"The messages that come out on the typewriter are very crude or foolish--misleading--but I know that if I spend enough time at the typewriter the most intelligent part of me will finally make itself known and I will be able to decode what it is trying to talk about... Very feeble signals, but intelligent ones, are coming from somewhere, and I can refine those if I am willing to spend boring day after boring day meditating on them and opening myself to them. It's slow work and it's not much fun, and it looks stupid to me; a stupid way to spend days."
-Kurt Vonnegut interview with Franck Mclaughlin 1973. Pg. 73 Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
Working Article: Consensus
Hi Everyone, I'm posting what I think is the start of an article about consensus process in the composition classroom. I'm undertaking a major revision of a thesis chapter in the hopes that I can get it published as an article somewhere. Any and all feedback would be helpful. Here, I'm wondering if my distinction between the two forms of consensus is clear enough and if I've hit the right tone.
While the Washington Consensus operated through top-down, manipulative ideological consensus, the opposing movement operated on what David Graeber (formerly Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Yale) cites as the “apparent miracle of consensus decision making in which one can see thousands of people coordinate their actions without any formal leadership structure” (4). The Washington Consensus was an over-reaching ideology; the consensus-driven oppositional movement was a specific, local action. While the Washington Consensus attempted to repress dissent, the consensus process of the opposition found a way to agree on an action while maintaining ideological differences.
Considering this apparent conflict over the definition of consensus, it is no wonder Raymond Williams calls the term “now a very difficult word to use” (77). Ranging in definition from a “positive sense of seeking general agreement” to a “’manipulative’ kind of politics seeking to build a ‘silent majority’ as the power-base from which dissenting movements or ideas can be excluded,” consensus has two strikingly different signifieds (77-78). So contentious is our conflict in definition that a powerful ideological global consensus can line up against a consensus-driven grassroots movement on any city block worldwide.
Discussions of consensus in composition studies have, likewise, balanced conflicting connotations, processes, and outcomes, mainly in debates about collaborative learning ushered in by social construction theory. Responding to these debates from the mid to late eighties, John Trimbur states that “the notion of consensus is one of the most controversial and misunderstood aspects of collaborative learning” (602). The two competing connotations of consensus and the goal of these debates are made clear by Trimbur: “To develop a critical version of collaborative learning, we will need to distinguish between consensus as an acculturative practice that reproduces business as usual and consensus as an oppositional one that challenges the prevailing conditions of production” (612). Which line of definition has consensus fell on in composition studies? And what can the global justice movement and its history and practice of consensus decision making teach us about student agency and consensus process in the composition classroom?
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Composition and Cornel West
I just finished the text and am floating on a Brother West high.
The interview at the end is outstanding, and I know I'll be on a West kick from it for the rest of the summer. I'm looking at his memoir, Democracy and Race Matters, Prophesy Deliverance!, and Evasion of American Philosophy as texts that I will at least check out, if not read in full. Democracy Matters and Evasion seem like they have the most to say to my work and I want to know more about how West does what he does everyday, and I think that means reading his memoir.
As far as the text goes, I like the fuel that interview gives to the work done in a composition classroom. Coming into the text, that's what I wanted. I want some texts and motivation and philosophy when I step in the class on Monday mornings. The first three chapters and the interview did that for me. Chapters four and five I wanted to be closer to West's ideas and closer to the composition classroom, although they were interesting in their own right.
Did any body find it interesting how West danced around the notion of rhetoric in the interview? It seemed like Gilyard wanted him to speak directly about the traditions of rhetoric and how they affect him, but West has a much broader view, speaking about voice and embodiment, talking about where words are lacking, and talking about the "cerebral song" of academia with its lack of soul (105). West was a fish that couldn't be caught in Gilyrad's net of rhetoric, and they moved on to talk about the classroom where there was much more agreement and excitement.
Teaching here at LMU, high on a bluff over LA and with Hollywood in sight, I was hit hard by what West says with school as this "manicured, deodorized place" that doesn't engage with the world or connect with the tragic (at least in most instances) (109).
West says that deep education has "everything to do with awakening" and that happens through acknowledging the tragic, absurd, and mysterious, and feeling them: "They [students] are part of a whole larger system, too. But that's going to be painful. And the only way that pain is real is when people feel as if those claims are tied to them" (111).
