Customer Reviews

Composition In The University: Historical and Polemical Essays (Pitt Comp Literacy Culture)

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Crowley draws from a wide-ranging array of historical sources and her own publications to present a thoughtful and (generally) persuasive case against requiring every first-year college student to take a composition course. In instance after instance, from adjunct teachers to Writing Program Administrators, Crowley provides a reasoned argument on how everyone implicated in FYC would be better served without the universal requirement.

Don't read Crowley's text if you disagree with her, as she just may change your mind!

Future writing instructors need to read what Crowley has to say. She minces no words and calls rhetoric and composition instruction what it often is: a dreary bureaucracy more interested in policing student thought and behavior than encouraging beginning writers to argue well. Her discussion concerning graduate assistants is particularly salient. She correctly assumes beginning writers should be taught by the most experienced faculty, not first-timers.

After a while, the polemical tone of this book becomes irritating. Crowley evidently thinks most highly of her own previous writings. She does make an interesting case for abolishing first-year composition as a requirement, and then she re-makes it, and re-makes it, etc. There is something distastefully showy about this book.

I want to say I like this book. There are elements in it that are striking-- insightful. But I found myself feeling burdened by the tone of the book-- an incessantly polemical stance that Crowley takes on so many issues. I don't disagree with her; indeed, I agree with a good deal of what she says about first year composition in the university. But there is already so much didactic material in English studies and in the academy, in general. This book made me think of a relentless school teacher telling everyone where our previous education has gone wrong.

Why did I buy this book? Crowley manages to quote and cite herself enough to make me realize that her intended audience must be herself! At least she's honest: these ARE "polemical essays." But do we really need more polemics in higher education? This profession isn't polemical enough already?

Some of these essays are familiar, and are no fresher in their reprinted form in this volume. Crowley's polemics are tiresome and her remarks about the role of first-year writing courses in the college curriculum are neither radical nor particularly useful. I can imagine educators cheering at certain portions of this volume, but the after-effect is that it was merely another exercise in reading, an occasion for an author/educator to "vent" spleen on the profession. It's hard to admire this work.