By Devon
Inventing the University by David Bartholomae is basically about the way students fit in at universities. Right away Bartholomae begins by explaining the difficulty students have to learn the discourses of the field they are majoring in. He refers to students either trying to learn the discourse of a certain group in college or how many students pretend to understand and try to act and speak a certain way to get by.
Bartholomae also talks about creativity in his essay. He had students write about creativity, and then he showed who did not fit in to an English discourse and who did by judging them on their vocabulary. By doing this he shows that many students are pretending to be someone who they might not be. That many individuals try to fit into the mold that has been created centuries ago. Many students are successful at fitting in with the discourse they have chosen, but it takes time for a person to truly be part of this lifestyle.
Originality and uniqueness seemed to be one of the last topics. According to Bartholomae, to be original and unique is a difficult task to accomplish. That many students take what they have learned, regurgitate it, and call it original. He also wrote about how students learn how to address their audience by using creativity; that here are rules and a level of authority that needs to be taken into account.
Personally I think Bartholomae needs to be knocked out of his ego trip. In his point of view it seems that there is a caste system or a chain of command for writers. I do agree with him that many students try to be someone they are not just to fit in. I thought that it was interesting that Bartholomae believes that only good writers use a broad and extensive vocabulary. Would that make Shel Silverstein, the author of The Giving Tree, a bad writer? Overall there were many themes in the article, but I feel Bartholomae to be very pompous, and to talk with him about an educated writer would be like talking to a post. Why should anyone have to pretend to be someone they are not? If everyone did that we would live in a boring world of robots.
On the question of originality and uniqueness, I think that B is saying that the standard ways we think about this do not serve students: academic work necessarily relates to and builds from the work of others. And, in learning the discourse, that students do have to mimic or apprentice, using the work and words of others. Having said this, however, "fitting in" isn't only a matter of vocabulary; it's a matter of understanding the values and kinds of work that are embedded in those language choices. The language is not "just vocabulary," the language carries a culture.
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