This reminded me of a student coming to class and saying that he and a group of friends at dinner had realized that there was life outside of LMU. They had forgotten in their first semester in college that life existed elsewhere. There was so much to do and think here that they hadn't read the news, or thought of life beyond the bluff. Here, at LMU, the admin privledges social justice and the education of the whole human, but that obviously isn't ingrained or my student wouldn't have come to class this way with all the students agreeing with him.
This made me think of the one moment this year when I really saw LMU engaging with the tragic, and that was in the 20th anniversary of the Jesuit martyrs (november 16, 1989). They dyed the fountain red to represent their blood and they made crosses for each of the martyrs and put those on campus. This felt like a real connection to the tragedy in history and it tied into the United States military empire attacking the Jesuit tradition, and so I think that many students felt it in a real way and they became critical about the history, awakened to the structural violence in our society, and through protests, prayer, and vigils here and at the SOA protest, they acted on new possibilities for the future.
Now, the question always for me is: how do I tie this into the classroom? How do I get students into this critique and into possibilities beyond market ideals?, and how do I do that while justifying my practice to all the stakeholders involved? And, when and if I do this, is it enough? How do I know that that practice in the classroom has importance and relevance once those students hit the streets and life outside the university, down away from the bluff?
The interview at the end is outstanding, and I know I'll be on a West kick from it for the rest of the summer. I'm looking at his memoir, Democracy and Race Matters, Prophesy Deliverance!, and Evasion of American Philosophy as texts that I will at least check out, if not read in full. Democracy Matters and Evasion seem like they have the most to say to my work and I want to know more about how West does what he does everyday, and I think that means reading his memoir.
As far as the text goes, I like the fuel that interview gives to the work done in a composition classroom. Coming into the text, that's what I wanted. I want some texts and motivation and philosophy when I step in the class on Monday mornings. The first three chapters and the interview did that for me. Chapters four and five I wanted to be closer to West's ideas and closer to the composition classroom, although they were interesting in their own right.
Did any body find it interesting how West danced around the notion of rhetoric in the interview? It seemed like Gilyard wanted him to speak directly about the traditions of rhetoric and how they affect him, but West has a much broader view, speaking about voice and embodiment, talking about where words are lacking, and talking about the "cerebral song" of academia with its lack of soul (105). West was a fish that couldn't be caught in Gilyrad's net of rhetoric, and they moved on to talk about the classroom where there was much more agreement and excitement.
Teaching here at LMU, high on a bluff over LA and with Hollywood in sight, I was hit hard by what West says with school as this "manicured, deodorized place" that doesn't engage with the world or connect with the tragic (at least in most instances) (109).
West says that deep education has "everything to do with awakening" and that happens through acknowledging the tragic, absurd, and mysterious, and feeling them: "They [students] are part of a whole larger system, too. But that's going to be painful. And the only way that pain is real is when people feel as if those claims are tied to them" (111).
This reminded me of a student coming to class and saying that he and a group of friends at dinner had realized that there was life outside of LMU. They had forgotten in their first semester in college that life existed elsewhere. There was so much to do and think here that they hadn't read the news, or thought of life beyond the bluff. Here, at LMU, the admin privledges social justice and the education of the whole human, but that obviously isn't ingrained or my student wouldn't have come to class this way with all the students agreeing with him.
This made me think of the one moment this year when I really saw LMU engaging with the tragic, and that was in the 20th anniversary of the Jesuit martyrs (november 16, 1989). They dyed the fountain red to represent their blood and they made crosses for each of the martyrs and put those on campus. This felt like a real connection to the tragedy in history and it tied into the United States military empire attacking the Jesuit tradition, and so I think that many students felt it in a real way and they became critical about the history, awakened to the structural violence in our society, and through protests, prayer, and vigils here and at the SOA protest, they acted on new possibilities for the future.
Now, the question always for me is: how do I tie this into the classroom? How do I get students into this critique and into possibilities beyond market ideals?, and how do I do that while justifying my practice to all the stakeholders involved? And, when and if I do this, is it enough? How do I know that that practice in the classroom has importance and relevance once those students hit the streets and life outside the university, down away from the bluff?
