Overall Response: Week 2

I would like to focus my response on Berlin. I have to give it to him, he performed a thorough and exhaustive interrogation of the discipline of English. I, for some reason, though, thought I should have known some of this stuff. I feel like I have been blindly studying English and not really understanding why I was taught what I was taught. As far as progress and comparison, I'm not sure how well current programs of English fare against those of the early 20^th century, but I'd like to think we've ( anyone who has taken English courses) have made great strides. One thing I noticed about progress in the study of English, though, was how Berlin explained that high school composition holds a lot of gravity as to what a college composition course needs. When I was in high school ,you could take English Composition I if you were able to meet certain requirements; many students opted to take the composition course, too. However, the United States is still falling behind at the high school level. I don't know why that is, though. I'm not sure if it is that we are living in a society that is less dependent on the ability to write, schools lack the resources to adequately teach children or if we are just living in a society that has lost sight of the importance basic composition holds. I think that this deficit of composition skills is also reflected by lack of concern. It is no secret that colleges are facing a similar plight as the American high school when it come to these issues of learning composition. The humanities are facing a crisis at the current moment and I'm not sure if there is anything that will occur to put emphasis back on English; I would like to think something should occur since, from what I've read, rhetoric and composition are the tools one needs to discern the truth from all of the stimuli and information she perceives. Maybe people prefer not to think as much because  finding out truths can be frightening. It seems that there should be an equal amount of time spent on art as is science. I would like to know what the golden mean between science and the arts is, too. I think that an overabundance of anything isn't good and that one need to attain copious amounts of science with their art, but art has been on the downside of academia’s priority and I'm sure this is reflected by the freshman writer and high school writer. I think this humanities crisis has caused students and society at large to develop a composition deficiency. People are having a difficult time developing the ability to fully articulate themselves. It's hard enough articulating the metaphysical by virtue of words as a student of English so I'm sure others may find it harder. As Berlin explains, English had it's heyday decades ago and has went through a lot to get to where its at now; actually, 1985. I'm sure English isn't going anywhere, but it is evolving. It is almost at a point to where actual English (Composition) skills aren't needed. I guess orality studies shows that some cultures can sustain themselves without a written language, but most would agree that this is counter intuitive. It's an interesting dichotomy that is occurring now: As the rate of technology increases, the actual need to learn composition decreases. I'm not sure if this is a regression or there is some development in communication that I am missing that makes the formal composition obsolete; I don't know.