Negroponte advocates learning by doing. We learn best by “playing with information” which is an activity that computers are uniquely suited for (199). This is a response to an older method of teaching, in which teachers impart facts to students who passively absorb them and consequently don’t know what to do with them (besides regurgitate them for tests). Often, students don’t struggle against this type of teaching. It’s the educational experience many of us grew up with. I didn’t wonder what to do with the 200 technical terms I had to memorize for that high school biology final. I knew exactly what I would do with them: I would memorize them, write them down on the answer sheet, and then forget them. In my small town, biology class was just another site where I could demonstrate my proficiency at memorization. Isn’t getting a good grade the goal of all learning anyway? That’s what I thought. Why think otherwise if you aren’t doing what you’re learning? I would have been better off in a computer class, where they could teach me how to Google what the difference between “phylum” and “genus” is.
Learning by doing (and thus learning to do) is becoming more and more crucial. As Kemp notes, our transition to the digital has caused a similar transition in our learning needs. We no longer need to focus on accumulating knowledge; we now need to learn how to “judge and use” the vast world of knowledge we have access to. If you don’t teach a kid to swim, he will drown if thrown into the deep end of the pool. If we don’t get students to become active and adept users of knowledge, they will drown in the ever-growing sea of information.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Post-Process Pedagogy
On Tuesday we discussed Atkinson and post-process pedagogy. I’d like to write a little about it here to get it clearly set out in my mind.
On this view, literacy is more than reading and writing. It is the ability to critically “read” reality. Without the ability to look at reality in a critical way, students see themselves and the world as a result of inevitable and mysterious “natural forces” and “universal truths” which Berlin told us in “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class” don’t exist. Truth must be “continually decided by all and for all in a way appropriate to our own historic moment” (Berlin 490). As a result of this and other factors, composition becomes “a cultural activity by which writers position and repo¬sition themselves in relation to their own and others' subjectivities, discourses, practices, and institutions” (Atkinson 1532).
Atkinson doesn’t think solely in terms of post-process pedagogy though. He recognizes that process pedagogy is not a bad thing in itself. I mean, how can you conceive of writing instruction without thinking about pre-writing, drafting, feedback, and revision? Atkinson isn’t thinking in terms of a “basic ‘paradigm shift,’” but rather “in expanding and broadening the domain” of how we think about writing (1538). This way he can take advantage of the merits in process pedagogy, while at the same time avoiding the pitfalls that come with engagement in a purely process pedagogy.
That sounds pretty appealing. I like the idea of students learning to think critically about the world, and then learning to frame those thoughts in appropriate rhetorical terms. If we wanted to employ pedagogy like this in our own composition program at TTU, I guess we would have the students stop doing rhetorical analysis (at least as their main focus) and start engaging with article content. We might want to change the topic of assigned readings to something related to social issues that students would be interested in (I don’t think they are interested in the development of the English language).
I’m trying to imagine how our students would perform in a system like that. It’s difficult to do.
On this view, literacy is more than reading and writing. It is the ability to critically “read” reality. Without the ability to look at reality in a critical way, students see themselves and the world as a result of inevitable and mysterious “natural forces” and “universal truths” which Berlin told us in “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class” don’t exist. Truth must be “continually decided by all and for all in a way appropriate to our own historic moment” (Berlin 490). As a result of this and other factors, composition becomes “a cultural activity by which writers position and repo¬sition themselves in relation to their own and others' subjectivities, discourses, practices, and institutions” (Atkinson 1532).
Atkinson doesn’t think solely in terms of post-process pedagogy though. He recognizes that process pedagogy is not a bad thing in itself. I mean, how can you conceive of writing instruction without thinking about pre-writing, drafting, feedback, and revision? Atkinson isn’t thinking in terms of a “basic ‘paradigm shift,’” but rather “in expanding and broadening the domain” of how we think about writing (1538). This way he can take advantage of the merits in process pedagogy, while at the same time avoiding the pitfalls that come with engagement in a purely process pedagogy.
