Week of 5/5

Fulkerson: “Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century”

“It’s important to emphasize that in CSS the course aim is not ‘improved writing’ but ‘liberation’ from dominant discourse” (660).

Are these two aims mutually exclusive? I realize that Fulkerson says he doesn’t mean to generalize, but he is, I think. I guess what I’ve realized from reading this is that what I’m aiming at isn’t CSS education, even though I’m using Freirean pedagogy. Or maybe I’m not using Freirean pedagogy. I am suddenly completely at sea. Here’s the thing: I don’t want to teach my students to resist hegemonic discourses, but I do want to teach them how to recognize hegemony when they see it and hear it and to find a way to enter into it if that’s their goal and to find a way to articulate resistance if resistance is their goal. That involves teaching stuff about writing (rhetoric, genre) that’s necessary to improving writing.

Fulkerson says that according to the CSS approach, “[t]he central activity of the course is interpretation” (660). Well, of course it is. Isn’t interpretation the only way we have to make meaning? When scientists experiment, when compositionists implement studies, eventually they get data, which they then must interpret. When we make decisions about the ends of writing classes, we are making those decisions based on our interpretations of previous scholarship and the relationship of higher education to both the individual and the community. Whenever we make judgments, whenever we read, we are interpreting. Even when students read the syllabus, the very first act of the semester, they’re interpreting it. They interpret what the syllabus means based in part on what the words on it say, in part on what those words or words that they interpret to be reasonably like them have meant in other classes, in part on what they’ve heard about the instructor from other students, in part based on their expectations of the course, in part based on the instructor’s demeanor while they go over the syllabus, etc. The factors and discourses that enter into even the most seemingly straightforward aspect of what goes on in the classroom must be interpreted in order for students and instructors to make meaning. Making knowledge, developing skills, however one conceives of composition, one must, it seems to me, acknowledge that interpretation is central to the activities. Writing is, I think a kind of interpretation, or a working out of interpretation, isn’t it? What I’m doing right this instant certainly is.

Writing is, in large part, reading, which is, of course, interpretation. When I write, I go back, read and reread what I wrote, and try to imagine how it might be interpreted by other readers. How much interpretation (about audience as well as text) is involved in revision? Isn’t imagining an audience really about imagining how it might interpret what you’ve written? Even if others tell you explicitly how something you’ve written affects them, you must interpret what they tell you since you have no direct access to their states of mind or affective states. In order to be able to effectively understand how one is affected by discourse, one must be able to read/interpret it effectively. Interpretation is fundamental to writing, in other words, and while I think one can interpret without writing (although I’m not so sure about composing), I don’t think one can write without interpreting.

If “Berlin and others” say that the “course goal . . . is to empower or liberate students by giving them new insights into the injustices of American and transnational capitalism, politics, and complicit mass media” (661), then Berlin et al., must be wrong. I think the goal of CSS education is to help students to develop the kind of critical thinking and analytic skill that will enable them to interrogate the discourses in which they are immersed and to recognize that when they interact with those discourses they affect them even as they are affected by them. In order to affect discourse effectively, especially public discourse, one must be able to communicate effectively. I think that one of the best ways to understand how your discourse and writing are likely to affect others is to consider how other discourse/writing affects you and to investigate why you’re affected as you are. This involves looking at genre (which creates certain expectations that will influence interpretation), emotional language, traditional rhetorical devices, tacit assumptions, all kinds of stuff. I don’t give students only left-wing stuff to read. I give them far right stuff, too. I think we should ALL learn to interrogate the ways language is used to affect us in one way or another. And, I think one of the goals of the writing class ought to be to learn how to use language to affect others.

It seems to me that rejecting Cartesian certainty doesn’t entail the inability to teach about things like evidence. We just have to understand that when we offer “proof” we don’t supply Proof. So epistemological assumptions don’t necessarily “determine what sort of scholarly research is acceptable as grounding for the approach itself,” nor do they “control what students are taught regarding ‘proof’ in their own reading and writing” (662). Inductive logic doesn’t fail because deduction isn’t possible. For example, I understand that there’s no proof that the sun will rise tomorrow and there is no deductively valid argument that could prove it objectively. Nonetheless, I can deploy inductive reasoning to infer that it will rise tomorrow, and I can recognize that this is a really strong inductive argument. Furthermore, that I don’t believe that I can know anything in itself or with Cartesian certainty (except possibly mathematical truths—an ugly can of worms, and irrelevant here) doesn’t mean that deductive reasoning fails. It just means that the warrant is always conditional upon the truth of the premises (which we can never know but can reasonably infer to be true based on inductive reasoning). So, my epistemology (materialist social constructionist—not sure that’s even on the compositionist radar) doesn’t determine anything about my attitude toward doing research, because research is always induction! In other words, that I believe we can’t get at truth doesn’t mean that I don’t think it’s worth shooting for! My epistemology does determine how I can interpret research, however. I think this is a crucial distinction.

Focusing on interpreting texts as part of the FYC class doesn’t neglect to “leave room for any actual teaching of writing” (665). Rhetorical reading and interpretation is, after all, interpretation, and rhetorical reading, if I understand it correctly, involves attending to how something is written, the rhetoric of the text, that is. So, it seems that interpreting texts (even the ones we’re writing) is an essential part of teaching writing!

