Berlin "Contemporary Composition"
My love for Berlin knows no bounds. I find his labeling of composition theories to be helpful and insightful. Most importantly, though, I feel as if he is able to put into language the meaning I am constantly striving to make. At times as I read this article I almost felt as if I were reading a version of what I have said to myself over and over again: "I...strongly disagree with the contention that the differences in approaches to teaching writing can be explained by attending to the degree of emphasis given to universally defined elements of a universally defined composing process" (765). This comment is clarified later when he states: "Pedagogical theories in writing courses are grounded in rhetorical theories, and rhetorical theories do not differ in the simple undue emphasis of writer or audience or reality or language or some combination of these" (765). Everyone is engaged in the process of teaching writing, and I feel, as I think Berlin does, that often we draw lines in the sand unnecessarily instead of examining what underling beliefs are the same and what is producing results and why.
I could go on quoting this article at length, but I will skip to the end in the interest of time. I am, as Berlin would label me, a New Rhetoric follower. I studied at the school of Berthoff and it was incredibly exciting to see him using language to state what I believe to be one of the best ways to teach writing at the end of his article. He says, "Language is at the center of this dialectical interplay between the individual and the world. For Neo-Aristotelians, Positivists, and Neo-Platonists, truth exists prior to language so that the difficulty of the writer or speaker is to find the appropriate words to communicate knowledge. For the New Rhetoric truth is impossible without language since it is language that embodies and generates truth" (774). As teachers of writing we aren't teaching a scientific formula or even how to use such a formula--we're teaching how to create one and making meaning with it. That is, I think, a large difference.
Fulkerson "Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century"
Sigh. Here is my beef with Rhetorical approaches (I finally have the language for it I think): rhetorical theories don't teach meaning-making. They address what to do with the language once you have it, but not how to create it. I also feel that Fulkerson works really hard to convince the reader that everyone he like uses the rhetorical approach, even when he admits that they might fit somewhere else. We are back to the good old either/or problem. I think pedagogies that succeed have more in common than can be labeled with the characteristic Fulkerson puts forth. I also feel that he misunderstands CCS to some degree; in fact, I feel that most people who disagree with the approach misunderstand it--at least its goals and strategies. Finally, I am against modeling. I do think reading and writing are connected and that we often write similar to what we read, but I think modeling is what you do when you don't know what/how to teach. Is that to argumentative?
Fulkerson had some interesting things to say and I appreciated his survey of the composition theories, but I felt that Berlin did a better job of putting forth categories. I also think Berlin named the problems of the "theory wars" in a superior fashion.
And, if I may digress for just a second? I might scream at the next person that accuses writing teachers who teach students to critique themselves and their world of being "leftist ideologues" who "brainwash" students. No doubt there are some extremists out there (as there are in any pedagogy) but forcing you to question does not brainwash you, it simply unsettles you. And I will not be sorry if you realize that being a racist misogynist is a bad idea. I won't grade you for being an asshole, but I refuse to apologize for teaching in such a way that you have the best chance possible of realizing your asshole tendencies and changing them. Are we, as composition teachers, really going to quibble over whether it is okay to say racism is wrong in the classroom? Really? I'm gonna have to take a stand on that one and say that racism is a non-defensible position; that doesn't make me a brainwasher, it just means I don't allow obscene stupidity in my classroom.
Downs and Wardle "Teaching About Writing, Righting Misconceptions"
I like this article. I say I like it as a demonstration of my view that we should include the personal with the academic (since I don't think you can ever really remove it) and because it seems to fit with what Downs and Wardle are discussing. Now I will explain why I like it, you see.
I feel they name the biggest problem of FYC very well. The issue of "academic writing" as being a dead, created term that actually carries no meaning. This is why we can't agree on how to teach it, and why so many FYC classes fail to carry across the curriculum. They state, "a number of assumptions inform the premise that academic writing is somehow universal: writing can be considered independent of content; writing consists primarily of syntactic and mechanical concerns..." (555). But of course, correct? All we need to do is teach to the rhetorical moves made in "academic writing" and the students will be set! But wait, there's more: "even when FYC courses do attempt to directly address the complexity of 'academic discourse,' they tend to operate on the assumption that writing instruction easily transfers to other writing situations--a deeply ingrained assumption with little empirical verification" (556). An assumption without critically thinking about it? Surely writing teachers would not make the error for which they judge their students. I don't believe it.
But I think that is exactly what many writing teachers do, and I think this article nails that point. We assume that "academic discourse" is achievable because it is what we were taught. It is what we do. So to speak. But even as we do whatever it is we do, how many of us actually know how we are doing it? Can you put it into words? Or do you find yourself struggling with content, style, and ideas? I find that in my own writing I have reached an impasse--I am no longer able to write in way that conveys the complexity of my ideas. Huh. Maybe academic discourse doesn't quite cover everything.
Breuch "Post-Process 'Pedagogy'"
This article reminds me of Knoblauch and Brannon's plea to the reader to understand that every teacher should understand "why they do what they do." This seems very similar to Breuch's statement that "post-process theory encourages us to reexamine our definition of writing as an activity rather than a body of knowledge, our methods of teaching as indeterminate activities rather than exercises of mastery, and our communicative interactions with students as dialogic rather than monologic" (98-99). I also think that her effort to understand post-process theory is one that should be taken by theorists about most theories.
That may sound odd coming from me as I am often argumentative and sometimes negative about what we have read. I hope, however, that I am not misunderstood for not attempting to understand that theory itself. Often my objections come from what I perceive to be the theories lack of understanding itself and the writing process itself. To that end I jump to the conclusion of her essay and would like to say that her remarks about "letting go" are also incredibly useful to any pedagogical approach. As she says, "it means becoming teachers who are more in tune to the pedagogical needs of students, more willing to discuss ideas, more willing to listen, more willing to be moved by moments of mutual understanding" (122). I think such a strategy can apply not only to post-process theory but also may illustrate how post-process theory can be used in conjunction with other theories or vice versa. It isn't about either/or, but entirely both/and.
This concludes my final response and in a moment having nothing to do with composition theory or this class I urge you all go see Ironman. Perhaps some day I will write a comic book about a superhero named "Compstar"--the hero of all composition theorists.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
Website Reflection
The creation of this website was a reasonably stress free event. I used Microsoft Publisher, feeling most comfortable with Microsoft programs. I worked with code in the past, not html or java, but it has been so long I knew it would be of little use to me. I am not, despite my protestations, anti-technology; I spend quite a bit of time in my teaching educating my students about the classroom and have had a class website in the past. I understand the appeal of a website for professional and teaching reasons, but from my own experience as a student I rarely use a faculty website for anything beyond assuaging my boredom and surface level curiosity.
