Man, did this reading resonate with me. It’s instructions were clear, and the instructions were noteworthy. Indeed, allow me to create a parallel with a more domestic situation in order to illustrate, what I feel, is the author’s message: Imagine, for a moment, a kid who’s taking the piano. He’s actually pretty good—he plays Beethoven, Mozart, the big guys. However, the songs that his piano teacher assigns him are seemingly random, without order or reason; sure, the songs get more difficult as time goes by, but, due to a lack of context, he often wonders why he has to play “Funereal Dirge No. 666” by some unknown composer out of a Soviet-bloc nation. (Not, of course, that he has anything against Soviet-bloc nations, of course, but the music can be, on occasion, uh, bleak.) Bored out of his mind, he finally abandons the piano for the guitar, for he wants to rock the proverbial house. He is happy.
However, what happens then? He progresses into guitar study and finds—could it be?—the context for his piano instruction? Syncopation, pentatonic scales—all this draws upon his piano training, and—in a flurry, it happens—he understands. It all makes sense. If only he could have understood the context of what his teachers had been trying to teach him with the Slavic death marches, if only he could’ve known that the piano was really helping him, if only!
As I am prone to do, I exaggerate somewhat in this—uh, fictional—story. (Yep. Totally false. Yessir.) However, I think it demonstrates our author’s point, which is that many of today’s student-age learners, be them piano students or composition students, are, sadly, not given much instruction in theory, in context. Thus, when evaluating textbooks, we must pay attention to whether the textbooks have any particular aim in their instruction—that is, whether their pedagogical choices are motivated by theory or whether they simply flail about, teaching whatever the author feels is needed in his/her judgment. As the author here states, “The problem with the partial canons and the modes is that they do not have any aim. They are cut off from meaning because they are cut off from pointing forward to any life outside the text. They point back only to themselves and so implode meaninglessly” (Welch 275). In other words, instruction for the sake of instruction is no instruction at all.
The flip-side of this idea, though, is encouraging: If students can be taught the context of what we’re teaching, the why-and-wherefore of the homework that we assign, perhaps they will be more eager to do it. Perhaps not, of course—when I (I mean, our hypothetical student) was taking piano, some of the songs that I was assigned to learn were so unbelievably boring that no amount of musical theory could ameliorate the situation. But the theory does help.
What is the solution? Should we create a textbook that is entirely devoted to theory? Should we have a textbook that features articles that students find enjoyable and/or “fun”? Welch’s article advocates that:
[r]ules for dominant-culture English can be relegated to a pamphlet that not only instructs students in the conventions of this dialect but that explains the implications of power, authority, and social mobility that go with mastery of his dialect.
We must begin with these changes in current textbooks. Their currently enormously persuasive effect, in their large numbers if from nothing else, is to show writing students that language is banal, boring, and not central to anyone’s life. (279)
Whatever the solution, something needs to be done, ‘cause I’ve seen my fair share of composition textbooks, and they are almost universally boring. (The book we had last semester was okay. The articles really got the students’ hackles up.) (I like hackles.)
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