[Teaching_Composition] RE: Critical Pedagogy and Politics ... and Empowerment

[Laura D Card]

Kathy, you just struck a nerve when you mentioned the power teachers have. Here's another take on power and teaching composition--

I was recently reading an article by Margaret Hamilton in The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association where she talks about ethics and education, which is essentially what we’ve been discussing on this listserve. Composition-type learning is similar to a type of learning discussed by James Paul Gee in Social Linguistics and Literacies. He states that this type of learning is one of the better ways of learning  because it “uses analyses that break down material into its analytic bits and juxtaposes diverse Discourses and their practices to each other” to produce “meta-knowledge” (145). By teaching this way, Gee posits that we avoid colonizing our students. In the process we also give them the ability to “imagine better and more socially just ways of being in the world” (190). Kathy’s emphasis on choosing is a major component of this type of learning. If students are allowed to choose topics, find a variety of sources, explore them and draw their own conclusions while being guided in expressing their ideas according to effective argumentation and rhetorical strategies, they will learn. They may change their ideas about topics and thereby learn to look at the topic in very different ways from what they had known before. They may formulate ideas about a topic they previously knew little about. They may find support for a position they already held. But the important thing is that they will learn. If we’re so worried about social change, we must remember that social change happens because of an educated populace. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it—educating our students to think and write analytically hoping that their experience in our classes may make lasting changes in their ways of thinking and expressing themselves. If we can get to that point, rather than clinging to the idea that we have to change everyone to think like we do, we’ve succeeded and made a difference in our world.

That said, there are still times we want to change our students. I’ve been noticing some aspects of teaching writing that require imposing ideas of right and wrong on my students. One instance is in teaching that plagiarism is wrong. Another is teaching grammar and punctuation standards. Another is teaching that certain styles of documentation are appropriate depending on the target discipline the text is written for, which brings with it all the rights and wrongs that make up each style of documentation. By practicing those rules, students often find enacting the rules become second nature, which supports some ideas I am studying.

 Please bear with me as I briefly explore these ideas. The process of writing does change people. I’m writing an article right now on how composition classes can teach ethical behavior (and hopefully influence future ethical behavior) such as citing sources correctly and presenting information ethically because of how the mind works biologically. Ethical behavior may be further supported by writing about topics that have ethical aspects. Short explanation: writing engages several parts of the brain that have to do with memory and learning. When we teach writing we assist students in altering their brain structure when new axons grow on the nerves in the brain to store new memory. Eric Kandel, Nobel Prize winner 2000, found that memory is physical and biological. Kandel documented axon growth in relation to memory storage, proving that learning alters the brain structure. Neuroscientists have also found that the most effective learning engages several parts of the brain. Writing engages several parts of the brain ranging from areas that control the physical manipulation of writing tools to analytical thinking.

 Another thing Kandel found is that more learning takes place when emotion is present--extra chemicals are present that help axon growth. Of course, Aristotle said something like that long ago, but it’s nice to know there is scientific evidence for that idea. Therefore, more learning takes place when students are allowed to write about something they are interested in; their emotions may be more engaged than when they are forced to write about a topic they care little about. So, by teaching writing and having our students write about topics related to ethical situations, they can’t help but be changed.

The same idea of writing being able to change people is used in behavioral therapy. Using writing to explore and record patients’ perceptions and experiences, many behavioral therapists are able to assist patients to recover from depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder and more beyond what medications can accomplish. 

I could go on and on, but I’ll stop now with one more thought—seeing the neurological power to change associated with the act of writing makes me want to be more careful about how I teach it. What a responsibility!

Laura Card, PhD
English Department
Brigham Young University

-----Original Message-----
From: Kathy Fitch <kfitch@kafkaz.net>
To: teaching_composition@mailman.eppg.com
Date: Tue, 03 Oct 2006 10:36:27 -0500
Subject: RE: [Teaching_Composition] RE: Critical Pedagogy and Politics ... and Empowerment

Oh, yes, power makes folks so uncomfortable, yet teachers have it, and
there’s no gainsaying that.  How we use it, examine it, or share, or claim
it is another thing.  To me, a good way both to share and to claim it (that
is, to occupy it comfortably and without undue guilt) is to give students
some choices.  Let them see the line-up of FYC themes ahead of time, and
choose as they will.  Some teachers would *screech* (power over a captive
audience can be especially tough to sacrifice), but so what?  Put it in the
agora, and see what happens.  All sorts of interesting things do happen,
*including* students purposefully choosing the seemingly most radical
things.  Choice matters.

