🚀 go-pugleaf

In response to Ralph Wahlstrom's comments about the problem of English
departments teaching literature and grammar and calling it writing:
  When I last engaged senior faculty in my former school on this point,
they provided a rationale having to do with issues of content vs. skills
in university instruction.  Their claim was that the university has no
business teaching skills, which are vocational in nature; instead, courses
must focus on content.  Hence we can see the argument for literature and
grammar as writing focuses
  Let me clarify that I consider this argument to be thoroughly mistaken
and dangerous.  First, the distinction between skills and content is
much less clear than my former colleagues suppose.  Second, I think we
can see the refusal to instruct students in essential skills as a form
of "gatekeeping"--those with the "proper" background will succeed while
those with "deficient" backgrounds will fail.
  Dan Dionne
  RPI