The Dichotomies Raised in Harris’s A Teaching Subject

A Teaching Subject, written by Joseph Harris, offers to his readers valuable knowledge in Composition Studies, deemed so by the fact that we are left fussing over the dichotomies that this scholarship raises. His first chapter entitled "Growth" is perhaps the strongest illustration of this phenomenon. So from its cue is where this essay will begin.

Perhaps no other concept has been and will continue to be more analyzed by serious English Comp 101 professors than the growth of their students. Although the term is thick with ambiguity, it can be summed up by the empirical fact that students will leave the classroom with something that they themselves did not bring there. I agree that the agonistics between what this something includes should be praised, as Harris does, rather than condemned by a Habermasian following, a discipleship that adheres to a possible consensus between intellects sprung by rational communication. For what makes composition studies something unique for the University as a whole is this very "reimagining what work in English might be" (17), how it might make students grow individually , within their academic disciplines, and eventually within their communities. According to Harris’s humble statement in "Voice," he has "only a set of competing theories of voice and writing to offer. . .a serious of choices that. . .teachers and students must still face for themselves" (41). As do these competing theories on voice, British and American differences in Composition Studies expressed at Dartmouth and afterwards proclaim the vitality of the discipline rather than merely illustrate its fragmentation. Without this fervor the teaching of English would loose its flair or freshness, and a performativity or an efficiency criterion would prevail as more and more students would ridicule the notion that literature and writing are ends in themselves.

I also agree with Harris that something must be done to engage students to not only enjoy writing and reading, but to do these activities well. These two phenomenons appear to complement each other: the more a person enjoys writing and reading, the better he or she will be and vice versa. Harris gives an example, however, that somewhat refutes this statement. Harris is concerned that David does not augment "what he thinks his experiences mean, or add up to, to move from narrative to idea" (22). As Harris notes, there could be a number of reasons that David refused to tackle in his essay the sociopolitical implications that race has for a native of Pittsburgh. But perhaps Harris’s methodology itself produced David’s reluctance and consequently the complemental proposition previously stated remains valid. Harris, baiting his students with the allure that everything and anything is a readable text, seems to hold that "glancing through magazines, checking out ads on busses and billboards and in stores, scanning supermarket tabloids. . ." (19) can be compared to the reading of Dave Marsh’s introduction of Fortunate Son. His disappointment that David did not assimilate his essay in similar fashion to Marsh’s can be seen as David’s choice to focus more on music or dance--two texts that are held by Harris in the same esteem as Marsh’s introduction. Though he wants David to chose Marsh’s essay, Harris cannot show disappointment when he does not, for he himself has delegitimized the value of critical reading by legitimizing surface reading, e.g., billboard reading.

What seems to be lacking in Harris’s theories on growth is that he does not make the necessary connection that the enjoyment of critical reading--reading that is more than surface--helps students to augment the complexities of sociopolitical issues on paper. Instead of connecting to merely his enjoyment of Michael Jackson’s music, David should be persuaded first and foremost to ideas that represent such complex sociopolitical issues. Harris insistence that a text can be everything allows students to chose "texts" that do not maximize their abilities to write, and consequently their essays only get at the surface of complex issues.

Harris changes his defintion of the word text, which would perhaps more clearly illustrate how his methodology employed for his Comp 101 class might stunt their growth. In the interchapter after "Process," Harris "argue[s] that all strong readings of a text are actually misreadings--interpretations that refuse to accept what a text seems to say about itself, to read it as it seems to be ask to be read" (72). This definition is radically different than the definition used in the interchapter after "Growth"--can a billboard be misinterpreted? Can a text be both something that sparks argument and is also a Rolling Stones song that we hear riding to work? Does not Plato’s dialogues force ideas to the fore more so than a Freshman’s observations at Walmart? Should not professors first show students the excitement and the novelty that reading ideas has in itself then directed them back to Walmart? My point is that Harris’s advocates to his Writing About Movies class--presumebly a class that requires Comp 101 as a prerequsite--that a text has some worth in the text themselves (yet it is a meaning that we can never get to!). But Harris explains to David and students in his Comp 101 class that texts are everywhere but yet void of substance without the linkage to socialpolitical issues--David’s preoccupations with New Edition are only the surface of larger racial attitudes. Why has Harris’s methodlogy toward texts changed in relation to the classes? Should not his Comp 101 students also be pointed in the directions of examing texts that have value in themselves and as a result spark argumentative qualities in students to whom then can draw out these sociopolitical issues? If a book or movie does this better than a song, a billboard, or the Internet, then doesn’t if follow that teachers should only emphasize the use of these texts? If a book maximizes students’ abilites to learn how to express their ideas, then why even mess around with other forms of texts, texts which hinder students from getting to the essence of ideas and clutter a professor’s methodology.

In general I think that most of Harris’s conclusions are, though nothing spectacular, at least pretty solid--perhaps too solid. Instead of choosing one dichotomy or the other, he simply splits them, taking a path that plays to both sides. For instance, in his chapter on "Error" he combines Graff’s "strong attention to issues of correctness" (85) to Rose’s insistence that "student’s need. . .a sense of what others find most exciting and useful about books, writing, and ideas" (83) to get his stifling conclusion: "We need to makes sure that in distancing ourselves form poor practice (a focus on error alone) we don’t seem to advocate an equally unconvincing stance (no concern with error at all)" (88). It seems that he has created a tautology, his conclusion will always be true because the premises of his argument encompass so much ground.

The most important issue that Harris’s text raises is his skeptical view on process. The simple statement that a student wants her writing to be viewed by "a reader rather than a composing coach" (56) is a stroke of brilliance. It is troubling that professors change students’ papers, not because they were necessarily grammatically wrong or logically inaccurate, but because they want to write the paper themselves. Harris gives the example of how Emig and Flower both have their peculiar ideas on language and expect students to share these views. Explaining the severity of the situation and the negative impact it can have on students, Harris notes that Emig and Flowers teach "through positing an ideal text and working backward from that" (67). Students’ voices and abilities to express their ideas are held back from their fear of not reaching their professor’s textual ideal. All the ingenious language inventions that students have then remain dormant in a repository of the unspoken.