[Teaching_Composition] Re: Teaching_Composition digest,Vol 1 #1110 - 2 msgs

Mon, 2 Oct 2006 12:36:33 -0400

Thanks for the post, Laura.  Your list of questions in your second
paragraph is one all teachers should consider.  Bullying is not only
wrong; it is counter-productive.  We probably all have experienced it at
some point in our educational journeys.  However, as someone else said,
it is one thing to make a student uncomfortable and to enrich him or her
in the process.  It is another to bully.  The former is what good
teaching should do.  I would mention two other things in response to
other areas of your post:

1)  Students are not learning how to write in a neutral environment.
The world--learning about it included--is political.  I cannot not teach
students ideologically.  Hiding those ideologies from the students does
not help them make decisions on their own.  They are being influenced
tacitly, so the decisions they end up making, without intervention, tend
to serve self-interests (or what the students perceive as being in their
self-interest) and the interests of the status quo.  So if I choose not
to talk about content or do not share with my students the questions I
have about the inherent biases in some of the conventions of "good
writing," I am reinforcing the status quo.  As many of the classical
rhetoricians knew, ethics and values have to be taught alongside
rhetoric or it can and will be abused.  I do not want merely to hope or
to leave it to chance that my teaching of "good writing" will not be
misused.

2) Extremist right-wingers have taken over education.  We feel it most
in K-12 education, but many books have documented the undermining of the
university by corporations and government with right-wing agendas.
Lawrence Soley's Leasing the Ivory Tower and Jennifer Washburn's
University Inc. are just two examples of the scholarship in this area.
The real problems and the most overt political influencing of higher
education are misrepresented frequently.  The ABR is just one example of
this.

Bill

-----Original Message-----
From: teaching_composition-admin@mailman.eppg.com
[mailto:teaching_composition-admin@mailman.eppg.com] On Behalf Of Laura
D Card
Sent: Monday, October 02, 2006 11:44 AM
To: teaching_composition@mailman.eppg.com
Subject: Re: RE: [Teaching_Composition] Re: Teaching_Composition
digest,Vol 1 #1110 - 2 msgs

Wow.  After reading the recent postings, I have to say I'm somewhere
between Doug and Kathy, probably leaning toward Charles. Sure we teach
and write according to our own ideas that may be ideological. Sure we
all value some things while others value other things. I admit I value
some hierarchies and resent others. So, what's the bottom line? At what
point do I or my students start shouting, like the little man in Monte
Python and the Holy Grail, "Help! I'm being repressed!" 

Perhaps we need to ask ourselves some questions? What do my students
come away from class having learned? What is of worth in my own
experience while teaching? What does all this translate into in the
trenches?  What is my teaching style? Do I out shout my students when
they disagree with me? Do I grade them down when they espouse an
ideology I think is wrong? How do I help them think analytically? How do
I help them learn to write well? I agree with Charles who said, "As a
composition instructor, my goal is to help my students learn to think
for themselves and to learn how to improve their writing--not to move
them toward Marxism or capitalism, maternalism or paternalism, or other
pseudo-political-ideological-binaries that are not part of first-year
composition content, but to give them the thinking tools to decide for
themselves the direction in which they wish to move, which are part of
that content." 

As for the ABR, I see it as a wake-up call that as teachers we may be
doing some things right-such as teaching our students to look at a
variety of sides on issues, which may threaten some who are certain some
things are just RIGHT-and we may be doing some things wrong-teaching in
ways that may be paramount to intellectual bullying. As a former
student, I've experienced both. As a teacher, I hope I am rational and
open to viewpoints other than my own and that my students have a
worthwhile experience. Additionally, perhaps my head is in the sand, but
I don't see extremist right-wingers taking over the education system
when there are so many in the education system and politics who have
more liberal leanings. It is my opinion that both sides are necessary
for our society to function and that they act as checks and balances to
keep extremists from either side from taking over. I like the term
"struggle" used by Stuart Hall and Edward Said and the like and see this
str!
 uggle between different ideologies as a balancing act that keeps our
world spinning--not a bad thing.

Laura Card, Ph.D.
English Department
Brigham Young University

-----Original Message-----
From: Kathy Fitch <kfitch@kafkaz.net>
To: teaching_composition@mailman.eppg.com
Date: Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:13:48 -0500
Subject: RE: [Teaching_Composition] Re: Teaching_Composition digest,Vol
1 #1110 - 2 msgs

Geez, Doug, I had to read sections of Houston Smith, Madeleine L'Engle,
Anne
Lamott, and Kathleen Norris just to set the world right again, and I may
still have to wander off into the mystical moist night air, for a bit.
I
could probably go on and on about this, but I'll be brief, for the night
air
beckons:  professing writing need not entail usurping all absolutes,
disrupting all certainties, denying every fundamental.  As Smith points
out,
"There can be, and are, dogmatic relativists and open-minded
absolutists."
Yes, language, learning, and teaching are all inherently political
activities in the broadest sense.  It is simply and inescapably so.
However, teaching writing need not entail narrower, more specific
political
aims.  Too often, the latter masquerade as the former.  I'm not a huge
fan
of the particulars of the "bill of rights" that would have students make
it
through school without ever encountering a challenging or disquieting
notion.  Nonetheless, my first instinct toward the document as a whole
is to
wonder to what extent it proceeds not merely from simplistic concerns
(oh,
no, my teacher is a leftie!), but also from deeper, more complex fears:
destruction of hierarchies, disappearance of the transcendent, dismissal
of
the mystical, loss of faith, nihilism.  It's not hard for me to see how
someone inclined to be a signatory to this "bill of rights" would read
what
you have to say about language and politics and hear in it a claim that
writing has only been successfully professed if writing students end up
replacing their fundamental beliefs (and not only about language, but
about
truth, power, objectivity, subjectivity, the metaphysical) with
yours--or
worse, with nothing at all.  

Then, too, the absurdist in me comes to the fore and pictures a writing
student wondering how all of this helps her get the researched essay
written, the cover letter and resume posted, the screen filled.  I like
her,
and think she asks excellent questions.  If she comes to me--to any of
us--for help with these tasks, what then?  How shall we cope with her?
How
shall we serve her best?

Kathy

_______________________________________________
Teaching_Composition maillist  -  Teaching_Composition@mailman.eppg.com
http://mailman.eppg.com/mailman/listinfo/teaching_composition

To unsubscribe, please visit
http://mailman.eppg.com/mailman/listinfo/teaching_composition and update
your information.

_______________________________________________
Teaching_Composition maillist  -  Teaching_Composition@mailman.eppg.com
http://mailman.eppg.com/mailman/listinfo/teaching_composition

To unsubscribe, please visit
http://mailman.eppg.com/mailman/listinfo/teaching_composition and update
your information.