Jon Udell's post on the new freshman comp has been making the academic rounds: Colin, Derek, and Will have all commented on it. I can only imagine the tremendous resistance to this idea in the field of composition, which, like all disciplines is quite conservative when it comes to preserving its regular practices. However, I do see other possibilities.
There were two particular points of interest to me in Udell's post:
- The connection between writers and programmers: "We haven't always seen the role of the writer and the role of the developer as deeply connected but, as the context for understanding software shifts from computers and networks to people and groups, I think we'll find that they are."
- And the step into the new medium of video for the web (or screencasting as he terms it):
We're just scratching the surface of this medium. Its educational power is immediately obvious, and over time its persuasive power will come into focus too. The New York Times recently asked: "Is cinema studies the new MBA?" I'll go further and suggest that these methods ought to be part of the new freshman comp. Writing and editing will remain the foundation skills they always were, but we'll increasingly combine them with speech and video. The tools and techniques are new to many of us. But the underlying principles--consistency of tone, clarity of structure, economy of expression, iterative refinement--will be familiar to programmers and writers alike.
And a third point comes up in the comments in reference to Daniel Pink's contention that the MFA is the new MBA. Also as noted in that comment, Richard Gabriel's contention that software engineering programs should model themselves after MFA programs: what does he mean by that?