Week 3, Post 3: Second Thoughts

The Goens articles lay out the Integrated Reading/Writing Program set in action at SFSU; the second article is an update on the challenges this program has faced, the benefits it provides, and a reflection on the overall debate to eliminate remedial programs at the college level.  The program was in part a reaction to legislative plans to eliminate all remedial English at the CSUs, and in part a response to thoughtful research on integrated programs by McCormick, Nelson, Calfee and many others.  Politically, it was a manuever to incorporate composition studies with remedial studies, potentially dodging the legislative bullet aimed at remedial programs.  It was also an opportunity to experiment with new methodologies to develop a sound and ground-breaking curriculum at a time that demanded creative innovation.

After reading these articles, my opinions shifted somewhat compared to my prior two blogs.  While I still need to research and understand the baffling failings of reading and writing education at the secondary level, I'm rethinking my stance in general.  My first blog this week expresses how I felt (feel?) about the need for students entering college to be ready for college-level work.  Now I see that up to 45% of all CSU Freshman require remedial help, which suggests that the actual situation statewide is far different from the ivory tower high school where I graduated 30+ years ago.  Somehow, these today's CSU Freshmen are getting great grades and have great SAT scores and TOEFL scores, yet they need one, sometimes two years of remedial scaffolding.  I thought it might have been around 10-20%, but it's nearly half of all students, which indicates it's got to be a systemic issue and something must be done to heal the system.

Rather than focus on the causes of this "cancer," the SFSU English department (some of them anyway) decided to find a cure for the disease on their doorstep by re-imagining the basic reading/writing curriculum, achieving stunning results.  One recalls the movie "Stand and Deliver," in which a single high school instructor re-invented his approach to teaching math at an inner-city high school, revolutionizing academic thought about the potential within the secondary classroom.  In the same way, our very own English department has chosen to blaze a new trail, and, best of all, their research proves their curriculum works.