This has been helpful, however, as I hope to someday have a tenure track position and I know from my own school research that faculty webpages are helpful in discovering who I want to work with and why. I hope to someday put this knowledge to good use, but frankly, this semester has whooped me and it’s all I can do to write a basic sentence.
As the internet continues to grow I’ve become more aware of my lagging behind the learning curve—my next goal is to familiarize myself with the uses available to me in teaching through computers, the internet, and all manner of fun technology.
This has been helpful, however, as I hope to someday have a tenure track position and I know from my own school research that faculty webpages are helpful in discovering who I want to work with and why. I hope to someday put this knowledge to good use, but frankly, this semester has whooped me and it’s all I can do to write a basic sentence.
As the internet continues to grow I’ve become more aware of my lagging behind the learning curve—my next goal is to familiarize myself with the uses available to me in teaching through computers, the internet, and all manner of fun technology.
Spittin' Mad
Smith "Students' Goals, Gatekeeping, and Some Questions of Ethics"
I'm half-way through this article and I have to take a break. I'm so angry I'm not sure I can finish it. Is this guy for real? Could he be more condescending? I especially love the way he attacks Griffin for her feminism. That's my favorite part. What was that we discussed early on about composition theorists not attacking each other? I'll show you attack if the rest of this article doesn't shape up really, friggin' fast.
Nope. Still hate him.
I don't want to engage this article. I don't want to talk about what I think. I sure as hell don't want to summarize it. But this is a graduate class and I "willingly" entered into the system so I will present my ticket to the gate and we'll see if I can pass through.
Smith has several good points; it is important that we remember the purpose of writing composition and gear our curriculum and classes towards fulfilling that purpose. If you aren't engaging in activities that promote/teach better writing than you can't very well call yourself a writing teacher. He raises excellent objectifications to the blind acceptance of many composition theories and points out the ethical obligation to students. He also calls teachers to task for their forgetfulness of where they work and interact. All of these things are insightful and, one could argue, justifiably required. All composition theory should be self-examining and open to criticism and it is as necessary to keep dialogue open as it is to initiate it in the first place.
However, I still think Smith is an ass. Students are not my clients and I will not think of them that way. I will teach them what they need to know of basic writing skills that are necessary for further education; I will grade them to the standard they will be held to in the future. I completely understand that English 101/102 is not a large part of their life nor do I expect to be held in some vaulted peace, love, and happiness place in their hearts for all eternity. But the question remains how best to teach writing. And my answer to that remains to teach thinking/speaking/reading/writing all together. You cannot do this if you think of your subject as a skill because writing (and I will argue this to the grave) IS NOT LIKE OTHER SUBJECTS. There. I said it. Call me feminist, call me naive, call me egotistical. But be prepared to have a discussion.
Hariston "Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing"
AAAHHHH!!!!!
Can that be my response?
"I'm convinced that the push to change freshman composition into a political platform for the teacher has come about primarily because the course is housed in English departments" (702). And she follows that up with, "But I think this is what happens when composition theorists remain psychologically tied to the English departments that are their base. Partly out of genuine interest, I'm sure, but also out of a need to belong to and be approved by the power structure, they immerse themselves in currently fashionable critical theories, read the authors that are chic--Foucault, Bahktin, Giroux, Eagleton, and Cixous, for example--then look for ways those theories can be incorporated into their own specialty, teaching writing" (703).
Let's examine her "key elements": "student's own writing must be the center of the course" (705). Okay, I agree with you there, though, I would still argue there is value to bringing in outside text (not silly essays about college drinking) to expand thought. "Second, as writing teachers we should stay within our area of professional expertise: helping students to learn to write in order to learn, to explore, to communicate, to gain control over their lives" (705). Oh fantastic. Because none of those "chic" theorists help with this goal at all. I'm so glad you clarified that.
I'm being unconventional. I am, perhaps, not engaging the text properly. View my unorthodox response as a response in itself.
Berlin
A soothing balm to my fiery nerves. I'm Scotch-Irish, can blame this response on genetic disposition to anger?
Berlin makes the points I am too tired and angry to bring up. The problem isn't the ideology of teachers--you can't get outside of your ideology which is what Smith and Hariston don't seem able to admit--but an awareness of that ideology and a use of it to further writing instruction. Not touchy-feely oh I feel good about myself crap, but a demand of yourself as a teacher that you don't pretend you have no ideological goal. It also demands that you don't judge your students; something I would argue is impossible unless you are self-aware enough to recognize you have an ideology and ideological goals.
It isn't the fault of "English departments." It's the fault of our failure as teachers. And yes, I'm a social-epistemic.
Wow. I'm not even capable of a neutral response to these readings. But I admit it. See? That's social-epistemic at work baby.
I'm half-way through this article and I have to take a break. I'm so angry I'm not sure I can finish it. Is this guy for real? Could he be more condescending? I especially love the way he attacks Griffin for her feminism. That's my favorite part. What was that we discussed early on about composition theorists not attacking each other? I'll show you attack if the rest of this article doesn't shape up really, friggin' fast.
Nope. Still hate him.
I don't want to engage this article. I don't want to talk about what I think. I sure as hell don't want to summarize it. But this is a graduate class and I "willingly" entered into the system so I will present my ticket to the gate and we'll see if I can pass through.
Smith has several good points; it is important that we remember the purpose of writing composition and gear our curriculum and classes towards fulfilling that purpose. If you aren't engaging in activities that promote/teach better writing than you can't very well call yourself a writing teacher. He raises excellent objectifications to the blind acceptance of many composition theories and points out the ethical obligation to students. He also calls teachers to task for their forgetfulness of where they work and interact. All of these things are insightful and, one could argue, justifiably required. All composition theory should be self-examining and open to criticism and it is as necessary to keep dialogue open as it is to initiate it in the first place.
However, I still think Smith is an ass. Students are not my clients and I will not think of them that way. I will teach them what they need to know of basic writing skills that are necessary for further education; I will grade them to the standard they will be held to in the future. I completely understand that English 101/102 is not a large part of their life nor do I expect to be held in some vaulted peace, love, and happiness place in their hearts for all eternity. But the question remains how best to teach writing. And my answer to that remains to teach thinking/speaking/reading/writing all together. You cannot do this if you think of your subject as a skill because writing (and I will argue this to the grave) IS NOT LIKE OTHER SUBJECTS. There. I said it. Call me feminist, call me naive, call me egotistical. But be prepared to have a discussion.
Hariston "Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing"
AAAHHHH!!!!!
