I just recently took a gander at
this article about how batshit crazy us composition teachers supposedly are. I haven't seen it discussed up here, so I figured I'd link us to it. And I am purposely not posting any kind of
graphic so as to irritate those folks who love them and those folks who love to criticize them.
I kinda feel like this article is a double-edged extension of the "call out" culture. The writer is calling out the conference for calling out teachers who assume all their kids are the same.
ReplyDeleteThe trouble is that we collectively want to make things more accessible to more people, but we as academics also want to score points off each other. And what results is something that I believe hurts everyone involved. Our standards fluctuate so broadly and the goals of education destabilize. No one is well-served.
Expression is a barrier, I'll admit that, but trying to establish a uniform method of communication is not a bad goal. What is wrong here is the impersonal nature of modern teaching. The model of schools-as-businesses that do not take into account how a first-generation student might struggle to adopt formal language more than a privileged upper-class white kid.
(speaking in generalities, of course)
There should be more opportunity for people to prove themselves for promotion rather than hitting all the right targets and walking off with a degree. But I'm probably preaching to the choir there.
I think, too, that sometimes these national conference presentations aren't ALL necessarily representative of what's really being done in the classrooms or the overall climate of teaching. In attending local conferences, I see more 'here's what we do and why and how' than I do at 4Cs or MLA. While these kinds of presentations get accepted for presentation (and publication), how many of them truly represent the reality of a comp classroom?
ReplyDeleteMoreover, since we have no actual "content" that we teach, what else is there to criticize? The fact that we want to use writing for more than reporting of facts, is always going to irk some people. The fact that we CAN use writing to empower and to criticize, scares some people. Those who claim that having students examine power structures inherent in language, or having students examine identities, or exploring ideas is not what a writing class is for probably don't see any value in developing WHOLE students (rather than segmented little grammar Nazis). If comp teachers were only teaching the importance of the semicolon, there'd be critics of that, too.
That said, the report seems very biased. I attended 4Cs and found tons of "traditional" presentations. But that's not what is being taught in grad schools right now.
It looks like the 4Cs convention is joining the MLA one as a target for the by-now-cliched "look at how ridiculous these liberal professors are" story. In both cases, the target panels are almost always those which engage race, class, and/or gender in some way, and the implication seems to be that all scholarship that engages those issues is ridiculous (which, of course, some of it is, but much of it isn't, nor is the idea that scholarship should take into account multiple perspectives, experiences, etc.)
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure quite what to make of the parent blog, which seems to take the line that a university education is valuable, but that students in most American universities are not in fact getting a good education, but instead are in danger of being brainwashed by liberal academics pushing their own personal race/class/gender hobbyhorses. In the humanities, at least, they seem to advocate a return to the "classics," to "objectivity," and to (supposedly-universal?) standards of artistic worth. They also advocate critical thinking -- but not, apparently, about where concepts such as the classics, objectivity, etc. come from, or what purpose they serve.
I read the article and assumed that the writer was exaggerating or flat-out making stuff up (no links to the technical program made me suspicious). You commenters seem to be taking the author's description of the conference seriously. Based on your experience, do these conference topics sound reasonable?
ReplyDeleteMary Grabar responds to some criticism here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mindingthecampus.com/forum/2011/04/mary_grabar_responds.html
I note that she did not address the criticism, brought up by some commenters over there, that she had "cherry-picked" only the most radically postmodernistic presentations.
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ReplyDelete@ Ben -- The 4C's always has a pretty significant number of flaky presentations, so the topics listed actually do sound realistic. However, the author also (willfully) mischaracterized some, if not most, of the presentations, and she also doesn't seem to get the rather simple ideas behind innovative composition pedagogy.
ReplyDeleteFor one, composition courses don't have to be focused on academic-writing-and-nothing-but. Personally, I'm a fan of a strong focus on academic writing, but that's neither here nor there.
For two, topical strategies can be used in the composition classroom to engage students. Often, a topic that causes students to actively analyze the world that surrounds them is one that will get students involved in actively writing as opposed to just vomiting forth pablum about why abortion/the death penalty/gun control is wrong.
For three, learning how to apply theoretical perspectives as an analytic tool is one of the things that college is all about. I find it interesting that the author of the hack job probably wouldn't mind if an instructor used "Why Glenn Beck Is Right" to be an analytic tool, but the lefty ideas that she denigrates are somehow anathema.
On top of all that, the author really did cherry-pick what seem to be the most outrageous examples. I've attended a handful of 4C's conferences, and I've never actually attended any silly presentations.