 |
 |
I've been away on holiday and haven't had a chance to keep up with this conversation though the subject interests me . . . so forgive me if I'm being redundant. Most recently I've been thinking about teaching reading and writing about literature as critical thinking. I taught a junior introduction to critical reading course last year which has recently been taught as "baby critical theory." I like the idea of exposing young undergraduates to contemporary critical theory, but also thought it a great opportunity to teach some rhetorical theory: invention, evaluation, and argumentation strategies for example. It not only helps to demystify academic discursive practices, and lets students be critics rather than parrots, but trains students to think about how value language functions. While I might not want to teach a *particular* set of cultural values in a literature/writing course, I do see it as a great opportunity to talk about the rhetoric of evaluation. Some rhetoric programs in the States, have a narrow understanding of rhetoric as civic discourse that appears in recognizable political genres--political speeches, newspaper editorials etc. They tend to ignore or even oppose the study of those more literary/cultural genres that also have tremendous political impact. This is not to argue that "everything is political" (I don't want to "go there" right now), but that rhetorics of socio-cultural value permeate a wide variety of genres, and that teaching critical reading, as critical writing, as critical thinking, teaches skills that are transferable to other academic disciplines, various professions, and ethical living. Any takers . . . objectors?