Reading Response 2

This week, our class read through the first half of James A. Berlin's Rhetoric and Reality, and Berlin tracks and contextualizes changes in English studies through the 20th century. What motivates past debates about education remains, in a manner of speaking, the same motivation for our debate on our legitimacy and pedagogy as a scholarly discipline today: an urgent sense of crisis. When students can't write, our culture--more likely our profession--is going to end and end catastrophically.

Fortunately, the English department has survived by responding to changes in our culture. Berlin, for instance, explains that rhetoric in English studies slowly diminished in value, taken over by literature. The crisis then was displacement of rhetoric, and students still couldn't write.

Today, I see an inversion to this past crisis. Composition and rhetoric studies are challenging the eminence of literary studies. If you don't believe me, I encourage you to ask a trusted advisor or friend in which field is it easier to find a job. Comp/rhet. and literary studies seem like rival siblings that, while coming from the same home, simply can't--or don't want to--get along.

In this moment, where jobs are scarce and schools are driven by consumers' wants, it seems that the study of composition and rhetoric appeals to a practical and positivistic mindset present in our culture. The general appeal of comp/rhet., while still deeply theoretical and complex, responds to a narrative in which practical skills are valuable and get results. The theories wars of the 1980s and 1990s, by extension, don't settle well when we're pinching pennies and looking for alternatives to the mess that is postmodernism.

However, we can't altogether discount postmodernist theory. Without it, would we insist on multiple literacies as opposed to just one definition of literacy? Would we be as sensitive to discursive power over knowledge as we are? Would we look so closely at subcultures and smal communities? So, to extend my silly analogy further, comp/rhet. and literary studies are more like rival siblings--they fight, but they can't get entirely away from each other.

With Berlin's historical account in mind, this struggle is good for our discipline. Without the competition, we would not have invention and integration that makes what we do useful and, yes, even fun. So, our current crisis for intellectual legitimacy isn't really a crisis at all--it wasn't really a crisis then--but rather a familiar, ongoing process for change.

Executive Summary 2

Berlin, James A. "The Influence of Progressive Education: 1920-1940." Rhetoric and Reality:Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-1950. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987. 58-91. Print.

Between 1920 and 1940, the dominant trends of writing educated vacillated between individual and social objectives, each building off ideas of progressive education, that is, using science to study human behavior and promote the social good.

Attempts to quantify human behavior in order to shape curricular policy lead to widespread assessment. Berlin uses two university surveys to illustrate pedagogical trends in freshman composition. Generally, rhetoric textbooks disappeared, and administrators sectioned students by ability.

Berlin next looks at current-traditional rhetoric in this period, using Syracuse’s curriculum as a standard. Students were sectioned off with the best writing about literature, the standard writing research papers and about language, and the worse not writing themes at all but instead learning about spelling and grammar. With literature at the forefront, reading took a privileged position over writing.

In contrast, Berlin looks at liberal culture rhetoric, an elitist instruction for future literary genius in mind. Expressionistic rhetoric, influenced by psychoanalysis, grew from liberal culture. Expressionist Teachers did not assess writing but created instead conditions for students to reach their creative potentials.

Social rhetoric turned toward communal and political concerns. Writing education should teach citizenship and allow for a dialogue between people about controversial or relevant. Language is a social instrument, and correct usage is a matter of social context.

Berlin ends with two viewpoints condemning college writing. One suggests that courses made no difference in the quality of writing, and the other explains that new students had nothing to write about so writing classes should come in the last year of school. Of course, writing instruction remained part of college curriculums going into the 1940s.

Quotes

"[Progressive Education] was likewise concerned with the school serving the well-being of society, espeically in ensuring the continuance of a democratic state that would make opportunities available to all without compromising excellence" (59).

"Placement tests were multiplying and ability sectioning was becoming widespread. At the same time, rhetoric textbooks were being abandoned while literature was increasingly being introduced into the course. Finally, English clinics were being established--places where students who had completed the freshman composition requirement could go for assistance with their college assignments" (64).

"The minimal essentials were a placement test, grouping students by ability, and some sort of procedure for verifying the success of the program, such as exit tests or follow-up programs for students who later displayed shortcomings" (65).

"Theirs was an effort to democratize college, making it available to a new group of students, even students whose parents had not benefited from higher education" (68).

"It is obvious that these current-traditional programs were including those features of progressive education that were compatible with their positivistic epistemology" (69-70).

"Their effect, Bower explained, had been to make freshman composition a course in reading rather than writing" (71).

"The proponents of liberal culture, on the other hand, looked upon the university as the preparatory school for an elite, aristocratic group of individualists" (71).

"The origin of [liberal culture] can instead be found in the postwar, Freudian-inspired, expressionistic notions of childhood education that the progressives attempted to propagate" (73).

"[Adele] Bildersee explained: 'The aim of the book is to guide students in learning how to write. During twenty years, more or less, of experience, the teacher who writes the book has learned this: that the art of writing cannot be taught; it can be only be learned. The part of the teacher can play in this process is that of guide and advisor--collaborator if need be' (ix)" (77).

"As the thirties brought its increasing store of human misery, the attention of composition teachers became more clearly focused on writing as a response to social contexts" (82).

"Taylor argued for the teaching of writing in a way that would serve the political role of the individual in a democratic state" (86).

"Correctness or incorrectness in thought and usage is determined by the social context in which language is used, not by predetermined and fixed standards" (89).

"According to [Oscar James] Campbell, students could not write because they had nothing to say, and the only solution was to fill the void" (90).

Weekly Response 1

The readings for class this week seem to challenge commonly held notions of literacy and the trope of a literate person as a learned scholar with a slim, tweed jacket and varnished smoking pipe. All types of people write, and this fact should redefine literacy and redirect our efforts to understand writing practices. The central idea is that writing takes place outside of the classroom and outside of Western culture. To a varying degree, the readings also suggest popular and personal writing is valued and fun, and traditional writing in the classroom is dull and difficult.

