I have taken a class with Dr. Dunbar-Odom, so I feel confident when I say that she is not one to ascribe to the prescriptive measures of a product pedagogy. She situates literacy in such a way that the power and the drive of the individual for their own literacy is key. What I find most intriguing about her writing is the acknowledgement that power is a part of literacy.
If power is a part of literacy, how can we not want our students to have the knowledge and the skills that are required to meet an accepted “standard” that is a part of that power structure. “Structures and strategies of power make learning in systematic ways and passing on that learning in systemic ways possible; structures and strategies of power not only make possible “our” standard of living, but also make any standard of living possible, such as in the ways we live work, and play” (16).
There may be many of us who aren’t entirely comfortable with the power structure or aren’t happy with the systems that support and perpetuate that power structure, but we still are part of the system. We know the proper rules of grammar, but can we accept if our student doesn’t use them. If writing is essentially dead as a form of communication, and with blogging, texting, emailing and other digital forms taking precedence we could easily make a make a case that it is, why do we want to hold on to its traditions so strongly? Is it just about the power it provides us as one of the elite who can effectively use language and literacy?
Writing on paper was a powerful tool for communicating ideas. Now, people don’t have to be able to write on paper to communicate their ideas. It’s acceptable in other mediums to use English in different ways. I already wrote a paper once on the ways that technology could change the paradigm of literacy instruction, so I felt like I couldn’t do it again. I didn’t want to finish this class without addressing it in some way, so I’ve sort of used Dr. DDO to do it.
There is resistance to change, but that is to be expected. What also is to be expected is that change will come regardless of whether or not one is prepared for change. Reading and writing teachers should be taking the lead and embracing the change that new literacies offer. New technologies and new literacies offer the perfect opportunity for the paradigm shift away from a narrow view of literacy to a more embracing and open definition.
Reader Response #4
I will admit that I’ve been a little bit cast adrift by the readings for the last two weeks. I can appreciate the points that were made, and I can see where they have value, but I don’t connect with them easily. I just didn’t feel that there was a connection with my constructivist and pragmatic approach to teaching and the philosophies that are so different from my own. This week, one statement by Guerra re-sparked my enthusiasm and gave me a new way of understanding the dissonance between my understanding of these writings and what I was seeing as everyone else’s understanding.
“Chief among the pedagogical quandaries is critical literacy’s tendency to situate the teacher as hero, as the only individual in the classroom who has achieved critical consciousness and whose job it now is to enlighten his or her students so that they can be transformed and emancipated” (1646).
The conflict between the ideology of writing instruction as being able to free students to work within and find value for their own literacies, and the concept that an instructor (often with vastly different experiences and certainly with different educational attainment) being the person who has to ‘reveal’ that these literacies have value.
I realize that in some ways I am merely being obtuse, but I have often had the feeling that those who write, using only the highest level of academic composition and vocabulary that so many could hardly follow, about the valuing of other literacies have effectively disproved their own point. This is where my conflict about the language of power arises. If all literacies are truly to have recognized value, couldn’t someone write about it a much plainer tone? Isn’t there a conflict there?
Guerra seems to share some part of my conflict, and I’ve found, in his essay, a way to understand that those who advocate a critical pedagogy above all else. I felt that by not following a critical pedagogy, I was somehow not committed to empowering my students as writers. That wasn’t the case though; I just couldn’t find a way to connect my own pragmatism with a more expressivist or process pedagogy.
Dr. Carter addresses this conflict and her own concerns about it too. “Maybe indoctrination is the most likely outcome of critical pedagogy when the instructor is no longer concerned about (or aware of) her own power to indoctrinate (or “force-feed ‘a liberal ideology’” (51).
There’s a danger in feeling that we can empower students in their writing. If we take ourselves too seriously in this role, instructors can become the new agents that dictate what has value. Students already value the literacies that they possess; they need us to find ways to apply this in wider instances and to see that the academic literacy we are asking them to master has its own place too. We cater to this form of literacy, so how can we ask our students to do anything different?
Reader Response #3
It took me a while before I realized why we were asked to read two articles about textbooks. About halfway through the essay by Carr, et al., I suddenly realized, “hey, this is a textbook.” That was the moment I understood. The selection of a textbook can set the tone for a class, and depending on the book that is being considered or the essays/stories that are included in that book, the teacher sets the tone for the discourse of the class.