Friday, May 7, 2010
Position Statements- SRTOL
I like your idea of posting that resolution on community literacy up, AJ. We can reference that as we move through texts and use it in our teaching practice to guide what we do. In the same spirit, I thought I'd throw up the 1972 resolution of Students Rights to Their Own Language (which was amended in '74 to read like the following):
We affirm the students' right to their own patterns and varieties of language -- the dialects of their nurture or whatever dialects in which they find their own identity and style. Language scholars long ago denied that the myth of a standard American dialect has any validity. The claim that any one dialect is unacceptable amounts to an attempt of one social group to exert its dominance over another. Such a claim leads to false advice for speakers and writers, and immoral advice for humans. A nation proud of its diverse heritage and its cultural and racial variety will preserve its heritage of dialects. We affirm strongly that teachers must have the experiences and training that will enable them to respect diversity and uphold the right of students to their own language.
Since this was controversial, they published the linguistic and cultural justifications and have that up for reading as well, with an updated bibliography.
I've been reading Parks's book about the SRTOL. While he argues that the truly radical language and history of the resolution were cut out, this statement still looks progressive today, and I don't think we do nearly enough to make this part of our classroom practice (as Parks mentions too).
We affirm the students' right to their own patterns and varieties of language -- the dialects of their nurture or whatever dialects in which they find their own identity and style. Language scholars long ago denied that the myth of a standard American dialect has any validity. The claim that any one dialect is unacceptable amounts to an attempt of one social group to exert its dominance over another. Such a claim leads to false advice for speakers and writers, and immoral advice for humans. A nation proud of its diverse heritage and its cultural and racial variety will preserve its heritage of dialects. We affirm strongly that teachers must have the experiences and training that will enable them to respect diversity and uphold the right of students to their own language.
Since this was controversial, they published the linguistic and cultural justifications and have that up for reading as well, with an updated bibliography.
I've been reading Parks's book about the SRTOL. While he argues that the truly radical language and history of the resolution were cut out, this statement still looks progressive today, and I don't think we do nearly enough to make this part of our classroom practice (as Parks mentions too).
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
CCC position statement
I was just navigating the CCC web site a little bit and came across the section containing the position statements. There is something undeniably encouraging, and inspiring, about being part of an academic field that sees the importance of explicitly laying out a position on the value and importance of community service work as scholarship. I cannot envision this existing in another discipline within the humanities. Here are the four reasons why "community-based literacy work should be valued and rewarded as institutional service by universities, colleges:"
- Enriching the literacy environment of a region contributes to the welfare of all, including higher-ed institutions well positioned to take a leadership role on these matters.
- Postsecondary students, instructors, and institutions can benefit from the curricular innovations developed by working with learners of all types. Innovations with one population can contribute to improvements with other types of learners.
- Productive partnerships with non-academic organizations promote the reputation and stature of post-secondary institutions with local communities, business partners, and others interested in student learning.
- College/community partnerships provide opportunities for students at various levels to meet, interact, and learn.
Friday, April 30, 2010
From Parks and Pollard
"We believe that our classrooms and programs should form writing projects with local and international worker-writer collectives, collectives that are attempting to gain both the literacy and the occupational skills that support larger struggles for representation and rights" (478).
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Reading List
This is a draft for picking through and adding to. I went back to my first email with Tim and picked up all the names he mentioned. This list is healthy, but it could still be filled out in places.
- Keith Gilyard's Composition and Cornell West: Notes Towards a Deep Democracy
- Derek Owen's Composition and Sustainability: Teaching for a Threatened Generation.
- Nancy Welch's Living Room: Teaching Public Writing in a Privatized World
- Gramsci's Prison Notebooks
- Freire's Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to those who dare teach
- Selections from Rhetorics of the Americas edited by Baca and Villanueva
- Sandy Grande's Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought
- David Graeber's Direct Action: An Ethnography
- Plato's The Apology
- Cornell West's American Evasion of Philosophy (and more?)
- Myles Horton and Paulo Freire- We Make the Road by Walking
- Linda Flower's Learning to Rival
- Rosenblatt's The Reader, The Text, The Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work
- Anthony Scott's Dangerous Writing
- Paula Mathieu's Tactics of Hope
- Jame C. Scott's Weapons of the Weak
- Gabriella Modan's Turf Wars
- Jason Del Gandio's Rhetoric for Radicals
- Some Dewey-Exp. and Nature, Art and Experience, Public and Its Problems, Human Nature and Conduct, Individualism Old and New. (?)
