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).