10/28

A lot of what Moran had to say concerning electronic composition struck me as applicable to traditionally written composition as well.  The first instance of this was his comment on the different assistance needed by students based on their individual composing processes (208).  This is not isolated to word processing and speaks more loudly against the linear composing models than a difference of teaching methods required when a student works on a word processor.  Students need to be met instructionally at their level of individual needs depending on the process with which they choose to write.  This could run the gamut from learning a writing process in general to learning final editing techniques.  The very individuality of this instruction raises the questions as to the validity of distance education through technology.  But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

I was even more intrigued by Moran’s comment that,  “looking for essential differences between screen text and print text is a dead end, because writers write differently, and even a given writer will write differently on different occasions” (207).  Have all the researchers attempting an empirical measurement of writing process and ability read this comment?  Does it not negate all attempts at such measurements, or merely insert a very larger and uncomfortable variable into the machinations of their research?  Alright, their research isn’t evil. But it’s formulaic products in conjunction with universal standards and, yes, technology have done more to distance composition instruction from the reality of individual and unique learners in need of equally individual and unique instruction. 

At the end of Anson’s article the question, “Is the motivation for distance education financial or pedagogical?” is tucked amongst many.  But this seems the crux of the issue being measured here.  Both Anson and Moran have a hard time finding concrete educational benefits to technology being the center of the classroom.  It may excite the interest of students, but who does it priviledge, who does it educate more easily?  Does it really increase access or does its increased use in education only serve to further restrict and marginalize groups based on social and economic standards?

10/21

This needs to be a quick post for me, so get ready.  Sommer’s comments on the thesis statement and how it limits the development of ideas during student writing, sign me up – I’m a believer.  Too many times I have students approach me in the hall asking how to write a thesis statement.  When I ask what they are writing about, I get the same response – “I don’t know”.  Really?  We give our students assignments on how to write before asking them to think, about anything?  Has the model become that important? 

Mutnick mentions Bartholomae’s work in basic writing as a disciple of Shaughnessy, but centers on his “shift in emphasis of instruction from grammatical to rhetorical concerns-from surface error to semantic and critical content”(184)  Compare this to Sommers analysis of the different areas of focus in revision between student and professional writers.  One focuses on the lexical and the other on the semantic.  Guess which one’s which? Interesting yes?  Yet we still are chained to our desks by curricula that insist a code of grammar and mechanics be taught in place of rhetoric.  Do curriculum specialists read any of the materials we’ve been going over?

10/14

“Thus are we wrecked on the rocks of teaching seen as intervention; of the so-called student-centered classroom; of single-skill correction; of discourse analysis, in which the chief function of discourse is disregarded; in reading instruction in which language is considered solely as a graphic code; of writing as seen as the assignment of topics sequenced according to the commonplaces of classical rhetoric . . .”(Berthoff 336)  Well cheese and rice! This is my curriculum.  Ahhh!  I don’t know what Berthoff means by teaching students “to use what they already do so cleverly in order to learn how to generalize – how to move from abstraction in the non-discursive mode to the discursive abstraction, to generalization”(337).  But I know I don’t want to be inhibited by the former anymore.  I also have an inkling that what students already “do so cleverly” is connected their knowledge of “how to sabotage any process which alienates them”(George 96).  All of which is part of the critical teacher’s project to empower students in the realization of their own voice.  Particularly, having a say in their education, “allowing students to direct their own education” (101)

By far, the part of this weeks readings that interested me the most was the notion that students are so far sold into the American dream that the idea of subverting it is a hard sell.  How fantastic that one would prefer to succeed within the fantasy than struggle to expose reality.  Then Smith argues that teachers have no right to shatter these dreams if it is what students truly want.  Who are we to tell them what they want or need?  But isn’t that just what we are doing when allowing the dominant hegemony to guide or pedagogy.  It would be hypocritical to stand aside when students begin to desire elitist ideals and say we are doing so because they deserve the freedom of choice.

Somewhere done the line, in my many juvenile attempts at rebellion, I must have asked my dad why I have to everything a certain way, or something to that effect, because I remember him telling me that the only way to change the status quo is to be one of the people who sets the status quo.  He wanted me to understand, from his point of view, that I had to be part of an institution, to break it apart, if that’s what I wanted.  Now, I don’t know if he really meant it or if it was just his way of trying to get me to behave, but I’ve never forgotten it.  Reading George’s take of Friere that “the liberatory teacher will, thus, train students yet simultaneously problematize that training – will for instance, teach standard English and correct usage while also problematizing their status as inherently superior to other dialects or grammars”(102) brought this memory back to me.  It raises the question of how dominant critical literacy can become in a classroom when students still need to survive in a world that operates under the dominant ideology?  Because of this, I found Villanueva’s course plan inviting.  The pairing of canonical an non-canonical texts in the classroom so students may “discuss ways their own lived experiences connects the two” (100).