Can that be my response?
"I'm convinced that the push to change freshman composition into a political platform for the teacher has come about primarily because the course is housed in English departments" (702). And she follows that up with, "But I think this is what happens when composition theorists remain psychologically tied to the English departments that are their base. Partly out of genuine interest, I'm sure, but also out of a need to belong to and be approved by the power structure, they immerse themselves in currently fashionable critical theories, read the authors that are chic--Foucault, Bahktin, Giroux, Eagleton, and Cixous, for example--then look for ways those theories can be incorporated into their own specialty, teaching writing" (703).
Let's examine her "key elements": "student's own writing must be the center of the course" (705). Okay, I agree with you there, though, I would still argue there is value to bringing in outside text (not silly essays about college drinking) to expand thought. "Second, as writing teachers we should stay within our area of professional expertise: helping students to learn to write in order to learn, to explore, to communicate, to gain control over their lives" (705). Oh fantastic. Because none of those "chic" theorists help with this goal at all. I'm so glad you clarified that.
I'm being unconventional. I am, perhaps, not engaging the text properly. View my unorthodox response as a response in itself.
Berlin
A soothing balm to my fiery nerves. I'm Scotch-Irish, can blame this response on genetic disposition to anger?
Berlin makes the points I am too tired and angry to bring up. The problem isn't the ideology of teachers--you can't get outside of your ideology which is what Smith and Hariston don't seem able to admit--but an awareness of that ideology and a use of it to further writing instruction. Not touchy-feely oh I feel good about myself crap, but a demand of yourself as a teacher that you don't pretend you have no ideological goal. It also demands that you don't judge your students; something I would argue is impossible unless you are self-aware enough to recognize you have an ideology and ideological goals.
It isn't the fault of "English departments." It's the fault of our failure as teachers. And yes, I'm a social-epistemic.
Wow. I'm not even capable of a neutral response to these readings. But I admit it. See? That's social-epistemic at work baby.
A Normal Response
I don't know if life coincidentally matches up with schoolwork, or if I simply read life into my schoolwork. Perhaps part of both.
Shor, "Monday Morning Fever"
I find myself remembering our 791 discussion about Freire; Dr. Brown asked us what value he carries for the U.S. since he was theorizing for an entirely different situation. I won't explain my argument for the value I believe he carries, but at the end of the discussion my point was simply this: it doesn't matter that the problems we pose are different in our classrooms, it only matters that we are posing problems. Shor writes, "Most students possess more language skills than they will display in school. The turn towards student reality and student voices can release their hidden talents" (107). By posing a problem that is somehow applicable to them (or made applicable to them) we open the doorway for their rhetoric to flow through and give them voice. This seems what everyone is after. If this is done successfully then suddenly writing makes sense in a way it never did before. Shor tells us, "Most of my students have never looked this closely at their jobs, their writings, each other, or the teacher. The careful attention to detail is what their English teachers have lectured to them under the rubrics of "paragraph development" and "theme organization" (113). My favorite part, though, is what immediately follows: "Studied as a rhetorical lesson instead of as a lesson in critically reperceiving reality, 'paragraph development' has of course not developed inside my students" (114). By discussing the "tools" of writing and rhetoric as something to be harnessed instead of providing an inquiry for them to develop and sharpen what they already have reifies language and shuts down discourse. I think Shor has touched on this and that is a lesson that is applicable to all composition classrooms no matter the politics or the nationality.
Freire
Oh Freire. How is one not motivated by Freire? Even now, so worried I can't sleep and so tired I keep worrying, I find myself perking up a little bit when reading Freire. How is he not applicable to our school systems, our pedagogies? My classes are working on their research papers right now. I finished the drafts last night and was angry. Angry! I haven't been that angry in...I don't know how long. I was angry not just because they were bad--no focus, poorly framed sentences, etc--those mistakes I could have understood. Those mistakes show me a writer grappling with language. No, these drafts were full of typos, citations errors (which we had covered ad naseum in class) and sentences like "There may or may not be a solution." "This is a complicated problem with no simple answer." "When pregnant the woman will give birth after some time." These are sentences that don't say anything. My students, faced with a research paper, had reverted back to their old "academic sounding" selves and were filling page after page with "facts" and worthless meaningless commentary. All our discussions about making meaning, discussing their own thoughts had flown out the window when faced with an eight page research paper.
I wish I could have read the first line of this article to them: "Experience teaches us not to assume that the obvious is clearly understood" (616). Or perhaps, if I could find the great cause of our education's treatment of language I could say, "Only someone with a mechanistic mentality, which Marx would call 'grossly materialistic,' could reduce adult literacy learning to a purely technical action" (617). At the very least I could help them to understand that "To acquire literacy is more than to psychologically and mechanically dominate reading and writing techniques. It is to dominate these techniques in terms of consciousness; to understand what one reads and to write what one understands; it is to communicate graphically" (622). These are the ideas they are unaware of in relationship to themselves, their language making capabilities, and their general approach towards life.
We talked about it. I brought in passages of meaning made by Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein, but I wish I would have remembered my Freire. I read this article a couple of years ago, but I now realize he is one of those that might be worth re-reading every year before the school year.
Shor, "Monday Morning Fever"
I find myself remembering our 791 discussion about Freire; Dr. Brown asked us what value he carries for the U.S. since he was theorizing for an entirely different situation. I won't explain my argument for the value I believe he carries, but at the end of the discussion my point was simply this: it doesn't matter that the problems we pose are different in our classrooms, it only matters that we are posing problems. Shor writes, "Most students possess more language skills than they will display in school. The turn towards student reality and student voices can release their hidden talents" (107). By posing a problem that is somehow applicable to them (or made applicable to them) we open the doorway for their rhetoric to flow through and give them voice. This seems what everyone is after. If this is done successfully then suddenly writing makes sense in a way it never did before. Shor tells us, "Most of my students have never looked this closely at their jobs, their writings, each other, or the teacher. The careful attention to detail is what their English teachers have lectured to them under the rubrics of "paragraph development" and "theme organization" (113). My favorite part, though, is what immediately follows: "Studied as a rhetorical lesson instead of as a lesson in critically reperceiving reality, 'paragraph development' has of course not developed inside my students" (114). By discussing the "tools" of writing and rhetoric as something to be harnessed instead of providing an inquiry for them to develop and sharpen what they already have reifies language and shuts down discourse. I think Shor has touched on this and that is a lesson that is applicable to all composition classrooms no matter the politics or the nationality.
