Composition Studies Origins

I began this week's reading assignments--my first exposure to the wide world of Composition Theory--with excitement. The feeling quickly wore off as I finished the first few sentences of The Domain of Composition, a work which I didn't understand at first. I think I could understand it now, having gotten into the mindset of reading such work in much the same way I imagine a prisoner resigning himself to the fact that the walls of his cell will never be painted any other color but gray. Have I missed anything important in this article? As one of my literature professors has recently commented something to the effect of, "I could live a happy life knowing I've never read a paragraph of that stuff [composition theory]." Well, that's good for him, but I need this class to graduate. I began to pay closer attention as I realized, whilst reading The Origins of Composition Studies, that the history of the field may actually be a little interesting, but then again, anything can be made interesting when told in story form. It all started after the Civil War, when American colleges began to experience growth based on the German model and certain changes as the emphasis shifted from orality/rhetoric to literacy/composition , eventually blossoming into the university as we know it today. Certain major historical events occurred that forever solidified the status of compositional studies as we know it today, namely the efforts of Harvard to correct student ineptness in writing. I find it interesting that nearly 100 years later, students still don't find first-year compositional particularly helpful and that no other mention is made of composition until first-year graduate school when we are expected to already know everything without ever being taught it.

The issue of mal-education, as I call it, is addressed in 4C, Freshman English, and the Future (and to some degree, in all of the readings). Here, Kitzhaber presents two ground-breaking ideas in how to improve college writing. First, by helping "the high schools do a better job of teaching composition." Second, he proposes "we would have to make Freshman English a much better course than it has been" (132). The way to do this, he claims, is for the field to answer a list of questions taking up half a page. All these decades later, Freshman English has not improved. The authors of Writing Into the 21st Century suggest that this finding "might also provide a point of departure for graduate students and early-career researches, who are wondering where--in the vast landscape of possible research--they should seek to contribute to the field(s)" (472). I agree that out of the thousands of research papers they examined, none of them have had a significant impact on student education and results, therefor, many more thousands must be written. Surely the best way to fix something is by writing about it then studying, ad infinitum, what others have written, then writing about that. Reading this paper, I felt compelled to further the scope of enjoyment for beach-goers by collecting and organizing grains of sand according to size and shape and reporting my findings in hopes of broadening our appreciation and understanding of the sandy shores. Perhaps we can improve the work of artists by subjecting them to a rigorous study on the chemical history of color pigments in paint, documenting trends in the average number of bristles in a paint brush, or finding correlations between the tools used to cut the wood which keeps a canvas stretched and the prevailing artistic styles of the period. Particularly interesting is the study's finding that technology was the least writ about subject in the six year period from 1999-2004 (try as I might, I could not find that sixth year) and the fact that, in my opinion, Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key, is the most engaging and pertinent piece of the week.

I found it interesting that Yancey recognized that most of the writing in today's society is going on outside of the classroom and without teachers; that writers are finding new styles of writing which are tailored to the countless mediums in which it is now possible to write; that average citizens, navigating through the digital age are doing more to further the scope of writing in increasingly more innovative ways than educators; that to become competent in this new period is to engage readers on a social scale (not some minuscule sphere of study which has no influence/relevance to anything outside of it). In "Quartet Three," Yancey details specific ways in which to tailor teaching and curriculum to the changing needs of the 21st century.

I found Where Did Composition Studies Come From? to be the most interesting and informative article. I enjoyed reading about the different trends and modes of thought in criticism and the study of language. I also found the definitions of the various -isms particularly helpful. However, I did not finish the article in time to write anything truly substantial about it.

I look forward to learning more about this vast new field of study which has been opened before my eyes like a treasure box of joys. So far, I am especially interested in further studying the relationship between composition and the emerging technologies, for I believe that to reach the most number of people, one must engage them on their terms and by mastering whatever tools/media/methods/styles/etc they value most.