| EDITORIAL | ||
C. McKenzie - General Editor, FYHC Perhaps this neglect is most principally caused by the idea that FYHC might be considered a category-of-privilege as opposed to a category-of-need and thereby any focused and institutional attention dedicated to this location or site in First-year Composition (fyc) might seem to be unwarranted (and Conservative) advocacy for a group that does not need any advocacy. Indeed any advocacy of FYHC might seem classist or racist to some people in some places. This is because, in a way, FYHC is the obverse of Basic Writing (BW) which is understood as a site of political and pedagogical contentions (and often contentiousness and conscience) and one that needs regular advocacy (mainly from the Left). Certainly BW has instigated much heated and efficacious debate and caused many publications about what can and should be done in first-year composition courses and has improved Composition praxis as is well-established for several decades. But as BW is downsized now and/or outsourced at the senior-college level and is increasingly farmed-out to Junior Colleges (JC), I am arguing that FYHC is the new forum in which to discuss issues of advocacy and pedagogy, and Writing Program politics. More important, I think, is my argument that unless we in the discipline of Composition-Rhetoric—both nationally and locally—can make a good case for first-year composition for the so-called best and brightest in senior-level and so-called Elite colleges and universities then we just missed another institutionally, pedagogically and politically important boat floating around the Academy. That is to say that if we in the discipline of Composition-Rhetoric/ Writing Studies cannot demonstrate that Composition in the first-year sequence (really) matters for the excellent student then we admit that fyc is no more than remedial and we just lost the big battle for the relevance of composition in the first-year sequence. The logic of this contention should be obvious: If we in Comp have nothing to teach students-with-better-than-average-writing-skill sets, then we are actually making the argument that fyc is merely service to larger and more important and more essential disciplinary needs and so is something that can be bypassed by students with a better than average composition skill set. That is to say, if the best-and-brightest don’t need us in fyc, then we are remedial in the main. And as “remedial” is fast leaving the senior-college-level curriculum scene, then we too, fyc, will be, shortly, leaving this scene as a significant player. A lot of people in senior-level colleges and universities believe this service-function for us in Comp to be the unmarked case already: composition in the first-year is, in many if not most places, given short shrift in interdisciplinary discussion, is a “given” as a necessary evil but not a very important part of institutional discussion. This belief/attitude is longstanding and pervasive and probably a part of the professional life experience of almost any compositionist who has worked at the senior college level in any capacity and really doesn’t need any explanation. Just attend any “interdisciplinary” or WAC confab at your own school and hear, “well, you in Composition teach grammar so students can write better papers in my (fill-in-the-blank) class, don’t you?” and cringe with the rest of us. Composition-Rhetoric has resisted this constrictive notion of composition-as-service in a wide variety of ways for a relatively long time; but the current process of eliminating remedial writing in many senior-level colleges (as in CUNY) and the increasingly frequent use of the Junior College as a location to which to “farm out” remedial issues (of writing, but also of reading and math) coupled with the increased use of privatized schools that can and will, for a price, handle this remediation all speak to the loss of pedagogical and political clout suffered by First-year Composition at the senior-college level. So FYHC is important, even essential at this moment in our collective history. Because if the best and brightest don’t need fyc (because they don’t need “correction” or “help”) then the case is proved (for many administrators and faculty) that all other fyc is corrective or some form of catch-up, that is to say, though to different degrees, all remedial because if the “best” first-year students don’t need us then we are remedial. Simple as that. And as senior colleges attempt to rid themselves of anything smacking of remedial this is the death knell for first-year composition. This calculus applied to our beloved first-year composition is now clear: if better student-writers (or simply better students as ascertained by standardized test scores) don’t need first-year composition—because they do not need any “help” or “correction”—then all other students who are in fyc are not the best and brightest and do need this help or correction, thus all other composition but FYHC is remedial and will go the way, eventually, of BW, outsourced, as is happening as I write this editorial, in my current homebase of the City University of New York where remediation is almost altogether now the problem of our Junior Colleges and no longer anymuch concern of our Senior Colleges. To be repetitive in order to reiterate in an editorial context: Allowing the excellent student to skip composition in the first-year sequence helps make the argument that writing instruction in the first-year sequence is unnecessary in general except for those needing “help.” Allowing or encouraging the excellent students to make themselves or to allow themselves to be exempted from any fyc also reinforces the arguments currently being made for farming out fyc to the JC and/or becoming part of a privatized scholastic industry. So don’t allow frosh to skip or be exempted from fyc or, at the least, institutionally and personally discourage it. And do make a case for an aggressive and responsive and responsible FYHC program—in general across the senior-level college spectrum and in your own specific institutions—because a well-considered case for FYHC-as-most-useful makes better the case for fyc in general because making the case against requiring the “best and brightest” to take fyc effectively makes the case that Composition is only for those students who lack certain skills and is necessarily remedial, but making the case that everybody benefits from a robust program of fyc makes the case that fyc is ESSENTIAL. If first-year composition is not required of the excellent student and is only for those who lack sufficient skills (to be fully functional in a senior-level college) then clearly fyc is simply, merely remedial in senior-level colleges and universities—this is logically inarguable. Many schools—large and small, public and private—are implicitly if not explicitly committed to making the case for FYHC by having healthy and longstanding FYHC-specific programs. Elite schools who are committed to fyc as a requirement make this same implicit claim—that Composition in the First-year Sequence Matters, even for the most highly skilled students. I am not arguing against remedial writing courses. I have taught them as my bread-and-butter and love to teach BW and will continue to teach them as opportunities arise. But, as a tenure-track faculty in a senior college in the CUNY system my opportunities to teach BW are mostly disappeared. I understand the rhetoric on both sides. I accept the current reality of the current diminution and eventual disappearance of BW in the Senior CUNY colleges. There are those who argue against this political tide and a return to older, and perhaps wiser, notions of what CUNY senior colleges should be. I wish them luck and do not in any way oppose them. What I am arguing is that a continued disciplinary focus on remedial writing hurts us, in general, on the senior-college level politically and practically. I am arguing that a primary focus on remedial writing has hurt our fyc cause in the main and over the years because as things are now, politically and pedagogically, Composition-Rhetoric is now almost entirely connected to remediation, and everything remedial is leaving the senior colleges and universities. I work in a senior college and would care to keep on teaching writing. I am also arguing that, in a larger sense, the divorcement of composition from rhetoric has made fyc, in general and too our collective and disciplinary detriment, (simply) a “skills” course and this characterization has damaged our discipline, perhaps irreparably. Partly this is due to an over-focus of our discipline on remedial writing at the expense of writing on the other margin (FYHC) and on what were/are perceived as larger concerns of composition in the first-year sequence in general as a viable enterprise in the Academy, mainly overtly political. My contention is that FYHC needs to be aggressively developed and defended, and, especially, studied, and on all fronts, because it is the best and brightest hope for strengthening the weakened power base of fyc at the senior-college level. And we all need to, aggressively and progressively and proactively, re-attach Composition to Rhetoric (or something intellectually-structurally as significant as Rhetoric) so that Composition is no longer viewed, institutionally, as merely a “skills” course but will be seen as a content course, an essential content course. Citation |
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