses on students' attitudes about composition and interrogates the very idea of literacy itself.
Acknowledgments

Introduction: A Necessary Beginning

1. The Lure of Literacy

2. The Sphinx Riddle of Freshman English: Examining Continuities of Literacy in the Great Debate

3. Recovering the Reformists: Articulating the Educational Reforms of Compulsory Composition

4. In This Spirit: The Rhetoric of Referencing a Current and Traditional Complaint

5. “What Should Colleges Teach?”: A Proposal for Compulsory Curriculum in First-Year Literacy Studies

Notes
Works Cited
Index

Sujets

• History of education
• Tertiary education
• Général

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 03 décembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438454962
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE LURE OF LITERACY
THE LURE OF LITERACY
A Critical Reception of the Compulsory Composition Debate
MICHAEL HARKER
S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS
Published by
S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK PRESS, A LBANY
© 2015 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact
State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Laurie D. Searl
Marketing, Kate R. Seburyamo
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Harker, Michael, 1976–
The lure of literacy : a critical reception of the compulsory composition debate / Michael Harker.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5495-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5494-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5496-2 (ebook)
1. English language—Composition and exercises—Study and teaching. 2. English language—Rhetoric—Study and teaching (Higher) 3. Literacy. I. Title. PE1404.H3625 2015 808’.042071—dc23 2014009553
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
Introduction: A Necessary Beginning
CHAPTER ONE
The Lure of Literacy
CHAPTER TWO
The Sphinx Riddle of Freshman English: Examining Continuities of Literacy in the Great Debate
CHAPTER THREE
Recovering the Reformists: Articulating the Educational Reforms of Compulsory Composition
CHAPTER FOUR
In This Spirit: The Rhetoric of Referencing a Current and Traditional Complaint
CHAPTER FIVE
“What Should Colleges Teach?”: A Proposal for a Compulsory Curriculum in First-Year Literacy Studies
Notes
Works Cited
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A Georgia State University PAWS Junior Teaching Release allowed me the time and resources to finalize my book for publication. Work on this project was also supported by a Georgia State University Research Initiation Grant, a Georgia State University Department of English Summer Research Award, and a Hambidge Artist in Residence Fellowship. Previous versions of certain portions of my book appeared in the journal Literacy in Composition Studies (LICS). I am grateful to LICS for granting me permission to reprint material from my study, “The Legibility of Literacy in Composition’s Great Debate: Revisiting ‘Romantics on Writing’ and the History of Composition.”
In the process of writing this book I have spoken about my ideas, questions, and struggles with mentors, colleagues, and friends. I offer my special thanks to Beth Burmester, Shawn Casey, Daniel Coe, Kathryn Comer, Scott Lloyd DeWitt, Aman Garcha, Susan Hanson, Mary Hocks, Ashley Holmes, Nan Johnson, Stephen Johnson, Andrew Kopec, Aaron McKain, Debra Moore, Rupesh Naik, Mary Ann Norfleet, Caitlin Ryan, Craig Teel, Tom, Vicki, and Aminda Warburton, and Gerry Weber.
I am grateful to Randy Malamud, my department chair, who read and commented thoughtfully on several chapters of this book and guided me through the proposal process and several grant and award applications. Thanks also to colleagues who reviewed my manuscript and provided suggestions, especially Kelly Bradbury, Lindsay Dicurci, Lyneé Lewis Gaillet, Baotong Gu, Tim Jensen, George Pullman, Susan Kates, Cindy Selfe, H. Louis Ulman, and Wendy Wolters-Hinshaw. Special thanks go to Mike Bierschenk and Laurie Searl for their close readings of every chapter and editing of the manuscript.
Beth Bouloukos, my editor at SUNY Press, advocated for this project from the beginning, and with the help of Rafael Chaiken guided me through the publication process. I am very appreciative of the support I have received from SUNY Press, especially from the two anonymous reviewers of my manuscript, who provided detailed, constructive, and encouraging feedback.
As readers will see, I owe a great debt to Harvey J. Graff who introduced me to the field of literacy studies and took an interest in my work, encouraging me to think more broadly, comparatively, and historically about composition studies and the field’s investment in myths and legacies of literacy. I am also grateful to Kay Halasek, who introduced me to the Great Debate over compulsory composition and provided thoughtful direction of my program of study while I was a graduate student at The Ohio State University. I am especially appreciative of Harvey and Kay for their willingness to co-chair my dissertation, out of which this book grows. Although my understanding of literacy has evolved since graduate school, I also wish to acknowledge the University of Oklahoma’s Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy program. Michael C. Flanigan, David Mair, Catherine Hobbs, Susan Kates, Ron Schleifer, Kathleen Welch, Karen Jobe, and Ron Brooks were among the very first to ask me to define literacy and attempt to understand how characterizations of literacy impact the teaching of composition.
I also wish to express my gratitude to Dr. Seth Walker and his fine staff at the Emory University Adult Cystic Fibrosis Clinic in Atlanta, Georgia. Since receiving my diagnosis and learning how to manage complications that come from living with CF, I have developed a new appreciation for many things in my life. To be sure, I cherish each day that I breathe freely, especially those days when I find myself surrounded by friends and family. But I am especially appreciative of physicians like Dr. Walker who are working to improve the day-to-day lives of people with CF in its varying forms.
Finally, I am deeply grateful to my parents, Ralph and Linda Harker, and my sister, Elizabeth Hylton, for their encouragement and support during the writing of this project. I dedicate this book to them.
INTRODUCTION
A NECESSARY BEGINNING