Moreover, most of my life is devoted to “exposing [and combating] the social injustice of racism, classism, homophobia, misogyny, [and] capitalism” (665). Still, I can accept well-constructed, well-written arguments that deny that these discursive practices are inherently unjust. And one way I ensure that students don’t write to my beliefs is that on the very first day of the class, before they’ve read anything and before we go over the syllabus, I ask students to write down on a 3 X 5 card their name and “agree” or “disagree” in response to a prompt like “Anybody can get ahead as long as he or she works hard enough.” Then, the students pass those cards forward. When it comes time to write from this prompt, students have to argue the other side. Those who said “agree” have to write as though they disagree, and vice versa. It’s worked well in the workshops I’ve led at CSN. We’ll see how it translates here in the fall, I guess.

I guess that by all of this I’m trying to convey that I don’t think the approaches—CSS, rhetorical, genre-based, and expressivist are mutually exclusive. I think they all bring important insihts to the table, and I think a reflective instructor can integrate what’s useful from each. As Fulkerson says, “Axiology . . . has implications for, but doesn’t determine, processes . . . and both are involved with pedagogy” (679-680). He’d probably add, as would I, that instructors who try to integrate aspects of these different approaches to teaching writing need to exercise great care not to end up with a mish mosh of confusing, unrelated assignments or writing sequences.

Downs & Wardle: “Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions: (Re)Envisioning ‘First-Year Composition’ as ‘Introduction to Writing Studies’ ”

Great article! I think it’s really more applicable to ENG 102 as it’s conceived here at UNLV, since 101 students aren’t supposed to do research, but what a great idea . . . I think.

The four outcomes for writing instruction offered in the WPA Outcomes Statement seem good to me. But I think Downs and Wardle make a good case that it might not be possible for FYC to do all those things. Still, one of the guiding principles of my life is the belief that some things are worth aiming at even if (or just because) they’re not possible. I’m not sure it’s necessary to focus all FYC classes as D&W suggest, and I’m sure it’s not possible, since, as they note, background in Comp Theory is necessary to do it properly. One thing I’m hearing yet again is that one year is not enough. That’s part of the reason I requested to teach 101E next semester. Because I’ve come to realize, partly through this class and partly from my experience in the Writing Center, that a semester isn’t enough time to do even half of what most students need, even to fulfill their goals of being prepared to be corporate stooges !

I hate when people say something “begs the question” when what they mean is that it raises the question (556).

The question of transfer has been bothering me since we read the article about David, and I suspect that there might be other ways of enabling it. I just don’t know what they might be. While I think transparency and demystification are the answer to a lot of classroom issues, I’m not sure they’re the answer here. And, D&W have articulated more clearly than I have yet what I want to convey to students in FYC: “the ways writing works in the world and how . . . writing [and language in general] is used to mediate various activities” and our understanding/interpretation of the world and our places in it (558). Still, demystifying writing involves disabusing students of their misconceptions about writing, and I agree with D&W that that’s crucial.

“If writing cannot be separated from content, then scholarly writing cannot be separated from reading” (561). Even if writing can be separated from content, no writing can be separated from reading. I’ll just keep repeating that.

Breuch: “Post-Process ‘Pedagogy’: A Philosophical Exercise

I’ve said a bunch of what Breuch says in earlier blogs. And I thought I was being insightful and original. I guess Derrida is right: There’s only citation! (Another joke)

Philosophers and physicists recognize a difference between “indeterminate” and “indeterminacy,” and while I don’t understand it well enough to be able to put my finger on how, I suspect the distinction will illuminate this discussion once I understand it better. See Joseph Margolis’ Selves and Other Texts and Historied Thought, Constructed World (the latter is available online for free). Also, the article on “emergence” in Wikipedia (I know) is actually kind of helpful.

Really rigorous philosophical discussion of what people are really saying when they make different claims about writing. Thus she is able to recognize the distinction between the inability to teach writing and the inability to teach writing “as a system” (101). And she’s right. There is something to teach. I don’t think it’s a systematic something, though.

When we ask people to “change what they know” we are already asking them to “change who they are” (103). Where’s the disjunctunction?

I understand the “rejection of mastery” as an essential part of understanding that human beings are never finished until they die. I can’t master anything because there’s always room for innovation and improvement. Of course not all innovation is improvement; Ben Franklin cautions us not to mistake motion for progress…

Just to clarify: “having a codified body of knowledge that can be transmitted” is not identical to “being” a body of knowledge as Ewald’s criticism of Kent implies (qtd. p. 105).

Distinction between “how-centeredness” and “what-centeredness” really, really, really important. Writing is how-centered because it’s activity. It’s just important to remember that there may be more than one “how.”

Davidson’s understanding of meaning as language-in-use is fundamentally Wittgensteinian (111). He said, “Don’t ask for the meaning; ask for the use.” That seems to me more a claim about meaning being contextual than about writing being public, though. Still, Davidson’s triangulation thing is intriguing.

I’m also interested in exploring the pedagogical possibilities of post-process theory. It seems to me that pedagogy is in large part pragmatic. That is, whatever works is the right thing to do. That means that the right thing to do can (and probably will) change from class to class, and maybe from person to person in class. Once again, theory takes me to a place where the institutional parameters that require that I teach everyone in a given class the same things in the same way strike me as counterproductive. Even harmful. I do, however, fully embrace the idea of teaching as mentoring. It’s what I did in the Writing Center, and I loved it, and the students I run into who have transferred here tell me that they benefited from our interactions. I did, too. can you imagine if we each had, say, five students with whom we worked individually for a year? How different would teaching writing be then? Damn, that would be fine!

Berlin: Still to come

Peace to all.