The strength of a writing program is that it is NOT specialized, something that Chesna alludes to in her post. Ultimately, it is the goal of writing departments to force students to consider multiple perspectives, so that they may arrive at the one they consider most just. Writing departments are responsible for nothing less than producing "good men." This is only possible by looking at rhetoric as an art, in that there is no prescribed formula other than what tends to produce the desired result. What creates the goal of "good men" is a program that encourages broad-mindedness; the shift away from specialization. So, the Rhetoric and Writing Program should strive for one method only: a curriculum that mandates critical thinking and its expression across a wide range of subjects, allowing the student to reflect on matters that will produce humans unafraid to venture from the comforting confines of their specialized disciplines.

The common opinion here seems to be that yes, methods of effective communication can be taught and can afterwards be specialized and applied to different disciplines by te student once the foundations are laid. Of course, I agree this is true, that it is possible to be an effective writer and apply the principles of good communication to other disciplines, but I think its easy to forget how difficult this can be. The expectations for writing a scientific paper are entirely different from those for a paper in an English class. We tend to develop a certain style and method of writing that is specialized to our own disciplines. So while effective writers can certainly be produced using the same methods of teaching effective communication, specialized writing classes are beneficial.

I believe UT's answer is sufficient. Once a student has learned a general method of producing workable communication, it can then be adapted to her course of study. For example: I took a composition course at ACC before transferring to UT. I have been able to adapt what I learned in that class to writing essays for Government classes (back when I thought I wanted to be a political scientist), Spanish language classes, and several Rhetoric classes. Once the basics are learned -- how to write grammatically, how to produce a thesis statement and a paragraph, how to tie paragraphs into an extended essay -- the rest is merely learning the particular rules of a given subject. For writing to be taught "in and by the specialists in each particular discipline" would be a waste of time of all involved; students taking multiple subjects would be learning the same basics many times over, and professors would be starting out at square 1 instead of square 9 or 10.

The answer is indeed sufficient. That answer encapsulates why I take rhetoric classes. I think that a department in rhetoric and writing can fulfill its promise. Rhetoric builds the foundation for writing in other disciplines. Once that foundation is set the only thing that is required is taking context into consideration and putting words over the framework appropriate to the context. I would liken it to writing a song. Rhetoric can give you all of the instruments, the melody, the production, etc. The specific discipline only needs to provide the lyrics.

I think one can make a good case against the specialization of writing (a fairly modern idea) on the grounds that a lack of common principles weakens ALL forms of writing. It causes writers to focus on what they want to 'sound like' to conform to their respective discipline, that is, to focus on the particulars of their discipline's style instead of the overarching, and much more fundamental principles of writing in general. All writing, regardless of discipline or purpose, requires 1) sound logic 2) intention-why are you writing what you're writing? what is it meant to achieve? 3)clarity of thought-you must understand what you want to say on all levels before you can express it 4) a strong thesis to which all other areas relate and 5) organization-a by-product of clarity of thought. Ah, one more 6) content density. Once again this is a universal requirement, and both philosophers and scientists elevate their writing by expressing as many ideas as possible in as few words as possible. This requires eliminating verbose "fluff" and ornate, redundant and possible pretentious diction which serves no purpose but to detract from the trajectory of the piece. All disciplines suffer from this affliction. George Orwell wrote a great essay on this topic that makes me shameful of my own writing:

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

When you ask students who are either rhetoric majors or who truly enjoy writing, if rhetoric is a necessary course for all undergraduate students, I think the answer might be just a tad biased. In my experience with non-liberal arts students, many undergrads put off their RHE 309s course till their very last semester labeling it as a course that isn't really vital to their undergraduate degree. Some of them will take the undergraduate course as a "blow-off" class during an especially rough semester with hard science classes Yeah, it hurts. But if we want to evaluate the usefulness of rhetoric in the university then we have to take a look at the reality of the situation. If I am majoring in biochem and I am perfectly trained in writing lab reports, and I don't plan on writing a novel then I can get by on my high school writing skills. Why do I need to take a lower division writing course? How does this benefit me? As far as I can tell, most non-liberal arts students will say it is not very beneficial at all.

So what do we do about it? Personally, I think it is a nice idea to require non-liberal arts students to take an undergraduate writing course that is not specialized towards any discipline. From there, the students can take a more technical or specialized upper division course. Unfortunately, in the face of so much apathy from non-liberal arts students towards writing, I wonder if this well-intentioned effort is wasted. If there was a way to encourage these students to see a world that Chelsea described, where they weren't cut off, then maybe a broad writing course could work. Until then, I don't think an method based approach is going to cut it.

