Focusing

I think I loathe being one of the last in the group to post (even though it's only Sunday) because I read everyone's posts and then want to respond to so many different topics. I will try to focus.

When I read Gilles, I wasn't as offended by his ideas as Faith apparently was. Yes, he was sometimes vague and yes, some of his points were only shakily supported at best (I'm still having trouble figuring out how, precisely, an ideal composition program " 'serves' its students, the faculty throughout campus, the institution itself, and the larger democratic society" (9)). However, I find many of his points about the goals of composition courses to be fairly commonsensical and practical, such as his assertion that comp courses "should provide students with the opportunity to practice the craft of writing" (5), for only with "regular, informal practice" will they begin to develop smoothness and "flow" in their writing. I think Gilles is saying that we don't have to teach comp courses as service courses in the sense that we are to provide a fix-it service for students, telling them what's wrong about their writing and then sending them on their way; rather, we can teach comp courses as service classes in the sense that we provide them with opportunities to practice and learn things that will help them develop as writers and thinkers, whether those "things" are conventions, drafting techniques, revision strategies, idea formulation activities, etc. I certainly don't think that providing a valuable educational service to students means you have to revert back to the banking concept of education, as Faith fears.

I was actually more irritated by Geoffrey Chase's "Letter to New Composition Teachers" than by Gilles' article. In his letter, seemingly written to encourage new composition teachers to "think beyond the borders of their classes" (12) and recognize that the goal of "helping students become better writers" is "too broad and too vague" (13). Well, Chase's ideas struck me as vague and unsupported;he mentioned ideas like the need to understand curriculum relationships, how teachers must become part of two "communities" (scholars and teachers), and how "developing a more connected, coherent vision" of his teaching contributed to the "educational enterprise" (13). But he doesn't give any specifics about these ideas. He mentions how engineering students wrote better when writing engineering-related assignments and that the same idea should be applied in comp classes. Well, how? They're in English class writing English-related assignments. He just keeps mentioning expectations, goals, answers, and relationships without ever clearly iterating the terms of those terms. I wasn't inspired.

And finally: Amy, I could write for days in response to your question about how we all view high school English courses, but for now, here's what I know:

1. Despite being a straight-A student my entire life, I didn't write a true academic paper until English professors taught me how to do so during my sophomore year of college.
2. When I was a teacher (sorry, Faith), many of my high school juniors and seniors in my "regular" classes didn't even know how to write a paper that contained any sort of argument, much less a thesis. My AP students knew how, but many of them needed a great deal of coaxing to feel "okay" about abandoning the 5-paragraph form they had been taught for so many years.
3. I'm tired now, but I will think more about this discussion for future posts.

Realizations

I confess that my only encounter with first-year composition was when I enrolled 23 years ago. I have friends who have taught this course and have shared their syllabi with me, but I realized while reading for next class how much I do not know about the history and purpose of first-year composition. What is fun is that I see many parallels to teaching high school English (or middle school, or elementary school). For instance – there is the notion that in a first-year course the purpose (historically) was to correct the wrongs of the previous teachers and fix-up the students so they are ready for higher learning. How many times have I heard teachers K-12 express concern over how to prepare their students for the next year, and complain that the previous teachers did not teach the students well enough.

I was also struck by the similar views in the Strategies book compared to the writers in English education: Everyone can write because it’s not just a gift to the few; students need to take responsibility for their writing; a writing classroom should be set up like an artist’s workshop; there is not one right way to teach someone how to write; we improve at writing through practice. Gilles surprised me in a quote about the view of composition as a service course. He said we get to explore the “foundational skills of democratic citizenship” (8). All this in addition to grammar and punctuation? What power! What privilege! What responsibility….doesn’t this tie into the political discussions of last week? I asked then if all of what we do in the classroom is in ways political? I’m still thinking about this….

My question for all of you is how do campuses here and elsewhere view first-year composition courses now? Not until the Gilles chapter did I realize that Harvard started these courses as they waited for secondary schools to do “their jobs properly” (2). Ouch. My second question is how you all view high school English courses? I don’t like generalized questions or answers, so I realize that any responses to these will only take into account your own experiences and not a universal view.

