Are You Kidding Me Williams?

Chapter 3 is a bunch of b.s. on the part of Williams.  It starts off with his silly assertion that some people are trying to dislocate or get rid of all together composition courses.  We already talked about the first-half of this chapter so I won't go for into what we haven't discussed about this chapter.
Williams believes that writing should be meaningful.  He gives several ABSTRACT examples, the emphasis being abstract.  I'll never forget what my dad always told me about his lacklustre education: "I just wished my teachers would explain WHY it's [the subject] was important."  Although Williams quotes another person saying the teacher must present and BELIEVE that their subject is interesting, they don't say WHY it's practical because, in all reality, it's probably not.  Sometimes Oscar Wilde might've been right when he says: "all art is quite useless" for everything outside of the actual subject itself is an art.  A culinary ART, language ART, engineering COMPOSITION [art], biological research [art.]
Often times I have students at WLAC (West L.A. College) who come in dissatisfied with their primary subject works.  Whether it be Virginia Woolf, Fast Food Nation (ugh...), Lolita or Kozol.  These books first off are not what everyone reads nor do they really have application in regards to real-life.  Williams blames the teachers who assign letters for students to write as being impractical of real-life.  Yet I find it to be the opposite with the students who come into the office asking for helping in writing a letter.  They often have the most sophisticated language, good evidence, and proper structure.  Most students otherwise find writing about literature a pain in the ass.
I don't blame them either.  Reading Virginia Woolf takes forever, writing 4 papers on a book you don't even care about (especially if you eat fast food anyways) you just wanna blow your brains out!
There's a lot of other stuff about ESL students and minority students being taught at a lower-standard.  It sounds a lot like Williams is prejudiced in his writing though I'm sure he'd love to deny it.  I found myself saying why not encourage students to write in their original language and either do a translation THEN transcription or do it the Azandula way and write in Spanglish or Francolish or Indianlish or Ethopianlish or Mardarinlish.  For who's to say they can't use some terms and write in the margins what it means or nearly means?
While Williams brings up good points about the pen-pal system so on and so forth, I think the effective teacher is one who can change a perspective like my father's.  If a teacher can explain a practical reality to their text or even give a text worth reading like The Monk (a best-seller for a reason) or a short and cool novella like the Castle of Otranto where students can easily remember and read info instead of being taught these long-winded books with nothing of substance in them then I think they have every right to hate composition.
One last thing.  Williams talks about essentially having office hours for students.  You can't force a student to come to your office.  In fact, they never do!  It's sad but true.  They will go to the tutor before you at least that's the case with me.  It's hard to imagine a student going to a teacher first.  I suppose Williams has not taught or if he has then he has some amazingly uncommon students throughout the years.  All of his theories to me are not worth a dime and neither is the book.
I think the best teaching method to be an effective teacher is to be honest, teach subject matter that students can easily access and readily learn from, stop making a facade about the importance of literature and just say: "Hey, relax.  It's a good book.  It's 90 pgs and in the first pages there's a murder."  What's there not to love about that?
Good luck trying Williams' theories.  I think that trying too hard to convince students of the practicalness of writing will turn them off.  Students of all colors, ages, and sexes are smarter they than appear.  And yes, that goes to Williams and all others.