Letter to Basic Writing List Serve

by Ed White, The University of Arizona

So here I sit, in this virtual coffee room, waiting for some company, a vigorous old guy who was there when rhet/comp began its modern manifestation, waiting for somebody who wants to join in some good talk. Laura asked me to do this, since she knows I’ve been around for a while and like to chat. My first book was a comp text, The Writer’s Control of Tone, Norton, 1970 and my next (last?) book will be a comp text, written with one of my former students, Shane Borrowman, The Promise of America, Longman’s, 2007. There are eleven books in between, if anyone is interested, and listed on my web site, www.u.arizona.edu/~emwhite, and about a hundred articles and book chapters. I’ve retired from Cal State, San Bernardino, twice actually, but I can’t resist the lure of teaching, so I’m now back in the classroom as a part-time visiting professor at the University of Arizona, working mostly now with terrific grad students. The students help keep me alive and after all these years I just can’t stop writing. Anyone want to talk about that?

I also was there when this list started. Bill Degenaro, another former student, and I hosted the first unit back in 2002. I just went back and read our opening statement, one that tried to define “basic writers” as well as the role of assessment for them, and it holds up pretty well, though some good new work in assessment has come out since. You can call it up if you want at http://www.mhhe.com/socscience/english/tbw/pt/degenaro.html and you’ll find me there with my scholarly jacket on. But here, I’ve taken off my coat and tie, poured a cup of coffee, and I’m looking for some colleagues who want to talk about our business.

Coffee. My first full-time job after grad school was at Wellesley College, where I taught for five years before heading west. I learned one lesson in the coffee room there: you are a spineless wimp if you load up the coffee, as I did, with sugar and cream. Real teachers, I was told in no uncertain terms, took their coffee neat. I took that bit of wisdom along with lots of other nonsense about teaching with me when I left New England in 1965. Everyone knew, for instance, that the best training for teaching writing was to study literature, and that every teacher who could escape teaching writing courses would do so. I felt positively perverse because I really liked teaching writing and because I resigned my posh post to go teach relatively untrained students in a railroad town at a brand new university. There was then only one university in the country where you could get a Ph.D. in rhet/comp, if my memory is correct. A recent survey by the journal Rhetoric Review listed 65 such programs. If you live long enough, and keep putting cream in your coffee, the times catch up with you.

So I hope you will decide to drop by this virtual coffee room, pour yourself something, pull up a chair, and talk about whatever interests you about our strange business. In this format, everyone can have a say and I’ll be joining in with whatever good sense about teaching writing I’ve learned over the past, let me see, 48 years of teaching. I’ll be looking for you. –Ed White

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