 

Kathy

 

  _____  

From: teaching_composition-admin@mailman.eppg.com
[mailto:teaching_composition-admin@mailman.eppg.com] On Behalf Of Becky
Flores
Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 9:56 AM
To: teaching_composition@mailman.eppg.com
Subject: [Teaching_Composition] RE: Critical Pedagogy and Politics ... and
Empowerment

 

Kathy's comment about "empowerment" is key, particularly in the context of
discussing the power allegedly inherent in the critical pedagogy she rightly
questions (something I'd call a paint-by-numbers critical pedagogy, it
having taken the same lamentable path as 

multiculturalism). Empowerment is a term, much like the ubiquitous "critical
thinking," that is often used yet infrequently considered for its suspect
undertones. The whole concept of "empowerment" (I'm drawing a lot from Bruce
Horner's work here) is problematic. Empowerment involves at least two
players -- the powerful and the powerless -- and then the act of empowering.
The result? Power is provided by those with power to those without. The
question here is power given by whom? "Allowed" by whom? And, isn't the
provider of power then suspect for having power to begin with, and the
recipient then compliant with the structure of dominant power? In short,
what's changed in the exchange of this much-touted "empowerment" other than
us feeling (misplaced) satisfaction about it having occurred?

 

Ah, I do love these semantics. 

On a final note, Horner's piece will be of interest to those considering
alternative perspectives to what being a critical pedagogue might entail. It
was published in JAC (2000): 121-52 with the title "Politics, Pedagogy, and
the Profession of Composition: Confronting Commodification and the
Contingences of Power."

becky 

 

 

Becky Flores 
B.A., M.A., Ph.D. 
Dpt. English, Philosophy, and Education 
Del Mar College 
www.delmar.edu/engl/instruct/beckyflores 

 

-----teaching_composition-admin@mailman.eppg.com wrote: ----- 

To: <teaching_composition@mailman.eppg.com> 
From: "Kathy Fitch" <kfitch@kafkaz.net> 
Sent by: teaching_composition-admin@mailman.eppg.com 
Date: 10/03/2006 07:38AM 
Subject: RE: [Teaching_Composition] Critical Pedagogy and Politics 

<< Critical pedagogy believes in problem posing.  A critical classroom
starts with the students? collective interests and helps the students forge
a connection to larger ideology through analysis, facts and statistics,
logic, and plain old questioning.  A critical pedagogue, for example, would
not assert that all hierarchies are wrong, as Kathy mentioned.  Rather, he
or she might generate a theme around hierarchy for the students or pose it
as a theme that students are invited to accept or reject.  The classroom is
not so de-centralized as to lack rigor.  Rather, the instructor is sharing
authority with the students and making them responsible for their education.
Frequently, a critical pedagogue will make the topic of the course a theme
or a starting point, what Ira Shor calls an ?academic theme.?  In a writing
classroom, then, students would study the topic of good writing or maybe
writing processes or what the students have learned previously about the
rules of writing.  Again, the instructor poses questions and problematizes
major issues for the students. >> 

Of course, Bill?this sounds like a course we?d all love to be in, and all
aim to teach.  But where is the great big threat against this approach?  As
far as I can see, the objections are lodged and the concerns expressed when
critical pedagogy ceases to be what you describe (an idealized version to
offset what you see as a caricature of the overly politicized teacher?) and
becomes something else altogether.  Something a whole lot pushier.  I think
part of your concern?and I?d agree?is that the line between critical
pedagogy and politics run amok isn?t always as clear in practice as it is in
our own minds, where we know (for the most part) what we?re up to, and what
our goals and motivations are.  

