Yancey Returns

Discusion post

Joshua C. Cook English 1001 (006)

The history is effective because it helps the reader understand the context and point of view that Yancey is coming from. The technology is part of the history and is what the curriculum is needing to keep pace with. The reason for this is remain relevant and add value to the students life by helping them navigate the texts in the 21st century instead of the 18th when the old curriculum was conceived. The metaphor was weak having the seismic activity making the world more stable doesn’t make much sense. I believe a better metaphor would have been is the foundation of modern academia settling into place, or is the house that is built upon it collapsing do to decay and neglect? I think this makes more sense because academia is a built and curated, while plates and seismic activity is natural which is at odds with a construct like the English curriculum (for it is not a natural thing, it is forced).

The starting statistics that Yancey uses in Quartet two is how many people graduated from high school, went to college, and graduated from college. The argument that Yancey is trying to make with these statistics is that the education is easier to access and more people complete some form of eduction compared to the time before the 50’s. but at the same time the percentage of people completing college is near the same that being around 30% of people who went. This to me show that it is a value system that what you get out of college wasn’t worth the price for the other 70% of people that went. The reason I come to this conclusion is that most people do fine in the world wether they go to college or not.

I’m mixed on seeing this curriculum do what Yancey intended, which was to make the curriculum more social and circulate the writing. The reason for this is I still feel like I’m just writing for the teacher and that I’m not interacting with my peers in any meaningful way. I will concede that this course would help prepare you for a writing major, and help you navigate modern writing practices. But, most people can already navigate these modern practices without schooling, because like Yancey pointed out herself people write even when not being in school or having gone to school for a variety of reasons.

This tectonic plate or change that is so monumental doesn’t seem to me to be a beginning or end. This huge change in curriculum seems like a constant a continual change that happens all throughout history. Yancey references this many times throughout her paper, like when she compared her trouble to the trouble face a hundred years ago.