Cooper and Julier

Cooper, David D., and Laura Julier. "Democratic Conversations: Civic Literacy and Service-Learning in the American Grains." Writing the Community: Concepts and Models for Service Learning in Composition. Ed. Linda Adler-Kassner et al. Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education, 1997. 79-94.

Cooper and Julier report on experiences with American Thought and Language first-year seminars at Michigan State. They designate special sections as asl sections, themed around 'public life in America' guided by three principles: 1) rhetorical lessons of real-world facilitate good writing pedagogy, 2) project-based writing at sites fosters "higher-order academic discourse skills," and 3) juxtaposing academic lessons and projects advanced civic education (82).

They write, "This particular line of philosophical inquiry and practical pedagogy views the writing classroom, in short, as a moral and civic venue, a place where moral sensibility, critical literacy, and the arts of public discourse, leavened by reflective and connected learning, develop hand-in-hand" (83). They worry that information overload has damaged public life to the point that it's become "anemic" (85). ASL goes beyond critique and gets students thinking about complicated, messy "solutions" to problems (92).