Freire
Oh Freire. How is one not motivated by Freire? Even now, so worried I can't sleep and so tired I keep worrying, I find myself perking up a little bit when reading Freire. How is he not applicable to our school systems, our pedagogies? My classes are working on their research papers right now. I finished the drafts last night and was angry. Angry! I haven't been that angry in...I don't know how long. I was angry not just because they were bad--no focus, poorly framed sentences, etc--those mistakes I could have understood. Those mistakes show me a writer grappling with language. No, these drafts were full of typos, citations errors (which we had covered ad naseum in class) and sentences like "There may or may not be a solution." "This is a complicated problem with no simple answer." "When pregnant the woman will give birth after some time." These are sentences that don't say anything. My students, faced with a research paper, had reverted back to their old "academic sounding" selves and were filling page after page with "facts" and worthless meaningless commentary. All our discussions about making meaning, discussing their own thoughts had flown out the window when faced with an eight page research paper.
I wish I could have read the first line of this article to them: "Experience teaches us not to assume that the obvious is clearly understood" (616). Or perhaps, if I could find the great cause of our education's treatment of language I could say, "Only someone with a mechanistic mentality, which Marx would call 'grossly materialistic,' could reduce adult literacy learning to a purely technical action" (617). At the very least I could help them to understand that "To acquire literacy is more than to psychologically and mechanically dominate reading and writing techniques. It is to dominate these techniques in terms of consciousness; to understand what one reads and to write what one understands; it is to communicate graphically" (622). These are the ideas they are unaware of in relationship to themselves, their language making capabilities, and their general approach towards life.
We talked about it. I brought in passages of meaning made by Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein, but I wish I would have remembered my Freire. I read this article a couple of years ago, but I now realize he is one of those that might be worth re-reading every year before the school year.
Monday, April 21, 2008
History of Literacy Volume I
"Stranger in Strange Lands"
"In each new class Dave believed that the writing he was doing was totally unlike anything he had ever done before" (234). That seems to sum it up for me. We have discussed writing across the curriculum to some degree in class and I find this article supporting what I figured to be true. Students don't understand writing as language, but only as a skill applied for particular instances. "Although the writing tasks in the three classes were in many ways similar, Dave interpreted them as being totally different from each other and totally different from anything he had ever done before" (243). She mentions this particular trait of Dave's a third time as well later on. I suppose my point in discussing this aspect of the article is the astounding surprise this finding seems to carry. Writing teachers are consistently flabbergasted by how students a) can't write a paper and b) can't write a paper outside of class. This is because, I would argue, we still hold tight to our imbedded beliefs about writing, beliefs many of us aren't even aware we carry. We teach English because it came easy and we've never stopped to think why writing might be difficult for someone else. Furthermore, we are consistently looking for the mathematical breakdown of how to teach writing better. "Fifty-four percent of his expressed concerns were for coherence of thesis and subpoints...Forty-four percent of his concerns focused on accurately interpreting...Seventy-two percent of Dave's concerns deal with the new rules of use..." (245). Wow. His concerns by percentage breakdown. That's really helpful.
This article is useful in recognizing why writing across the curriculum needs to be addressed and realizing what's going on outside of freshman composition, but what do you want me to do with the percentage breakdown? Really?
"Protean Shapes in Literacy Events"
Moral of this story: No Child Left Behind is a Bad Idea.
I kinda just want to leave my response at that. But, since I can't, here's my favorite quote: "in large complex societies such as the United States, the national state of technological development and the extent of intrusion of governmental agencies in the daily lives of citizens may have combined to set up conditions in which literacy no longer has many of the traditional uses associated with it" (465). The government messes with people. People don't live up to impossible standards. The government/media makes a big deal about how much we are all failing as a people, we do our best to fix our problems, education suffers. Furthermore, I sense a lot of Bakhtin in here, specifically the bit about interanimation of discourses--students move from discourse to discourse and their comfort with one does preclude the loss of literacy in another. Furthermore, literacy is not simply a skill like crocheting that we can just teach in a session and move on. That seems to be the gist of most of what's being said here. I do believe we're back to the writing as art vs. science debate.
"Hearing Other Voices"
I cannot help but hear the voice (text) of Foucault as I read Hull's article. I am thinking specifically of History of Sexuality and the way he traces the economic responsibility of citizens and their sexuality. As Hull discusses the "responsibility" of workers in terms of literacy it appears to me to be much of the same discussion. Workers are ill-prepared and thus cost the economy money. Your illiteracy is a failure not only in education, but also as a citizen. It is because of you this economy is failing. It is because of you we can't do anything right.
The scariest thing is that I see much of this rhetoric repeated by my students. It is each individual's responsibility to be a good citizen. If you fail you have no one to blame but yourself. If your particular skill set is not what is required by your employer then it is no one's fault but your own. Oh the sweet American Dream. "The popular discourse of workplace literacy sets up a we/they dichotomy. It stresses the apparent failures of large numbers of people--disproportionately the poor and people of color--to be competent at what are considered run-of-the-mill daily tasks. Exaggerated an influenced by race and class prejudice, this dichotomy has the effect of separating the literate readers of magazines, newspaper articles, and scholarly reports on the literacy crisis from the masses who, we unthinkingly assume, are barely getting through the day" (669). It's not my fault it is someone else's. If you can't participate in society the way society demands you are a failure and not really trying. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this rhetoric is the way we as teachers accept it whole without question and instead of asking what we should be teaching or why it is worth teaching, we imagine our jobs only in relationship to what will be "required" of them in the workplace. We also rarely stop to question whether those skills are actually what will be required in the workplace or if how we are teaching them best develops those skills. It is our responsibility as citizens to behave a certain way. It is our responsibility as teachers to teach a certain skill set. We are not only bad citizens if we fail in this, but also bad people, immoral people.
This is the rhetoric of so many aspects of our lives (hence my reference to Foucault) and reading Hull's article makes me want to revisit the question of why are we teaching and what are we teaching?
"Sponsors of Literacy"
Ah-ha! How we have debated in class the question of what we are teaching and why and how we have danced around the question of power and literacy--those who would teach it only to control it vs. those who would teach it provide freedom. "Although the interests of the sponsor and the sponsored do not have to converge...sponsors nevertheless set the terms for access to literacy and wield powerful incentives for compliance and loyalty." (166-167) Not every student who comes to college is looking for "enlightenment" or some other higher meaning, but does that mean we as teachers shouldn't teach to a higher goal than what the sponsors dictate? I think again of No Child Left Behind here; there isn't much an individual teacher can do to fight that dreaded beast, but what happens when all teachers go along with it? What happens when college instructors criticize it but unthinkingly perpetuate it in the classroom by only teaching to what the "employer" wants? What does the employer want? Is it worth teaching? Can we even teach it? These are my questions to this discussion of literacy. Finally, Brandt begins the important task of questioning the sponsors, not only the literacy of readers, and what is our job as teachers in teaching awareness of the sponsor as well as how to read the text they produce?
