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John Lee Massaro
Doctor Sonja Andrus
English 289
9 July 2012
Bartholomae and My Essay
Bartholomae’s essay on “Inventing the University” is forcing this basic writer to step out
of familiar territory and endeavor to improve writing skills and make the moves that matter in the
realm of academic community and convention. He refers to students as basic writers in his
statement "They must learn to speak our language. Or they must dare to speak it or to carry off
the bluff, since speaking and writing will most certainly be required long before the skill is
"learned . . . this, understandably, causes problems." (512) Accepting the assignment challenge
to revisit his essay, the moves he shares, and compare them to one of my first essays is an
overwhelming task for this basic writer. Familiar physical, emotional, and intellectual senses
begin to react. My heart is beating faster, palms are feeling moist, face is turning red, breathing is
short quick breaths, and mind is trying to grapple and organize the next move to discover the
mysteries of academic argumentation. I agree that we, as students, have to learn to accommodate
the academic requirements of writing to a particular community but our writing is greater than
that, it is reflection of who we are and our experiences. For me, getting past the like “writers
block” feeling, thoughts about using my essay, Spank! The Necessity of Corporal Punishment
seemed appropriate to evaluate how little I used invention and connected with academia.
I wrote my thoughts as if I was talking to other parents, future parents, and peers-not
academia. I used simple sentence structure and spoke from my position as being a parent. It was
my first attempt to steer away from a research paper approach and produce an argument essay.
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Although my English 101 essay quality would have been considered a high-school-student
attempt to argue the pros of physically spanking a child, it did include references to the Bible,
Dr. James Dobson, psychologist, and other authorities on using Corporal Punishment that the
audience would have been familiar with at the time. I think it tried to address the family
component of the community and share why it is appropriate to Spank! Bartholomae asserts that
students not only need to understand the community and appropriate discourse to the audience
but use the language and put themselves in the writing to share the rhythm of their prose.
Student’s writing needs to speak as to companions with academic conclusions, reader-based
prose, and as an in-sider in an established and powerful discourse. My essay included terms that
parents were familiar within the convention of family and raising children. Bartholomae would
have indicated that my essay did not accomplish in connecting with the academia and possibly
not capture the rhythm of the prose.
My essay might have been considered as conservative viewpoint, matter of fact, and
limited illustrative text presented as 1-2-3, there you have it, thus no connection with the readers’
assumptions, and biases. It did not give any more credence to the opposing views than the
slightest mention in summarizing the thoughts. This writing would have been considered as
clumsy, lack to build bridges, and teaching to spank. He would have said, “we have become
students and he the teacher, giving us a lesson.” (513) I offered advice and didn’t give
opportunity to academic conclusions. Some of this is because I have little understanding of
conventions of academic writing and how one should create such writing. I envisioned that my
audience, mainly my professor and peers, would expect to see a clear thesis with three or so
points with limited personal examples and conclusion that summarized my argument to Spank!
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So, when I think back of that essay, I do chuckle because of the basic skills I had to offer
up an essay as a writer and definitely not part of an academic convention. I have always been
very strong with analytical and financial assignments but a creative skill such as writing has been
a challenge for me as confirmed in the revisit to my Spank essay. I should have included some
statements like-on one hand spanking helps reinforce consequences of wrongful acts but on the
other hand it can cause hardened attitudes towards authority because of the pain it causes.
There were very few “moves that matter” in my Spank essay as illustrated in the book They Say/I
Say by Gerald Graff and Kathy Birkenstein. I provided a summarization of the sources’
quotations that were used to support the points but it did not include any opposing views
quotations and any summaries. Revisiting my essay and having studied “Inventing the
University” help illustrate how students struggle to make the transition from basic writing.
Bartholomae is correct to assert that there are many facets of writing academic content
the student must embrace: the commonplace, language and mind-set, customs, practices,
rhetoric analysis, and basic writing skills. When I wrote my early essays I have no
understanding of terms such as “commonplace”, “Discourse”, and “moves.” I did give
consideration to the audience and some of the terms I used were then more widely used. Does
anyone use the word “Spank” these days? There is little that I can disagree on that he says we
need as basic writing students to help us enter into the arena of academic writing. One thing he
seems to stretch is the expectation of students’ writing referring to his comments that students
need to engage the reader in a conversation as speaking to companions with academic
conclusions, reader-based prose, and as an in-sider of the established and powerful discourse.
Inventing the University is a very difficult learned skill for basic writers and I have much to learn
and experience before achieving academic writing as prescribed by Bartholomae and his peers.
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Works Cited
Bartholomae, David. “Inventing the University.” Literacy A CRITICAL SOURCEBOOK. Ed.
Ellen Cushman, Eugene R. Kintgen, Barry M. Kroll and Mike Rose. Boston: Bedford/St.
Martin’s, 2001. 511-524. Print.
Graff, Gerald. Birkenstein, Kathy. They Say / I Say: the moves that matter in academic writing.”
2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2010. 124 Print.