Would You Like Fries With Your Paper? Comp-as-Service and Me

In “The Departmental Perspective,” Roger Gilles states that he would “hate” to see English Departments abandon the idea of composition classes as a “service” (4). What precisely he means by “service” is vague at best: the best I could come up with is that the “learning strategies” we are to teach are a hybridization of grammar, discipline, and practice which is supposed to result in the “expression of ideas” (4). It’s “organization” and “standard written English” and “punctuation” (5-6). Finishing in a rhetorical flourish, Gilles tells us that we can’t teach such knowledge, but the students can learn it (6). Right.

“Providing a service” seems to me to be a veiled excuse for the banking concept of education, because “service” means to me some sort of self-sacrifice. Perhaps it means giving up one’s own ideas of what should be taught in class to conform to a department’s ideas. Perhaps it means teaching mechanics of writing instead of the expression of creative thought. What it likely means though, is giving up our own opportunity to learn in the classroom through problem-posing education in the name of plugging information into students, which apparently “serves” them better in the rest of their academic careers.

Gilles wants to bring back the idea of comp-class-as-service because the class is a service to the future academic pursuits of students, to the academic community, to the mission of the university. He says that universities abandoned the idea of the comp-as-service in the 60’s because universities started seeing the class as valuable in its own right, without the service component. I would argue that it might have been because of the position in which it puts the graduate student teacher.

Graduate school, I think, is an inherently self-indulgent act. Sure, we want to enrich the world with our knowledge -- that’s definitely a service. But the assumption of that is we have knowledge that the world needs and we are here right now to help ourselves (even if the ultimate goal is to help others). If I wanted to “provide a service” to the world, I could have stayed in the retail job I worked last summer or the food service job I worked the summer before that. I went to graduate school for me. No person in their right mind would work for this cheap under these circumstances unless there was something in it for them.

What really kills me about Gilles though, is that he’s set up his argument in such a way that by disagreeing with him I feel like I’m doing a disservice to my students (way to encourage a healthy debate, man). What I loved about the problem-posing method of education was the assumption that the instructor wanted to learn as well! Don’t get me wrong. I have the utmost respect for people in service jobs, be they waitresses, firefighters, etc. I’m just saying that I’m not in one of those jobs. I’m here for me, and I reserve the right to teach in a way that respects the fact that I’m giving up two years of my life to better myself.

English 1000 in context (post for 2-2)

Obviously, we have been talking about the larger context in which English 1000 is placed, and how the context of the department, university, and world in general should influence the goals and methods in a first-year composition course. I agree with the authors about the importance of taking a wide-angle shot in order to recognize the broader goals of education. Education is not the result of one class, and teachers certainly want to prepare their students for what lies ahead.
That said, however, I feel that a consistent fault in talking about courses such as English 1000 is a failure to recognize the education that has already taken place. Even the phrase “first-year composition” sends the message that all learning about how to write begins here. It does not recognize that teachers are providing writing instruction almost from the moment students learn how to grasp a pencil, if not before. More specifically, discussions of college composition often send an implicit message that students need to “unlearn” whatever ideas of writing they learned in high school. Both Gilles and Hesse mention the “five-paragraph theme” in ways that make it sound like an antiquated formula that is good enough for thoughtless high school writing but completely unsuited for the critical thinking demanded in college level courses (see Gilles 3 and Hesse 42). But after Hesse criticizes this form of writing, on the very next page he states, “A good deal of writing takes the form of generalization and support” (43). Disregarding the exact number of paragraphs, which Hesse himself acknowledges can vary, I have a difficult time seeing the difference between the “five-paragraph theme” and “generalization and support.” To me, both terms are just different ways of describing common academic writing. I feel that, in placing English 1000 in its larger context, part of that context should also include recognizing, appreciating, and building upon the learning that has already taken place. (I realize that my response is directly influence by my desire to teach high school English after completing my degree, but I feel this is a relevant issue for all to discuss.)

~Jennifer Hertlein

Group Blogs

I thought you might like to see some examples of group blogs:

Misbehaving.net
Crooked Timber
Kairos News

I pulled these at random. There are others I am sure you could find if you google on your interests and add the word "blog" or "weblog."

Class Activity

Rosa G. at Community College English describes a class activity she uses in her writing class, part of which is to design a business card. I thought an activity such as this might work well with Donna's syllabus because it's focused on work. Perhaps not this year because we're already a couple weeks into the semester, but it seemed like a good fit. That is, if Donna wanted to hold her class in a computer classroom one day.

Anyway, I thought it might interest some others as well. Deciding necessary information to include, organization of information, font selection, etc. -- these are all decisions that have to be made when designing a business card and are similar decisions that students must make when writing their papers.

