a novel & a history

Adjunct life on interwebz groupz and listservz is all gobsmacked (but in a good way) by the prospect of an echte adjunct novel, Alex Kudera's Fight for the Long Day + protagonist with his own Facebook page, telling it like is (at least the author's particular lifeslice). Will non-adjuncts buy it, read it, get it? Will it - gasp - go mainstream? Make a difference (be still my beating heart)? Until then, we still have to get up in the morning and sally forth teaching. For many that means composition and with it, commenting on student writing. We're fighting a long day too. 

Academic blogger, if not still adjunct then recently enough so to count, Dr Davis writes in A History of Freshman Composition — Teaching College English, "I studied under Jim Berlin and he would not agree with much that was written here, both in terms of history and in terms of whether it was good or bad. I found the article startling (freshman comp began as a remedial course?) and interesting (classes did that?).

Freshman Comp, Then and Now says:

Over the almost four decades that I’ve been a college English professor, I have seen many changes, some good and many bad. One of the worst changes is the transformation of the freshman composition course.

I was not teaching college (or anything else) in the 70s, but I taught as he did when I first started in the mid-80s. You might be surprised by how well it worked."

So did I - and remember being taught that way too. What about you? Anyway, read both and maybe the novel too. Or write your own.