Composition: History & Theory: 1970 - 1979
Textbook Rhetoric
Description
In “Freshman Composition and Administered Thought,” the sixth chapter in the 2nd Edition of English in America: A Radical View of the Profession (1996), Richard Ohmann focuses on texts used in current composition classes (1976) and what can be gleaned from them regarding assumptions about the goals of composition. Ohmann critiques texts used in Freshman Composition for presenting composition as apolitical and asocial. He further suggests (more so in the next chapter) that the way Freshman Composition is structured relates to how society “carries on ‘the business of living’ in the world outside college” (143). Ohmann begins his study by reprinting a memo he wrote in 1965 titled, “What is Wrong with Present Rhetoric Texts and the Courses They Are Written for?” He immediately criticizes himself afterward: “The analysis seems right as far as it goes, but partial and much too idealist . . . and the final explanation seems just wrong” (139). He uses this self-critique as a jumping off point for a longer analysis of fifteen textbooks, which he admits humorously that he chose randomly from his own shelf, writing: “I want to consider how assumptions that remain constant through dramatic changes in method and style may bear on the continuing ‘problem’ of freshman English--and to what extent our work in that subject is governed by social needs and cultural assumptions that could not easily be changed by the English 101 staff” (144). In studying the texts, Ohmann focuses on the following categories: Aims, The Student’s Situation, Finding Something to Say, Arguing, Organization, The Reader, Style, and Usage.
- Aims: Some of the texts Ohmann reviews offer to improve student writing. Others admit the writing is specifically for theme writing. A few offer to help the student express himself or discover herself. Very few texts address social questions and if they do they assume that “composition helps students get ahead in society and also helps preserve society itself in its American form” (146).
- The Student’s Situation: “Purpose,” Ohmann notes, “is something that emerges from the matrix of the theme assignment, rather than something that the student brings from life to English 101” (147). “And though these [few] writers see the student as moving toward a place in society,” he continues, “they do not locate him in society now” (148). The student is an individual with no history, and never working with others in society.
- Finding Something to Say: textbooks talk about finding a topic to fit an assignment. Writing never arises out of a topic of interest, but rather a topic of interest is found to graft onto a specific assignment. Ideas for topics come from the student’s individual past. This approach, to Ohmann, suggests alienation. From the topic a student forms a narrow thesis statement to fit the scope of the assignment. “Unalienated writing,” Ohmann writes, “begins in the feeling and belief that rise out of one’s life and tries to concentrate them” (153). “Textbook writing,” he continues, “begins in the nowhere of the assignment, moves into the unbordered regions of the student’s accumulated experiences, settles on one region--the topic--and then looks around for feelings and beliefs to affix to that topic, with supporting details to be added afterward” (153).
- Arguing: “These structural metaphors,” Ohmann concludes, “run through the whole treatment of the subject, confirming my belief that the authors have idealized argument, leaving out process, society, and most of the material world” (158). “Argument divorced from power, money, social conflict, class, and consciousness,” he argues, “is pseudo-argument” (158). Ohmann suggests that he would not change Freshman Composition without also changing society. He asserts that “the educational system is responsive to the personnel needs of the economic system” and therefore supports dominant ideology (159).
- Organization: The texts Ohmann examines evidence a problem-solving approach to organizing writing that includes set procedures leading to formulaic writing (like the five-paragraph essay).
- The Reader: The imagined reader is classless, sexless and raceless. “[T]he student is not to see himself as already having a relationship with his readers,” Ohmann writes, “readers are selected or imagined or invented, arbitrarily, along with subjects, theses, and patterns” (164).
- Style: Style comes from the individual psyche and not from social context.
- Usage: This is the emphasis on the style of the professional classes, however it is cast as the standard for the “educated” or as a school dialect, without any mention of class or power relations.
Ohmann ends his analysis of composition textbooks with two important questions: How could we write a text that does not follow these assumptions? & Who would publish such a text?
Date of Upload
3/14/09