Maxine Hairston, Freshman Writing, English Departments, etc.

I thought that Maxine Hairston made several interesting connections between the field of composition studies and English departments. She made it evident that a culture of power exists within a university, giving more authority to those departments that are politically charged and integrative. She argues that English departments tend to have a bad reputation with administrators, that is unless they craft their curriculum to be more literary criticism-based or transform their writing courses into "vehicles for social reform rather than as student-centered workshops designed to build students' confidence and competence as writers" (180). She discusses the controversial way of leading freshman writing courses, suggesting perhaps it would be better to let students, through liberal guiding on the professor's part, choose their own topics to write about and then workshop them with their peers. She believes that this will get students to really encounter and challenge themselves with their preconceptions and develop new notions of diversity and ideology. If a professor does the opposite, uses the class to establish and promote their own beliefs, she says they would largely be supporting capitalistic ventures by encouraging students to create a niche in the "power structure" (184).

She worries about the future of writing if students are being taught by professors with political agendas rather than professors who can actually teach craft and critical thinking skills specific to writing itself through genuine exploration of a student-chosen topic. I find myself agreeing with her statement: "Authoritarian methods are still authoritarian methods, no matter in what cause they're invoked" (187). I think she is right that students need to learn to critically evaluate the wrongs of the world, rather than have them inculcated by the institution, even if their tendency to challenge injustice is admirable. I know I can't just say "OK, ____ in society sucks and I'm going to say/do ______ to change it." I need to be informed about it through a class structured in the manner Hairston describes in which I evaluate my own knowledge/perspective on the situation, write about it, discuss it with my peers, revise, discuss it with my professor, discuss, discuss, discuss. I find that that's how I do my best learning in terms of political/social issues. Tom Kerr's Arugment class is a good example of this. Otherwise, like Hairston says, we find that incoming students in writing classes just learn how to play the game and use "fake discourse" which "is a kind of silence" and don't actually cultivate critical thinking skills (189). And that's critical. (I feel like that pun was valid because Hairston used a tapestry metaphor.)