---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 00:18:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: Marcy Bauman <[log in to unmask]>
To: CyberJournal for Rhetoric and Writing <[log in to unmask]>
Cc: Multiple recipients of list RHETNT-L <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Hijacking the Tuesday Cafe for 4/16/96
Greg and Tari both offline on the same night??!???
Well. Eric and I propose that we discuss two texts (one by Patricia Roberts
and one by Michael Bernard-Donals) which have been recently added
to the CCCC 96 web pages. Both texts were presented at Session I-10 in
Milwaukee, entitled:
"Less Teaching, More Learning: Clustered
Assignments, Workshop Groups, and the
Diffusion of Authority"
Here are a few snippets to get you thinking. Roberts says:
"Doug and Mike and I have gotten so involved in playing around with workshop
models of teaching composition because, in our different ways, we are each
extremely interested in the problem of authority. Ever since reading Hannah
Arendt's "What is Authority" and "The Crisis in Education" I have been
enamored with Arendt's model of authority, as it enables a model of
teaching and argumentation that permits multiple sites of authority. My
scholarly research is probably best summarized as looking for cultural and
pedagogical models of the public sphere which enact or facilitate
something like Arendt's definition of authority and rhetoric."
. . . and Bernard-Donals says:
"(5) By far the clearest pattern in the surveys was that most of the
consistency--students finding peer review successful, students taking an
interest in and providing direction for their own papers, student
understanding of the institutional and extra institutional import of
writing--occurred *within* sections, not across them. That is to say,
individual teaching practices influenced the relative success or failure
of the workshop comp classroom a great deal, and that some of the
"problems" of teachers overpreparing, the undermining of authority, and
student cynicism could only be partially (and in
some cases marginally) ameliorated by changing the curriculum. It is very
clear that workshop composition provides a model for shifting authority
to the students; but it is also clear that such a model only works when
the teachers understand the relationship between practice and the
exigencies of any practice."
You can see the full text of these presentations at:
http://www.umd.umich.edu/HyperNews/get/cccc96/roberts.html
and
http://www.umd.umich.edu/HyperNews/get/cccc96/mbd.html
respectively.
If you want to come to the cafe but you don't have access to the
web, email me ([log in to unmask]) or Eric ([log in to unmask]) by
5:00 on Tuesday and we'll send you the texts via e-mail.
See you there! (And hey, can anybody make slides??)
Marcy
Marcy Bauman
Writing Program
University of Michigan-Dearborn
4901 Evergreen Rd.
Dearborn, MI 48128
email: [log in to unmask]