"In each new class Dave believed that the writing he was doing was totally unlike anything he had ever done before" (234). That seems to sum it up for me. We have discussed writing across the curriculum to some degree in class and I find this article supporting what I figured to be true. Students don't understand writing as language, but only as a skill applied for particular instances. "Although the writing tasks in the three classes were in many ways similar, Dave interpreted them as being totally different from each other and totally different from anything he had ever done before" (243). She mentions this particular trait of Dave's a third time as well later on. I suppose my point in discussing this aspect of the article is the astounding surprise this finding seems to carry. Writing teachers are consistently flabbergasted by how students a) can't write a paper and b) can't write a paper outside of class. This is because, I would argue, we still hold tight to our imbedded beliefs about writing, beliefs many of us aren't even aware we carry. We teach English because it came easy and we've never stopped to think why writing might be difficult for someone else. Furthermore, we are consistently looking for the mathematical breakdown of how to teach writing better. "Fifty-four percent of his expressed concerns were for coherence of thesis and subpoints...Forty-four percent of his concerns focused on accurately interpreting...Seventy-two percent of Dave's concerns deal with the new rules of use..." (245). Wow. His concerns by percentage breakdown. That's really helpful.
This article is useful in recognizing why writing across the curriculum needs to be addressed and realizing what's going on outside of freshman composition, but what do you want me to do with the percentage breakdown? Really?
"Protean Shapes in Literacy Events"
Moral of this story: No Child Left Behind is a Bad Idea.
I kinda just want to leave my response at that. But, since I can't, here's my favorite quote: "in large complex societies such as the United States, the national state of technological development and the extent of intrusion of governmental agencies in the daily lives of citizens may have combined to set up conditions in which literacy no longer has many of the traditional uses associated with it" (465). The government messes with people. People don't live up to impossible standards. The government/media makes a big deal about how much we are all failing as a people, we do our best to fix our problems, education suffers. Furthermore, I sense a lot of Bakhtin in here, specifically the bit about interanimation of discourses--students move from discourse to discourse and their comfort with one does preclude the loss of literacy in another. Furthermore, literacy is not simply a skill like crocheting that we can just teach in a session and move on. That seems to be the gist of most of what's being said here. I do believe we're back to the writing as art vs. science debate.
"Hearing Other Voices"
I cannot help but hear the voice (text) of Foucault as I read Hull's article. I am thinking specifically of History of Sexuality and the way he traces the economic responsibility of citizens and their sexuality. As Hull discusses the "responsibility" of workers in terms of literacy it appears to me to be much of the same discussion. Workers are ill-prepared and thus cost the economy money. Your illiteracy is a failure not only in education, but also as a citizen. It is because of you this economy is failing. It is because of you we can't do anything right.
The scariest thing is that I see much of this rhetoric repeated by my students. It is each individual's responsibility to be a good citizen. If you fail you have no one to blame but yourself. If your particular skill set is not what is required by your employer then it is no one's fault but your own. Oh the sweet American Dream. "The popular discourse of workplace literacy sets up a we/they dichotomy. It stresses the apparent failures of large numbers of people--disproportionately the poor and people of color--to be competent at what are considered run-of-the-mill daily tasks. Exaggerated an influenced by race and class prejudice, this dichotomy has the effect of separating the literate readers of magazines, newspaper articles, and scholarly reports on the literacy crisis from the masses who, we unthinkingly assume, are barely getting through the day" (669). It's not my fault it is someone else's. If you can't participate in society the way society demands you are a failure and not really trying. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this rhetoric is the way we as teachers accept it whole without question and instead of asking what we should be teaching or why it is worth teaching, we imagine our jobs only in relationship to what will be "required" of them in the workplace. We also rarely stop to question whether those skills are actually what will be required in the workplace or if how we are teaching them best develops those skills. It is our responsibility as citizens to behave a certain way. It is our responsibility as teachers to teach a certain skill set. We are not only bad citizens if we fail in this, but also bad people, immoral people.
This is the rhetoric of so many aspects of our lives (hence my reference to Foucault) and reading Hull's article makes me want to revisit the question of why are we teaching and what are we teaching?
"Sponsors of Literacy"
Ah-ha! How we have debated in class the question of what we are teaching and why and how we have danced around the question of power and literacy--those who would teach it only to control it vs. those who would teach it provide freedom. "Although the interests of the sponsor and the sponsored do not have to converge...sponsors nevertheless set the terms for access to literacy and wield powerful incentives for compliance and loyalty." (166-167) Not every student who comes to college is looking for "enlightenment" or some other higher meaning, but does that mean we as teachers shouldn't teach to a higher goal than what the sponsors dictate? I think again of No Child Left Behind here; there isn't much an individual teacher can do to fight that dreaded beast, but what happens when all teachers go along with it? What happens when college instructors criticize it but unthinkingly perpetuate it in the classroom by only teaching to what the "employer" wants? What does the employer want? Is it worth teaching? Can we even teach it? These are my questions to this discussion of literacy. Finally, Brandt begins the important task of questioning the sponsors, not only the literacy of readers, and what is our job as teachers in teaching awareness of the sponsor as well as how to read the text they produce?
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Stupid Lord of the Rings
The following was written while I watched Fellowship of the Ring. I toyed with the leaving in my commentary or deleting it and decided to leave it in because it shows me having a dialogue with myself while writing. I think that's incredibly interesting (not my thoughts, but the idea at work here) and thought I would keep it in as a short research piece demonstrating the composing process.
I write my response while watching Lord of the Rings. Gandalf is about to die and I'm totally going to cry (again) so in honor of our discussion about technology I would like to say the great thing about word processing is that tears on the screen don't make the ink run.
"The Technological Nudge: Word Processing Is Rapidly Becoming Word Publishing"
I am still not sold on the whole word processing is such a big deal debate. This is no doubt because the first things I wrote were on Wordstar and thus much of my rhetorical education has been using word processers. I would agree that it is worth researching rhetorical techniques of images and words, but isn't that already labeled under advertising? And along side the "what are we preparing student's for" discussion it would make sense that if students were being taught how to prepare a business presentation then this sort of images/words rhetoric would be important to cover. But if we are talking about composing--what can be gained by practicing with images and words? I think there is something to be gained, but I don't know that freshman composition can do it justice. It seems like in order for it to be more worthwhile than highschool projects we would need to severely complicate the discussion of rhetoric and that is the question this article seems to be asking (or the chapter from the book rather) but doesn't quite answer, though, perhaps it does later on.
