Gosh, Doug, what a _wonderful_ passage. By itself, the assignment
illustrates the impossibility of doing assignments like that . . . it
couldn't be better. I know you've asked for theoretical perspectives
that might help us help students deal with passages like that; all I
managed to come up with were questions we might ask in those situations
(which then lead to a theoretical take.)
You'd be hard pressed, I think, to find a better example of why
surface decoding skills are never "surface" skills at all. What's
important about the passage is what _isn't_ said -- the assumptions and
attitudes that make the cohesive links between sentences. (Janet Giltrow
did some research with Toronto newspaper stories from the 50's and 90's,
showing how the coherence of the stories depended on assumptions brought
to the text. My reference for this is as a papre presented at the
_Rethinking Genre_ conference . . . is it also in the book which emerged
from that conference?)
I was completely flummoxed by the paragraph, too. As I read along
trying to figure it out, I was struck by how many of my questions had to
do with the context of the passage, because the words themselves were not
giving me any help at all. And there are a variety of contexts to ask
about. As you & Patrick have pointed out, it's necessary to know what
Mill might have meant by this passage: from what longer work of his does
it come? What might he be responding to? And I also wonder what the
immediate context for the assignment is: how might this passage reflect
or not reflect the instructor's beliefs? How might being asked to
reflect on this passage tie in with other readings or assignments in the
course? What's the point of doing this, anyway? (Not to suggest that
there _is_ no point -- however strongly I might be inclined to suggest
that -- but rather to figure out what the point of the assignment might
have to do with the point of the passage.)
So I think that any theoretical help you get with "decoding"
isn't really going to help here. From your original post, it sounds like
you and the other writing tutors came up with the sorts of decoding
questions that would lead to getting some meaning from the passage. I
don't think it's fair to say that if people can't get meaning from
passages like that one that they're unequipped to read 19th-century
prose; it's probably closer to the truth to say that if they've read a
lot of 19th-century prose, they're then equipped to deal with these kinds
of contextless 19th-century prose passages. (Frank Smith, call your
office _now_.) I also think it's unfair to help students work through
those kinds of passages without suggesting to them that some of their
difficulties are caused by things not having to do with the words on the
page at all.
Marcy
Marcy Bauman
Writing Program
University of Michigan-Dearborn
4901 Evergreen Rd.
Dearborn, MI 48128
email: [log in to unmask]
