Reviews for Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900 - 1985

The average rating for Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900 - 1985 based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-07-18 00:00:00 Numer Patacsil The early chapters make me want to give this two stars, as Berlin is brutally unfair to 19th century figures, though the middle chapters redeem him a little bit. Still, this is a very slanted view of college writing instruction, and the taxonomy is only of limited use. Part of the problem is that Berlin's history of writing instruction really focuses more on theories of writing instruction and not the actual instruction itself. Lots of gaps in the chain of inference (early on) and a very centering narrative toward the end (everything should be or wants to be epistemic). He doesn't account for some of the reclassifying from the last book, which seems odd. Still, his history gets better (i.e. more firmly dressed with disciplinary data and some historical/cultural data) as he moves closer to the seventies. Oh, and apparently, technical writing doesn't exist. You wouldn't know about it from reading this, anyhow.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-02-13 00:00:00 Debbie Tkachyk I read this for a rhetoric/composition class. I have no passionate opinions about this book. I am entirely neutral.