Crap. Gandalf just died and even though I know he comes back I'm totally sad. There's some powerful rhetoric for you. Elijah Wood does cry a lot in this movie, though.
"Microsoft Word"
I found this article helpful and insightful. I also pretty much said "duh" while I read it. Again, I grew up with computers so perhaps that changes my approach to them, but who are these people that think Microsoft Word is okay? Who are these teachers that don't know to tell their students not to use grammar check? Who are these people that think grammar check is a good idea? If they're English teachers then they need to be quickly eliminated without prejudice. If they aren't English teachers at all but people in the business world then they have nothing to do with our students until after school and that's a matter of politics, not writing. I mean, I suppose it is good to point out the obvious--one never knows what people are going to think is a good idea, Titanic is proof of that--but is this really new knowledge? I guess this is something I need to discuss further in class.
Boromir is about to go down now. This has got to be the most depressing post I've ever written. And yet I keep watching...there's rhetorical theory to be mined here.
"The Internet-Based Composition Classroom"
I was incredibly surprised by this article. Not only have I now read something for school that talks about MOO'MUD but they did so in way that I found amazingly helpful. This is perhaps the first article that discusses the uses of computers in a way that seems self-aware of it's limitations. They acknowledge what they hoped to gain in this article as well as what they wanted to avoid. There didn't seem to be the narrow sightedness that has challenged some of our previous articles in relation to the internet and I appreciated their dialogic look at their research. It is always pleasant to see a theorist using the theory she is promoting.
I appreciated what was said about the benefits of the computer classroom--I also appreciated the way the internet chats were used in conjunction with (a big factor) face to face interaction. This article actually made me rethink my own writing education. I spent many formative years on a MUD myself and now I have to ask, how much of my comfort with language was affected by that? Do computers shape writing ability or affect what is already there? I think that is, maybe, the next question in this discussion. But then, that is the question facing most of composition pedagogy.
And if I may digress for just a moment, I'm having a thought spawned by my emotional reaction to LOTR. Along with computers, how much of our students rhetorical ability, writing style, dialogism, etc, is shaped by the movies they watch? This is a topic we haven't read anything on yet, but it seems like an important issue. So many people in society today watch movies, a lot of movies, and doesn't the type of movie watched in some way shape how we view the world? How we construct meaning with language? There is an image/word dichotomy for you, not to mention music. I knew there was something worthwhile in my remarking on the movie.
Oh, Sam is running after Frodo. There's a homosocial versus homesexual discussion just waiting to happen.
"Undistributing Work Through Writing"
I enjoyed reading this article as I know next to nothing about technical writing. I found it very informative as well as indicative of exactly the issues Susan and Dr. J have been bringing up throughout the semester. I find I can't help but think back on the myriad of theorists (Bizzell among them) who have discussed the importance of recognizing "discourse communities" and being able to move back and forth. In that way, along with skills such as interpreting information, basic writing (what we now do in 101) and technical writing speak to the same skill set. I can't help but wonder if technical writing is best treated as "next step" in writing education. Should we teach directly to it, or should we begin with basic writing/thinking skills and then offer it after something like 102? But this, of course, brings us back to what are basic writing/thinking skills and that is, in some ways, the driving question of all the articles we've read.
I think technical writing is more challenging is evident through Slatterly's discussion of the number of texts writers must manage. This is a significantly different process than what we are currently teaching to in freshman composition. I believe, perhaps, that these skills can be shaped through exercises like the research paper, but doesn't approach what is needed as Slattery points out on page 317. Back to my earlier question then, how do we best prepare students to learn about this either in the classroom or the workplace? And what would the value be of making all student's take such a class, or at least all students in a business oriented profession? Would it be better to "prepare students for the workplace" in something like that?
I write my response while watching Lord of the Rings. Gandalf is about to die and I'm totally going to cry (again) so in honor of our discussion about technology I would like to say the great thing about word processing is that tears on the screen don't make the ink run.
"The Technological Nudge: Word Processing Is Rapidly Becoming Word Publishing"
I am still not sold on the whole word processing is such a big deal debate. This is no doubt because the first things I wrote were on Wordstar and thus much of my rhetorical education has been using word processers. I would agree that it is worth researching rhetorical techniques of images and words, but isn't that already labeled under advertising? And along side the "what are we preparing student's for" discussion it would make sense that if students were being taught how to prepare a business presentation then this sort of images/words rhetoric would be important to cover. But if we are talking about composing--what can be gained by practicing with images and words? I think there is something to be gained, but I don't know that freshman composition can do it justice. It seems like in order for it to be more worthwhile than highschool projects we would need to severely complicate the discussion of rhetoric and that is the question this article seems to be asking (or the chapter from the book rather) but doesn't quite answer, though, perhaps it does later on.
Crap. Gandalf just died and even though I know he comes back I'm totally sad. There's some powerful rhetoric for you. Elijah Wood does cry a lot in this movie, though.
"Microsoft Word"
I found this article helpful and insightful. I also pretty much said "duh" while I read it. Again, I grew up with computers so perhaps that changes my approach to them, but who are these people that think Microsoft Word is okay? Who are these teachers that don't know to tell their students not to use grammar check? Who are these people that think grammar check is a good idea? If they're English teachers then they need to be quickly eliminated without prejudice. If they aren't English teachers at all but people in the business world then they have nothing to do with our students until after school and that's a matter of politics, not writing. I mean, I suppose it is good to point out the obvious--one never knows what people are going to think is a good idea, Titanic is proof of that--but is this really new knowledge? I guess this is something I need to discuss further in class.
Boromir is about to go down now. This has got to be the most depressing post I've ever written. And yet I keep watching...there's rhetorical theory to be mined here.
"The Internet-Based Composition Classroom"
I was incredibly surprised by this article. Not only have I now read something for school that talks about MOO'MUD but they did so in way that I found amazingly helpful. This is perhaps the first article that discusses the uses of computers in a way that seems self-aware of it's limitations. They acknowledge what they hoped to gain in this article as well as what they wanted to avoid. There didn't seem to be the narrow sightedness that has challenged some of our previous articles in relation to the internet and I appreciated their dialogic look at their research. It is always pleasant to see a theorist using the theory she is promoting.
I appreciated what was said about the benefits of the computer classroom--I also appreciated the way the internet chats were used in conjunction with (a big factor) face to face interaction. This article actually made me rethink my own writing education. I spent many formative years on a MUD myself and now I have to ask, how much of my comfort with language was affected by that? Do computers shape writing ability or affect what is already there? I think that is, maybe, the next question in this discussion. But then, that is the question facing most of composition pedagogy.
