After reading the Williams's article I finally understood how I want to teach composition when I become a practicing teacher. He says "if our goal as writing instructors is to teach critical thinking, then we need to be careful about privileding a singualr method of representing knowledge," and suggests "that building a pedogogy on a combination of verbal and visual rhetorics empowers students to make connections among disparate, yet related texts and encourages them to weave together multiple forms."
Looking back on my schooling, teachers tried to encorporate different types of media into the classroom, but never connected the texts to literacy. The idea that many more connections can be made by encorporating and becoming literate in different types of "rhetorics" would really change the dynamic of the classroom, but for the better. As college students, teachers, and professors, we've dedicated our lives to the pursuit of knowledge. If we choose to follow William's model, students would be given the opportunity to critically engage with different new medias as well as the "old forms." This will help them become knowledgable of past and present which will give them the power to combine the two and astound the world with something new.
If I had the opportunity to engage with other types of media in high school, I would. I understand that time and lack of resources become the biggest obstacles preventing the interweaving of medias in classrooms, but that is nothing new. There are ways to work with what you have or don't have. Restricting students to just one type of rhetorical structure is "perilous" because it is close-minded and short-sighted; two qualities no one wants to see or experience in another person. Qualities that can easily be replaced if we recognize the importance and possiblity of William's suggestion.
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