Brother John A. Perron, C.S.C.
Associate Professor of English

St. Edward's University
Austin, TX 78704-6489
Tel. (512) 448-8560
Fax (512) 448-8492
e-mail: Br. John A. Perron

An Autobiographical Sketch

Presumably you are at this Web site because you are interested in the writing major St. Edward's University offers, and you are seeking information about those who teach in this program.

What follows, then, is a brief sketch of my background, with some of my thoughts about teaching and a few words about the writing major included.

Born in Kirkland, Washington, across Lake Washington from Seattle, I was reared on a dairy farm, located in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, near Redmond, now "famous" as the home of Microsoft. My family tended about 80 head of mixed-breed cattle, milking them twice a day, making silage and hay for them in the summers, and feeding and cleaning up after them in the winters. Is it any wonder that I strove to do well in (the public) schools I attended? I saw education as my ticket to escape from the farm. But with many interests beckoning me--e.g., law, the military, astronomy, religion, teaching, only gradually did my direction become clear.

Shortly after graduating from high school, I entered the Congregation of Holy Cross--to do something I thought worthwhile and to see more of the country than what lay in a 50-mile radius of our farm, however beautiful the environs around Seattle were, bounded on the east by the Cascades, on the west by the Olympics, to the north by Mt. Baker, and to the south by Mt. Rainier, with forested foothills, green valleys, lakes, a few towns (then), and Puget Sound situated between the mountain ranges. Indeed, I was off to Wisconsin and Indiana for training to be a Brother. After attending the University of Notre Dame, I began a series of high school teaching and administrative assignments at schools operated by the Brothers of Holy Cross in San Antonio, TX; Biloxi, MS; and Hayward, CA.

Since 1970, I have been a member of the St. Edward's University English faculty. Until recently, I held a joint teaching and administrative position. As an administrator, I served for 12 years as Director of Freshman Studies and an overlapping 12 years as Area Coordinator for The English Writing Major. Currently, I teach Rhetoric and Composition I, Honors Rhetoric and Composition II, and, for writing majors, Theories of Rhetoric and Composition.

The following "first principles" animate my teaching:

• Socrates' maxim, "The unexamined life is not worth living."
• Victor Hugo's cautionary reflection, "We do not comprehend everything, but we insult nothing."
• Love for my subject or academic discipline. From that naturally springs desire to share the discipline with other people.
• A belief that we learn by doing. I cannot abide students "just sitting there."

To understand anything, we humans must interact and work with it and, eventually, personalize and internalize it, making it in some sense our own. By its nature, involving as it does the whole person, writing is active learning! And this should be the case, as well, with the other language arts: reading, listening, and speaking.

In the classes I teach I want students to understand the implications of these ideas taken from several well-known scholars in composition studies:

• "We live in a world writing built." (Marjorie Kirrie)
• Learning to write is learning to think in new ways not found in a purely oral world. (Walter J. Ong)
• Being able to read and write (literacy) makes us members of an elite; it gives us power. Yet our literacy raises questions about power: who has it? who is excluded? for what purposes is power wielded--to benefit oneself, the interest groups to which one belongs, the common good? Along with literacy, then, come responsibility and issues of social justice. (James A. Berlin)

I hope some of the principles and ideas above--or some of the classes and features of our writing major--capture your interest. If you have not examined the Web Page describing our English Writing and Rhetoric major, I refer you there for information about our program. Here let me state our objective briefly: the classes in the writing major along with the University's general education classes are designed to prepare you to make contributions to, as well as meet the challenges of, the 21st century. If you are looking for a program to develop your aptitudes and versatility as a writer, I invite you to join our educational enterprise at St. Edward's University.

(In addition to a B.A. from Notre Dame, I have an M.A. from the University of Portland, and I completed all doctoral work, except for the dissertation, at Carnegie Mellon University. My writing has appeared in The High School Journal, The Catholic Educator, The Forum for Liberal Education, Composition Chronicle, several national directories that describe innovative college writing programs, and the Modern Language Association book New Methods in College Writing Programs. I have been selected to the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society, for the St. Edward's University Teaching Excellence Award, and to Who's Who in American Education.)

If money had been my objective, though, I should have stayed on our farm. Recently it sold for $500,000! (Be that as it may: the property had passed from my family's hands long ago.) But I have no regrets on this account. I have seen much of the country: I have been to Canada, Mexico, Ireland, England, Rome, Sicily, Paris and Le Mans, France; and I have taught many wonderful students over the years.  These experiences have been eminently worthwhile.