Unfortunately, things do get fuzzy.  For instance, one could make the case
that a given theme itself (how it?s selected and defined, which readings are
chosen to explore it, the types of assignments written around it) can
constitute a kind of argument that really brooks no opposition by students
who find themselves--all unawares, with no forewarning, and often with very
little sense of how to get out--caught in it.  I?ve inherited a few of those
students, and can tell you it?s a delicate thing, indeed, simultaneously to
get them back on track with FYC, and to promote respect for and good will
toward the instructor they?ve fled.  How does a student trust comp after
feeling as though he or she has been forced into reading and writing about
gender issues, say, when those readings seem not only terribly pushy and
personal, but also essentially unrelated to what they thought would and
should be the task at hand?  (It has also sometimes been a challenge not to
have the fled from teacher ticked off at me for agreeing to adopt the
fleeing student, but talking it through head on tends to ease things.)  Oh,
and just think of how many first year students in that spot * don?t * flee!
One approach to preventing this sort of issue  is to delineate themes
clearly and carefully ahead of time.  If this course is to be all about
hierarchies, or sustainable resources, or the philosophy of language, or
gender studies, or the rhetoric of war, or whatever, it?s both wise and
ethical to tag it as such in the catalogue and/or schedule, and to circulate
(online is one good way) a fairly detailed description of it in advance.
When students are empowered to choose that way, fewer problems develop,
which is good for everyone.   If I were teaching a lab/online/hybrid type
course in a school not heavy on technology use in FYC, I?d even want * that
* (seemingly innocuous, at least to me) course tagged and described in just
this fashion.  If FYC can?t be presumed to be pretty much the same from
section to section?as, in many places, it can?t (thus WPAs and or Deans
feeling the lure of the departmental text and syllabus), then we do our both
our students and ourselves a great favor by clarifying the choices ahead of
time.

I?d have been ticked off by (and probably pretty frightened of) a professor
or instructor trying to transform me into her particular version of a
feminist, for sure.  (It?s brave, wonderful, and a sign of wisdom for any
teacher to see that?s she done that, to regret it, to question how it
happened, and to reexamine that approach.) But by the time I landed in such
a situation, it was in a feminist studies course I?d deliberatively chosen,
where passionate exploration and disagreement were welcome all the way, and
I was free  vociferously to defend or attack ideas as the spirit or the
keyboard or the readings or classmates moved me.  If I?d landed in that spot
in FYC, it would have been a thing I?d gone into blindly, and felt trapped
by and resentful of, and rightly so.   

We can demonstrate how deeply we respect both students and the profession by
taking the time not only carefully to examine our approaches, but also
carefully to tend to student responses.  I learned this lesson very early on
when I was using a reader one department demanded?a reader that included a
section on abortion.  Couldn?t get a lick of conversation or a spark of
interest going about that section (such interesting readings, too, naïve me
thought), so I finally did the only thing a teacher really can do when in
that spot, which is to ask the students why.  They said, pretty much to a
person, that this was a hugely personal thing,  and that whether they were
still thinking it through, or had already come down?temporarily or no?on one
side or the other was, essentially, none of anyone?s beeswax unless * they *
opted freely to explore it with others (teachers or peers) for, say, a
research paper, or in a creative writing class, or in a class on Human
Sexuality or Contemporary Ethics, and so forth.

I think they were right.  Also, I expect, their response would apply in
somewhat subtler cases.  Whenever we?re crossing into the land of the
personal or the private in a course not specifically geared to those topics
(a course in which students can predict that those topics will make up the
content, and choose to enroll or not, accordingly), then student resistance
is not only perfectly appropriate, but downright healthy.  I?d call taking
that into account?and letting that response shape our courses even or
especially when it?s an unexpected response?a key part of critical pedagogy.


On a different note?I?ve hardly ever encountered the out and out morally
distasteful essay written by an FYC student.  Thoughtfully designed courses
don?t leave much room for them, so that?s one thing, but the bigger thing is
that, for the most part, students are rooting for us just like we?re rooting
for them.  Mostly, in my experience, they really want to learn a thing or
two about writing, and they?ll go a long way, indeed, to help us teach them
whatever we can in the brief time we have together. 

Kathy 

 

 

 

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