The rhetoric of remediation

"American universities have long professed dismay at the writing proficiency levels of entrants, and the volume of this complaint has been directly correlated to social, political, and economic currents. Many universities, in their rhetoric, have defined high need for remediation as a crisis point in order to garner state funding or to manage admissions." "In The Rhetoric of Remediation, Jane Stanley examines the statements and actions made regarding remediation at the University of California, Berkeley. Since its inception in 1868, university rhetoric has served to negotiate the tensions between an ethic of access and the assertion of elite status. Great care has been taken to promote the politics of public accessibility, yet in its competition for standing among other institutions, UC Berkeley has been publicly critical of the "underpreparedness" of many entrants. Early on, UC Berkeley developed programs to teach composition to the vast number of students who lacked basic writing skills." "The Depression era brought battles over funding and the creation of a rival system of regional state colleges, which competed for many of the same students. After World War II, the GI Bill caused a glut in enrollments, while the Red Scare caused attacks on faculty, administrators, and students. In the 1960s, the civil rights movement brought many changes to campus politics. During the 1970s, sexist admission policies and a de facto male-quota system were exposed, and accusations of racism in the instruction of Asian Americans surfaced. In the following decade, the school was challenged by an increasing number of students for whom English was a second language." "Setting her discussion within the framework of American higher education, Stanley finds that the rhetorical phenomenon of "embrace-and-disgrace" is not unique to UC Berkeley. Her study encourages compositionists to evaluate their own institutional practices and rhetoric of remediation for the benefit of both students and educators."--BOOK JACKET.