Response to "Basic Writing Reconsidered" by Peter Dow Adams - What's Left Out?

So far, during my readings on the subject of Basic Writing, a thought continues to come to mind. This thought is that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the minds of students that are placed into BW courses, whom often happen to be African-American, Hispanic or from immigrant families, but there are a number of cultural, societal, institutional, historical factors, etc., that have shaped not only their educations, but have shaped their access to quality education. Any human being placed under identical circumstances as some of these students who are less fortunate, would probably perform identically to these students. And what most strongly stands out for me as this thought crosses my mind, is that access to quality education has become a luxury not a right, based on income brackets and demographics, and that as a result, many of these students have never been challenged to rise to their innate intelligence levels. Further, because of teachers that do not challenge their subconscious racism based on deeply held beliefs, many of these students are expected to perform at lower levels and ultimately underachieve due to how they are treated in classrooms. This, of course, is not true in all cases, but it is a reality for many, and is a factor that I have not seen raised directly in the articles I have read thus far. Most of my reading on the subject of BW is read through this lens.

That being said, having read “Basic Writing Reconsidered (1993)” by Peter Dow Adams and other articles, I realize that courses are needed on the college level to address these discrepancies in our educational system in America. However, as Adams raises in this article, the stigma attached to being placed in a remedial class (at any age) can actually discourage students from seriously pursuing an education, because it is sending a subliminal message that s/he is not smart enough – when in fact, they are but may have been subjected to circumstances that prevented them from achieving accordingly.

Adams talks about not only the stigma of being placed in a basic writing class, but also about students performing at lower levels because the bar is placed low in these classes, about students not being motivated by their peers because they are all in the same boat, about being subjected to inferior materials and teaching methods and always feeling a step behind, and about the dangers of misplacement. Besides these negative factors, Adams also addresses the weakness of how BW had been taught in the 90s (assembly-line approach), and the strength that was discovered by taking a new approach of raising the bar for BW students by using the same materials and methods used in college-level courses. He goes on to questions whether it is fundamentally correct to segregate students that test into BW from students that test into college-level English. While I agree with this questioning, I have to go back to examining how a student will be treated in a classroom where it is known that s/he is not at the same level as the other students, especially if that student is not white.

Adams raises many valid points in this article, pointing out the importance of gathering statistical data so that arguments can be made for the existence of BW programs, broadening the freshman intro courses to included teaching methods that address students with weaker writing/reading skills, and trying a new initiative of mainstreaming BW students into freshman English classes. He looks at the TSWE (Test of Standard Written English) and how its administration is not addressing the needs of students – that students need more time for testing and would do better with writing samples than multiple choice questions. He stresses that funding for data collection and red tape are major obstacle is getting the statistics needed to measure results of BW, and suggests that teachers collect the data themselves, which I think goes too far. Teachers should not be responsible for data collection.

Adams provides comprehensive tables that chart the successes of failures of students that test into lower level BW, upper level BW, and Eng 101. The results are extensive but ultimately show that students do better when they are mainstreamed into levels with higher achieving students. The tables also showed a surprisingly high rate of students that were tested into either lower or upper BW but never took a class – sometimes as high as 52% that never took a class at all. Adams asks why? So many questions are raised at the end of this article, and they are questions that probably fueled the discourse on BW moving through the years after 1993 when this article was published.

There are many factors to consider in the discourse on basic writing in colleges, some of which I raised at the start of this blog. Another factor to think about is that sometimes, students just want to learn from the standpoint they are in and move forward from that point. They neither want others to expect them to be intellectuals or proficient writers, nor to expect them to embrace a culture of academia that they never aspired to in the first place. Maybe it is important to ask students, “What do you hope to achieve?” Just a thought.