Ethical factors influencing curriculum design and instruction in technical communication

Now that technical communication has become a fully accredited and accepted part of the undergraduate curriculum, reflecting important shifts towards more practical applications of language skills during the last decade or so, we face newer and more complex challenges. Opposing one claim of educational reformers — that our students are inadequately prepared for an increasingly technological world — is another: that our students are being exposed to a training which is excessively conditioned by marketplace demands, is too narrowly technical, and is more preoccupied with providing credentials than in providing a richer intellectual fare for life as well as work. In the flush of our own curricular successes, technical educators cannot stand aloof from these criticisms and concerns. We have to acknowledge our own responsibilities to the larger societal objectives of education, even if it means modifying our professional ambitions for extending the specialized training in engineering or the sciences. In practical terms, this might imply a greater commitment than heretofore to the cause of what Ernest Boyer calls “the integrated core,” a program of general education that “introduces students not only to essential knowledge, but also to connections across the disciplines.” It might well imply further limitations on expansion of the major as a percentage of total credit hours required, and greater restraint in course development, as well as more focused attention to meeting academic goals and objectives prior to vocational and career ones.