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But you should.

Access and Excess In Moran

"If as writing teachers we believe that writers are in any sense advantaged by technology, then access is the issue that drives all other before it." (GT 220)

Duh.

It's hard enough to get a person to open up and write on paper; let's worry about the inequity that some people are economically privileged and have ThinkPads while others are stuck with a pen and paper. Yes, it matters. No, it's not going to be solved without a drastic social change. I think it'd be great if everyone had a laptop, but I bet that's not the most pressing concern for many learners (maybe things like fair housing, biased police, health concerns or FOOD AND WATER are a bit higher on the priority list). You can't eat a computer; nobody writes with a bullet. Here's a solution, let's get corporations to sponsor classes. I'm sure they'd only request a little editorial control and propagandic space.

i feel like a speed bump on the information superhighway

So who's job is it to teach web design, multi-media literacy, and the odd blend of visual rhetoric and critical "reading" skills required by Al Gore's invention? Perhaps more pointedly, exactly how analogous are writing a website and writing an essay, or story, or other "composition?" The counterpointed viewpoints shown by Faigley and Neuwirth highlight the tension between "excluding" non-lingual components from composition courses and the overload/redundancy issues of attempting to be instructionally comprehensive.

Here's the overlooked problem in both views: when we talk about teaching writing, even Basic Writing, we aren't usually referring to the elementary skill set made up of penmanship, letter/word formation and recognition, and how to hold a pen or sharpen a pencil. But these are the equivalents of web-surfing, googling, and embedding web objects. 'How you use the tools' is different from 'making things with the tools.' Faigley explains-"What concerns me most in the gradual but evident movement of basic composition courses toward multimedia production is that the tools are becoming so easy to use that we'll simply teach students to do what the tools allow. The rhetorical dimension...is being lost in the interface." Now, obviously, I don't feel like multimedia production is as simple as physically writing a sentence, but that's because I didn't grow up "reading" the IntarWeb. What we need to give students is the ability to find their voice; what medium they choose to use is their decision.

Where does it stop? There are elements of visual rhetoric in my tattoos. Do we need to start handing out ink, autoclaves, and sterilized ultrasonic needle machines in writing class too?

The Magic Box

Ah, and now we hit it. The "Distance Learning Bogeyman" of Higher Education. He's hiding in your computer, behind your blogging, reaching out from the darkness of ANGEL to tear apart writer's voices and stifle those without the capital to provide themselves the Magic Keys. And those keys have a name, a word of privilege, a sigil of power: Access. In the current push for online courseware and the electromancy pioneered by the University of (the Order of the) Phoenix, can anyone not recognize soulless appetite of the great god Capital? On page 813, Anson writes "[via] technology supported shifts in instructional delivery, composition may be further subordinated to the interests of powerful subject oriented disciplines where the conception of expertise creates rather different pattern of hiring and material support." (Italics mine)
I know that the Marxist lens seems irritating to some, but just look at what drives the shift toward technological teaching. Fiscal constraint. Conditions of production. Training good drones for post-education jobs. Profit. And now look at what is lost. The student and the teacher are dehumanized into digital signals that are exchanged and categorized, their unique personhood is, more than subordinated, subjugated to the external power that needs it base to continue playing its role, maintaining the drones of the factory, the bureaucratic hydra, and the continuance of its imposed order in perpetuity.

Are we using the technology or is it using us?

By any other Name (Yes, I'm a cliche dork)

Ah, Rose and remediation. While the title of this post is a (not very) witty pun on the author's surname, it does relate to his subject matter as well. Much like our class discussion regarding medical metaphors in educational settings (e.g. diagnostic essays), the power of naming people, groups, and patterns of behavior is one of those common sense ideological enforcements that slips by unnoticed; it has a disturbing amount of impact on both the object of the label and the labeler (libeler?). "Tag some group illiterate, and you've gone beyond letters; you've judged their moral and their minds." (VV 561) Sticks and stones, no? It just fits with so many other examples of hidden connotative meaning we've already run up against like so-called "bad grammar" especially when that term is applied to something that might be better understood as differing dialect or rhetorical uses for ones writing based on audience. Standard Written English is not the only forum which people write in. Perhaps recognition of this oft overlooked detailed will make it easier to empower, rather than belittle, basic writers.

I just realized that while I did read the "Narrowing the Mind" Rose piece, the above post is on the second (read "wrong") one -- The Language of Exclusion.