That sounds pretty appealing. I like the idea of students learning to think critically about the world, and then learning to frame those thoughts in appropriate rhetorical terms. If we wanted to employ pedagogy like this in our own composition program at TTU, I guess we would have the students stop doing rhetorical analysis (at least as their main focus) and start engaging with article content. We might want to change the topic of assigned readings to something related to social issues that students would be interested in (I don’t think they are interested in the development of the English language).
I’m trying to imagine how our students would perform in a system like that. It’s difficult to do.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Feminism and ENGL 1301
In late September, we went to a Professional Development Workshop to talk about time management. Three guest professors were there, and they all gave us their tips and tricks for managing our (and their) hectic lives. I remember Dr. Spurgeon’s talk most clearly. Partly, that’s because she based her rules for survival in academia on Columbus’ rules for survival in Zombieland. Gosh, I love that movie. Another reason her talk stuck with me was that some of her advice was directed primarily at female students. “Don’t be afraid to say ‘no,’” she told us. When someone asks you to serve on such and such committee, don’t be afraid to refuse if you really don’t have time. In our culture, women tend to say yes. Yes, I’ll do that. Yes, I can take care of that. We’ve been raised to be accommodating. But don’t fall into that trap! Know when to say “no.” She then gave us a polite, non-combative verbal formula we could use to refuse these hypothetical coworkers.
There is a certain amount of truth to that sentiment. My mom and all three of her sisters, for instance, are all compulsively accomodating. There’s more to the issue though. Take Gloria Anzaldua, who was a feminist as well as a member of a traditional Hispanic community. How do you reconcile your beliefs, your sex, and your heritage? Or take the term “feminazi” (thank you, Rush Limbaugh). A militant feminist. Man hater. Is this a “right” and “accurate” term for certain kinds of feminists, or is it just crass and offensive?
Most of these ideas are really too complex for me to deal with adequately here, so I’m going to drop it now. The point is that issues of gender and sex are still relevant. They exist, even in 2010. As for injecting these issues into First-Year Composition—well, it’s happening this semester. I was grading peer critiques last night, and I came across one that dealt with a Draft 1.1 that analyzed “Who Wants to Marry a Feminist?” by Lisa Miva-Jervis. Later, I came across another one (I graded a lot last night). The article is concerned with dispelling the myth of the feminist as a “hairy-legged man-hater.” Talking about feminism can be tricky, but the two drafts I read seemed to be fairly straightforward rhetorical analyses. I found no impassioned arguments for or against feminism. The critiques seemed fairly neutral too. Are our freshman getting more mature? Maybe, maybe not. After all, I did only see two drafts based on that article. But is it wrong for the article to even be involved with ENGL 1301? We’re asking them to analyze rhetoric rather than argue content, but that seems like an article that lends itself to content-based consideration anyway. How can you read that and not think about sexism? So, are we socially engineering students?
There is a certain amount of truth to that sentiment. My mom and all three of her sisters, for instance, are all compulsively accomodating. There’s more to the issue though. Take Gloria Anzaldua, who was a feminist as well as a member of a traditional Hispanic community. How do you reconcile your beliefs, your sex, and your heritage? Or take the term “feminazi” (thank you, Rush Limbaugh). A militant feminist. Man hater. Is this a “right” and “accurate” term for certain kinds of feminists, or is it just crass and offensive?
Most of these ideas are really too complex for me to deal with adequately here, so I’m going to drop it now. The point is that issues of gender and sex are still relevant. They exist, even in 2010. As for injecting these issues into First-Year Composition—well, it’s happening this semester. I was grading peer critiques last night, and I came across one that dealt with a Draft 1.1 that analyzed “Who Wants to Marry a Feminist?” by Lisa Miva-Jervis. Later, I came across another one (I graded a lot last night). The article is concerned with dispelling the myth of the feminist as a “hairy-legged man-hater.” Talking about feminism can be tricky, but the two drafts I read seemed to be fairly straightforward rhetorical analyses. I found no impassioned arguments for or against feminism. The critiques seemed fairly neutral too. Are our freshman getting more mature? Maybe, maybe not. After all, I did only see two drafts based on that article. But is it wrong for the article to even be involved with ENGL 1301? We’re asking them to analyze rhetoric rather than argue content, but that seems like an article that lends itself to content-based consideration anyway. How can you read that and not think about sexism? So, are we socially engineering students?