I see great value in understanding different cultures and their respective writing practices, yet I feel remiss to discount the body of work put into standardizing education. Yes, I guess that I’m giving praise to “The Man” for subjecting me to one soul-crushing test after another and condemning me for the flowery prose that I used to enjoy writing. I have to give it to them though. It is hard to order a group of people—I’ve had a hard enough time leading a classroom. Still, there has to be a practical solution for testing writing and testing literacy without allowing for complete relativism.

At this point, I don’t have an answer to that problem since I only see more problems from a teaching perspective. If we adapt our writing instruction to the technologies of tomorrow as Scribner says in “Literacy in Metaphors” (74), I wonder if we’ll be losing something meaningful by getting caught up in the technology boom and new media craze. I’m not trying to sound like a nostalgic old-fogey or a Luddite, I am, but I do worry that with the escalation of technology will have a detrimental effect on how we learn, write, and understand the world around us and each other. Textscript is an eyesore even on a cell phone to me. I like to slow down and unplug sometimes, and usually that's when I enjoy studying and writing and reading the most. That's just me.

So, all right, if I am going to accept these multiple literacies and new technologies as a student as well as in my classroom, what do I do with them? What are the parameters for a “rich curriculum” (Yancey’s "Writing in the 21st Century" 3) and who dictates what they are? Also, how do I grade student writing? How should I write assignments? The questions are endless, but that's a good starting point for a class, isn't it?

Executive Summary 1

Executive Summary

Scribner, Sylvia. “Literacy in Three Metaphors.” American Journal of Education 93 (1984): 6-21. Print.

In this article, Sylvia Scribner approaches the question of “What is literacy” by questioning the pursuit of a single definition or, in her words, “essence” of literacy. This question is not a new one, according to Scribner, but rather one that has a body of scholarship and political history. As scholars and lawmakers try to single out what literacy is and how best to qualify and spread literacy, Scribner suggests that this definitional approach limits understanding the complexity of literacy moving beyond establishing criteria for literacy and assessing individual mastery and seeing literacy as a socially constructed and valued activity.

Scribner includes three central metaphors of literacy that demonstrate how singular perspectives are relevant but if left separate create boundaries in our understanding of literacy.

• Literacy as Adaptation: This metaphor underscores the practicality of literacy. For example, in our society, it a general rule that people need to be able to read and write to get a job. Although Scribner stresses the relevance for this type of literacy, she states that focusing strictly on these practical concerns establishes a short-sighted view of literacy that underscores the individual. Aptitude tests and other forms of assessment give us a sense of individual mastery, but on what basis can we test individual literacy? What is the standard?
• Literacy as Power: Scribner turns her attentions to the social influences of literacy in this metaphor. Literacy has a long association with social and political power. Scribner addresses how literacy can be used for hegemonic forces as well as social critics. Referencing Paul Freire, Scribner explains how literacy has been thought of as a means to socially liberate oppressed people and give voices to minorities people, including the elderly and blacks. Some theorists believe this type of social mobility is good, and it should be part of the work of spreading literacy. However, Scribner challenges this idea by asking how this can be monitored? Also, will one model of literacy lead to liberation in another culture?
• Literacy as State of Grace: Scribner, rather than emphasize the religious and spiritual overtones of this metaphor, states that there is a belief that literate persons carry some special purpose of exceptionalism. This idea steams from a cultural narrative that a “bookish” knowledge is equivalent to literacy. However, values vary from culture to culture, subculture to subculture, and belief in this type of literacy as the only literacy is elitist. Who defines the standards for useful literacy? How should they be cultivated.

To draw her argument together, Scribner refers to her ethnographic study of the Vai tribe. The Vai live by “Third World” means yet have been practicing literate activities for 150 years. Scribner explains that the three scripts of the Vai—Arabic, English, and Vai—carry different values for the community and individuals. Arabic is the language of their religion. English is the language of political and institutional power, taught at state schools. The Vai script is not taught in school but rather transferred from a tutor to a pupil through a continuous learning process.

Unlike in our society, writing is not a tool for survival, expressed in the Literacy and Adaptation metaphor yet writing takes place and carries with it various values and uses.

Scribner ends by returning to the original question of literacy and suggests that if the pursuit of a singular definition of literacy is fruitless that we should instead seek to understand variety of literacies. Such studies would help shape different types of instruction that respond to the dynamic and shifting conditions of literacy from one time and one culture to another.

Quotes

“They suggest that literacy is a kind of reality that educators should be able to grasp and explain, or, expressed in more classical terms, that literacy has an essence that can be captured through some Aristotelian-like enterprise” (72).

“It follows that individual literacy is relative to social literacy” (72).

“Replacing the school-grade criterion with a functional approach to literacy does not eliminate the time problem. Today’s standards for functional competency need to be considered in light of tomorrow’s requirements” (74).

“In the perspective of Western humanism, literateness has come to be considered synonymous with being ‘culture,’ using the term in the old-fashioned sense to refer to a person who is knowledgeable about the content and techniques of the sciences, arts, and humanities that have evolved historically. The term sounds elitist and archaic, but the notion that participation in a literate—that is, bookish—tradition enlarges and develops a persons’s essential self is pervasive and still undergirds the concept of a liberal education (Steiner 1973)” (77).

“If the search for essence is futile, it might appropriately be replaced by serious attention to varieties of literacy and their place in social and educational programs” (80).

“What is ideal literacy in our society? If the analysis by metaphor presented here contributes some approach to that question, it suggests that ideal literacy is simultaneously adaptive, socially empowering, and self-enhancing” (81).