In his article “Recopying to Revise,” Kratzke decries the superficiality that has taken over the modern classroom. He blames democratization and multiculturalism for a “dummy down effect,” a political correctness that includes differences by ignoring them in the name of being “easy, free, forgiving, attentive, comfortable, interesting, unchallenging, fun.” He also blames the computer. He quotes Neitzche: “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.” The spell and grammar check give students a false notion that the machine is correcting their errors; the instantaneous of information made available gives even scholars a sense of the transitory nature of knowledge, how rapidly it moves.
To offset this superficiality, Kratzke would have students return to a pre-computer mode of composition which included recopying a paper before it is handed in. In recopying the paper, a student is almost automatically inclined to revise it. Recopying is almost a metaphor for reflection. Writing a first draft is an experience, but the meaning of a draft is shaped by revision in the same way that reflection is a way of processing experience for its deeper meaning.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
students and statistics
In this study, authors Brammer and Rees try to quantify a notoriously unquantitative process. They attempt to measure subjectivity, something only a social constructivist would attempt. They attempt to measure what any expressivist or sane person would only try to describe in qualitative terms, if they tried at all.
The authors do make an interesting point when they point out that peer review, a staple of expressivist-introduced process, now occupies the same ubiquitousness in the classroom that the current-traditional approach once did. As such, it has become a matter of faith among teachers—a faith that is shared occasionally by students 31.1 percent of the time and usually shared 32.6 percent of the time.
I don’t have anything against a scientific point of view. Science and mathematics are subtle tools for understanding the world and the mind. Science is about measuring and being objective, quantifying data. I don’t even mind pseudo-science that imaginatively explores some aspect of the inner and outer universe in quantitative and qualitative terms--as long as it is done as a matter of arousing wonder and speculation. But this article did bother me for what I saw as a presumptuous use of quantitative terms to make qualitative judgments.
I didn’t mind the authors’ interpreting the data as saying that students who had been schooled in how to respond in peer review were more prone to view the process favorably. But the classification of responses into the categories of satisfactory and unsatisfactory (since it was a scientific study, they didn’t use “good” and “bad”) was problematic. I think it has to do with the number of students (20%) who “would not participate in peer review if were not required—even though they found it helpful.” That would seem to cast doubt on the categories of satisfactory and unsatisfactory. The student who said that “Peers never seemed to be willing to be open and give honest feedback” was “coded as negative.” But maybe he gave that response because he had begun to suspect that he wasn’t being honest and open with them—the value of peer review may have been that it made the student’s dishonesty with himself a little closer to awareness. This isn’t to say that students should be forced to do what they don’t like—I’m only saying that quantifying subjective reactions is an unscientific process. And how the authors could conclude that the statistics show that we "need more emphasis on peer review as a global activity" is beyond me.
The authors do make an interesting point when they point out that peer review, a staple of expressivist-introduced process, now occupies the same ubiquitousness in the classroom that the current-traditional approach once did. As such, it has become a matter of faith among teachers—a faith that is shared occasionally by students 31.1 percent of the time and usually shared 32.6 percent of the time.
I don’t have anything against a scientific point of view. Science and mathematics are subtle tools for understanding the world and the mind. Science is about measuring and being objective, quantifying data. I don’t even mind pseudo-science that imaginatively explores some aspect of the inner and outer universe in quantitative and qualitative terms--as long as it is done as a matter of arousing wonder and speculation. But this article did bother me for what I saw as a presumptuous use of quantitative terms to make qualitative judgments.
I didn’t mind the authors’ interpreting the data as saying that students who had been schooled in how to respond in peer review were more prone to view the process favorably. But the classification of responses into the categories of satisfactory and unsatisfactory (since it was a scientific study, they didn’t use “good” and “bad”) was problematic. I think it has to do with the number of students (20%) who “would not participate in peer review if were not required—even though they found it helpful.” That would seem to cast doubt on the categories of satisfactory and unsatisfactory. The student who said that “Peers never seemed to be willing to be open and give honest feedback” was “coded as negative.” But maybe he gave that response because he had begun to suspect that he wasn’t being honest and open with them—the value of peer review may have been that it made the student’s dishonesty with himself a little closer to awareness. This isn’t to say that students should be forced to do what they don’t like—I’m only saying that quantifying subjective reactions is an unscientific process. And how the authors could conclude that the statistics show that we "need more emphasis on peer review as a global activity" is beyond me.
