Surprising mileage

An essay I wrote for a graduate class and published in 1968 (submitted at the professor's suggestion) continues to be discussed and debated, as recently as two months ago in a Composition theory site:

While reading Charles Deemer and William Lutz's articles on bringing the Happening Movement into the classroom, I was struck by some of the deviations and parallels their pedagogy had with critical pedagogy as presented by Cathy Glenn in "Critical Rhetoric and Pedagogy." Both pedagogies utilize "shock tactics" in the classroom. Deemer insists that "shock and surprise are essential features of the happening, and they should also be frequent moods in the classroom" (124). He believes "clear writing" and "clear thought" go hand and hand with "clear experience." Deemer also states that the elements of shock and surprise allow a "teacher" (Deemer uses quotations around the word) to have "less of a problem...[getting] at the students' pat ideas and opinions and [inspiring] an experience, a happening, that will get the student to participate in the realization of his own awareness of his inadequacy" (124). Lutz also ruminates on the power of shock in the form of juxtaposition. He writes of creating an experience for students in which "hard core pornography [is juxtaposed] next to pictures and poems about real intense love" (35).

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You never know what your writing will do down the road. The main thing is to get it out there, make it available and get it archived somewhere.