Inventing the University

I found it interesting that Bartholomae seemed to be more impressed with the clay model example with all of its grammatical errors, than with the other examples that were grammatically correct but lacked the voice, or the membership of the discourse community that he was looking for. I thought this was interesting because all of my life I've been taught that the most important thing a teacher is looking for is correct grammer and spelling. I think that he brings up an interesting point, that instead of playing it safe and writting simple as we always do, students should be brave and use their writting to speak to the reader on their level using the same voice and language that an expert in the field would use, even if they make mistakes grammatically, it shows an ability to join the "conversation".
I think that this article is especially interesting following Orwell's essay on the fall of our language due to fancifull writting, but maybe that is an arugumentative comparison to be made another day.
In my field of study we rarely do much writting. In the math major we are more concerned with numbers than words. However, I do believe that mathmaticians have a discourse community, it just doesn't show up in the form of written essays. Right now I am in a class called Analysis 2 my professor tells us that this is the calss that will teach us to think like mathmaticians, and believe me, mathmaticians don't think like the rest of the population! I think that this class relates well to Inventing the University, because in that essay Bartholomae encourages, even beginners, to think, speak and write, on the same level as the expert, concluding that if the attitude is correct mistakes can be fixed as learning increases. That is exactly what I have to do in this particular math class. Think, solve and act as if I am already an expert mathmatician, and be patient throughout the semester as I learn to do better.

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