The Edge

Response — WAC and WCs (October 28)

Well, Anderson-and-colleagues challenged my (rather stale and inherited without question) ideas about writing’s utility across the curriculum.  I could turn around and argue that it’s the disciplines themselves that squelch the value of writing, by teaching teachers to use tests, to encourage formulaic writing, and well–discipline students more than teach them.  I could.

That response reveals my own anti-disciplinary bias.  I hate disciplines.  I’m not sure whether they encourage or respond to the student tendency to compartmentalize, but I think they’re bad for the university.  Part of this comes from my own first experience with composition, as a writing center tutor at a branch campus of the University of Washington:  there, the undergraduate curriculum was interdisciplinary, and my colleagues came from every concievable “disciplinary” focus:  business, nursing, writing, information technology.  That group was smart; so smart, that I’m not sure I’ll ever work or learn in a smarter place.  (Apologies to ISU, though I suppose the gauntlet’s right there on the floor, recording my challenge to you.)

I had a bit of a negative reaction to “Expanding the f2f.”  Here’s why–it takes an old, stale view about one-on-one conferences (i.e. that asynchronous conferencing that uses writing is somehow lesser, missing crucial communicative elements, harder, etc.)–and makes its suppositions about the value of AVT conferencing from that older, stale view.

The former Coordinator of the University of Washington, Bothell’s writing center did her Master’s thesis in this area.  She posited that asynchronous conferencing was its own genre, with its own conventions, advantages, and disadvantages.  I like that view–I feel as though it expands the conversation rather than shutting it down.

But as I write that, I note a contradiction:  I’m both arguing against disciplinarity, AND for it.  So maybe the real question is qualitative, and not quantitative:  When is disciplinarity helpful, and when does it shut down meaningful dialogue or ideas?