English 305OL: Education Paper

Education: The Idea of a University

The common ingredient that I find in all the writing I admire ... is something that I shall reluctantly call the rhetorical stance, a stance which depends on discovering and maintaining in any writing situation a proper balance among the three elements that are at work in any communicative effort: the available argument about the subject itself, the interests and peculiarities of the audience, and the voice, the implied character of the speaker. I should like to suggest that it is this balance, this rhetorical stance, difficult as it is to describe, that is our main goal.

-- Wayne Booth

We have been reading and discussing many education topics for the last few weeks. Re-read the introduction for the Education section in your book (49). You might also want to review what you have written so far.

Some of the questions raised by the reading selections in POO

Should colleges and universities serve to pass on to students the great traditions and values of Western culture? (Newman, Rose, Slate's "College Makeover")
Do colleges and universities need to change to accommodate students once excluded from the university? ("Mission Satements," Rich, Rose, Sommers, Pollit, Fryer, Brooks)
Should colleges and universities emphasize a unified view of culture and the commonalities among people, or should they emphasize people's differences? (Newman, Rich, Rose, Pollitt, Fryer)
What is (or should be) the relationship between the college/university and society? (Newman, "Mission Statements," Spayde, Rich, Croissant, Rose, Sokolove, Tierney, Pollitt)
What is (or should be) the relationship between teachers and students in the classroom? ("Mission Statements," Slate's "College Makeover," Rose, Sommers, Fryer, Brooks)
In what ways is knowledge acquired, passed on, or made in college/university? Are some better than others? (Newman, "Mission Statements," Slate's "College Makeover," Spayde, Rich, Rose)

The LA Times series focusing on the use of "value added" method to evaluate elementary school teachers asks us to think more specifically about attempting to make the evaluation process more useful, but also asks us to more closely consider our beliefs/ stances about many of the above questions, with the added bonus of being a currently ongoing debate that will affect most of us in this class.

If you haven't already done so, take a look at the questions in your text after the articles for even more possibilities.

You may use the above questions as starting places to focus your paper, or you may wish to develop your own question for a focus and try to answer it. The final draft should be in the 6 page range (double spaced, MLA format with a Works Cited page, not included in the final pagination). Initial first draft (3 pages) is due by the end of the week (post to forum). The second draft should be completed by next Thursday. The third draft is a careful edit, again working with your partners.

A question worth answering
An audience who could possibly care

The following dues dates are to help facilitate working with partners:

Feb 22-25: rough draft (min 3 pages) for development
Feb 26-Mar 3: Workshop dev and organization
Mar 4-6 Editing workshop
March 7: Final Due

I have set up a forum for people to use for workshop purposes. People who are familiar with their word processor's marking capabilities are free to send drafts to each other off the forum list, especiallt during the editing phase. However, for those who choose to do most workshopping off-moodle, I do ask for the second draft to be posted to the forum as my copy.

Email questions to the moodle forum.
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