Despite the fact that “composition” is obviously an integral part of my purported discipline, many of my colleagues, including myself, have devised various means to avoid this quagmire. Why? At Cortland, which is certainly not unusual in this regard, composition is delivered primarily by absurdly underpaid adjuncts. While these folks are generally hard-working, committed, intelligent teachers, they are not, for the most part, trained in the field of rhetoric and composition. Those with PhD’s have specialized in literature. Their understanding of the teaching of writing comes primarily from their experience, the “lore” of composition teaching as Steve North termed it, and perhaps from a course or two they took in graduate school.

Given their low pay, we cannot and should not expect our composition faculty to be “trained” in fundamental rhetoric/ composition theory and practice, let alone keep up with current developments in the field, unless the College is willing to support this labor. Obviously the College is not forthcoming with the money, and hence the quagmire that I try to avoid.

And yet here I am, stepping into this in some way. No doubt I would have already angered many members of the composition faculty with the suggestion that they may not be qualified. The fact is that in the development of English as a discipline, first-year composition (FYC) came to be viewed as teachable by almost anyone. This permitted the lit. faculty of the time to pawn off their FYC duties on part-time faculty as well as upon graduate assistants. As you know, comp. is a moneymaker. It was a moneymaker for English departments until College administrations caught onto our racket and muscled their way into our territory. I would argue that the only people qualified to teach composition are those with PhD’s in rhetoric/composition, but making such an argument is irrelevant. The egg will not be unscrambled at this point.

At this particular juncture, our Comp. program faces a particular dilemma. On the one hand are continuing concerns about “grade inflation” and maintaining standards; on the other are growing concerns about plagiarism. I see these issues as related: the greater the emphasis on standards, the greater the pressure on students to acheive the type of performance they believe plagiarism can help them simulate. Let me put it this way. If we said, “I don’t care how you write. As long as you hand-in all the writing assignments you will get an ‘A.’ However, if you plagiarize and I catch you, you will fail,” I would suspect that the rate of plagiarism would drop dramatically.

Now I’m not necessarily suggesting we do this, but I think this example explains my point: plagiarism results from the imposition of “standards” on student writing. Obviously, regardless of what tactic one might take, there will always be cases of academic dishonesty. Furthermore, the Internet makes plagiarism easier (though arguably also easier to detect). It may be though that new media creates an environment where traditional teaching practices do not work as they once did (a topic for other posts).

What I would suggest is that our composition program needs to rethink its emphasis on standards and correctness. Currently the program focuses on students producing products that meet pre-established standards that are largely based on grammatical and stylistic correctness. I would established a more elegant but more challenging pedagogic goal. I would like to see our comp students leaving the program seeing themselves as “writers:” that is, as people who use writing to figure out their world, communicate their understanding to others, and make positive social change as a result. I have absolutely no concern over whether they produce comma splices or can make subjects and verbs agree or correctly cite a journal article in their bibliography. If they haven’t learned grammar at the gunpoint of public school standards over 12 years, they won’t magically learn it in their composition class. However, if they come to see themselves as writers, they might eventually come to learn these standards as a matter of their own choosing.