Brad Pitt vs. Spenser and MIlton

Okay. There are many, many ideas expressed by my classmates that I want to respond to, so I'm going to number my different response areas in order to avoid having to formulate smooth transitions between topics. No time for segues.

1. Like Jennifer, I am intrigued by all the "intellectual capital" hoopla. Quite a few of the answers on Russell's test eluded me, but for some reasons, I didn't feel as chagrined as I thought I would. I guess I find the idea of every person having a basic foundation of knowledge valid, but who gets to determine what constitutes "basic" -- what facts are the ones that are most valid? According to Searle, I'm not well educated because I'm not fluent in another language and I don't have much of an understanding of physics, chemistry, or the way interest rates fluctuate. And though graduate school often makes me feel a little uneducated in comparison to some of my classmates who are already en route to their PhDs, I know I'm an educated person. Do I still have more to learn? Certainly. That's why I'm here. But each person has a niche, or two, or three, already -- everyone has some sort of basic foundation of knowledge. Jennifer said I can attest to the fact that she lacks pop culture knowledge, and she does (though I'm glad I helped you learn about the nuances of Brad Pitt before his divorce chaos, Jennifer), but that's one area in which I feel completely secure about my wealth of knowledge. But Jennifer knows way more about, say, Spenser and Milton than I do. So who's more educated? Jennifer may be able to write a conference paper examining the key thematic elements of Spenser's poetry, but I might have been able to follow the conversation in her film class with more ease. I think Searle would say Jennifer is more educated, and perhaps Freire would, too, but I find it difficult to determine which types of knowledge are the "basic" ones that we need, a point that piggybacks onto Jennifer's discussion of Russell's test being laden with language arts, current events, and social studies questions.

2. Kristina brings up an interesting idea when she ends her post with her question, "So, for a composition class, are the in-class writing exercises the place for observing, asking individual questions, and finding a position while the polished papers are place to practice making an argument without the distraction of having to define the parameters of topic?" In-class writing exercises certainly strive to produce observations, questions, and positions, but I've found that students I've tutored and taught still have a difficult time creating an argument on paper, no matter how beneficial or stimulating class discussions or exercises have been. Countless times in the Writing Center, I've asked a tutoree, "Well, have you been talking about these ideas in class?," and most of them reply something along the lines of, "Well, yeah..." (silence) or "Not really." I find the former response frustrating and the latter hard to believe; I think that oftentimes, students feel that paper-writing is an extremely solitary experience, one in which they are left all alone to produce something provocative and informative and intelligent -- and so they forget that eveything they've been doing in class is supposed to help them with the daunting paper-writing task.

So, I'm thinking that one of our main tasks as composition teachers will be to get students to "see" (there it is again!) how everything we do and read is in some way going to help them when they sit down to write their papers. And, moreover, we have to create good classes -- we have to make sure that everything we do in class does have the aim of helping them with their writing. If we don't -- if we create a class that lacks cohesiveness or clear goals -- we'd be lying when we tell the students that everything we're doing is supposed to aid their writing. And nobody likes liars.

3. I thought all three lessons on Friday did a really nice job of using what we had read and parlaying that information into interesting and useful classroom experiences. Kudos.

4. Seeing as how I like neither cauliflower and broccoli, I'm going to argue that condiments such as melted cheese and ranch dip are the only things keeping vegetables tasty and consumer-friendly these days.

"intellectual capital" and its "so what?"

I would like to respond to Russell, although more to some of the ideas he presented in class. Since he hasn’t yet been able to join the blog, I’ve made this as a new post instead of commenting on what he already wrote.
I find the idea of “intellectual capital” very interesting. And I agree with Donna that Freire would neither object to nor disagree with the idea that an understanding of basic, common facts is very important to cultural literacy. I think most would agree that we learn by making connections, but if we don’t have a certain foundation, we have nothing on which to build those connections.
That said, however, I do want to make two comments about the questions Russell presented. Firstly, most of them fell in the realm of social studies and language arts. What about “intellectual capital” in other areas, such as knowing the four bases that compose DNA or the name of the note on the top line of bass clef? And as we broaden the basis of “intellectual capital,” we cannot neglect popular culture. I am sadly lacking in my knowledge of popular culture (as Kristin can confirm), and so I am actually at a disadvantage when reading the Everyday section of the Post-Dispatch, and I was unable to follow some of the references fellow students made in a film class last semester.
As an English major, I am hardly one to argue that people don’t need to know that Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick. But as my second point, I am unsure what being able to match the title and the author signifies. If a person knows that Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, are we supposed to presume that he or she has actually read them? Similarly, I can tell you that Ottowa is the capital of Canada, but I only know that fact because I learned it at a trivia night last week; personally, I know little else about Canada that would make my knowledge useful. I think this example, of my knowledge of a random fact with little else, is what Freire wants to avoid about the “banking concept of education.” Here, I agree with Faith’s post. “Seeing” may be a twofold activity. The physical act of seeing may be analogous to knowing basic facts. But, based on those observations/facts, one should then ask questions like “why?” or “what do I do with this information?” I also agree with Keri that for Freire, the ideas students have is less important that their ability to work with and interact with those ideas.

