Oh, geez, it's like shooting fish in a barrel.
1. Nobody else writes essays. They don't prepare students for
"real-world" writing. They are a very specialized genre that students
don't understand.
2. You can accomplish the same goals through other means (and here I'd
mention discussion lists, ala Beth Baldwin).
3. What about multimedia? I'd point people to moveon.org and the "Bush in
30 seconds" ads, or my piece - soon to be released as pay-only - in the TCC
Online conference: http://www.umich.edu/~marcyb/TCC-L </shameless plug>
3. Assign writing that's situated in local rhetorical contexts instead.
Here we could mention Russ' Playgoers' Guides, or other service-learning
initiatives.
Just a start,
Marcy
--On Tuesday, April 06, 2004 11:47 PM -0400 [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Perhaps we might want to think of it as 3 (or 4 or 5) good reasons not to
> write essays. If plagiarism paranoia is a bad reason, what might we
> articulate as "soundbite" sized good ones? And with those soundbites,
> what are the alternatives?
>
> I like your point earlier Doug that writing with no context is still
> better than no writing, but perhaps we can articulate that writing
> doesn't need to be so contextless even in the imitation-ivory tower.
>
> Rob
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Marcy Bauman, PhD
Media Consultant
College of Pharmacy
University of Michigan
734-647-2227
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