Who won last night's debate?

This week’s readings bring up a very basic question for me: What is the purpose of a composition class; what are we trying to teach our students in terms of writing?

Geoffrey Sirc in his article, “Box Logic,” challenges us to think outside the box. He wants students to enjoy the process of writing and get more than just an end product out of it. I think Sirc gives some practical advise on how to juxtapose different, seemingly incompatible things side by side to spark curiosities in students, teach them how to think outside the regular argumentative framework of writing. He wants students to get excited about writing by creating aesthetically appealing, raw, not cooked texts. He also suggests means to make use of sources other than straight out articles to “write.” He wants to expand the writing genre to include a multitude of things in the composition classroom. Sirc’s advise is great in terms of making students enjoy the process of writing, and I think it would interesting to assign them things in class that makes something ordinary and seemingly unchallenging task into an intellectually stimulating activity. I think a lot of us do this in some way or the other. It may not seem as radical as Sirc’s suggestion, but using advertisements, or presidential debates or movies to understand rhetoric and argumentation does a little bit of this I think.

I think James Kastely’s article, “From Formalism to Inquiry: A Model of Argument in Antigone,” is the one I related to more in terms of my own teaching methods. Kastely wants students to use practical, political problems and argue those instead of just focusing on academic argumentation, which he thinks has no place in the real world. I think I liked Kastely more than Sirc because of my bias for Sophocles’ Antigone. I have seen that students are usually very excited to discuss topics that have some form of a direct relation to their life outside of academia. In my class, when I teach argumentation, I show a movie like Bowling for Columbine, and let students explore their “personal and political identities” in their writing. Also, those of you who have seen the movie know how it does not really take sides or make an argument in a direct way. Instead, it leaves the viewers with questions that they could explore and argue. Also, most students when they make an argument on some political topic are very successful in explaining and arguing their side, and I usually have students come to class, form two groups and argue their points. Most times, the argument does not go anywhere. This proves Kasely’s point about the failures of argumentation and questions like why argue, if you can’t succeed, or does anyone really succeed in an argument?

This theorizing about argumentation brings me to my big question of the day: Who won last night’s debate? Can anyone really “win” a debate? :-P