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93 5ta exPerimentation, 1966–1969 with Rasha Diab and Mira Shimabukuro In the fall of 1969, 4,360 students, or about 78 percent of the 5,569 freshmen at the University of Wisconsin that semester, enrolled in Freshman English. One hundred and forty-nine registered for English 101 (11 sections), the newly remedialized writing course examined in some depth previously. Another 329 were in 18 sections of English 181, the Honors version of Freshman English. But the vast majority, 3,882 students, enrolled in English 102, the only composition course most UW students took that year. They were divided into 164 sections of around twenty-four students each, and like their peers in English 101 and 181, they were entirely in the hands of English Department graduate teaching assistants (TAs).1 The department employed 158 such assistants in fall 1969, two-thirds of them (or 101) assigned to English 102. Many of them taught two sections of the course that semester.2 The other 57 TAs were assigned to English 101, 181, or 200 (sophomore literature), or they assisted faculty in upper-level courses. What were those TAs doing in fall 1969? In particular, what were the 120 or so TAs assigned to Freshman English doing that semester? We saw in the previous chapter what a small number of them were doing with the newly liberated English 101 course. But what about the still-required English 102? What were TAs doing with it in the late 1960s? Now, we know from chapter 3 what TAs were supposed to be doing at this time: we saw there the course’s focus on genre and mode, the heavy use of model essays, the prevailing concern with correct- 94 TA Experimentation, – ness. We’ve seen the training TAs were provided in orientation and weekly staV meetings: the modeling of diVerent kinds of “class hours,” the emphasis on theme annotation, and so on. And we’ve seen evidence that this training was highly insuVicient in a variety of ways. There were, after all, no faculty at UW in the late 1960s doing research in composition-rhetoric, no graduate courses in “comp-rhet” theory or pedagogy, no departmental colloquia treating writing studies or instruction as bona Wde intellectual projects. In fact, the most sustained instance of faculty reXection on composition during this entire period was the statement about clarity and eVectiveness that Professor William Lenehan issued in February 1970—three months after the dismantling of Freshman English!3 Before that, the faculty were largely dismissive of innovations in composition studies or pedagogy. In his August 21, 1969, memo to Heninger, for example, course director Lenehan (a specialist in American literature) wrote, “The idea that the fresh point of view and youthful enthusiasm will enable the teaching assistant to create new means of teaching composition is fallacious. After 150 years (if we begin with Harvard’s appointment of a Professor of Rhetoric) of rather hectic experimentation in composition , few new ideas crop up.”4 The TAs certainly couldn’t rely on their own backgrounds, prior training, or professional interests to help them teach writing better or diVerently. As Virginia (Joyce) Davidson recalled, “None of us had experience in teaching writing ; we were steeped in the criticism of literature.”5 Jean Turner likewise admitted that, at UW in the late 1960s, she had no real theory for teaching Freshman English and was never very good at it.6 Though she learned about critical pedagogy from more advanced TAs like Margaret Blanchard and Bob Muehlenkamp , she had diViculty translating those insights pedagogically. Similarly, Susan McLeod told us that, although (like Jean Turner) she had experience teaching high school and college English before she came to UW, she had never taken any coursework in comp theory and lacked conWdence as a writing teacher. She was forced to rely, therefore, on the “enlightened current-traditionalism” of Edgar Lacy and Ednah Thomas, which is why, she told us, her copy of Evaluating Student Themes was so well thumbed—it was how she learned to teach English 102. As for the new rhetorical theories then emerging, McLeod said, they simply weren’t available at UW in the late 1960s.7 Ira Shor conWrmed all this: “We were lit students,” he said in his interview; “we weren’t plugged into the composition crowd.”8 The TAs had no idea, said Shor, that the groundbreaking Anglo-American Conference on the Teaching of English had been held at Dartmouth in 1966; they hadn’t read...

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