Josh's Response Foreword

I have decided that since this is a blog and since the word blog is itself an informal word, I shall write in an informal method in my blog entries. The responses that follow are written as I read the different pieces and as different thoughts and ideas occur to me. As a result that may be somewhat disjointed or difficult to follow, and for this I apologize. I do hope that at least one or two of the thoughts that I leave in this blog over the course of the semester resonate with someone or at least make me look like a mildly intelligent intellectual. (Also, I shan't be editing grammar, so I hope that I am grammatically clear to all.)

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Composite Response for "Happenings" PDFs

First of all, I wish that I had not read the PDFs in the order they were presented on BB. I read them in said order and found that the earlier readings began to make sense as I moved forward to the later readings. Why this confusion? I could not define precisely what a "happening" was. I was of course coming to my own contextual reasonings but it was not until I reached the 1970s workshops that the definition became explicit. There's an interesting experiment for you, Shipka. See if students always follow the instilled pattern of order, and see if the different orders in which the students read affects there understanding, questioning, or rhetorical responses to the assigned readings.

As I believe the writers of these articles may very well wish, I found that they raised a great many questions for me and did not provide many concrete answers other than the concretely inspecific definitioin of "happenings." Therefore, this entry will just provide a "shotgun" listing of the different questions these readings raised for me:

  • Is it only the fresh-people (for you, Shipka) who wear these writers' masks?
  • How is a literalist different from the more mature first grader?
  • Why raise the status of English Composition to the introduction to the university? Why not just make a class called Introduction to So-and-So?
  • Doesn't the "happening" movement's push for living in the present sound like the gateway to anarchy?
  • Is the essay's purpose really to "transmit information as economically as possible"? What is the definition of an essay? Consider Baldwin, Orlean, Orwell, etc.
  • The one essay considers silence as a method to visit the inner self. What about extremely "distracting" loud noise? Can't that help one reach his/her inner self, too?
  • If one implemented a "happening" activity, how would one move forward after that to produce further learning?
  • If grades are put in the hands of the students or removed entirely, wouldn't fresh-people comp become second-tier to the students' other more traditionally taught classes?
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