The Edge

Response — Basic Writing, et al… (October 21)

I love Berthoff’s assertion that “students with language and learning disabilities” is pretty much a description of any beginning college student.  It suggests (I almost said “foregrounds,” but I don’t know that it does THAT) that the real situation isn’t one of deficiency, but of adapting to a new context.  I HATE Berthoff’s solution to use “a line down the middle of the page” as the one organizing principle in her class.  Why?  Students already know how to think in opposites by the time they get into college.  I think they need to be challenged in new and different ways.  (I almost said “more” here.  Why did I delete that?  Go read my teaching philosophy, especially the section about evaluation.)

I don’t have a solution, or a suggestion about how to do things differently–and I certainly think that Berthoff’s right–there are many things that students already know how to do, and a teacher’s task is often simply showing them that they know (often by giving them the vocabulary to name what they do in a way that makes what they talk about intelligible to others).

Let’s just say that what I DO have is an uneasy, but exhilarating (dis)comfort with ambiguity, conflict, and open-endedness.  And I think for about three-quarters of the excerpt we’ve read, Berthoff does, too.