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Are competency tests totally indefensible?  I don't think so.  It's
interesting to me how fast arguments against competency testing devolve into
dyadic, either/or positions: competency testing has nothing to do with
writing, while proper writing teaching occurs in the disciplines;
competency testing is a narrow reinforcement of superficial rules, while
proper writing teaching is expansive and empowering; competency testing is a
waste of time and money, while proper writing teaching is never funded
adequately.  Now while I generally agree with the second half of these
dualistic statements, I don't buy the first half, and I think we need to be
careful how we demonize competency testing.  The dyadic thinking entailed
here soon leads us into a number of invidious polarities: enlightened faculty
and students vs benighted faculty and administration; or enlightened gown vs
benighted town (and toadying administration).  Once we're in this rhetorical
space it's awfullly hard to get out.  We've defined ourselves through
opposition, and opposition we'll receive.  That benighted town will wax
poetic about pampered faculty squandering tax dollars on such frippery as
writing empowerment; that toadying administration will argue that writing
intensive classes are an unaffordable luxury as it removes the limits on our
class sizes.
 
We need to cultivate a rhetoric which is triadic if we're to escape
unfruitful dichotomies and move toward a higher ground for writing in
universities.  For example, while we know that WAC is an extremely fertile
pedagogy, it is not opposed to competency testing, only different.
Competency testing's purpose, it's rhetorical situation, involves a larger
discourse community than the disciplinary ones, a community that includes
town as well as gown. Purpose here involves issues of accountability, of
skills, of recognition that somehow disciplinary languages must partake of
other more common usages if we are to be a community.  The rhetoric of
competency is about sending messages to faculty, administrators, students,
the community about certain expectations, about performance.  If we take a
triadic perspective we can open these expectations up to discussion, and
possibly change.  If we stay dyadic, we encourage entrenchment, and
retrenchment.
 
Laurence Steven
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