Michael,
   I can remember students like that--correct, but weak-- from when I first started teaching in the 70's. My current students tend to write lively prose that is fairly far from correct. But I like your exercise and have used variations on it myself over the years. There's room for a great deal of creativity in punctuation, and that is hard to teach.
   I think form can constrain, and the popular view of grammar is probably that--a list of acceptable forms that we are limited to. But form also enables. Meaning doesn't happen without it. So an attention to form can also be a  means toward empowerment, toward making more explicit the nature of good writing, well beyond the target of correctness. Correctness doesn't make for much of a goal.
   My initial exposure to that view of language was through the English romantic poet Coleridge. He made the distinction between mechanical and organic form. If meaning and form are dynamically linked, then an attention to form is an attention to meaning.
   Of course, this can be a rigorous approach, not merely licensing freedom. I think that may be what Edmond is objecting to, the notion that freedom is the goal. We think that students should be free to be themselves, when in fact that may doom them to failure.

Craig

Michael Dee wrote:
[log in to unmask]" type="cite"> Re: The 'progressive view'
Yes, I believe I do agree with Dr. Wright's critique. I just wish it was aimed at something like Emile rather than progressives. In regard to your final question, I suppose the presentation I gave for ATEG at the most recent NCTE conference might provide an answer. I described my use of the descriptive vocabulary provided by grammar to define voice and rhetorical style.  Most of my students are law-fearing writers: they write grammatically sound prose which no one I know would wish to read. So, for example, I might distribute a passage written by Orwell from which I have removed all the punctuation. They must then punctuate it and explain their choices. Inevitably, they produce a range of solutions, most of which would pass editorial scrutiny. We then compare their solutions to Orwell's own. The exercise usually produces an interesting discussion about the artistic deployment of punctuation, one which they can only understand and articulate by using grammatical terms.  At this point they now understand my definition for an A grade on writing mechanics: "no errors of grammar, spelling, capitalization; transgressions artistically defensible." In order to bend or break the rules of standard grammar as they write their own papers, in other words, they need to identify the rules they are bending or breaking and identify an explicitly rhetorical intention for doing so. Our classroom exercises inform their practice and their defense of their practice. I suppose the encouragement to bend rules would conform to a definition of a progressive approach; it certainly feels different and progressive to them.  And, as I think you'd agree, it is not a romantic approach.

Michael Dee



Michael,
  I think the fact that Edmond is writing us from England ought to get him at least mildly off the hook.
 The progressive movement in American politics has a very proud history, especially in the early twentieth century. I'm not sure many Americans understand that, let alone someone from another country.
  Am I right that you agree with Edmond in other ways?
  Can you give us a description of what a true progressive would say in relation to things like "craft," "discipline", and "grammar"?

Craig
 
Michael Dee wrote:
In my lifetime, progressive causes have been routinely disparaged by the logic evident in Dr. Wright's definition: renounce the general term (and its proponents) by identifying it with an obviously flawed subcategory or remote relative.  If you doubt the efficacy of this rhetorical strategy, consider the fate of "liberal."  Believe me, my rage at the predominance of conservative politics in this country can easily match Dr. Wright's passionate criticism of romantic idealism. Not only that: I would agree with the criticism, particularly as it applies to educational principles and practices. And for that very reason I object to casting progressives as childish idealists.

More passion available upon request.

Michael Dee

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