Berlin's "Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories"

I enjoyed the Berlin reading for this week and found myself attempting to classify which school of thought I fall into in regards to teaching rhetoric as I read through Berlin’s explanation of each area. What I found out is that it’s very hard for me to place myself since I’ve never actually taught before. Of course, I can pick the area that I feel is the most logical, looking at it from a student view point, but, having no experience teaching, I have really no idea which type of approach would be the best. I think the most impactful moment in Berlin’s argument is when he states that college English teachers “are teaching a way of experiencing the world, a way of ordering and making sense of it” (776). Likewise, at the beginning of the article, he says “To teach writing is to argue for a version of reality and the best way of knowing and communicating it” (766). Both of these quotes exemplify the importance of teaching writing and show the magnitude to taking the time to figure out the best way to go about helping students learn; it means more when you understand that these are not just skills they will take to their writing but to all aspects of their lives.

There are aspects of all the theories that I have problems with, but the one I think I have the most issues with is the Current-Traditionalists view, which I’m assuming is in conjunction with the Common Sense Realism, though Berlin was not completely clear on that terminology. Berlin explains that the Current-Traditionalists believe:

“Common Sense Realism denies the value of the deductive method- syllogistic reasoning- in arriving at knowledge. Truth is instead discovered through induction alone. It is the individual sense impression that provides the basis on which all knowledge can be built…The world is still rational, but its system is to be discovered through the experimental method, not through logical categories grounded in a mental faculty” (769).

Why is that a legitimate problem? That was the question I kept asking myself when I first started reading this section. However, Berlin does a great job of clearing up any uncertainties with his readers. At the end of the article, Berlin says that “Current-Traditional Rhetoric views the rhetorical situation as an area where the truth is incontrovertibly established by a speaker or writer more enlightened than her audience” (777). This whole idea that there is one truth known by someone who is of a higher intelligence than the rest of the world is actually very Platonist, which is interesting to me why it is not at issue in the Neo-Platonists theory, and by using this argument to try and teach writing to students, the outcome would be a lot of elitist young writers going out into the world believing they understand more than anyone who will ever read what they have to say. In this way, the Current-Traditionalists close down any kind of debate or conversation about the argument being presented by the speaker or writer, which brings me to ask how can this method be taught? If the instructor of the course is teaching that there is no truth other than the one being presented in writing, the instructor most likely already has a constructed truth of what they believe. I think this type of teaching and writing could be destructive to students who do not have a strong background in writing because if they do poorly on a paper, they will begin to question if they understand the truth instead of questioning the way they went about attempting to convince their audience.

Berlin wraps up his article by saying “The test of one’s competence as a composition instructor, it seems to me, resides in being able to recognize and justify the version of the process being taught, complete with all of its significance for the student” (777). As an instructor, not only is it beneficial to be able to understand what you are teaching, but also to understand how the students will understand what you are teaching. In this way I think it is a great idea that graduate students, students themselves, are teaching the freshman composition course since we are still in a position of being pupils and we can understand why a method may or may not work. This is also important when explaining to students why they have to sit through a composition class, as we discussed in class last week. If we can understand what we are teaching and how it will help them interpret the world and speak the truth, they will be more likely to pay attention and take something away from the class.