There is no doubt that Rhetoric courses or introductory writing courses at the collegiate level help students attain a certain kind of proficiency or at least, as Heath says, a list of do's and don't for everyday writing. But, there are very technical forms of writing and communication in today's society as the course selection in the Rhetoric department can prove with classes like multimedia writing and writing for non profit organizations. This being so, I think that it is necessary to go beyond just rhetoricians teaching and look to the experts for instruction as well. Simply teaching rhetoric isn't enough anymore, you have to dig deeper. While it is possible for people to be effective communicators, in the business world for example, they would most likely be more effective if they were taught the principles of business communication rather than simply the art of rhetoric.

I think that having a class like Rhetoric and Composition is necessary because it gives students a base to start from in their writing. The reason UT makes kids take this class during their freshman year is so they can learn basic skills and then carry those skills learned into classes for their major. Once students know the fundamental components of communicating effectively on paper, when they get into classes for their major, they can tailor their basic skills and make them fit into a specific writing genre. So I don’t think Rhetoric and Composition needs to be taught by a specialist in a given field: I think it needs to be taught by someone who can relay fundamental writing skills—clear sentence structure, focus on a topic, etc.

So I agree with csbownman that we need to teach everyone the basics of effective communication. Once people have that, they can move on to using those skills in whatever field they choose. While engineers and journalists have very different styles of writing, they would probably still be able to communicate with one another in writing because they were both taught the necessary elements of good writing at some point in their lives. In high school and the beginning of college, journalists are not taught a specific form of writing: they had to first have taken general writing courses in order to later move in the direction of journalistic writing.

So give everyone a base from which to start, and later they can use that base as a point of reference for specific writing in different fields.

RHE courses help me pick up "dos" and "donts" in writing that apply in life and my other studies, and I can't extensively learn them anywhere else (Except maybe from ENG courses too?). In the RHE classes I've taken, we've followed a Quintillian-style method in that we PRACTICE regularly with emails to the prof, discussion posts, and major papers. We follow the method in that we are moderately careful when we make posts (we don't want to seem dumb to our peers and profs), and of course even more careful on the papers. Practicing has helped w/ clear/quick thought, increased active vocab., quicker organizing, etc. In my other classes, often the writing that we read is horrible - I don't get the exposure to the excellent writing to imitate and much less practice. Rhetoric is an "active" art and I would be a awful artist w/o the RHE focus.

To answer this I am going to start with the last question and hope that it leads me to the others because it is the only one that I really have an answer to.

Yes. Yes, Rhetoric and Writing can teach “good writing” and writing should, therefore, not be specialized according to discipline. I make this claim not just because I feel that other departments should reciprocate (I have to take government and math, after all) but mostly because I fear the consequences of specialization. The required basic course is consistent with what I consider the aim of a university: a broad education (although, in this line of reasoning, engineering and business are not.) To teach engineers and bankers only how to communicate in their own style is to teach them only to communicate with their own kind. This would certainly do a disservice both to them and to ourselves, as we will need to communicate with them for time to time. And so, because an engineer will need to speak or write well to a banker or communicate something to the general public or speak or write about something other than engineering, rhetoric and writing should not be specialized by discipline.

Perhaps specialization of writing is the reason why scientists seem only to write to other scientists, leaving their information to be (mis)represented to the public by a third party, the news media.

So, to teach basic communication to everyone, Rhetoric and Writing seeks to teach a method applicable to any circumstance. Again, because I would have everyone be able to communicate to whomever about whatever, I must say that this is sufficient. From what I remember, the basic method taught in this course is pretty formulaic and the method can generally be observed even when done well. Nevertheless, it’s an effective method and one very teachable. Moreover, it should be taught if the writer would otherwise make unfounded claims, or confuse the reader, or commit any of the number of faults of “bad writing”.

So, like Quintilian we teach a method. Signpost, introduce topic, back up with evidence, explain evidence, summarize. Repeat. (Or something of that sort). Hopefully, we also teach discretion because “rules must generally be altered to suit the nature of each individual case, the time, the occasion, and necessity itself” (383). I think that with both the method and the knowledge of when to deviate from it, the engineer and banker can communicate to each other or to a layman about any subject. That goal should be both the class’s and university’s aim.