CramminItAllTogether

I was unsure if we were pushing forward a week, and it was spring break (pronounced "Bender"). Therefore I've read some of the technology readings, and the basic writing section as well. I'll be pumping out multiple posts, at speed, now. Bear with me if it seems frenzied (It is).

I got into Sommer's article on revision strategies because it paralleled amazingly well with the problem my friend Bob is going through in composing music with his band. His guitarist and drummer are what he calls "riff writers." Bob, on the other hand has been playing bass for 17 years, and composes entire arrangements with the aid of his computer and knowledge of musical theory. I mentioned how Sommer's case studies discovered that "They [inexperienced writers] perceive words as the unit of written discourse," to him and he said that I could substitute "riffs" for "words" and see the same problem in musical composing. (VV 46) A pretty, polished song with technical excellence and variety can still be ineffective. Much like an experienced writer, he transcribes the first run, then finds out where it's going and reinforces the living growth of the song. Detailed editing comes at the end.

Critical Mass

Berthoff's critique of cognitive psychology based development models for writing capability and teaching is thoroughgoing and beautiful. Two points that seem to exemplify the critical attitude stood out to me.
The first is that we must think and question for ourselves. On page 331 in Crosstalk, she points out that “all method, including scientific method, entails interpretation...there are no raw data.” We live in a world where such cliches as “the numbers speak for themselves” and “you can't argue with facts” are considered as common sense. Their implicit authority is overlooked. The truth is, you should argue with facts and only people speak for themselves (and often they simply repeat others words, at that). By blindly accepting the false assumption that scientific evidence is unbiased and objective, we become trapped in a mechanistic worldview that values quantification and classification above all. The inherent problem in this view is that counting and labelling cannot lead to progress, change, or the solving of problems.
The other point is that there is no substitute training of the reflective mind. If we, as writer/teacher/thinkers cannot are unaware of our own conscious actions while doing X, then we mustn't assume that a lack of performance is the same as a lack of ability in doing X, whether that is writing a position paper or making a spicy lamb stew. Berthoff indicates this by her phrase, borrowed from Richards, of “'assisted invitations' to look carefully at what they are doing – observing a weed or drawing up a shopping list – in order to discover how to do it.” [italics hers] Simply put, we are good at things we need to be good at and new things are difficult because we haven't unconsciously practiced them.

And on to Myers. Be warned, after I drop the quote from page 445, you're all going to get a glimpse into the inside of my head. It does not follow a logical, or even chrono-logical order. It is a web of interconnected connotaive hooks. So, from the section titled Leonard and Reality:

“People have no simple unmediated perception of reality; the facts we are likely to take as reality are most likely parts of another ideological structure.”
Consensual Reality. I played that game, it was called Mage: the Ascension. The universe was made of what everybody in it thought it was. Damn Technocracy locked it all down. Leonard? Like Leonard nimoy? Mr. Spock, that's fits with the whole 'logic as king' thing. Still an ideology. Some people's real world is Star Trek. Mine is school and whiskey and friends and (lack of) women. Work pays bills, nothing more. Lying to myself again. The real world is all my life, and theirs. Perception, too, eh? Isn't what I see determined by where I look, what I look for? I only write for what I want audiences to see.

Hilldog

In one of her recent "down but not quite out yet" speeches, Senator Clinton used a line that poked me. She claims that she wants to revamp the education system into one where "Teachers can teach, not just test."

Just six little words.

I like 'em.

Here's hoping.

Petrie Dishes and Social Constructs

Ok. Any of you who know me, even marginally, know that I actually like Cultural Studies. It's an especially interesting discourse into which you can toss different theoretical systems and, well, play. So I approached the George and Trimbur article with a pretty open mind. I was just curious as to see how Cultural Studies could have it's application to composition teaching. After wading through 7 pages of familiar and unfamiliar names, dates and titles I got to the section on “Connections to Composition.”
I continued to wade.
And wade.
And wade.
Through such well argued positions as Berlin's “particularly rich discussion of. . . reading of cultural texts,” and Faigley's evaluation of “postmodernism not just as a theoretical problem but as a sensibility that increasingly pervades contemporary social life.” (GT 80-81) This is rigorous, challenging, possibly even brilliant stuff. There are worthwhile insights that should be considered and kept in mind, especially when you do cultural inquiry.
I was only left with one question. How is this composition?

