syllabus
calendar
blackboard
student.email resources

last.updated 10.11.11

 

Responses to Harvard's Pedagogy

Purpose

While Harvard's composition pedagogy was emulated far and wide in U.S. academies, it was not without its critics, we will discuss early critics of Harvard's pedagogy and their current influence. Likewise, we will discuss strategies for conference presenations that you can apply for your roundtable presentation.

Before Class

  • Read Buck "Recent Tendacies in the Teaching of English" [Origins pp. 241-251]
  • Read Lounsbury "Compulsory Composition in Colleges" [Origins pp. 261-286]
  • Read Scott "What the West Wants in Prepatory School" [School Review 17.1]
  • Read Kirsch "'Suppose a grammar uses invention'" [Rhetoric Soceity Quarterly, 38.3]
  • Submit Blog Entry #4 on Blogger by the beginning of class
  • Submit informal email proposal to the instructor about concept your team will do for the Teaching Applied Rhetoric Workshop, why it is an important concept to teach, what your team preliminarily plans to do, and desired workshop dates

Lecture–Conference Papers & Presentations

The instructor will provide some tips on writing conference papers and doing confernece presentations (see presentation) and then specifically apply it to next week's roundtable presentations.

Discussion II: Why Harvard is Run by Idiots

  • How questions, comments and/or concerns do you have about the readings for this week?
  • What are the various criticisms of Harvard's approach to teaching composition? Are these fair critiques considering the context? In what ways do the critiques converse with the SCSRs?
  • How does Kirsch's work speak to how these texts currently respond to Harvard's pedagogy?
  • For those of you familiar with John Dewey's work, how would he respond to the Harvard composition pedagogy? Why?
  • In the Harvard Reports, high schools are blamed for the "terrible" writing incoming students produce on their entrance exams. This argument resonates with a commonplace among college composition instructors. But as Scott suggests, the colleges' meddling in high school pedagogy often contributes to these problems. What suggestions do you have for bridging this divide between high school English and college English? And do you think rhetoric can play a role in building these bridges, or is it an obstacle that needs to be overcome?

Class Activity I – What Would You Do?

The following excerpt started a long discussion on WPA-L recently. Read through the initial post below. How do you see aspects of this situation (the instructor's policy, the WPA's response, the chair's response) being informed by the readings we have done so far this semester? You may also want to peruse more of the conversation. Based upon the readings this semester and your own experiences with the writing classroom, how might you respond to the inquiry?

Hi,

I have an odd situation about which I'm soliciting feedback. During a conversation the other day with a few of our adjuncts, one talked about his solution to having students take reading seriously in his class. He said that he's sick of students not reading and/or not reading well, so he's going to give reading quizzes, which I think is fine since this does help motivate students to read, but his new grading policy connected to the quizzes is where I have a problem. He decided to put on his syllabus that the quiz grade you earn in the class determines the "cap" of the final grade you can earn. In other words, if you happen to have a C average on quizzes but write essays that earn A-s, you can only get a C as a class grade because that's the grade you earned on the quizzes. I raised the issues of test anxiety and that it's a writing class to him, but he said that he lets students take as long as they need on the quizzes and that they are writing a lot on the quizzes, so he is focusing on writing. He then said, "I talked to [the chair] about my idea, and she said to 'do it and see what happens'." I'm often by-passed as the WPA at my institution, but in this case, I'm not sure if we're facing a legal issue. What do you all think?

If he had come to me about the issue, I could have offered him other pedagogical ways to emphasize reading in his class, but, as he has done in the past, he went straight to "the top" because he does not usually like my answers. I have professional and pedagogical objections to what he is doing, but is there a legal issue here? Does anyone have any ideas or feedback for me? Any help is greatly appreciated.