Just Fishing Around His Statements

Stanley Fish is a professor at Florida International University, in Miami. He has also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Duke University and the University of Illinois, Chicago. Stanley Fish has written fifteen books one of his most recent being How to Write a Sentence. He also wrote an article in The New York Times titled "What Should College Teach, Part 3?". This article states that students these days are going into college not knowing how to write. I agree with some of the statements that he has to say, but I feel that he missed a point. That point being that it is not the high schools fault, but the lack of guidance the students have at the beginning of college. Guidance needs to make its way into what Fish has to say about what college should teach.

Which one or ones do you need?

There are many different kinds of guidance that can take place and students can take on different levels to different degrees. Students require guidance to a certain level, whether it is physical guidance or a will power of some sort. It can be a very minimal, as in just telling them what to think about like a topic. Or it could be to the extent of needing the paper to be drafted up, needing specific information, and amount of quotes needed for the writing piece. Guidance could be given in various ways, but it seems as if we are not pushed some way to write something, it will not be written without a purpose to do so. That purpose moment could even be a guide, because it leads the writer to start something and to write about it. This was observed when I conducted observations at Ohio State University Newark Writing Studio.

One form of guidance is the non-physical type, and as guidance is defined as leadership, instruction or direction, direction can be looked at as views. Guidance is the will, the push towards something, it will be the main reason to write. Many people that go to college are surprised with the change of pace from what lower schooling was. With the use of guidance through time management, it can be maximized. Time management bases off of guidance. If time management can be guided and kept to a clear optimal, then the writing can be a college ready piece.

Another type of guidance is a physical guidance. All through high school, teachers have taught the students how to write. Whether it is teachers showing students formatting, how many paragraphs, or even what font to use, students that go into college have gotten used to some type of teacher as a guidance. Teachers are a physical type of guidance to writers. So for "guidance" to be an overall big picture to college writing, it would not be surprising. Going into college with the guidance that was received in high school, you expect it to be no different. At college, they have teaching guidance and also student guidance. Nick is a representation of student guidance as a peer tutor. Nick physically guided Rebecca through looking for sources, drafting up her paper, and proof reading.

So as a first year student in college, I can say that I was taught the basic sentence structure in high school and it was up to me to either accept what was taught to me or to ignore it. With the right guidance I received physically and mentally, I was able to contain the information from high school and utilize my knowledge for college writing. So not that I am saying what Fish is saying is wrong, but that he needs to have other considerations and not generalize all high schools in not teaching their students right. Students have to be able to accept the guidance given to them and that it is all on the students themselves and not the actual teaching.

Students accepting what is taught to them

Students Ignoring what is taught to them