Response to Introduction and Berlin

     The Introduction, How Did We Get Here? By Kelly Ritter and Paul Kei Matsuda  is a piece that explores how composition has changed throughout the history of colleges and universities. According to the two authors, universities were set up to educate the elite. Composition was first a class taught mainly to men "for deployment into profession society."  Women were also taught composition in women colleges but there was a slant to it, they learned composition in the context of becoming teachers or "mother-teachers".  Colleges were for the upper-class men of "taste," but after World War II there were a lot of empty seats, so elite colleges such as Harvard didn't have the luxury of admitting only upperclass people.
The authors illustrate how universities are reimaged whenever a huge change in society occurs, such as the civil rights movement or the baby boom.
Writing instruction changes based on the students, an idea that the authors clearly examine during this piece.


Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class by James Berlin explores the different types of rhetoric that teachers use to teach writing. There's cognitive, expressionists, and social-epostimic rhetoric.
   According to Berlin, cognitivists  talk about writing if it's some kind of formula, which is funny because I always considered writing to be the opposite of math. " In other words, the elements of the process can be identified and their functions described, but the order of their operation will vary from task to task and from individual to individual, even though the practices of good writers will be very similar to each other." This idea is something I've been slowly learning. I'm a writing major and my classes focus on good writing, how to effectively convey your meaning exactly the way you want. To do that my peers and I have been learning to incorporate tools that all writers use, so when cognitivists mention functions and the process I have to agree. It's hard to see writing as a tool and not a form of creative expression. In my experience my teachers have incorporated both expressionists and cognitive rhetoric in their teaching. I believe the best kind of writing is a mix between the two, there are certain elements of craft that good writers incorporate no matter how reinvented to achieve their goals of getting their point across. When this is done well enough the writing comes across as flawless and true which has elements of expressionists.