Bizzell
Male/female has an even longer history than conservative/liberal of organizing public discourse into two separate camps. Male is associated with aggression, ego, separateness, rationality—female with nurturing, the unconscious, connectedness, intuition. No how many times actual existential beings prove the generalizations false, the generalizations persist and their effect on human life is as constant and obvious as sunlight and gravity. Composition theory seems to be taking shape in my mind (admittedly male, even if I am extremely left-handed) in relation to these age old polarities.
Lunsford and Bizzell seem to define the female influence on composition. They stress the social context of a student. Bartholomae also stressed that social context, but as a sort of threatening, hegemonic influence that the individual had to fight against through rigorous rationality. Lunsford and Bizzell stress social context in a more benign way: as the natural setting from whence an individual comes and, even more importantly, the goal towards which an individual should strive, the place where he or she is integrated into the world of others.
Lunsford’s emphasis on collaboration seems paradigmatic of a female methodology. So, too, does Bizzell’s theory of a “holistic” manner of teaching. In my imagination, I can see her listening to two men arguing the points of inner and outer directed methods. She listens with, if not outright disgust, at least with impatience as the two ramble on and on. She sees them as two men who are so egotistically wrapped up in individual theories that they’ve lost contact with life on earth. Holistic teaching is something that is ultimately perceived through intuition, not rationalization.
I don’t mean to imply stereotypes when I talk of male and female principles. Although I’ve never met the women, I doubt that Lunsford and Bizzell got where without being aggressive individuals. I’m sure they fought against the stereotypical reception of their ideas even as the propounded the larger principles which supported the ideas. They probably had to fight those who saw collaboration as another form of gossip and holistic teaching as an inability to decide one way or the other.
I tend to get lost in theory. Shaynee’s comment that a teacher had to look at the goals of his or her students reminded me again of the context of teacher. When I think of teaching, I think of college—and not always undergraduate teaching. Most of theories we are studying seem aimed at that level. But for a teacher whose students are not demographically destined for the university, how does one find a method of teaching so that exceptions can be inspired and challenged while acknowledging the fundamental validity of not moving on. Male theory seems to be a one size fits all sort of thing—female theory seems more . . . contextual.
Lunsford and Bizzell seem to define the female influence on composition. They stress the social context of a student. Bartholomae also stressed that social context, but as a sort of threatening, hegemonic influence that the individual had to fight against through rigorous rationality. Lunsford and Bizzell stress social context in a more benign way: as the natural setting from whence an individual comes and, even more importantly, the goal towards which an individual should strive, the place where he or she is integrated into the world of others.
Lunsford’s emphasis on collaboration seems paradigmatic of a female methodology. So, too, does Bizzell’s theory of a “holistic” manner of teaching. In my imagination, I can see her listening to two men arguing the points of inner and outer directed methods. She listens with, if not outright disgust, at least with impatience as the two ramble on and on. She sees them as two men who are so egotistically wrapped up in individual theories that they’ve lost contact with life on earth. Holistic teaching is something that is ultimately perceived through intuition, not rationalization.
I don’t mean to imply stereotypes when I talk of male and female principles. Although I’ve never met the women, I doubt that Lunsford and Bizzell got where without being aggressive individuals. I’m sure they fought against the stereotypical reception of their ideas even as the propounded the larger principles which supported the ideas. They probably had to fight those who saw collaboration as another form of gossip and holistic teaching as an inability to decide one way or the other.
I tend to get lost in theory. Shaynee’s comment that a teacher had to look at the goals of his or her students reminded me again of the context of teacher. When I think of teaching, I think of college—and not always undergraduate teaching. Most of theories we are studying seem aimed at that level. But for a teacher whose students are not demographically destined for the university, how does one find a method of teaching so that exceptions can be inspired and challenged while acknowledging the fundamental validity of not moving on. Male theory seems to be a one size fits all sort of thing—female theory seems more . . . contextual.
Scott on Graff
Scott’s presentation of Graff’s ideas struck a responsive chord in my experience of composition. In the last couple years, I’ve taken four writing workshops here at CSU-- two in fiction, two in creative nonfiction. All the courses have involved peer review. The stories I read, my own as well as others, are often rambling and unfocused. A person has to write for awhile before he or she begins to see what the story is really about. It often turns out that the first five pages are irrelevant to the resolution of the last page. That resolution is usually unsatisfying because it seems to come out of no where, it hasn’t been developed. Of course, it’s not always the case that the most effective writing appears at the end. The best writing, the clearest and most vivid, can appear anywhere in the body of the text and the story will leave it for things far less interesting. But one thing the resolution or those moments of truly gripping writing do is point to the main conflict. That conflict is the thing that has generated so many muddled, rambling words and images.
