Estival Elegy
This is a throwdown to the critics of Stanley Fish. Fish argues that college composition courses should teach writing and only writing, focusing exclusively on grammar, style, clarity, and argument. His critics, who also bemoan the prevailing poor writing skills of college students, say that teaching grammar without content leads to boring classes. Without movies, books, or contemporary culture to write about, students write vapid essays – like, what I did on my summer vacation. This is a fascinating exchange — one you should read — where Fish persuasively argues for “drilling students in the forms that enable meaning; and these are not inert taxonomic forms, but forms of thought.”
However, it was the “vapid essays about summer vacations” that irked me as I returned to NJ and to NJIT. I left behind narrow country roads for the dusty grooved pavement of Route 280 East, still under construction since I last traveled it three months ago. I traded hummingbirds and Monarch butterflies in my gardens for butterflies in my stomach that always typify the first day of school for me. While not a Luddite summer, it was certainly a summer without many of the most common technological and worldly intrusions – no television, no traffic, no NY Times delivery.
I already miss the early morning sun on my back as I stand at the end of the dock with Kodi, our yellow lab, watching the clear river water for fish. But these summer memories instill me with a renewed sense of creativity. I look forward to the challenge that new students, new courses, and a new semester always bring.
I hope that your summer vacation has inspired you as well.
