Near the end of “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class,” Berlin remarks that he deems social epistemic rhetoric to be the “most worthy of emulation in the classroom” (682). From our class discussion, I suspect most of us also liked his position. However, he also says that social-epistemic pedagogy is “the least formulaic and the most difficult to carry out” (682). Most of our discussion of Berlin’s “liabilities” seemed to center on the difficulties that the system or the students would present to us as hypothetical teachers trying to implement a successful social-epistemic pedagogy. How exactly can we create a pedagogy that does not replace the student’s with the teacher’s, but still frees them (to an extent)? How can we all transcend the limitations of the traditional classroom? There are answers to these questions, but none of them are easy.
And here we are now. We are grading for a freshman composition program that I do not think is based on Berlin’s notion of social-epistemic rhetoric. We all could quit, but we’re not going to because we haven’t gotten our degrees yet and we need the money. Most of us, I think, will end up trying to work within the system. Like Dr. Kemp, we could encourage alternative forms of student interaction with tools like the MOO. Like certain free-thinking undergraduate professors I had, we could escape the classroom by conducting our classes in locations other than the assigned one—in the library, in the courtyard, at the Lubbock Lake Landmark. Whatever we do, though, there will still be big problems to contend with. Working within systems we don’t necessarily believe in can be a soul-sucking enterprise. Rising to the challenge of continually creating courses that are “always open-ended, receptive to the unexpected, and subversive of the planned” and effective to boot can be exhausting—especially if the students don’t engage with the course no matter what you do (682).
I'm not trying to be a complete downer here. Berlin’s essay simply made me think about the fact that to be a teacher, you need positivity, patience, endurance, and a deep devotion to learning just as much as you need a grounding in the “history and theory” of their profession and a self-reflective teaching pedagogy. The realization makes me really wish that I'd given more of my teachers an apple (or a Dr. Pepper, or a pack of cigarettes, as the case may be) on the first day of school.
I agree with you Hannah. I am continually impressed with the magnitude of what being a teacher really means, and how difficult it may be to be the kind of teacher each of us wants to be within the existing system. However, it has been my experience that the challenge of working within a system you don't necessarily believe in is not exclusive to teachers. I think that a lot of people in a wide variety of jobs deal with that dilemma everyday. I know I have. So the only thing any of us can do is the best we can within the system we are working. Maybe, we can be the voice of change along the way, maybe not. And if it becomes too uncomfortable, or we feel we are being required to compromise our integrity or standards too much, we move on. That's what I did, and that's how I ended up back in school.
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I really like the way you approached Berlin's ideas on social-epistemic, and the whole idea of pedagogy in general. You bring up a great point that a teacher is expected to be a miracle worker, therapist, policeman keeping control, all the while maintaining complete patience the whole time. As indicated by all of our classroom experiences, that is not realistic at all. Teaching a class is difficult, and if anything this class and authors like Berlin have kept bringing ideas to the forefront to help us combat the jungle that is the classroom. If we keep Berlin and others' good ideas in our heads, I think we (at least the people in our class) will be more prepared as teachers and more able to accomplish what we want to see happening in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I wonder if much of the resistance against these kinds of changes (that we've discussed in class) aren't from teachers who don't want to change that role of the "teacher as authority." I know this is a picky argument (against many people who I admire), but you can't help but wonder if with all of these changes that are proposed, the standard of a teacher must change with the role of the teacher. Most of what we've discussed- to work properly- takes a pretty genius worker. Here's to these standards being raised away.
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