Technical and Creative Writing
Winsor's "Invention and Writing in Technical Work" was really interesting to me. She writes that engineering work is traditionally seen as coming before and largely determining its written representation in the form of a report (Winsor 843). So we tend to think that there is no creativity or invention involved in technical writing.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have creative writing. For instance, this semester I’m writing a textual history of Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea. It’s a fantasy novel in which another universe is envisioned—complete with an imaginary world map (consisting mainly of islands), distinct imaginary cultures, distinct imaginary economies, etc. Think LOTR and Narnia, only more Taoist and less British. In an essay describing her creative process, Le Guin writes the following:
"I did not deliberately invent Earthsea. I did not think ‘Hey wow—islands are archetypes and archipelagoes are superarchetypes and let’s build us an archipelago!’ I am not an engineer, but an explorer. I discovered Earthsea” (Le Guin 49-50).
This is kind of interesting. The traditional view of technical writing is that it is a report on the real work of invention. It doesn’t involve much creativity in and of itself. Le Guin characterizes her writing as discovery rather than invention. Earthsea was already there (in her unconscious), and writing about it constituted a “discovery” of that universe rather than a creative “invention” of it. The main difference between the two is that engineers report on concrete objects and Le Guin is reporting on a fictional object.
As we find out, however, technical writing is deeply involved with the engineering process. The students Windsor studied used writing to “recall, juxtapose, and trigger ideas,” to serve the purpose of “establishing and validating group knowledge,” and just generally as a method for “attaching writing to the object as a way of thinking about it” (Winsor 846, 853, 849). If we keep reading Le Guin’s essay, we find that she wrote notes and preliminary short stories in order to “discover” the people and geography of Earthsea. Her process sounds like it involves recalling, juxtaposing, and triggering ideas to me. It also sounds like she used her short stories to attach writing to her fictional object, so as to solidify her way of thinking about it.
I found the parallels between the two interesting. To me, it indicates that technical writing is not on the opposite end of the spectrum from creative writing after all.
Le Guin, Ursula. “Dreams Must Explain Themselves.” The Language of the Night. Ed. Susan Wood. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979. 47-56.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have creative writing. For instance, this semester I’m writing a textual history of Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea. It’s a fantasy novel in which another universe is envisioned—complete with an imaginary world map (consisting mainly of islands), distinct imaginary cultures, distinct imaginary economies, etc. Think LOTR and Narnia, only more Taoist and less British. In an essay describing her creative process, Le Guin writes the following:
"I did not deliberately invent Earthsea. I did not think ‘Hey wow—islands are archetypes and archipelagoes are superarchetypes and let’s build us an archipelago!’ I am not an engineer, but an explorer. I discovered Earthsea” (Le Guin 49-50).
This is kind of interesting. The traditional view of technical writing is that it is a report on the real work of invention. It doesn’t involve much creativity in and of itself. Le Guin characterizes her writing as discovery rather than invention. Earthsea was already there (in her unconscious), and writing about it constituted a “discovery” of that universe rather than a creative “invention” of it. The main difference between the two is that engineers report on concrete objects and Le Guin is reporting on a fictional object.
As we find out, however, technical writing is deeply involved with the engineering process. The students Windsor studied used writing to “recall, juxtapose, and trigger ideas,” to serve the purpose of “establishing and validating group knowledge,” and just generally as a method for “attaching writing to the object as a way of thinking about it” (Winsor 846, 853, 849). If we keep reading Le Guin’s essay, we find that she wrote notes and preliminary short stories in order to “discover” the people and geography of Earthsea. Her process sounds like it involves recalling, juxtaposing, and triggering ideas to me. It also sounds like she used her short stories to attach writing to her fictional object, so as to solidify her way of thinking about it.
I found the parallels between the two interesting. To me, it indicates that technical writing is not on the opposite end of the spectrum from creative writing after all.
Le Guin, Ursula. “Dreams Must Explain Themselves.” The Language of the Night. Ed. Susan Wood. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979. 47-56.
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