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Changing the subject once again... A while ago Henry reaised the issue of political arguments for generic comp courses. I'd like to raise the issue of pedagogical arguments, since the issue of a generic "Reading/Writing/Critical Thinking" course has again surfaced at U of C. 1. Traditionally (since the Sophists) it has been assumed that there is a "general" art of rhetoric that belongs to no particular discipline and can be taught as such. Though this vision of writing has had its very bad patches (the current-traditional style of equating writing with correctness, for instance), it is still one defensible view of rhetoric, rooted (I think) in a combination of two notions: a) there are some learnable language skills, including generalizations about invention and arrangement, that can be generalized across writing contexts. This argument can be defended even if you believe that these skills are best learned indirectly rather than as a list of rules. It is perfectly possible to design a rhetoric course with some "content" which is read, written and thought about in a context in which the reading, writing and thinking is the figure and the content is the ground, rather than the reverse. b) there is some merit in generalized reading, writing, and critical thinking skills as part of being a functioning educated citizen, not just a discipline-educated academic. 2. The other side of this argument originates in the newer socially-situated cognition, contextualized learning school of thought. Bazerman would be the paradigm case. It seems to me that the argument here is that you learn to write sociology in sociology courses as part of becoming socialized into the discourse of sociology, etc across the disciplines. This school of thought would see relatively little value in a non-disciplinary writing course because language for every discipline is language for no discipline. To be in a "context," a language learning environment has to be in the context of a developed discourse on something. This school of thought obviously privileges WID programs and completely delegitimizes generalized competence testing etc. Without getting too deeply into the generalized competence testing question, which I think is tangential at the moment (though clearly related), I'd like to ask this on-line think-tank: What support (if any) is there for Position 1 these days? Has Position 2, which I read as more recent, completely carried the day, leaving generalized comp courses, even the best-designed, most contextualized, least current-traditional in nature, high and dry without a pedagogical philosophy to back them? I ask this question, of course, with a political agenda, but with a completely open one. I have to decide which view to put my shoulder behind and I'm genuinely perplexed. On even-numbered days I am convinced by the literature that seems to support Position 2, which calls upon me to resist attempts to set up more generic composition courses. On odd-numbered days I am convinced that this view is too narrow and that I should not resist these courses but instead make damn sure that they are built well and taught well, as true discourse communities and not as warmed-over Aristotle. Discussion? References? Doug (perplexed as usual)