Toward a Rationale
The
question of the role civic literacy should play in the English curriculum has
been at issue for several years in, for example, an ongoing discussion in the
pages of English Journal and publications like Connecting Civic
Education and Language Education: The Contemporary Challenge (Teachers
College Press, 1991), co-authored and edited by Sandra Stotsky, director of the
Institute on Writing, Reading, and Civic Education at Harvard University.
The issue of civic literacy in education per se has been explored
extensively by political scientist Benjamin Barber, who has made its eclipse the
centerpiece of his critique of American education.
Barber defines civic literacy as “the fundamental literacy by which we
live in a civil society. It
encompasses the competence to participate in democratic communities, the ability
to think critically and act with deliberation in a pluralistic world, and the
empathy to identify sufficiently with others to live with them despite conflicts
of interest and differences in character.”
English composition has been for many years a lively field, with an
evolving theory and practice influenced by a variety of disciplines--rhetoric,
literary criticism, cognitive and developmental psychology, et al.
Even as it has evolved from the traditional pedagogy of the
teacher-centered, didactic approach to the process-oriented, student-centered
classroom, it has retained an implicit faith in the humanistic dimensions of
language, in language as a repository and nexus of knowledge, in the ability of
language to illuminate both the world as it is and the world as it might be. The general composition classroom is a place where students
from various disciplines meet to share and test their views, their knowledge,
and their understanding. It is in a
sense, as James Moffett (author of Teaching the Universe of Discourse)
has said, an “epistemological homeroom.”
This is especially true at the upper division level, where the cognitive
and social faculties of students enjoy the benefit of two years’ exposure to
university life, and when undergraduates have begun to enter the dialogues of
their chosen disciplines.
Presently, English composition finds itself pressed by a number of
economic, technological, and demographic phenomena.
As the struggle for budget share heightens, as technology produces new
methods of instructional delivery, as financial pressures on students increase,
so does the threat to the humanistic dimension of composition teaching.
Declining budgets have raised the specter of increased class size or
courseloads, threatening to vitiate further the instructor’s interaction with
students. Computer classrooms and
teaching via e-mail, while they provide obvious benefits, may also tend to
broaden the gap between teachers and students, not to mention between students
and students. These conveniences
potentially reduce the person-to-person dialogue that since the time of the
ancients has provided the stage for humanistic growth.
Still another worrisome development is the wish for advanced composition
courses to stress the “pre-professional” development of the students.
This emphasis is accompanied by further specialization in course design,
so that in addition to general composition we offer courses in legal, technical,
and scientific writing, as well as classes paired with courses “in the
disciplines.”
All this is not to say that these curriculur developments are wrong or a
menace, or that one should pursue the folly of resisting them.
There’s nothing wrong with stressing “pre-professionalism,” as long
as the community of writing teachers shares a common definition of the term,
and, in my view, as long as the term is not too narrowly defined.
There is a danger that the economic and technological trends mentioned
above, along with the enervation of general education and core curriculum
requirements, could exacerbate a trend toward a “pre-professionalism” that
is too strictly instrumental, characterized primarily by a narrow utilitarianism
or pragmatism--one that, in short, fails to prepare students adequately for
their responsibilities as citizens in an increasingly fragmented civil society.
To say just what a citizen’s responsibilities in civil society might be
is too large a burden to shoulder here. But
a modest beginning might note that a professional’s responsibility would
entail the ability to interpret developments in a given field within the context
of a historical continuum, to understand and articulate how one’s actions as a
professional may connect with the past and the future of civil society.
More specifically, civic literacy would entail an understanding of how
everything that happens in the worlds of commerce, law, medicine, or agronomy
affects, and is affected by, the health of our civic institutions.
Such an understanding would of course entail an understanding of the
history and function of civic institutions, along with an ability to read and
write well enough to understand and articulate their successes and failures.
That is where English composition is indispensable.
As Ben F. Nelms, editor of English Journal, has emphasized, “The
task of educating literate citizens, of raising the level of public
communication, of preparing students for active commitment to and participation
in the democratic process has always fallen to the schools. . . .
English teachers must not abdicate that responsibility; we must not
delegate the task to speech teachers or social-studies teachers. . . .
[T]he primary task of teaching the use of the language, whether in
critical reading or deliberative talk or persuasive writing, still falls to us.
To shrink from the task is to handicap our students and imperil the
future.” Language, in short, is
the crucible in which ideas must be tested, and the English classroom remains
the optimum setting for developing minds to discover the nature of their
thoughts and ways to shape them.
