Hillocks response 2

On another note, I could not be more epistemologically opposed to the teacher in the Hillocks reading. This instructor teaches almost exclusively text types in a teacher-centered style, predicated on the highly dubious notion that the teacher-as-omniscent-dispenser-of-knowledge model can be effective. Learning in his classroom is extremely structured, and seems to be more about classification than clarification.

As I'm currently reading (rather unhappily, at the moment) On Rhetoric for another class, I'm inclined to blame the latter on our discipline's Aristotlean roots. This sort of categorization seems to stem from Aristotle, who - so far as I can tell - was bent on pinning down every minute aspect of rhetoric and fitting it into a neatly defined category. I see the same tendency towards classification (not to mention endless specificity and detail) in teachers who adhere to structured, prescriptive "models" of classroom teaching.

Classification can be illuminating, but it also has the potential to distort. In Hillocks' example, the teacher's elaborate explanations of the particulars of each mode belie their inherent flexibility. I think perhaps some instructors are seduced by a model’s clarity and explanatory power. The problems start when instructors teach parts (text features) as wholes, when a single model is presented as an objective truth, as the only appropriate way to do things. The "modes" (save possibly for narrative) are almost always embedded in larger genres of writing. It's more of less unheard of outside of an academic context for a person to write an "exemplification" essay, but we use examples quite often when we write. When the modes are taught separately, it's difficult to see how intertwined they all are. Textual features never tell the entire story. A teacher who acknowledges this, and teaches the modes as the somewhat amorphous strategies they are, rather than as ends in and of themselves, is a teacher who may better help students to learn.

As it happens, my only foray into teaching comp classes was at a community college, where I was required to teach the aforementioned rhetorical modes. There are ways to do this effectively - or so I've come to believe - but the mode method is incredibly limiting for an open-ended teacher.

Which brings up another issue - what if the beliefs and assumptions of your institution/department do not match your own?