Teaching Philosophies

I found a stash of articles on Developing a Teaching Philosophy at Lore and thought they might prove to be stimulating reading as we prepare our own.

Reaction to Class on 1/26

An important theme of class on Wednesday was teaching students to "see" -- showing them that they can come to an understanding of the world on their own terms. But as much as observation and understanding are important, the next logical step is to make some sort of argument or take a stance on your observation. I think this fits into Searle's idea that knowledge is two-fold: one element is information, the other is judgment. To use my own example from class:
Observation/Information: The pedestrian crossing in the street is not well-marked.
Judgment: This is bad because people could get hit by a car. Therefore, the crosswalk should be well-marked.
Writing functions as a vessel for that judgment. So that's what we teach -- the formulations of judgments throuhg writing. How do you say something interesting about an obsevation or a piece of information? To extend a metaphor from Brittany's quote: "You make broccoli interesting if you say it's better than cauliflower," I think a lot of people think that they are making broccoli interesting by discussing its relationship to cauliflower (vegetable cousins, no?) or by just plain saying that they don't like it. But setting up a contrast to something in its same category ("Chocolate is better than broccoli" isn't very interesting), and then making a value judgment IS interesting. Our job is to teach students how to make those distinctions and value judgments in intelligent and interesting ways.

The value of instructions

Yes, Marcia's right: my idea was that those of you posting a response before class would post a new entry, like this one. (And like Marcia's below.) But since most of you haven't blogged before, how were you to know? I can give you more information on Wednesday.

Learning to Wallow

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire discounts the "banking concept of education," whereby "knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing" (para. 6). In the banking method, then, students are deemed successful if they are able to regurgitate knowledge upon demand, or if, when filled with the requisite knowledge, they graduate.

Students, parents, and others valorize a college education as the path to a good job, success, and earning more money. Yet, critical thinking demands that students, especially, see the value in the educational process. That is, in the process of education, the important part really is the journey and the questions asked along the way, particularly, if students really do aspire to positions of management and authority, for those who know why something is done will manage those who know simply how something is done. (someone else said this last bit before me, but I can't remember who).

Educators, of course realize this. However, how can they reframe the pejorative use of "intellectual" during the academic experience so that students value the process of learning to think critically?

We are learning that to think critically is to be both a good college student and a good college English instructor. Such roles require "learning to wallow in complexity" (25) as introduced in The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing (25-27). To wallow is to think critically, to ask good questions, and to become good at posing problems.

In other essays, progressive educators are being attacked by so-called traditional "conservatives" for among other things, questioning the canon and exposing students to "liberal" ideas. In The Storm Over the University, Searle would have us believe that to teach the "traditional canon" is somehow an apolitical act, while making the canon more inclusive is the act of political radicals. How is excluding women and minorities from the canon any less radical than the "liberal" goal of including women and minorities in the canon?

Searle claims that it's wrong for a teacher to expose their political leanings, and others such as Graf, say it's wrong not to. Graf may in fact have the best answer: teach the conflicts, or as A&B say, "[learn] to wallow in complexity" (25). Yet, are there times when critical thinking and questioning should be avoided? Should teachers expose their political beliefs?

In the end, is teaching critical thinking a political act? a progressive act? can all educators who teach critical thinking then be labeled liberal radicals by our government and so-called conservatives?

Welcome!

Welcome to the collective class blog for English 8010, Theory and Practice of Composition! I look forward to reading your responses and ruminations as we move forward through the semester, from the short chilly days of January to the warm and lingering days of May. If that's a metaphor for the course, I wonder what it means?