It took just a quick review of the literacy narratives from Week 5 to see the impact that books can have on a person. Jennifer Collar said she still remembered “quite well,” Grover Goes to School. Gay Kiser remembered And to Think that I Saw It on Mulberry Street. For Greg it was Island of the Blue Dolphins, for Priscilla Rosie, the Rockhound, though I didn’t spell it out, I think for me it was Misty of Chincoteague, and the rest of Marguerite Henry’s books. Though the connection to these books were personal, it’s clear that books make a significant impact. Most of us could remember the names of books from early childhood, which for me was a fair while ago.
“Virtually every literate person encounters these books, yet their significance as cultural texts is often ignored or devalued” (Carr, et. al., p.109). There is nothing that says that what we encounter in a textbook cannot have as powerful affect on us as students as the books we read as children had on us as we were growing up. Shouldn’t we as instructors, work to find textbooks that have this kind of effect?
The controversy last year over whether or not the Texas School Board would approve a social science curriculum that indicated that the founding fathers never intended a separation of church and state and that stresses the superiority of American capitalism, garnered national attention. The way that Texas goes, so do the textbooks that are offered throughout the country goes. Those who disagreed with the Texas School Board perspectives on history were very concerned about the possibility of the change because it could change textbooks everywhere. Textbooks influence the way that students learn, so when we, as teachers, are looking at textbooks, we must take into account the perspectives the books have on a subject.
Bloom talks about the fact that textbooks, in the form of anthologies, are re-worked and re-examined periodically to have a reason to sell new editions, but that student readers aren’t consulted on these changes. Teachers who do use the book or who will use the book are consulted and much of the text that is used in each edition remains the same. She says that the essays are meant for intellectual stimulation, “though their subjects, organizational patterns, tone, and perspectives are nevertheless expected to provide students models of thinking and writing” (p. 960).
As a writing instructor, the books and writings that we show our students as examples will dictate the kind of writing that they believe we like and that they believe we expect, so the materials we choose can affect students in much deeper ways than I had previously perceived.
Carr, Jean F., et.al. from “Archives of Instruction: Nineteenth-century Rhetorics, Readers, and Composition Books in the United States.” In The Norton Book of Composition Studies, edited by Susan Miller, 108-118. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009.
Bloom, Lynn. “The Essay Canon.” In The Norton Book of Composition Studies, edited by Susan
Miller, 945-972. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009.
Presentation #2
On the Local
Or, you can view the video directly at YouTube.
Reader Response #2
I am still considering the two differing outlooks or attitudes toward writing and this time, I think I come down on the freer and more open process side of the pedagogy. As we have progressed through our readings, a new dichotomy has appeared and that is the difference between standard academic writing and, I guess, everything else. It’s a different two-sided issue in writing instruction, but I see where it connects in the process and product debate too.
If you have those who are writing for love and expressing freely their ideas and concepts then the are likely to become supporters of the system that rewards them - supporters of academic writing. If they are more likely to associate writing with a prescriptive process that produces an “approved product,” they are most likely to have been faced with product pedagogy and decided – well it will at least get me where I need to go.
Douglas’ examination of the history of composition shows that the university was not meant to be a democratizing institution–not at first. It was meant to be a training ground for the best and brightest. Mostly it was for the social and economic elite, but there were rare openings for those who were able to “rise above their station.” This follows the ideas from Ritter in the historical context of “basic writers.” Students are relegated to the status of “basic writers” by colleges throughout the country based on the testing standards of decided at that institution. But why?
By classifying some students as 'basic writers," institutions are just perpetuating a classification that de-values some literacies and elevates others. Since, by and large, the institutions are setting the standard, how can we blame the student for not being prepared for whatever goal is set?
Ritter focuses on the historical context of the label of “basic writing.” The purpose that he finds for this is, “to delineate acceptable literacy practices and to sift out and re-acculturate students who were determined to be out of line with the local standards for first-year intellectual work.” The local standards are used to define "acceptable" literacy practices, but if the students have sufficient facility with language, as they might, how can they be deemed unacceptable? What they are missing is defined locally, so it is academia that sets the standards for literacy. For society in general, they could have sufficient literacy for their lives, but lack literacy for the academic world.
Sara Edgell asked in last week’s discussion, “what is wrong with having standards and requirements?” She received a slew of responses, most rather passionate and widely varied. Sandra Masterson advocated for supporting a “citizen’s” view of offering all students opportunities. Holly McGowan and John Lewis advocated improving basic writing instruction. I don’t think the question should necessarily be what is wrong with having standards–nothing is. The questions need to be why do we have the standards that we do? Who are they favoring? And Why?
