Rose, Mike “The Language of Exclusion: Writing Instruction at the University”

Rose, Mike “The Language of Exclusion: Writing Instruction at the University” (547).
“Writing is a skill or a tool rather than a discipline.” [conclusions drawn from snippets of conversation about writing by writing instructors.]
“I realize how caught up we all are in a political-semantic web that restricts the way we think about the place of writing in the academy” (548).
Aren’t we though! Instead of talking about the act of writing, we talk about where writing stands in the university, the levels of our students, and other things that have no direct impact on the teaching of writing.
“And the movements of the last four decades that have most influenced the teaching of writing—life adjustment, liberal studies, and writing as process—have each, in their very different ways, placed writing pedagogy in the context of broad concerns: personal development and adjustment, a rhetorical-literary tradition, the psychology of composing” (549).
“they found a Latin and Greed-influenced school grammar that was primarily a set of prescriptions for conducting socially acceptable discourse, a list of the arcane do’s and don’ts of usage for the ever-increasing numbers of children—many from lower classes and immigrant groups—entering the educational system” (550).
So, today it seems we fight strongly against that “prescription” and want to work toward a writing that does not use “rules”. However, those rules are still necessary, to some extent, in order to create some kind of order out of chaos. Can we give our students a “fluidity” within our teaching which accepts rules and breaks them at the same time?
“It gives us a method—a putatively objective one—to the strong desire of our society to maintain correct language use” (552).
I wonder if the word “correct” is the right one. Yes, we desire a uniform use of language, but is it therefore because we desire “correctness” or because we desire understanding, clarity, etc. I find it difficult to believe that a written language in which there is no uniformity would be able to be understood by all. I academia we have articles that inform, to inform as many as possible we attempt to hold onto a certain use of language. That language could be IMing for all I care, but the uniformity seems necessary.
“To view writing as a skill in the university context reduces the possibility of perceiving it as a complex ability that is continually developing as one engages in new tasks with new materials for new audiences” (554).
Yes, and to not view it as at least a skill, in part, would be to believe you either can or you can’t.
“So, to reduce writing to second-class intellectual status is to influence the way faculty, students, and society view the teaching of writing” (555). YES!!
“What is remedial for a school like UCLA might well be standard for other state or community colleges and what is considered standard during one era might well be tagged remedial in the next” (556).
“The model we advance must honor the cognitive and emotional and situational dimensions of language, be psycholinguistic as well as literary and rhetorical in its focus, and aid us in understanding what we can observe as well as what we can only infer” (565).
While I understand and agree with this, I also think it is a little bit much! Too much for one human to attempt while teaching others.
“Consider, though, the message that would be sent to the schools and to the society at large if the university embraced- not just financially but conceptually—the teaching of writing; if we gave it full status, championed its rich relationship with inquiry, insisted on the importance of craft and grace, incorporated it into the heart of our currciculum” (567).
DEFINITELY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!