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

Mon, 2 Oct 2006 11:59:20 -0500

Actually, I totally agree with you here, Laura--Great questions, and they
keep the focus where I think it should be.

Kathy
-----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 10:44 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

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