* I'm in the same boat as you regarding the details about budgets and the like, but one thing that has become increasingly clear as the CCCCs have diminished in recent years (for example, they no longer gather people to make panels for the conference) is NCTE as an organization is a hopelessly overwrought bloated bureaucratic mess. It needs to become a lot more nimble, not by just closing down the CCCCs but by rethinking the way it's organized. If NCTE follows through on axing the CCCCs (and as I write this, it's not entirely clear what's going to happen), then I hope there is an exigence to create something new. I'm not the one to lead that effort, but I'm a lot more willing to put time and money into that than I am NCTE.
* You make a really important point that if even the NCTE board votes to keep the CCCCs around, there is no way to unring this bell. NCTE-- particularly under the leadership of Emily Kirkpatrick-- has proven itself to be hostile to writing studies and untrustworthy as an umbrella organization. How can they possibly win people back?
* You make the analogy of other brick-n-mortar businesses/restaurants, and I totally agree. NCTE announcing they're closing down the CCCCs feels a little like a large restaurant chain announcing they are suddenly closing a third of their locations in the name of efficiency and to better serve their customers. That's usually the beginning of the end for the whole chain. So what I'm sensing here is the CCCCs is just the beginning, that the whole thing is going to be out of business. I'm predicting by 2031.
I have to imagine that they'll be shedding thousands of memberships, and I'm not sure what that will do the journals as well that were bundled into that. I don't think there's a path back from this. It won't affect my day-to-day much, but there's a lot of organizational framework that will need to be reconstructed or reconceived...
IMO, the big issue with NCTE and 4cs is that I never grasped its true purpose. I attended four times over the years and listened to some great ideas that never developed outside the presentation panels--mostly,I believe, because the actual goal of 'Improving' College writing motivating NCTE is:
1) extremely vague
2) was considered by other disciplines housed in many English departments a 'bastard'
discipline as no one truly identified the actual purpose of college writing instuction (as a side note beteen those of is who payed attention to V's confrontational style in his written analyses that clearly demonstrated a "DESPERATE CHANGE REQUIRED IN WRITING PROGRAMS,"which. of course, he demonstrrated time and again a dimension of human methods of thought, expression and communication were being trimmed to near meaningless in purpose in nearly all higher education programs.
3) One more (I could go on listing dozens of more negative forces at play among English professors that NCTE ignored or was summarily dismissed through ignorance and, yes, arrogance.
4) Higher Ed writing instruction has always been mired in 19th and early 20th century literary style. When I first became acquainted with Victor's use of 'rhetoric' as the signpost of a tremendously thoughtful and ancient tool of analysis that seemed to underwrite the versatility and power of text "PRODUCTION" was 'DAMNNNNN; (and let's not forget LuAnne Franks, Hans Kellner, and A handful of other intelligent and thoughtful scholars at UTA who nurtured and explored the seeding of a writer's mind with creative discipline)
Thanks, Ron. I didn't want to go deep into this in my post, but I don't know that the org really "grasped its true purpose" itself. I can only guess what it was like in those early years, but the conference and the journal were two of the only places where isolated specialists (pre-internet) could connect, gather, share notes, build discipline/audience, etc.
As it got bigger, and grad programs emerged, and that initial collaborative exigence was less urgent, the conference didn't evolve so much as it just grew. I know that there were attempts to evolve it, but those attempts were measured by short-term metrics (which they often fell short of meeting) rather than long-term viability or vision. I was only ever on the edges, so I don't know that my sense of things is accurate or fair, but I've seen other orgs think more carefully about the fact that an organization or event designed for dozens or even hundreds can't just be scaled up seamlessly when it starts to draw thousands. It's not any one person's or even generation's fault, but the org itself was never set up (in terms of resources or leadership) to think in those terms.
I'm sad about the conference vanishing, but if I'm being pragmatic, I'm more concerned about the erasure of things like book awards, honors, the research network forum, workshop opportunities (both for folks running them and those attending them), special interest groups, caucuses, etc. There's a whole host of small practices that build community and provide recognition for folks that will vanish as well, and they can't easily be ported somewhere else. Nor can they be built quickly from scratch. It won't affect me all that much, but I think it'll have a real impact on early and mid career folks, not to mention those who follow them...
At my first TT gig, 30 years ago now, I started at a small school (look it up if you’re curious) as basically their first comp/rhet hire. What I mean is I wasn’t someone who did their PhD in lit but they had a chapter in their diss about teaching writing and they worked as an assistant to the WPA. My diss was about rhetorical theory, my primary course work was in comp/rhet stuff. I was there 2 years and I taught a bit of everything— lit theory, film studies, rhetoric classes, world lit— and, of course, comp/rhet. I remember a meeting with a senior faculty member who helped coordinate the schedule for the department, and he said to me “look Steve, we all have to teach some intro classes. So what would you like me to pur you down for, world lit or ancient lit?” I said “Honestly, I’d just as soon teach freshman comp.” That senior prof looked at me like I had just pissed on his leg. And so that for me was the thing about the CCCCs that was always attractive was it was (still is? will be in a new form?) a group of faculty from all kinds of different colleges and mostly English departments where we actually were interested in writing and rhetoric.