And if I may digress for just a moment, I'm having a thought spawned by my emotional reaction to LOTR. Along with computers, how much of our students rhetorical ability, writing style, dialogism, etc, is shaped by the movies they watch? This is a topic we haven't read anything on yet, but it seems like an important issue. So many people in society today watch movies, a lot of movies, and doesn't the type of movie watched in some way shape how we view the world? How we construct meaning with language? There is an image/word dichotomy for you, not to mention music. I knew there was something worthwhile in my remarking on the movie.
Oh, Sam is running after Frodo. There's a homosocial versus homesexual discussion just waiting to happen.
"Undistributing Work Through Writing"
I enjoyed reading this article as I know next to nothing about technical writing. I found it very informative as well as indicative of exactly the issues Susan and Dr. J have been bringing up throughout the semester. I find I can't help but think back on the myriad of theorists (Bizzell among them) who have discussed the importance of recognizing "discourse communities" and being able to move back and forth. In that way, along with skills such as interpreting information, basic writing (what we now do in 101) and technical writing speak to the same skill set. I can't help but wonder if technical writing is best treated as "next step" in writing education. Should we teach directly to it, or should we begin with basic writing/thinking skills and then offer it after something like 102? But this, of course, brings us back to what are basic writing/thinking skills and that is, in some ways, the driving question of all the articles we've read.
I think technical writing is more challenging is evident through Slatterly's discussion of the number of texts writers must manage. This is a significantly different process than what we are currently teaching to in freshman composition. I believe, perhaps, that these skills can be shaped through exercises like the research paper, but doesn't approach what is needed as Slattery points out on page 317. Back to my earlier question then, how do we best prepare students to learn about this either in the classroom or the workplace? And what would the value be of making all student's take such a class, or at least all students in a business oriented profession? Would it be better to "prepare students for the workplace" in something like that?
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Agree to Disagree
"The Writer's Audience Is Always Fiction"
I had such high hopes for Ong's article. I find this piece a little too, well, literary--if I may say such a thing. I feel odd even saying it that way because I feel the divide between com and lit studies is more imagined than ordained, but none-the-less I had no idea what three-fourths of Ong's article had to do with the writer as imagining an audience. He made excellent points in the beginning and then went on to prove them; all of that is well and good, but the pages upon pages of Hemmingway were more than a little excessive. I acknowledge the necessity of the proof and that this section was not the thrust of the article, but I felt as if Ong got off topic. I didn't feel that his extreme deconstruction of Hemmingway's writing style supported his point of the writer's audience as fiction as effectively as he imagined it to. Obviously he fictionalized me and could not account for the reality. But that is why we read and respond.
And that is, perhaps, what I felt was missing from the discussion, sacrificed on the altar of literary reading techniques and scholarly proof. He states that each reader makes her own text, and even ostensibly attempts to prove it, but his article, purportedly about freshman writers, would have been significantly more helpful to freshman writers if he had kept it in the realm of the writer. Did everyone follow that sentence? Ong appears to engage here in what I would call academic self-pleasuring. He is so excited to discuss how all these texts have fictionalized writers that he fails to bring his argument full circle, and meet the promises of his first few pages. What does fictionalized audience mean for the teaching of freshman writers? Why is this worth knowing or discussing? What is your point in explicating this? The knowledge that all audiences are fictionalized is not enough, it needs to go further than that.
But I acknowledge the date of 1975 on this article and it seems this was new knowledge then. For that reason I am appreciative of my chance to fill in another gap in my knowledge of the scholarly debate.
"Collaborative Learning and the 'Conversations of Mankind'"
Fantastic. Stupendous. This is totally the stuff I want to write when I grow up.
I found Bruffee's article one of the most insightful and helpful articles we have read thus far. My reason for this is because it keeps all of its discussion in the realm of what it purports in the beginning--the teaching of comp--and it explicates his own thought process even as it challenges the readers. There is no hidden agenda here. Bruffee is not challenging the authority because he can or because he hopes to upset the equilibrium. Rather, operating from the standpoint of knowledge as "social artifact" (427) he works outward to discuss the implications of that for the composition classroom and how better to teach to writing.
And that is, I think, what is missing from much of the scholarship we have read, or at least, not discussed as much as I think would be helpful. How better to teach writing. This is the issue around which composition pedagogy revolves and yet, often we are derailed by talks of cognitive processes, scientific studies, etc. These are all important issues but instead of discussing them in relation to how to teach writing we discuss them as answers in and of themselves. I think part of the reason for that is our own acceptance of teacher (scholar) as authority.
"Our authority as teachers, accordingly, has had its source in our nearness to one of these secular versions of the mind of God" (431). I love that Bruffee takes this issue on. How often do we stifle conversation and, therefore, learning because we are uncomfortable with the possibility of losing control? Of being found out? Of being challenged? How often do we dismiss abnormal discourse specifically because it is abnormal? I feel these are all incredibly important issues to think on. My irritation with the blog article the second week of class stemmed specifically from this issue. Teachers in that article vaunted the computer over the personal because it "empowered" the student, but in fact it does the opposite. It distances the student from the teacher thereby reinforcing the power structure in place by creating a false sense of empowerment. The teacher can then control the student at no risk to him/herself that might be had in face-to-face interaction. Here, in an article written in 1985, Bruffee anticipates that.
I think, and I have no proof of this actually, that to be a good teacher you must be willing to look the fool. A willingness to learn is always precluded by a willingness to be challenged, or proven wrong. And as a teacher, shouldn't one of your goals be to learn from your students even as they teach you? Perhaps that's a naive standpoint, but I think I might stand by it for now. I am, though, willing to be proven wrong.
I think.
"Consensus and Difference in Collaborative Learning"
This is why you read all the articles before you discuss them. I have realized after reading Trimbur that I read into Bruffee's article all the meanings and answers that I thought should be there, instead of reading critically everything he was (might have been) saying. Trimbur brings up several incredibly important points in regards to consensus I believe, acknowledging the criticisms, Bruffee's own weak points, and offering a more sensical possibility, but I would like to discuss the possibility of more Bakhtin informing this conversation.
