Composition: History & Theory: 1900 - 1919
The Ideas Approach
Description
In Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-1985 (1987), James Berlin touches on the “ideas approach” to teaching rhetoric. According to Berlin, the ideas approach focused on writing essays about the traditional issues of rhetoric. It was an attempt to restore to rhetoric its concern with the probable by arguing opposites in the realm of political action. Ideas courses in rhetoric and composition (stemming from the transactional idea of rhetoric as a social, political act) asked students to read essays in controversial readers from a variety of viewpoints. These courses were praised and criticized, especially by faculty members who thought that English instructors should be teaching literary texts (because they were unqualified to teach religion, philosophy, politics, sociology, and many of the other subjects that came into play when reading/writing about controversial issues) (52).
Date of Upload
3/13/09