- Steve Park's Class Politics: The Movement for the Student's Right to Their Own Language
- Emma Goldman's Living My Life
- Race and Language Rights: Smitherman, Richardson, Gilyard, Pough, etc.
- Myles Horton's The Long Haul (changed my life)
- Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals
- Laclau and Mouffe- Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (?)
- Bruno Latour-(?)
- Jeff Rice- The Rhetoric of Cool: Composition Studies and New Media (?)
- Paul Feyerabend's Against Method
- Ira Shor's Critical Teaching and Everyday Life and When Students Have the Power
- Iris Marion Young-
- Some Marx-
- More Rhetorical Theory-
Defining 'radical' and 'critical pedagogy'
Ben,
I thought I might twin those two themes because of their proximity. Firstly - I think I am with you on the self-defining 'radical'. What does it suggest? In what sense is the word being used and understood? I can't help but think of it in terms of the 60's, and Shor (not to overuse the interview but they touch, candidly, on such a wide spectrum of the rhet/comp field) was one. So I think in looking at how he has evolved, how this active radical now defines himself, is interesting. Like to me the questions are of constraints and conditions. What is possible? And how do we know that?
Shor: The last thing I'll say is that sometimes we think of transforming pedagogy in an historical vacuum and don't consider that the political climate has been hostile and conservative for twenty years now. What's possible in such a political climate is less than what's possible in a more insurgent or progressive era. I'd like us to blame ourselves less for some of the restrictions or limits that we discover in experimenting and transforming, and understand that we're pushing against some powerful limits set by the climate. What we can do, we accomplish inside a specific setting in a real history.
I really really dig your friend's thoughtful response: I'm a political liberal but an educational conservative. Ben I think your thought that it is a state of mind, a "deep state of solidarity with the students and their struggle to find meaning/voice/access/understanding/purpose. i think it is also an acknowledgment that the teacher is not ordained to be the only expert in the classroom."Spot on! I'm open to describing myself as a radical as long as I'm committed to that term's meaning as open and requiring constant interrogation.
So to me the next interesting question is, can this "deep state of solidarity" be achieved in a mode that doesn't exactly resemble critical pedagogy. Like if I were to discuss what my class looks like, in this composition/lit course, it looks like the following: the students are in groups and i'm standing or sitting not in a circle (the power actually feels too centered for me in that mode, and all that empty space in the middle) but close almost'within' their groups. Not necessarily at the front of the room, but trying to be among them. What I try to create is a discussion of literature that is situated, deeply, within their own experiences, and one of the risks I take is that I try to bring my own odd and out there life experiences and their connection to the text, in such a way that it lets them feel free to do so. I'll say something ridiculous in the hope that they might start to make really interesting, and unconventional connections to the text. Make them feel that their thoughts aren't odd but compelling and rich and worth weaving into the text. This, however, might be a romantic idea.
And the way I'll respond to a student's reading attempts to be really open and inquisitive, like "tell me more", and respond within a vocabulary that draws, loosely from pragmatism, but is also, hopefully, explicitly empathetic. So - like "I find that really persuasive", "That is a very cool connection you've made", and if I don't think it's persuasive I'll try and say "Hmmnn I'm not sure I'm completely convinced but I'm open to the idea, definitely". Is this 'frontloading' student discourse? I'm not sure.
And then it brings up this question (and all of its perils): How did I learn best? And if I can figure out how I've learned best, can/should/what are the risks of applying that to my students? I learned by seeing profs engage the texts in ways that I thought were alive, and cool, and interesting, and I tried to model them. So if that means in my class the "student discourse" wasn't frontloaded, it worked for me, regardless, and allowed me to find my voice.
I thought I might twin those two themes because of their proximity. Firstly - I think I am with you on the self-defining 'radical'. What does it suggest? In what sense is the word being used and understood? I can't help but think of it in terms of the 60's, and Shor (not to overuse the interview but they touch, candidly, on such a wide spectrum of the rhet/comp field) was one. So I think in looking at how he has evolved, how this active radical now defines himself, is interesting. Like to me the questions are of constraints and conditions. What is possible? And how do we know that?
