An Honest Relationship?

David Bartholomae had some very interesting points within in his work titled "Inventing the University", which had four main setcions. In his first section he states that by nature a student in a Liberal school should be able to act a a chameleon in writing in various discourses simultaneously by the sophomore year of study. He also defines "basic writers" as those placed in traditional remedial courses. Then he eloborates and states that a defining characteristic is that "basic writers" offer advice or homilies rather than academic conclusions. His second part adresses audience in that a student must be able to write to a variety of audience in order to be sucessful. Also, knowing the "codes" (language of a particular discourse in which the audience is adressed) grants the inside track knowledge neeeded for powerful discourse. He also notes that where education fails is when students are not engaged in scholarly projects - or what is perceived as busy work to the student. Then lies a truth in that students will engage in bastard discourse. Bastard discourse, ironically, is acheivable bacause a student can fake their discourse. This type of discourse is also brought up to note that it undermines education because instead of setting up schemas-- which is challenging-- the students take the easy way out and write to get by and then cheat themselves as well. Section three is about how one sifts through college entrance essays and what he thinks constitutes as a good paper and questions creativity. He states that non creative works can be masked as great writing because of mastery of good grammar but is one reads carefully it is easy to see the lack of creativity. Good writers also set the stage for transition in thought with academic proof behind there transition into a well thought out and executed conclusion. There is even notation for the naive writer to use a template to help draw out a conclution from unfamiliar texts. Section four hammers out the ideas that it is in the naive writers best interest to learn many different forms writing styles and to practice writing as honest as possible inorder to grow from the experience.

O - I have a lot to say about this article. As for the part about entrance essays I still don't think it is an accurate we to place people. I was placed in a remedial English course for college and my teacher was completely befuddled as to why I was in her class! She even went as far to see if it was a clarical error and it actally did note that it was perceived that my idea of being creative through reflective thought, I in fact was marked down for writing too informally. However, I whole heartedly agree with the concept that bastard discourse really is a waste of everyones time. On the students side not going the extra mile to connect with the assignment will only hurt their own knowledge in the end because they most likely will not grow from whatever such discourse was used. In fact, I would even hypothesize, that once they "get away with it" they will inturn be more focused how to do it again verses trying harder to connect with the assignment. As for the instructor's side, they may not pick up on such discourse because it is masked in the dialogue of the community and there by think the course work is working well. Therefore, I think it is just as important for the teacher --at the colligiate level-- to pick relative exercises that work with the objectives of the course and it is the students job to build their own schemas.

He draws on many authors of composistion theory. Flower is noted arguing that inexperienced writers largest difficulty lies in "negotioating the translation between"writer-based" and "reader based" prose"(627).