Once one knows the conflict, either through the resolution or as a result of contemplating what peers pointed out as the parts that most deeply affected them, the story can be revised to develop the conflict more clearly. The relation of disparate parts of the story can more closely related to the conflict—exactly how to they touch on the conflict in its development through time or theme? Those details which don’t relate can discarded as irrelevant and other details included which do relate to develop the story. In either case, the conflict becomes that point which organizes the piece.
I know this analysis of conflict seems to concentrate on composition theory as if were just a story, a fiction. But I can its relevance to Graff's approach to “academic obscurantism,” a way to approach the postmodern influence on theory to try to find a way to make those theories of relevance in a context where students and teachers actually exist. Argumentation (which necessarily involves focus on a conflict) as a meta-practice can function as well in an internal dialogue as well as a social one. Thanks, Scott, for a very engaged and evocative argument.
Once one knows the conflict, either through the resolution or as a result of contemplating what peers pointed out as the parts that most deeply affected them, the story can be revised to develop the conflict more clearly. The relation of disparate parts of the story can more closely related to the conflict—exactly how to they touch on the conflict in its development through time or theme? Those details which don’t relate can discarded as irrelevant and other details included which do relate to develop the story. In either case, the conflict becomes that point which organizes the piece.
I know this analysis of conflict seems to concentrate on composition theory as if were just a story, a fiction. But I can its relevance to Graff's approach to “academic obscurantism,” a way to approach the postmodern influence on theory to try to find a way to make those theories of relevance in a context where students and teachers actually exist. Argumentation (which necessarily involves focus on a conflict) as a meta-practice can function as well in an internal dialogue as well as a social one. Thanks, Scott, for a very engaged and evocative argument.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
One politic response
The Elbow/Bartholomae debate—why did it become so publicized? I think it became such a hot topic because it so neatly invoked the words of the large political debate—that between conservatives and liberals.
The argument between conservatives and anticonservatives has been going on a long time. It can easily be read into the right/left movement of recent elections, the platforms of presidents from Bush to Clinton to Reagan/Bush to Carter. The dichotomy goes well beyond recent campaign rhetoric—back to the days when the constitution was debated into words as not so much a balance as a tug of war between state and federal governments.
The Elbow/Bartholomae conversation got caught up in this debate almost by accident it seems. Well, maybe it wasn’t quite by accident--Bartholomae did frame part of his argument against Elbow’s views of writing in a political context: it was conservative and promoted the status quo, an ideology of sentimental realism. But the neat fit of their pedagogy into the conservative/liberal debate depended on limited view both their platforms. I think they were both complicit letting certain aspects of their theories be emphasized by others and the rode the wave of public acclaim for awhile. But they weren’t the surfers that politicians are—they got too high on it and crested. Although teaching has political implications, neither of the two men was a politician. The same way, although writing has political implications, at some point, it is an individual shaping thoughts in words. I think the public pressure so many eyes critiquing their words made both men try to reclaim their status as teachers rather than political celebrities.
Elbow’s view of the self as a sort of Jeffersonian carapace filled an essence of fundamental, inalienable rights seemed to alter. He still used a singular article before the noun, but he acknowledged that the self was neither “unitary” nor “unchanging.” Bartholomae also modifies his stance. He acknowledged the “empowerment” that comes to a student who recognizes the validity of his own experience, that he is the “Author” of his life—even though he does turn his and mutter in writing that “authorship in that sense is a lie.”
I’m uncertain exactly what I should make of all this. In one sense, I think their fall from the spotlight proved Elbow’s point of view: a self is not synonymous with the political forces that shape them. Man does have some agency even if it’s only stepping out of the spotlight. But in another way, maybe the fact that both have been used and discarded by political forces proves Bartholomae’s position. Or maybe it just proves the two were men.
I think it interesting that women seem to be the ones pointing to the academic (in all senses) nature of the debate. Nancy quoted Lunsford as saying that the two aren’t that far apart in their views. Shaynee’s presentation of Bizzell’s argument that inner directed and outer directed approaches need to be combined in a holistic manner seems very much directed towards the Elbow/Bartholomae deabate--a sort of Hegelian application of history as a dialectical assumption of thesis by antithesis into synthesis. Emily, too, pointed out that the debate had run its course and was now a submerged part of any composition theory.
