I took that as hyperbole. If it's literal, then yes he's gone too far. But I'm back to Mrs Schlinker here. Mrs Schlinker said something like "I don't care what you say, but how you say it."
I always took this to mean that she didn't care - for the purposes of the class - what our opinions were, only that we correctly communicated what we wanted to say , and correctly interpretted what we had read.
I'm considering Fish's phrase "content is a lure and a delusion." On the one hand I understand clearly the value of content - students can get most excited about things that interest them. If they get excited they will learn more. Also, one part of mastery in any subject is bridging the gap from theory to practice.
I've seen the consequences of (mis-)education based solely on content. Students learned more about convincing their particular class, but they didn't learn that much about writing. OTOH, with your explanation I think I see connections to cases where students have learned about forms alone. In this case (and I can only think of one example at the moment), the 'student' was very well-versed in the form, but was a practically incapable of communication. (Although, frankly, it's not clear to me whether this was a due to defect of the method of instruction or a disorder of his personality.)
Being an inherently stubborn person, I'm not willing to change my mind immediately. But what you say does make a lot of sense to me.
k
