Booth: Stance Schmance
Thu, 09/13/2007 - 09:53 — lslimak
"Successful rhetoricians are to some extent like poets, born, not made. They are also dependent on years of practice and experience. And we can finally admit that even the firmest of principle about writing cannot be taught in the same sense that elementary logic or arithmetic or French can be taught."
Ha! See rant on Rose. Attach comment here as evidence of my point.
Comments
A clarification
I think that I react negatively to the idea that a methodology or pedagogy will somehow "work" "better," or that, even if we could say that, the evaluation of methods would be independent of the teacher, students and context. I matter to my class because I am the teacher and I have expectations, preferences, a certain style, etc. My students matter because some are good writers and rhetoricians who will better, some are bad writers who will get better, and some won't change because that's who they are. You can't teach everyone to hit a curveball 400 feet. You can't make every student into a rhetorician, method aside, and I think that part of what Rose suggested that angered me was the underlying, unstated assumption that his method will "work." That's bullshit and he should know it. It might work for HIM (might), and it might work for some of his students and some of mine, and some of us as teachers, but no sample size will guarantee that any method will "work."
I'm done.
For now.
Writing cannot be taught
"...writing cannot be taught in the same sense that elementary logic or arithmetic or French can be taught."
OR PLAYING THE PIANO