Still, looking back on the debate, it is interesting to wonder what it was truly about. I never did see Elbow as a “frontier guidesman.” He was always more a hippy guru to me and hardly an archetypal conservative. And I never saw Bartholomae as a radical so much as I saw him as a stern Puritan father chastising his children about the evil ways of the world.
Obama’s campaign focused on the ideological divide between parties, the divisiveness that has has paralyzed our government. He said that the legislators were so concentrated on reacting to whatever happened on the other side of the aisle that they weren’t seeing the problems that actually faced us. Like Graff “teaching the conflict,” Obama wanted to school the populace into a different perspective on approaching government. His argument that we could transcend dualities to become unified as Americans sounded good to enough people that he won election. I hope that his both/and approach is effective even while I know that either/or is as old as ying and yang and will always be a fundamental part of the decision making process. And writing, as well.
The argument between conservatives and anticonservatives has been going on a long time. It can easily be read into the right/left movement of recent elections, the platforms of presidents from Bush to Clinton to Reagan/Bush to Carter. The dichotomy goes well beyond recent campaign rhetoric—back to the days when the constitution was debated into words as not so much a balance as a tug of war between state and federal governments.
The Elbow/Bartholomae conversation got caught up in this debate almost by accident it seems. Well, maybe it wasn’t quite by accident--Bartholomae did frame part of his argument against Elbow’s views of writing in a political context: it was conservative and promoted the status quo, an ideology of sentimental realism. But the neat fit of their pedagogy into the conservative/liberal debate depended on limited view both their platforms. I think they were both complicit letting certain aspects of their theories be emphasized by others and the rode the wave of public acclaim for awhile. But they weren’t the surfers that politicians are—they got too high on it and crested. Although teaching has political implications, neither of the two men was a politician. The same way, although writing has political implications, at some point, it is an individual shaping thoughts in words. I think the public pressure so many eyes critiquing their words made both men try to reclaim their status as teachers rather than political celebrities.
Elbow’s view of the self as a sort of Jeffersonian carapace filled an essence of fundamental, inalienable rights seemed to alter. He still used a singular article before the noun, but he acknowledged that the self was neither “unitary” nor “unchanging.” Bartholomae also modifies his stance. He acknowledged the “empowerment” that comes to a student who recognizes the validity of his own experience, that he is the “Author” of his life—even though he does turn his and mutter in writing that “authorship in that sense is a lie.”
I’m uncertain exactly what I should make of all this. In one sense, I think their fall from the spotlight proved Elbow’s point of view: a self is not synonymous with the political forces that shape them. Man does have some agency even if it’s only stepping out of the spotlight. But in another way, maybe the fact that both have been used and discarded by political forces proves Bartholomae’s position. Or maybe it just proves the two were men.
I think it interesting that women seem to be the ones pointing to the academic (in all senses) nature of the debate. Nancy quoted Lunsford as saying that the two aren’t that far apart in their views. Shaynee’s presentation of Bizzell’s argument that inner directed and outer directed approaches need to be combined in a holistic manner seems very much directed towards the Elbow/Bartholomae deabate--a sort of Hegelian application of history as a dialectical assumption of thesis by antithesis into synthesis. Emily, too, pointed out that the debate had run its course and was now a submerged part of any composition theory.
Still, looking back on the debate, it is interesting to wonder what it was truly about. I never did see Elbow as a “frontier guidesman.” He was always more a hippy guru to me and hardly an archetypal conservative. And I never saw Bartholomae as a radical so much as I saw him as a stern Puritan father chastising his children about the evil ways of the world.
Obama’s campaign focused on the ideological divide between parties, the divisiveness that has has paralyzed our government. He said that the legislators were so concentrated on reacting to whatever happened on the other side of the aisle that they weren’t seeing the problems that actually faced us. Like Graff “teaching the conflict,” Obama wanted to school the populace into a different perspective on approaching government. His argument that we could transcend dualities to become unified as Americans sounded good to enough people that he won election. I hope that his both/and approach is effective even while I know that either/or is as old as ying and yang and will always be a fundamental part of the decision making process. And writing, as well.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Lunsford
In reading for another class, I came across a line from Catherine Gallagher’s “Historical Scholarship’: ‘When critics specify exactly which aspect of authorial identity was thus threatened, it often turns out to be masculinity, and hence the submerged topic of the historical gender of authorship arises.” The phrase “historical gender” gave me pause. The author went on to put it into a context of the feminist desire to recover a history of women writers, but I couldn’t shake the anthropomorphic connotations of the phrase: the huge, dark body that keeps following on the heels of the present has a gender. In anthropomorphizing history, it does appear a single entity—genderizing it introduce a conflict. Exactly how does this entity work out its bipolar sexual identity?