Relatedly, I bounced up and down on the theoretical diving board and, somewhat more cynically, jackknifed into “Cognition, Convention, and Certainty” by Patricia Bizzel.
It was a belly flop on the order of Free Willy. Bizzel's critique of the Hayes and Flower article I was previously so enchanted with was reminiscent of Simon from American Idol, just more meticulous. However, I felt like a Beatles fan at an Oasis concert when she started to propose her own recommendations regarding “the fact that all discourse communities constitute and interpret experience.” (VV 401) Much like Robin felt about the stage process model in Hayes and Flower, I feel here. Bizzel is explicating audience rather well, but she's not really adding much by interchanging the term with discourse communities. She hasn't really added anything beyond a well described process pedagogy when she concludes that “the main casualty of our theoretical debate can be the debilitating individualism which adds so much to classroom strain.” (VV 409) A well-focused approach involving voice, purpose, and audience will serve this end just as well.

Trimbur. Consensus. Dissensus. With all his focus on “exploring the differential access to knowledge and the relations of power and status that structure this writing situation” (VV 471) as well as references to Habermass, Benjamin and Rorty that there wasn't so much as a nod to bio-power or Foucault. As it stands I must reiterate the above – it's great to inform the students of the social influence and ideological interpellations and limitations they live in the middle of, but emphasis based on their own voice and experience still seems to be the most realistic method for the actual learning as opposed to indoctrination in the classroom.

Tobin or Not Tobin, that is the Question

“...by not emphasizing the teaching of grammar, usage, audience analysis, and proofreading, college composition teachers were accused of failing students who needed to learn the conventions of academic discourse.” (Tobin in Tate, et al 11) This point seems like much of the highly contentious, emotionally charged discussion that's gone on in our class lately. But by the end of his essay, Tobin points out that, while he centers on Process Pedagogy, he has “minilessons” on ethos, citation format, and even the 5 paragraph essay. How can he be an adherent of Process and do this? He can because he can. Just because he likes one method doesn't mean that it must be the ONLY thing he teaches. By recognizing the usefulness for his students of other tidbits, details, and morsels he can make use of them and keep his classes well-rounded. Going to extreme positions doesn't usually work, whether it's in politics, arguments or classrooms.

Magic, Dragons, and Comp Theory

No, wait for it, stay with me. In Dungeons and Dragons there is a class of wizard known as an "invoker." So when I saw that "Writers conjure their vision [for the audience's role]...by using all the resources of language available to them to establish a broad, and ideally coherent, range of cues for the reader," (Ede and Lunsford in VV 90) I immediately imagined some jehovian-bearded scribe locked away in his basalt monolith, scratching spells into a moldy tome, envision the entities he would bind to his will with the mystic symbols thus inscribed.

The analogy isn't too far off really. That "range of cues" is like the summoning circle that you fit your audience into. Since you can't know exactly what will speak to exactly that audience, you imagine them as best you can and give them hints to make the reader match the writing. And anyone who hasn't felt the magic in a well written piece is a robot, lobotomized or dead.

Thinking Writing or Brain to Paper and back (Alot)

Flower and Hayes make a distinction in their piece on Cognitive Process that had never occurred to me, namely that what many of us call the writing process is really the stage process of the product completion. Aside from the somatic component of hitting a key or inscribing with a pen, the process is mentally interior (Moffet's Inner Speech, anyone?). By somewhat minutely describing the moment to moment activity of a writer in the midst of process they are using protocol analysis to do something that could really offend the intuitive, romantic writer.

They're using science, they're demystifying the process. They're aiming to destroy the art and replace it with a quantifiable account of the recursive, near-simultaneous acts a person goes through during the act of composing. If this positivist, experimental methodology is successful it could destroy the elitism of "talented writers." If they are able to isolate which manner of goal setting, monitoring and revision are most effective, it's feasible that anyone could become an effective writer.

Damn scientists.

Grammar is not your Mom's mom.

