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.
“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.
posted by Faith | 7:06 PM
2 Comments:
Jeremy, I disagree with your framing of student as customer. There is no direct economic exchange. The student pays tuition for the opportunity to get an education. What students obtain is due in no small part to what they offer beyond financial and how much they are willing to participate and take responsibility for their own educations. I prefer to characterize students as apprentices. I also don't think it's all about students. I am supposed to be benefiting from the educational experience as well. It's more give and take and take and give than simply give, be filled up, and receive a receipt.
Amy and I have been discussing James Moffett and the ladder of abstraction. A lot of our talk about "service" is very high on the ladder of abstraction. What if we brought it down to the lowest rung of the ladder and have some concrete talk. But first, I would like to challenge all of you to play the believing and doubting game with the word "service" in relation to a first-year composition course. Part of teaching composition is being open to and responding to ideas that may not be your own. So, we've covered many possible negative connotations concerning what "service" means, but imagine that you believe service could have a positive connotation. What could Gilles have meant?
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