The System Is Down

I would like to begin first with "Distributed Cognition At Work." What interests me, specifically, comes at the end of the chapter on page 149: "Thus, patients in hospitals as their name implies are acted on; so too are clients in social work agencies, as are applicants who wish to be hired by personnel officers in most institutions. Students at university are like patients and clients in this respect. The focus of the institution, and of those representing the institution, is to know and inspect them." This philosophy of teaching is described and named by Paulo Freire as the "banking-concept" of education. The teacher possesses knowledge and so, opens up the student's head and deposits it, much like one would deposit money at a bank.

I don't know what the school-to-work transition is like for other majors. As an English major I had very little practical knowledge when beginning my first "real" job. Most all of my other friends were computer-science majors. If they found themselves relearning in the workplace I never heard about it. What I do know, is that while my abilities to analyze a text weren't called upon, my abilities to pick up knowledge quickly, assess what was needed of me and follow directions were. The only thing I took with me from college that actually impressed people were my speed at typing (and other computer skills) and comprehension capabilities. As an English teacher I don't see my Composition 101 or 102 classes as helping students who will find jobs in the financial sector in their job specifically.

I am tired and this is not as concise as I hoped to make it. My point is simply thus: it is important to assess what students need to learn and teach it to them. It is important for education to remain valid and current. I do not think viewing my students as patients or clients will, in any way, help those two goals. I'm basically against objectification no matter the form it takes.

I want to discuss the other three articles in relation to each other. The reason for this is that Bizzell speaks back directly to Flowers and Hayes and Ong offers some very helpful insights that better allowed me to understand Bizzell.

I was disappointed by Flower and Hayes article. After all the reading that has referenced it I don’t know exactly what I expected, but it wasn’t what was actually there. I think Bizzell actually nailed it when she said that “The Flower-Hayes model consistently presents a description of how the writing process goes on as if it were capable of answering questions about why the writer makes certain choices in certain situations” (395). Flower and Hayes attempt to acknowledge this when they say on page 285, “However, a theory of composing that only recognized embedding wouldn’t describe the real complexity of writing. It wouldn’t explain why writers choose to invoke the processes they do or how they know when they’ve done enough...The third point of the theory is an attempt to answer this question.” And so they go on to discuss “goal-setting.” I still agree with Bizzell, however. In the end she said my thoughts far more eloquently than I could. “What’s missing here is the connection to social context afforded by recognition of the dialectical relationship between thought and language” (395).

Flower and Hayes use a lot of qualifying language: good writers vs. poor writers. This bothered me as I read because I’m hesitant to classify learning writers that way. At the same time there is a definite ease with which some people writer--language comes easier to some than others. This is where Ong comes in. “The term ‘illiterate’ itself suggests that persons belonging to the class it designates are deviants, defined by something they lack, namely literacy” (19). It might seem odd to place that quote alongside this discussion of writing as skilled or unskilled, but I do so because it brings us back around to the same argument/discussion the class has been circling since the beginning of the semester: writing as art vs. science, learned vs. inherent, teachable vs. unteachable.

Ong seems to me to strike on something closer to what I imagined and intuited the answer to be. “Technologies [writing] are not mere exterior aids but also interior transformations of consciousness, and never more than when they affect the word” (23). Language is inherent, but writing is a skill. This makes it an activity between an art and science; something that can be taught but also something affected by natural talent. Just like music. Just like sports. The difference between writing, though, is that everyone (supposedly) is supposed to be able to achieve it and perform at an outstanding level. You aren’t just untalented or unathletetic if you can’t write, you’re dumb. And so the stakes are raised and we find ourselves in the current predicament. As Ong states, “Human knowledge demands both proximity and distance, and these two are related to one another dialectically. Proximity perceptions feed distancing analyses, and vice versa, creating a more manageable intimacy” (31). I feel my job as a teacher, therefore, is not to treat my student like a patient or client, but to do whatever I can to give them the skills to manage the chaos that comes with proximity, and the chance to achieve the distance to make sense of it all. Hence thinking about their thinking, recursiveness, reflexivity, and all the other terms I bandy about. It’s not about making them robots. It’s about realizing they’re people.