Don't Be A Judger

I enjoy Mike Rose. I know, I know, my enjoyment doesn't matter, but I think there is a difference between scholarship that inspires while it educates and scholarship that sucks your soul. One takes root in your conscious mind, interacting with previously held assumptions and challenges you to rethink your thoughts; the other bounces off your knowledge and, even when the reader carries the best intentions, is minimally assimilated and rarely challenged or challenges. In "Narrowing the Mind and Page" Rose examines many theories that have long since taken root in the average English teacher's mind and discusses why those theories should be reexamined. He does it with clarity, style, and, I would argue, passion. All of these things are necessary for good scholarship. All of this goes to the point of one sentence I found (and Rose himself points out) to be the thrust of the article: "Human cognition--even at its most stymied, bungled moments--is rich and varied. It is against this assumption that we should test our theories and research methods and classroom assessments" (379). This is a simply concept too often forgotten by teachers of all ages and disciplines. No matter the age, education, gender, or class no one intends to be "dumb." No one engages literature or writing with the intention of showing their lack of education, intelligence, or ability. Furthermore, Rose points out how these broad theories of the mind, while useful and enlightening, must be considered critically when put alongside writing processes. I am guilty of this; I forget sometimes to relate everything I hope to create in the classroom back to writing, hoping instead that if the student has an epiphany it will automatically translate to the page. I find a reconsideration of my theories (which include the belief that one should always be reconsidering their theory) necessary as Rose says, "A good deal of careful, basic descriptive and definitional work must be done before we embrace a theory, regardless of how compelling it is" (378). What can I say except "naturally"?

Shaughnessy offers a compelling theory about the four stages of teaching. I don't think this essay is exhaustive, nor do I think Shaughnessy intends it to be, but it does do what she says she hopes teachers will eventually do--urge us to "dive in." She once again restates the problems with judging students' intelligence and illustrates the dangers with assuming they both understand and are capable of receiving the knowledge imparted to them; what Freire would call the "banking" concept of education. She also illuminated for me the way that many teachers consider their students as uncivilized or primitive; how often teachers assume the role of the colonizers and become angry when the student doesn't wish to be colonized. That vocabulary offers an interesting look at the classroom dynamic, I think, and demands that teachers cease to see their students as someone to fight against and instead as people to work with. After all, the goal is that they learn, not that they become us, right? It is worth noting, however, that even as I say that I do hope somewhere deep down that they become a little bit like me--the world needs more liberals. But I will never EVER grade them for it.

Oh, "The Language of Exclusion" has my mind racing. Where to start? What to comment on? Well, there is the "myth of transience" which brings to mind No Child Left Behind. Part of me wishes to rant on that for a good thousand words or so, but I'm not sure anyone else is interested in reading it. There is also the incredible look at the way academics judge students, something that seems to me to be one of the hallmarks of the Mike Rose's work. I especially love what he says on page 559 in response to one teacher's complaint: "We in the academy like to talk this way. It is dramatic and urgent, and, given the current concerns about illiteracy in the United States, it is topical. The trouble is, it is wrong." This is followed up by what I would call the key point on page 561, "Tag some group illiterate, and you've gone beyond letters; you've judged their morals and their minds." This is heteroglossia at work my friends. Most importantly, however, may be the way Rose addresses the writing as science or art question, skill or talent. My favorite sentence of the whole article might be the one found on page 553, "The narrow focus was made even more narrow by a fetish for 'scientific' tabulation." I love his use of the word "fetish" there because in the ongoing debate of writing I think our need to quantify has become a fetish. We want numbers, we want math, we want logic. We want to be able to see how our students are unlearned and FIX it. We fetishize grammar because it's concrete, simple, and easy. If you don't have to consider your student's complexity then you don't have to consider yourself as teacher. We revel unwholesomely in our own intelligence. Rose calls all of this into question and he does it without attacking or belittling, but I don't feel his article is any less critical for that. While he makes comments like "such research and pedagogy was enacted to good purpose" (552) he is still saying that what was being done, and what is being done, is wrong. You can dress it up however you want--doesn't change what it is.

At times I marvel at my ability to anticipate the homework I will have to read in the future. Here in Bartholomae's essay "Inventing the University" we see, amongst other things, a discussion of audience. I felt incredibly vindicated to see that my squeamish response to "audience instruction" was also discussed here. For this reason I would like to focus on the audience portion of the essay in particular, even though Bartholomae himself goes on to use it as a vehicle to look at writing processes overall. I especially enjoy the quote on page 628 when he says, "One of the common assumptions of both composition research and composition teaching is that at some 'stage' in the process of composing an essay a writer's ideas or his motives must be tailored to the needs and expectations of his audience." But of course, someone might say, can it be any other way? What I like about the way Bartholomae discusses the writing process in this essay is that he examines and discusses the complexities at work. What is happening when a student writes a paper isn't a simply twelve-step process and thus to simply instruct the student to "consider audience" is akin to telling an eight year old calculus can be accomplished by simply filling in the formula. If you don't understand what you are doing, then you can't interpret what knowledge needs to be put where in the formula or how to manipulate the formula to acquire the desired result. And this, I suppose, is where my irritation with instruction regarding audience comes in--to instruct about audience is to assume that writing is a skill and, like grammar, such a mistake can be easily rectified. It limits the writing process and judges the student. In short, it accomplishes everything that Rose and Bartholomae (and everyone else) has told us NOT to do. I don't know yet what we should do in regards to audience, but I know what is being done is, more often than not, wrong.