First of all, much of what both Bruffee and Trimbur describe is identified in Bakhtin as the critical interanimation of discourse. This idea that everyone speaks in different discourses to different people (discourse communities) and once one becomes aware of this the critical interanimation begins. This ties in directly with the idea of struggle, as brought up by Timbur which is illuminated better, I think, in Lu's "From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle." The idea here is that we all unconsciously move from discourse to discourse, but real control, knowledge, what-have-you, is achieved when conscious knowledge of that movement is gained. Furthermore, Bakhtin's ideas of the internally persuasive discourse (everything that is me) and the authoritative discourse (everything that is reified and defies challenge) would further illuminate this idea of consensus. What I mean by this is that everyone is in a constant struggle as their internally persuasive discourse seeks to assimilate the outside, which includes authoritative discourses. Thus, Bakhtin tells us, we are only half-ours and half-someone else's.
All of this goes to affect my reading of collaborative learning and the idea of knowledge as social. It was because I went ahead and read Bakhtin into Bruffee that I didn't see some of the gaps in his argument Trimbur discusses, but I felt as if Trimbur would be on more solid theoretical ground if he had pulled in significantly more Bakhtin. This ideas of struggle and critical interanimation of discourses very simply (as anything in Bakhtin is simple) answer this question of consensus and students agreeing/disagreeing all the while to shape their own internally persuasive discourse
I had such high hopes for Ong's article. I find this piece a little too, well, literary--if I may say such a thing. I feel odd even saying it that way because I feel the divide between com and lit studies is more imagined than ordained, but none-the-less I had no idea what three-fourths of Ong's article had to do with the writer as imagining an audience. He made excellent points in the beginning and then went on to prove them; all of that is well and good, but the pages upon pages of Hemmingway were more than a little excessive. I acknowledge the necessity of the proof and that this section was not the thrust of the article, but I felt as if Ong got off topic. I didn't feel that his extreme deconstruction of Hemmingway's writing style supported his point of the writer's audience as fiction as effectively as he imagined it to. Obviously he fictionalized me and could not account for the reality. But that is why we read and respond.
And that is, perhaps, what I felt was missing from the discussion, sacrificed on the altar of literary reading techniques and scholarly proof. He states that each reader makes her own text, and even ostensibly attempts to prove it, but his article, purportedly about freshman writers, would have been significantly more helpful to freshman writers if he had kept it in the realm of the writer. Did everyone follow that sentence? Ong appears to engage here in what I would call academic self-pleasuring. He is so excited to discuss how all these texts have fictionalized writers that he fails to bring his argument full circle, and meet the promises of his first few pages. What does fictionalized audience mean for the teaching of freshman writers? Why is this worth knowing or discussing? What is your point in explicating this? The knowledge that all audiences are fictionalized is not enough, it needs to go further than that.
But I acknowledge the date of 1975 on this article and it seems this was new knowledge then. For that reason I am appreciative of my chance to fill in another gap in my knowledge of the scholarly debate.
"Collaborative Learning and the 'Conversations of Mankind'"
Fantastic. Stupendous. This is totally the stuff I want to write when I grow up.
I found Bruffee's article one of the most insightful and helpful articles we have read thus far. My reason for this is because it keeps all of its discussion in the realm of what it purports in the beginning--the teaching of comp--and it explicates his own thought process even as it challenges the readers. There is no hidden agenda here. Bruffee is not challenging the authority because he can or because he hopes to upset the equilibrium. Rather, operating from the standpoint of knowledge as "social artifact" (427) he works outward to discuss the implications of that for the composition classroom and how better to teach to writing.
And that is, I think, what is missing from much of the scholarship we have read, or at least, not discussed as much as I think would be helpful. How better to teach writing. This is the issue around which composition pedagogy revolves and yet, often we are derailed by talks of cognitive processes, scientific studies, etc. These are all important issues but instead of discussing them in relation to how to teach writing we discuss them as answers in and of themselves. I think part of the reason for that is our own acceptance of teacher (scholar) as authority.
"Our authority as teachers, accordingly, has had its source in our nearness to one of these secular versions of the mind of God" (431). I love that Bruffee takes this issue on. How often do we stifle conversation and, therefore, learning because we are uncomfortable with the possibility of losing control? Of being found out? Of being challenged? How often do we dismiss abnormal discourse specifically because it is abnormal? I feel these are all incredibly important issues to think on. My irritation with the blog article the second week of class stemmed specifically from this issue. Teachers in that article vaunted the computer over the personal because it "empowered" the student, but in fact it does the opposite. It distances the student from the teacher thereby reinforcing the power structure in place by creating a false sense of empowerment. The teacher can then control the student at no risk to him/herself that might be had in face-to-face interaction. Here, in an article written in 1985, Bruffee anticipates that.
I think, and I have no proof of this actually, that to be a good teacher you must be willing to look the fool. A willingness to learn is always precluded by a willingness to be challenged, or proven wrong. And as a teacher, shouldn't one of your goals be to learn from your students even as they teach you? Perhaps that's a naive standpoint, but I think I might stand by it for now. I am, though, willing to be proven wrong.
I think.
"Consensus and Difference in Collaborative Learning"
This is why you read all the articles before you discuss them. I have realized after reading Trimbur that I read into Bruffee's article all the meanings and answers that I thought should be there, instead of reading critically everything he was (might have been) saying. Trimbur brings up several incredibly important points in regards to consensus I believe, acknowledging the criticisms, Bruffee's own weak points, and offering a more sensical possibility, but I would like to discuss the possibility of more Bakhtin informing this conversation.
First of all, much of what both Bruffee and Trimbur describe is identified in Bakhtin as the critical interanimation of discourse. This idea that everyone speaks in different discourses to different people (discourse communities) and once one becomes aware of this the critical interanimation begins. This ties in directly with the idea of struggle, as brought up by Timbur which is illuminated better, I think, in Lu's "From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle." The idea here is that we all unconsciously move from discourse to discourse, but real control, knowledge, what-have-you, is achieved when conscious knowledge of that movement is gained. Furthermore, Bakhtin's ideas of the internally persuasive discourse (everything that is me) and the authoritative discourse (everything that is reified and defies challenge) would further illuminate this idea of consensus. What I mean by this is that everyone is in a constant struggle as their internally persuasive discourse seeks to assimilate the outside, which includes authoritative discourses. Thus, Bakhtin tells us, we are only half-ours and half-someone else's.
All of this goes to affect my reading of collaborative learning and the idea of knowledge as social. It was because I went ahead and read Bakhtin into Bruffee that I didn't see some of the gaps in his argument Trimbur discusses, but I felt as if Trimbur would be on more solid theoretical ground if he had pulled in significantly more Bakhtin. This ideas of struggle and critical interanimation of discourses very simply (as anything in Bakhtin is simple) answer this question of consensus and students agreeing/disagreeing all the while to shape their own internally persuasive discourse
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