A New Beginning in College Writing

Abstract

Pedagogies for teaching high school English and college composition often divide between so-called approaches and their opposite, variously labeled teacher-centered, traditionalist, or product-based. Where students collaborate in the discovery of knowledge, learning is said to be student-centered. Where teachers impose their knowledge on students, as in the banking model of education described by Paulo Freire, the teacher-centered approach holds sway.1 Implied in this distinction is good will on the part of those who take their students' side, and something less than good will on the part of those who impose their authority on them. Because teachers work for students, every instructor should take his or her students' side; every teacher should ask which assignments in which order will foster the best results; every educator should make the classroom a lively place where students learn to think for themselves. The claim that one approach to teaching is more than another therefore carries a polemical charge. It sets an educational philosophy that favors the advancement of students against another that holds them back. But what if a misunderstanding arose as to what student-centered means, and, as a result, a pedagogy passing for progressive actually inhibited progress? What if this misunderstanding unfolded, like the internally consistent logic of a bad dream, and became policy, ruling high school English and college composition programs across America, gaining dominance over the