I also find it very interesting (I must not have gotten to this part yet) that she believes that literature has no place in composition courses. At first, I disagreed with this and I thought, if students don't read it in composition courses, when will they? Then, as has become a daily epiphany for me, I realized that it really doesn't matter. The purpose of a composition course is, after all, to get students ready for other college courses and for the "real world." Indeed, it will be our job to teach students how to use language both effectively and correctly and, in the end, it will not matter if they have read Shakespeare, Swift and Shelley (the husband or wife). What will matter is if they can be understood by others in their writing. Like Donna said, if students want to read "higher" literature, they will take a literature course.
Also, as we learned during Rebecca's exercise, the most important thing (that our group came up with, anyhow) to teach burgeoning learners is critical thinking and how they, as individual thinkers, fit into a culture (or cultures).
Lindemann, in many ways, is also focused on process, and the various kinds of processes that exist in writing. I appreciated Rebecca providing us with the information that she did. I am still, however, a little confused about the Systems that Rebecca spoke about, and included on the handout. I suppose that I will have to do further research into those. It seems that all of these processes and systems generate various modes of learning, so that each student will have the opportunity of becoming a better writer, which is admirable.
Lindemann seems to have great hopes for those that she educates, which should, indeed, be every educator's goal.
Emily, thanks for you kind comments. Students are generally taught set forms or modes of writing, but Lindemann argues that composition is more complicated than that. Her idea is that writing is a system constantly engaged with other systems of ideas, purposes, interpersonal interaction, cultural norms, and textual forms. Students need to learn how an incident of rhetoric fits within all the various systems and where those systems intersect. Students are encouraged to think critically about why certain texts are effective and how they work. Lindemann contends that by examining a wide variety of genres inside and outside the academy, students develop a stronger sense of making appropriate rhetorical choices in their writing.
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