Leave it to Fish to make an argument, introduce an organization which praised his approach (the American Council of Trustees and Alumni), and then spend the remainder of the piece disseting his agreement and dissent with the group's ideas. It's challening to say "thanks, but," and Fish does it well, making his conservative point while critiquing ACTA's Conservative agenda.
I have an ambivalent orientation toward Fish. As an early graduate student, I reviewed Fish's Professional Correctness (1999) for a bibliography class. I fought with it and with myself (for liking it) the entire time. In fact, when reading Fish, I often feel like Anakin Skywalker listening to Palpatine's seductive logic about the Dark Side in Revenge of the Sith.
Fish's recent post turned me inward to critique my own course this semester, an intro composition course themed on Teaching and Learning for freshman interested in becoming educators. We spent a considerable amount of time reading education theorists and debating public school policy, while also practicing memoir, analysis, and observation essays. Is the course trying to do too much? Fish argues yes; sometimes I think I agree with him.
To pop-culturalize my relationship with Fish once more, reading him often reminds me of one of my favorite lines in The Big Lebowski. After Walter makes a logical but melodramatic point, the Dude says, "No, you're not wrong, Walter. You're just an ***-****."
I agree that we should teach our comp students how to string together a few coherent sentences. From the dialogue I hear in the Writing Studio, most of the TAs are doing just that. But way Fish begins his essay sort of irritated me–how he lambasts graduate students and their writing. That one statement proves your final analogy. The Dude would not approve.
ReplyDeletechristine
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