> I think this is a bull's eye. [...] I don't think this professor is repudiating other ways of teaching composition
Yes, I agree with you that there is some sense in this approach, FF. Bbut what he actually says, in clean and clear sentences in the second paragraph, is that he does indeed repudiate the vast majority of teaching taking place today:
Most composition courses that American students take today emphasize content rather than form […] The theory is wrong. Content is a lure and a delusion, and it should be banished from the classroom. Form is the way. [e.a]
Not, you will notice, that ‘content should be given a lower priority’, or that in some circumstances might be a useful part of the pedagogical toolkit: no, complete banishment is prescribed. Now, to argue about the merits or demerits of what he says is one thing, but since he has expressed himself clearly and with some care, I see no profit in arguing about its actual content. He has stated clearly and transparently that he believes most current teaching practice is fundamentally misguided, and thinks that in classrooms up and down the land form should be everything, content nothing.
This is as intellectually weak as anyone having the temerity to suggest that no study of form is worthwhile, and it can all emerge from processing content – therein lies the madness of Shakespeare’s typewriter monkeys. But it must be faced that Shakespeare did indeed come (despite what Alabama believes) from a long line of ‘smart monkeys’, and the post-facto analysis of what he did is invariably undertaken by formalists with duller minds than the man himself. I would accede at once to the argument that Shakespeare’s luminous grasp of poetry was built on foundations that included study of form through Latin and Greek, but I have little doubt that the formalists of his day would have been happy to beat out the irregularities of his use of language had they the wits to do so.
I do not dispute that the study of language forms is valuable. I do not dispute (nor indeed have much knowledge about) whether American students are functionally more or less literate or capable of rational discourse than in some previous golden age.
What I am disputing is the central tenet of what he has clearly stated in that second paragraph: that form is everything, and content, nothing. That is the way to raise a litter of grammarians, for sure, but human beings should aspire to higher things!
