New Edition?

I have mixed feelings about the new edition of The Presence of Others. I haven't read all of the essays, of course, but I have perused the table of contents. It appears that Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz have added some great essays in the gender, ethics, and business/labor sections of the anthology (by the way, I like that they made ethics its own section). They've also dropped a few good readings, most notably Neil Postman's "The Great Symbol Drain." I also think I'll miss Jimmy Carter and Elie Wiesel's essays on the Iraq war, since they're perfect opposites for the critical analysis assignment. But the Iraq war has been debated to death, so I understand dropping those essays.

From a teaching perspective, I think it would be great to make copies of good readings from the old anthology (such as Postman's "Symbol Drain") to use in addition to the new anthology. From the student's perspective, I'm not sure that the new readings are necessarily worth the higher cost of a brand new edition. Perhaps a good middle ground would be to wait a year or two until there will be plenty of used copies of the new edition available via bookstores and the internet. After all, I have a feeling that most current T.A.s will use the same readings from the old edition since they are familiar with those readings, with maybe a few new ones added to the syllabus. In which case, I would be seriously upset if I were a 110 student who had to pay a lot more for the same old readings. (Of course, a 110 student will have no idea if this is the case, but I think teachers should put themselves in their student's shoes as much as possible, especially when deciding what would be best for their learning, finances, preparation for future classes, etc.)

Writing What We Teach and Sharing What We Write

While working on the Writing What We Teach assignment, I have been conscientiously commenting on my own writing. I've made an effort to describe and explain various rhetorical moves, why I'm making them, what I'm trying to accomplish through them, etc. I've also been keeping track of potential pitfalls, mistakes, and things for further consideration. By sharing this essay and my self-comments with my students, I hope to give them guidance for how to approach the critical analysis.

Unexpectedly, I've found that commenting on my own writing has put a magnifying glass, so to speak, to my process--both my writing and thought processes. I think I'm always aware of the decisions I make as I write and the rationale behind them, but pausing every so often to actively ponder and explain them has heightened this awareness. I think there are several lessons to be learned from this experience.

First, I've reminded myself that a writer always has some kind of reason to his madness. If we as Composition teachers can keep this at the forefront of our minds, perhaps we can discern the rationale behind our struggling student's work and then help them to understand and build on it. Second, we can help our students realize that they ought to have specific reasoning behind their decisions to do this or that in their writing. The next step is helping them improve this reasoning, thus making better decisions. Of course, there is great potential (and danger) to make our students into models of ourselves. Accordingly, much of my self-commenting concerns the subjectivity of my choices, how I could just as easily choose a different way (to cut this introductory phrase or not to cut?) and the pros and cons of the various choices and options. Third, it might be beneficial to our students to have them comment on their own writing in a similar fashion, thereby making them more aware of the thought-processes behind their writing. And finally, self-commenting during drafting could be an excellent tool for researching student writing processes.

I want to close by referencing Mina Shaughnessy. As she told us, in so many words, we need to understand the logic behind our student's mistakes in order to correct them. By commenting on my critical analysis and sharing these comments with my students, hopefully I'll help them understand their own logic through discussion of my rhetorical choices.