It's funny. We read this Hartwell piece last semester in ENG470, and it wasn't exactly easy to keep track of. Grammar 1, grammar 4, grammar 3b sub theta, I actually found myself wishing for a Venn Diagram. Argh! (and yes, I know that 'argh' good grammar not is.} But now that I'm revisiting it, it was for more enjoyable as well as grabbable. and really, it just reinforced what i was convinced of the first time. Diagramming sentence and knowing about gerunds may be fun and even useful, but it doesn't contribute to making you a good writer. Writing does. Reading does. Caring about what you are writing about does. Heck, if you want to write a long explication of participles, dangling and not (you wierdo!), then the writing will improve your writing.
I like the pseudomagical metaphors used in the grammarians and non-grammarians, or incantation users and alchemists, but I believe I have a similar yet better metaphor for what the so called "alchemical" method is doing. Alchemy was more pseudoscience and each alchemist hid his secrets from the others, but I think of Hartwell more like I think of the way my roommate cooks. He (my roommate) reads about cooking. He watches other people cook. He tries all sorts of different foods and tries to figure out what's in them. But when he actually makes dinner, he never follows a codified recipe. 9 times out of ten, it's mmmmmmmmdelicious. Sometimes it's a dismal failure. But it gets better every time.

King of the Brittons, or Why I Loved that Man

I gotta tell ya, I loved Britton. The concept of a continuum between transactional and poetic discourses with expressive discourse a shady fluid center is beautiful. Just these three little (humongous) categories cover what we do in all our communications. The description of poetic discourse really nails the dichotomy: “And poetic discourse is the form that most fully meets the demands associated with the role of the spectator, demands that are met, we suggested, by MAKING SOMETHING with language rather than doing something with it.” (VV 158) With expressive capability and purpose as the wellspring from which both transactional and poetic discourse are birthed, Britton makes the assertion that expressive writing is a way in which we both wish for a state affairs and advertise or relationship to that state of affairs.

This isn't dead, cold, dessicated production of literary study objects. It's the making of worlds! Everyone needs to find their place in the world, continually. With this need as a motivator, writing becomes one of the best ways to make the world and me fit. All the other uses to which writing can be put will come about when they are desired as the best method to getting what we want, whether that is the aesthetic chills brought on by powerful fiction or a clearly explained set of instruction for bomb defusing.

One last thing about Britton's example of Clare. The little chart on page 167 about story length, age and T-unit length is powerful evidence for the influence of reading on writing, not just in subject matter or “feel,” but in level of sophistication as well. It's good to see it confirmed in someone else, I was starting to worry that I was the only one prone to “write snooty” after reading a bunch of theory.

Whose world is it anyway?

One of my co-workers sometimes leaves his satellite radio at work, and when he does I get to listen to CNN or BBC news in the morning. I felt like having propaganda blatantly thrown at me this morning, so I clicked over to CNN and this is what I heard:

“Well, Alison, coming up we have the story of how a Cincinnati school has fired its entire teaching staff and principals, as well as trashing its curriculum.”

Of course, my interest was peaked (piqued? I'm never sure on this on). Predictably, this abrupt and total sidelining of an educational center was due to the lack of funding they were receiving after repeatedly not raising the students evaluative test scores a la “No Child Left Behind.” Instead, it seems, every child was getting left behind the 8-ball. The drastic revamping is certain to give the stable learning environment that will grant confidence to underperforming students. Please forgive me, my ability to write sarcastically is still in its infancy.

“That's disturbing, yes indeed,” I can hear you saying at your screen, “But what in Dante's Frozen Hell does it have to do with the readings?” I'll tell you now. In his discussion of the four camps in composition related pedagogical theories, James A. Berlin points out that “We are teaching a way of experiencing the world, a way of ordering and making sense of it.” (268) Coupled with the current prolific dominance of the Current-Traditional camp and its technical/scientific emphasis on procedure and quantification you can see that the failure in my CNN example may be with the standards and the reward/punishment method of their enforcement. Perhaps the problem lies in the theory that motivates No Child Left behind and the (tacitly wrong-headed) definitions of successful learning it creates.

What impressed me most about Kinneavy's “Basic Aims of Discourse” was its scope in such a short piece. While the idea of an exhaustive survey is laughable, this was comprehensive. Meaning that his use of the charts made the huge listing of names and descriptors comprehensible to me. Call me a follower, but I loved the 'built from existing speech' classification by Bertrand Russel. Oftentimes I found the more detailed version to seem overly detailed. It just seemed that bothering to subdivide the category of Reference (Russell's Informative) into Informative, Scientific and Exploratory didn't really add anything. (132)

Help me my Fellows

So this blog is ostensibly for responses to the reading in my Compositional Theory Grad course.However, I want to make "normal" or "personal" blog as well. Do you all want to wade through my other offal as you review my posts for class? or should I set up a second blog for unclass things?

The High Holy Forker