Fishy Business

After reading a blog post in the New York Times: “What Should Colleges Teach”, which was written by Dr. Stanley Fish, his main argument in the article is that Colleges should teach the basics of a sentences structure. Fish says that to be able to write in college students must be able to know what the correct way of writing a sentence.

With that statement that he makes I must say that I disagree with what he says. Ok, yes knowing how to write sentences is important for writing in general but it is not the be-all, end all when it comes to writing in college. That brings me to my central argument that in my opinion, I believe that the thesis should be at the forefront of the college English classes because without the thesis there essentially would be no paper.


Dr. Stanley Fish giving a lecture at a colleg class

Some people may wonder what good-old Stanley Fish did before he wrote his blog (“What Colleges Should Teach”); I was one of those people. Dr. Fish is a distinguished professor who taught at many different colleges and Universities across the country. He is currently a professor at Florida International University.

In Stanley Fish’s Piece about “What should Colleges Teach”, the way I read it, or what I think he wants us to believe is that a colleges primary focus when it comes to English, is that teachers should not just keep their attention on a SENTENCES STRUCTURE.

Now I get that it’s important to know the structure of a sentence but it doesn’t need to be the FOCUS of a student’s entire semester while in college. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed reading his blog and seeing what he thought what important for students to know what the structure of a sentences is and I agree that a lot of students don’t fully understand the structure, but I don’t think it needs to be the focus of the class.

In my English 1109 class at the Ohio State Universities branch campus at Newark my teacher focused on one question of “What Is College Level Writing” and the classes final Paper was based on that question while only discussing one important aspect of College writing, I chose to talk about the thesis statement.

 I admire Dr. Fish for his work and what he has accomplished in his life, but he talks about sentences structure like that’s all a student needs to know and ok, if all he wants to stress to his students the importunateness of sentence structure that’s alright to do in his course and its his opinion I just don’t think spending a whole semester on one topic is the smartest move.

That paper I was talking about, yes I focused on one aspect of college writing for what I believed was to be important for a college paper. My professor got us (his students) prepared for that paper. He focused on multiple parts involved in the writing process. In the

Tutoring session at the OSU Newark Writers studeo

course of the semester we got ready for the paper and for the last 8 weeks my professor had his students go to the OSU Newark Writers studio to observe other student writers so that we could implement the experiences of those observations and find some link between the observations and the topic of our paper.
After the 8 weeks of observing where done we need to interview the student writer and his/her tutor and ask them question based on our time we spent observing.

I talked about the aspects of a theses and what it does for not only the statement but for the entire paper. In one of the questions for the interview I asked the student writer why she thought the thesis was important to a paper. She stated that “A thesis is like offering a claim for your paper and what you’re going to talk about in your paper”. After the interview I wondered how I would see how I would use her opinion in my paper.

This student gave her opinion on what she thought a thesis statement was just as I have given my opinion on Dr. Stanley Fish’s blog on “What Colleges Should Teach”. When it comes to writing and learning about writing in college all the students and teachers will have their own opinions on what is important in the long run. Stanley Fish was not right or wrong in what he said in his blog because opinions are open to everybody. So I think the question still rages on, WHAT SHOULD COLLEGES TEACH?