Shor: The last thing I'll say is that sometimes we think of transforming pedagogy in an historical vacuum and don't consider that the political climate has been hostile and conservative for twenty years now. What's possible in such a political climate is less than what's possible in a more insurgent or progressive era. I'd like us to blame ourselves less for some of the restrictions or limits that we discover in experimenting and transforming, and understand that we're pushing against some powerful limits set by the climate. What we can do, we accomplish inside a specific setting in a real history.
I really really dig your friend's thoughtful response: I'm a political liberal but an educational conservative. Ben I think your thought that it is a state of mind, a "deep state of solidarity with the students and their struggle to find meaning/voice/access/understanding/purpose. i think it is also an acknowledgment that the teacher is not ordained to be the only expert in the classroom."Spot on! I'm open to describing myself as a radical as long as I'm committed to that term's meaning as open and requiring constant interrogation.
So to me the next interesting question is, can this "deep state of solidarity" be achieved in a mode that doesn't exactly resemble critical pedagogy. Like if I were to discuss what my class looks like, in this composition/lit course, it looks like the following: the students are in groups and i'm standing or sitting not in a circle (the power actually feels too centered for me in that mode, and all that empty space in the middle) but close almost'within' their groups. Not necessarily at the front of the room, but trying to be among them. What I try to create is a discussion of literature that is situated, deeply, within their own experiences, and one of the risks I take is that I try to bring my own odd and out there life experiences and their connection to the text, in such a way that it lets them feel free to do so. I'll say something ridiculous in the hope that they might start to make really interesting, and unconventional connections to the text. Make them feel that their thoughts aren't odd but compelling and rich and worth weaving into the text. This, however, might be a romantic idea.
And the way I'll respond to a student's reading attempts to be really open and inquisitive, like "tell me more", and respond within a vocabulary that draws, loosely from pragmatism, but is also, hopefully, explicitly empathetic. So - like "I find that really persuasive", "That is a very cool connection you've made", and if I don't think it's persuasive I'll try and say "Hmmnn I'm not sure I'm completely convinced but I'm open to the idea, definitely". Is this 'frontloading' student discourse? I'm not sure.
And then it brings up this question (and all of its perils): How did I learn best? And if I can figure out how I've learned best, can/should/what are the risks of applying that to my students? I learned by seeing profs engage the texts in ways that I thought were alive, and cool, and interesting, and I tried to model them. So if that means in my class the "student discourse" wasn't frontloaded, it worked for me, regardless, and allowed me to find my voice.
radical?
So, in the little description in the sidebar, I labeled the future writers of this blog as "a few radicals in rhet comp." But I have my reservations for radical as a description of what I think I do, and I'm wondering what your reactions are to the term or if you use it to describe yourself or not (right now this question is out to Tim and A.J., but also to anyone else who joins--a few more invitations have been sent out and I'm waiting for a return).
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
The penultimate week of classes
As we approach the end of this spring semester I realize how much I'm looking forward to reading within the spheres of rhet-comp that I find most compelling. I'm envious of Ben and Tim's future in the fall and am stoked to hear from them what the experience is like. In the meantime, I think this forum will be a really cool space to test out ideas and see what seems to take hold and what doesn't. As an extension of the discussions that Ben and I have in person, I'm just stoked to have a place to bring and unravel these thoughts and notions. I think it's likely that we'll all be bringing our own diverse backgrounds and out approaches will be idiosyncratic and unique, and were that not the case I think we'd learn less. Allright - enough bluster from me. Here's Shor in 1997 interview with Graff in JAC. So I have to be honest and say that I'm more unsure than comfortable with some critical pedagogy, only in the sense that I don't know if it work for me. What Shor posits here though I find really strong:
"Here's what I have in mind: instead of this vast, subordinated enterprise called "freshman comp," we would recover writing as a rhetorical and social act of making meaning, constructing the self in society, producing culture. Concretely, when students come to campus, their writing requirement is to affiliate with a project."
summer reading group blog
I had some free time today, so I decided to mess around with this summer reading blog. I'm also excited and that's why I built this on April 20 when we probably won't really get down to business until June. After two years in the university defined as teacher instead of student, I can't wait to get into some more focused dialogue over ideas I care about.
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