I’m sure it is influenced by people like Lunsford. As Nancy gave her presentation, I didn’t develop an image of an individual woman so much I thought about a historical movement—an identity that has come about through a hard core social contructionist attitude. The idea of a “self creating, self expressive subjectivity” is historically gendered male. The ideas of Lunsford are opposed to this notion in every way possible: collaboration, ownership issues, multiple intelligences. I can see how she could regard the conservative/radical debate between Elbow and Bartholomae as academic.
I’m sure it is influenced by people like Lunsford. As Nancy gave her presentation, I didn’t develop an image of an individual woman so much I thought about a historical movement—an identity that has come about through a hard core social contructionist attitude. The idea of a “self creating, self expressive subjectivity” is historically gendered male. The ideas of Lunsford are opposed to this notion in every way possible: collaboration, ownership issues, multiple intelligences. I can see how she could regard the conservative/radical debate between Elbow and Bartholomae as academic.
Murray
I like the comparison/contrast manner of Tony’s presentation of Murray’s view of writing in relation to Elbow’s. Both focused on process and the chief difference seemed to be that Murray began writing with “a clear vision of the product”—even though he did welcome surprise in writing. Maybe that tone is the difference between a guy who wrote for newspapers and a guy who wrote for academia, a guy who often wrote with a definite subject matter in mind and a deadline and guy who didn’t. But when the both wrote about the process of writing, I don’t see much contrast.
In his ’72 article, “Teach Writing as a Process Not Product” (an article that predates Elbow’s first book on writing by a year), Murray’s views are identical to Elbow’s. Murray says that teaching writing by critiquing literature is teaching students to do an autopsy instead teaching them to make “language live.” He calls true writing the process of discovery through language, a process of revealing “the truth to himself so that he can tell it to others.” In the classroom, “we should teach unfinished writing, and glory in its unfinishedness.” In this focus on the student as an individual appropriating knowledge for himself rather than being appropriated by that knowledge into a system of discourse, the product-drivenness of Murray’s view of writing fades.
His major tenets (at least at this time) are exactly those of Elbow: the text of a writing course is the student’s own writing; the student finds his own subject, uses his own language; multiple drafts are written on the same subject; mechanics come last. Writing is a process that occurs between a fluctuation between two poles—unpressured time “to think and dream and stare out windows” and pressured time, “the deadline.” The latter parallels Elbow’s dichotomous view of writing: freewriting/critiquing, believing/doubting game.
In his ’78 article, Murray writes: “Most of all, we need to move from failure-centered research to research which defines what happens when the writing goes well.” In this I hear echoes of Elbow’s critique of methodological doubt: that it is focused on finding flaws rather than looking for positives in writing. If Elbow propounded a weird, hippy sort of attitude like the “believing game” to overcome the problem, Murray seems only slightly different, more in tone than substance.
In his ’72 article, “Teach Writing as a Process Not Product” (an article that predates Elbow’s first book on writing by a year), Murray’s views are identical to Elbow’s. Murray says that teaching writing by critiquing literature is teaching students to do an autopsy instead teaching them to make “language live.” He calls true writing the process of discovery through language, a process of revealing “the truth to himself so that he can tell it to others.” In the classroom, “we should teach unfinished writing, and glory in its unfinishedness.” In this focus on the student as an individual appropriating knowledge for himself rather than being appropriated by that knowledge into a system of discourse, the product-drivenness of Murray’s view of writing fades.
His major tenets (at least at this time) are exactly those of Elbow: the text of a writing course is the student’s own writing; the student finds his own subject, uses his own language; multiple drafts are written on the same subject; mechanics come last. Writing is a process that occurs between a fluctuation between two poles—unpressured time “to think and dream and stare out windows” and pressured time, “the deadline.” The latter parallels Elbow’s dichotomous view of writing: freewriting/critiquing, believing/doubting game.
In his ’78 article, Murray writes: “Most of all, we need to move from failure-centered research to research which defines what happens when the writing goes well.” In this I hear echoes of Elbow’s critique of methodological doubt: that it is focused on finding flaws rather than looking for positives in writing. If Elbow propounded a weird, hippy sort of attitude like the “believing game” to overcome the problem, Murray seems only slightly different, more in tone than substance.
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