From "Clueless in Academe"

This is from the anthology, Teaching Composition, by Bedford St Martin...

[Discussing what unites different fields]
Whatever the differences between their specialized jargons, they have all learned to play the following game: listen closely to others, summarize them in a recognizable way, and make your own relevant argument. This argument literacy, the ability to listen, summarize, and respond, is rightly viewed as central to being educated. - 33-34

In giving priority to ideas and arguments, however, I don't minimize the importance of qualities that can't be reduced to pure rationality--emotional intelligence, moral character, visual and aesthetic sensitivity, and creativity in storytelling and personal narrative. What I do claim is that training in these qualities will be incomplete if students are unable to translate them into persuasive public discourse. -34

Nor does privileging argumentation in the curriculum necessarily represent the ethnocentric or racist bias that some make it out to be. On the contrary, since effective argument starts with attentive listening, training in argument is central to multicultural understanding and respect for otherness. -34

Given the genius-worship that runs through our culture, academics are often admired for speaking above other people's heads, but knowing this fact somehow doesn't save me from embarrassment when I fumble painfully to explain what I do to nonacademic relatives and friends. -35

Students must not only read texts, but find things to say about them, and no text tells you what to say about it. -39

In my educational writing, I am best known for the argument that the wisest response we can make to the philosophical and social conflicts that have disrupted education is to "teach the conflicts' themselves, to bring controversy to the center of the academic curriculum. -41

. . . the ultimate motivation of my argument for teaching the conflicts is the need to clarify academic culture, not just to resolve spats among academics or cultural factions. -41

We take for granted, for example, that reflecting in a self-conscious way about experience--"intellectualizing"-- is something our students naturally see the point of and way to learn to do better. -43

The idea that, below their apparent surface, texts harbor deep meanings that cry out for interpretation, analysis, and debate is one of those assumptions that seems so normal once we are socialized into academia that we forget how counterintuitive it can be. -45

If what authors intend does not seem a genuine problem, then making a problem of unintended psychological or social meanings in texts seems all the more patently a waste of time. -47

Why would any sane person go out of his or her way to say things that are "arguable"? Just as common sense suggests that it is foolish to invent problems that did not previously exist, it also suggests that the point of writing and speaking is to make statements that nobody is likely to dispute. -50