I encourage my freshman comp students to question "the academy", not
to attempt to emulate it. I usually have a unit of readings on
education that has ranged from Freire to Dinesh D'souza (sp?). It's
surprising how difficult it is to get them to question educational
methods and pedagogical techniques--to do so destabilizes the previous
12 years of their life. (This is much more a problem at the small,
private university I teach at than at the large, state university I
also teach at.)
Ok, but will this serve them well as they progress through the
academy? Indoctrination or Orientation? Semantics?
I think it IS "critical thinking" displayed through the technology of
writing. I think the problem is that people perceive it as teaching
"writing", which is not what I perceive it to be. It is much like
teaching grammar and mechanical correctness in isolation from the
student's own writing. Does spelling all the words right matter if
you have no words on the page?
Mike Hamende
hamendem@cts.db.erau.edu