In the face of confusing challenges and at a time of disconcerting societal and global transformations efforts evoking “functionalities” and “non-functionalities,” “cultural” and “historical literacy,” canons old and new, skills of survival and of humanity speak to the same conclusions: the legacies of literacy must be reconsidered and literacy/literacies reconstructed. That would provide a necessary beginning.
—Harvey J. Graff, Literacy and Historical Development: A Reader
Complaints about compulsory first-year writing are numerous and familiar: If acceptable habits of reading and writing have not been attained before students enroll in college, composition will prove ineffective for these students because one or two semesters of composition instruction are not enough to improve students’ writing, reading, speaking, and thinking. Graduate teaching assistants are characterized as lacking both the experience and the intellectual and professional preparation to do the job. Students enrolled in the course supposedly lack motivation because the subject is compulsory, or they feel as though they are simply repeating high school assignments. The compulsory nature of the course strains English departments’ personnel resources, thereby undermining the morale of teachers whose time would be better spent teaching something else. 1 Taken together, these criticisms aimed at compulsory composition form what Leonard Greenbaum calls “The Tradition of Complaint,” a series of assaults against freshman English that began in the late 1880s and continues in various forms today.
Given that complaints about compulsory composition and proposals to abolish it seem to “ebb and flow,” as Robert Connors suggests, in response to world wars, perceived literacy crises, and other legislative, economic, and academic pressures; it is understandable that questions and confusion remain about the relationships between this debate and significant moments in the history of higher education. After all, the theoretical underpinnings and rationales for compulsory composition in higher education take shape alongside and in relationship to the complaints and pressures that seek to reform, change, and (in many cases) abolish it altogether. Whether these pressures grow out of the emergence of land grant and co-education colleges during the 1860s, the transformation of colleges from the classical curricular model to the elective system during the late nineteenth century, or the drastic changes that World War II brought to general education courses in the mid-1940s, freshman composition continues to reflect the aspirations of the universities that teach it. If this is the case, complaints about compulsory composition and proposals for its abolition are also linked to the history of the American college in profound ways.
The Lure of Literacy disentangles persistent complaints about the aims and effectiveness of composition from the history of higher education. In doing so, it underscores how the relationship of freshman composition to literacy, language acquisition, formal schooling, and higher education is a fundamentally complex one. Contemporary receptions of this debate have oversimplified these relationships. Although no foundational text on the debate over compulsory composition exists, Robert Connors’s article, “The New Abolitionism” comes closest. In it he suggests that complaints about freshman composition are symptoms of more general social,