100%, and I would add three thoughts:
* I'm in the same boat as you regarding the details about budgets and the like, but one thing that has become increasingly clear as the CCCCs have diminished in recent years (for example, they no longer gather people to make panels for the conference) is NCTE as an organization is a hopelessly overwrought bloated bureaucratic mess. It needs to become a lot more nimble, not by just closing down the CCCCs but by rethinking the way it's organized. If NCTE follows through on axing the CCCCs (and as I write this, it's not entirely clear what's going to happen), then I hope there is an exigence to create something new. I'm not the one to lead that effort, but I'm a lot more willing to put time and money into that than I am NCTE.
* You make a really important point that if even the NCTE board votes to keep the CCCCs around, there is no way to unring this bell. NCTE-- particularly under the leadership of Emily Kirkpatrick-- has proven itself to be hostile to writing studies and untrustworthy as an umbrella organization. How can they possibly win people back?
* You make the analogy of other brick-n-mortar businesses/restaurants, and I totally agree. NCTE announcing they're closing down the CCCCs feels a little like a large restaurant chain announcing they are suddenly closing a third of their locations in the name of efficiency and to better serve their customers. That's usually the beginning of the end for the whole chain. So what I'm sensing here is the CCCCs is just the beginning, that the whole thing is going to be out of business. I'm predicting by 2031.
I have to imagine that they'll be shedding thousands of memberships, and I'm not sure what that will do the journals as well that were bundled into that. I don't think there's a path back from this. It won't affect my day-to-day much, but there's a lot of organizational framework that will need to be reconstructed or reconceived...
IMO, the big issue with NCTE and 4cs is that I never grasped its true purpose. I attended four times over the years and listened to some great ideas that never developed outside the presentation panels--mostly,I believe, because the actual goal of 'Improving' College writing motivating NCTE is:
1) extremely vague
2) was considered by other disciplines housed in many English departments a 'bastard'
discipline as no one truly identified the actual purpose of college writing instuction (as a side note beteen those of is who payed attention to V's confrontational style in his written analyses that clearly demonstrated a "DESPERATE CHANGE REQUIRED IN WRITING PROGRAMS,"which. of course, he demonstrrated time and again a dimension of human methods of thought, expression and communication were being trimmed to near meaningless in purpose in nearly all higher education programs.
3) One more (I could go on listing dozens of more negative forces at play among English professors that NCTE ignored or was summarily dismissed through ignorance and, yes, arrogance.
4) Higher Ed writing instruction has always been mired in 19th and early 20th century literary style. When I first became acquainted with Victor's use of 'rhetoric' as the signpost of a tremendously thoughtful and ancient tool of analysis that seemed to underwrite the versatility and power of text "PRODUCTION" was 'DAMNNNNN; (and let's not forget LuAnne Franks, Hans Kellner, and A handful of other intelligent and thoughtful scholars at UTA who nurtured and explored the seeding of a writer's mind with creative discipline)
Thanks, Ron. I didn't want to go deep into this in my post, but I don't know that the org really "grasped its true purpose" itself. I can only guess what it was like in those early years, but the conference and the journal were two of the only places where isolated specialists (pre-internet) could connect, gather, share notes, build discipline/audience, etc.
As it got bigger, and grad programs emerged, and that initial collaborative exigence was less urgent, the conference didn't evolve so much as it just grew. I know that there were attempts to evolve it, but those attempts were measured by short-term metrics (which they often fell short of meeting) rather than long-term viability or vision. I was only ever on the edges, so I don't know that my sense of things is accurate or fair, but I've seen other orgs think more carefully about the fact that an organization or event designed for dozens or even hundreds can't just be scaled up seamlessly when it starts to draw thousands. It's not any one person's or even generation's fault, but the org itself was never set up (in terms of resources or leadership) to think in those terms.
I'm sad about the conference vanishing, but if I'm being pragmatic, I'm more concerned about the erasure of things like book awards, honors, the research network forum, workshop opportunities (both for folks running them and those attending them), special interest groups, caucuses, etc. There's a whole host of small practices that build community and provide recognition for folks that will vanish as well, and they can't easily be ported somewhere else. Nor can they be built quickly from scratch. It won't affect me all that much, but I think it'll have a real impact on early and mid career folks, not to mention those who follow them...
At my first TT gig, 30 years ago now, I started at a small school (look it up if you’re curious) as basically their first comp/rhet hire. What I mean is I wasn’t someone who did their PhD in lit but they had a chapter in their diss about teaching writing and they worked as an assistant to the WPA. My diss was about rhetorical theory, my primary course work was in comp/rhet stuff. I was there 2 years and I taught a bit of everything— lit theory, film studies, rhetoric classes, world lit— and, of course, comp/rhet. I remember a meeting with a senior faculty member who helped coordinate the schedule for the department, and he said to me “look Steve, we all have to teach some intro classes. So what would you like me to pur you down for, world lit or ancient lit?” I said “Honestly, I’d just as soon teach freshman comp.” That senior prof looked at me like I had just pissed on his leg. And so that for me was the thing about the CCCCs that was always attractive was it was (still is? will be in a new form?) a group of faculty from all kinds of different colleges and mostly English departments where we actually were interested in writing and rhetoric.