Demystifying the Profession (It's Not for Everyone)

Dear Ron, Laura, Paula and  Colleagues ACT

I'm thinking of the then Composition Czar Ann Turkle's
remark to me when I  offered her a solution to her various
and always worrisome Required Composition Program's
devilish details:  finding adequate adjuncts, sustaining
common procedures & expectations, semester student
distributions, the  perennial whine among the doctors that
 "these kids don't know how to write" and "what did their
h.s.teachers"  (every entering freshman has 4 years of 5-
day-a-week English classes, yes") "do with them that they
are so inadequate?" not to mention the resistance  of some
of the students themselves. (Why? Why? Why? Why?)

"Well, Ann: why don't we just drop the requirement?
Make "college composition" an option? I would advise
again and again.

Laissez faire rather than lasso fair.

"It's not going to happen, Sam"
.
See:
right there a giant snort and snicker might indicate the
boundary trespass, border encroachment. Homeland
security  breech & potential illegal immigration. And
 that cross-road crucial agon ought to be Turned Up
so as to be put in play:

X) Sustain things was they are, thank you. (on the one
hand: the invisible hand)

Z)  Consider things as they might could be if things-as-
they-are would sustain some of that "critical thinking"
we celebrate as well as assessment and evaluation
(ouch, ooo, damnit, hurts! etc:not to be denied)
.   .
"especially since institutional precedents
can seem so resistant to change:" (R.B.)

Again: your "requirements,"  "crediting," "scheduling,"
"assessment" are terms  embedded in the habit & habitat
of professionalism-a-um   Llike going  into a closet to
study the darkness with my pen-light ablaze.

Demystification?
OR maybe turning it up (the mystification) so that it's
no longer the invisible hand.  Handy and manipulating,
sure: but not so invisible as to not be bitten. .

Need ways of talking that don't carry the bias of professionalism
and (I guess) amateurism into the conversation--OR--a shared
sense of the  bias-exposed and on the table and maybe factoring
IT  in so that it's not transparently &  automatically coloring the
shared inquiry-across-the-curriculum..

Beyond Amateur & Professional.   What would that sound like?
And could we do the work  (assuming it's desirable) with
task force, strategic planning committees, 4 o'clock
forum meetings, Zoomerang polling?  

I"m asking. It's an environmental issue.
It's a sustainability issue.
A professional concern.
Got to love it.
I know I do and may be the only one
(it's not for everyone.)

xxxooo, Sam