I spent a lot of time making notes and re-reading Brandt’s chapter, “Writing for Work.” Since I write for a living, I was able to identify with a lot that she said. I thought about the different kinds of writing that I do and why each situation favors a different kind of writing. News releases and brochure text, Internet, social media, advertising, email and other situations call for different kinds of literacy and facility with language, and each has a “standard” that is set by the media’s consumers and users. Is it because academics are both the users and consumers of academic writing that we value it so far above all other forms? I don’t write the way that I write in my courses in any of the other settings that I use. I do have to be grammatically correct (though web is more fluid there) and as precise as possible, but brevity is valued much more highly in other kinds of writing than it is in the academic world. I guess I am forced to look at the same question that I looked at in my presentation last week. How much are we part of the problem with literacy today?
PRESENTATION # 1
Well, my video link failed, but I don't blame Blogger, I blame YouTube and Powerpoint for Macs.
You could see the first slide, but that was it, and it really wasn't THAT interesting to spark discussion about sponsorship and basic writers. I've posted the Slideshow to my GoogleDocs.
I am not giving up on my video yet, so keep checking in. (Actually, it won't be that exciting, but it is frustrating that I've done everything that I think I have to do and it still won't work.)
Reader Response #1 - A Dichotomy in Writing Instruction
I’m in my final class of my 18 graduate hours in English. All but one of my courses has focused on composition and the teaching of writing, though this is the first that actually had the word teaching in the title. What I have seen in my months of classes has shown me that there is a dichotomy in how the instruction of writing is seen or perceived.
On one side there is the teaching of the process to produce writing; in comparison with process pedagogy, it would be more of a product pedagogy. On the other side there is the concept of writing as an art, requiring invention and demanding a true love of the art form. I realize that I am over-generalizing these two sides, but this week’s readings showcased the differences in these two yet again, and it, along with my classmates’ discussion has brought me to this question of whether or not we have to choose between the product and the process.
Shaughnessy’s introduction to “Errors and Expectations,” looks at the prevailing paradigm in writing instruction as a product paradigm. The understanding, given this paradigm, is that students should be taught correct grammar, proper style, and acceptable organization to produce a work that is free of errors. The reasons for the errors are as varied as the students themselves, but it is the errors that are often keeping students from progressing. Why then do many teachers feel that teaching about writing as a recipe of items (grammar, mechanics, style, organization, and focus) that students can blend to create an essay is a bad thing?
Shaughnessy herself seems to dislike the idea that errors are the lens through which basic writers are viewed, but it seems as if she plans to devote an entire book to examining just that–dichotomy. She says her focus on "errors" is based on the fact that “teachers' preconceptions about errors are frequently at the center of their misconceptions about BW students.”
In the Norton article, Mike Rose talks about the “mechanistic-medical model” for writing instruction. (A surprising phrasing for me considering his strong defense of technical or mechanical skills in Why School.) Much of what he mentions as being prescriptive in the means for writing assessment are the same foundation skills that are part of a ‘product’ pedagogy. He resists writing being called a skill, but he talks about all the barriers that remediation puts in the way of students who are still progressing as writers well into their college years. Some have not yet mastered the skill, while others have met the standards we use for ‘academic compositions’ and are allowed to move on.
In Why School, Rose talks about the dichotomy of standards, in that many parents and teachers call for strict standards that can “facilitate learning and show students that their teachers believe in their ability to meet academic expectation ” (p. 102); yet, he calls some teachers who adhere too strictly to standards “gatekeepers” as they take as their charge a role that blocks many from attaining higher education.
If errors, as Shaughnessy states, are barriers to beginning writers, why does Rose’s defense of writing instruction have such a harsh view of writing as a skill? Why wouldn’t everyoneIn “The Language of Exclusion,” Rose brings forth an argument or idea that I had not yet considered. He is opposed to labeling writing a skill, and his opposition has a basis I had not considered. If there is an expectation that writing is a skill, and that “its fundamental development is over, completed via a series of elementary and secondary school courses and perhaps one or two college courses,” could part of the reason that there are two camps be that those who teach writing are so set against seeing writing as a skill because others would judge it to be not worth pursuing past freshman year?
In the end, I am not sure what my question is or will be, but I think I will examine this art versus skill approach and perhaps delve into whether or not it is about the student or if it is really about us, the teacher.
