Week Seven Blog: How Technology Will Impact the World of Education

           After reading this week’s readings, I was left with one thought: will technology cause the Harvard Influence to reemerge. I also realized how much technology has already impacted my own education, and my teaching curriculum and job.

            In Chris M. Anson’s article, “Distant Voices: Teaching and Writing in a Culture of Technology,” I was amazed at how the language at certain parts of the article reminded me of the Harvard Influence. The one part that really focuses on the Harvard Influence is when Anson is talking about the female student, Jennifer, with the tablet. The technology alone screams expensive but we are not sure of it until he writes that “Because Jennifer is a privileged, upper-middle class student who has a paid subscription to an online service, her own high end computer system and modem, and the money to buy whatever software she needs for her studies, she can continue her schoolwork at home” (qtd. in Villanueva 804). This reminded me about how only the elite of society could afford to go to schools that would prep them for the college entrance exams and that they were the ones that could actually afford the tuition to be educated by experts in the field. This idea of experts educating students is also made in Anson’s article when he writes that “the institution is proud to have an exclusive contract with a world-famous historian (now living overseas) for the multimedia course” (qtd. in Villanueva 803). One major twist to the Harvard Influence is that instead of the teacher assistants grading class assignments, Anson’s vision allows “a non-tenure-track education specialist” run the class (qtd. in Villanueva 803). One of the major problems of the Harvard influence is that it stunts students’ writing skills. I felt that students in Jennifer’s scenario also are going to be stunted in their composition skills since the instructor will still being doing all the work and the student will just correct it and resubmit it. Anson states that “The instructor’s face appears on her screen in a little window, to one side of Jennifer’s first draft. As Jennifer clicks on various highlighted passages or words, the instructor’s face becomes animated in a video clip describing certain reactions and offering suggestions for revision. After working through the multimedia commentary and revising her draft, Jennifer then sends the revision back electronically to her instructor” (qtd. in Villanueva 804).  Even Charles Moran in his article discusses that how students can easily get persuaded by the computer to add or take away from their composition. They must realize “that they can to a degree control their writing environment” and not take to heart all the computer suggestions which sometimes are wrong. (qtd. in Tate, Rupiper, and Schick 207-208). Moran’s article, “Technology and the Teaching of Writing,” also discusses how there are still some gender and racial inequalities in technology. The idea that “the computer is seen as a “boy’s toy’” is a modern example of the chauvinistic attitudes of the Harvard Influence (qtd. in Tate, Rupiper and Schick 215).While Anson states that there have been some “positive accounts [that] already show that email can help students to form study groups, interact with their teachers, or carry on academic discussions with students at other locations all over the world” (qtd. in Villanueva 805). While he talks about the white students of one university working with the African American university students as a positive thing, I wondered if we can call it a great event since the students are not meeting each other and actually working together. How can these students learn about the subject matter they are writing on and how can they combat assumption and stereotypes that they may have. In a sense these students are segregated and I wonder and worry that these techno schools will become a place of racial and socioeconomic segregation. Another example of students being negatively affected by this elitist idea is the fact that one must be “a member to use this [online journals and articles] resource” (qtd. in Villanueva 207). Some colleges are able to subscribe to a certain limited amount while others are able to afford access to more journals which help to enrich their students.  Anson also states that some student services will be cut because schools will be focused on increasing technology. He writes that “These changes [technological] will increase the number of students the institutions can service without corresponding increases in the need for student daily-life support facility” (qtd. in Villanueva 812). This quote reminds the reader about an earlier point in the article when Anson shows how Jennifer does not have to go to the library or even visit certain historic sites because she can find them online. However, she was wealthy enough to buy the high tech equipment which others cannot afford. This will place her ahead of some of her classmates because she is financially better off and can afford to have the most efficient and up to date equipment. Thus, I wonder if the Harvard Influence will be reappearing and all the strides that have been made to combat its narrow minded and elitist ideals will be lost and future generations will have to refight against these stringent standards.

       I really enjoyed both articles and I thought that they really bought up some interesting points and questions. My first question is what is the old definition of a teacher and what is Moran and Anson’s definition of educators? Does anyone else feel that in these articles and in particular Anson’s article that they fail to see the importance of peer reviews, freewriting and classroom interaction that inspires and challenges students?  What is interesting is that some of these technological advances have been used by the online charter schools. I wonder if these online charter schools are using these articles as their guide. Are colleges and universities close to following the ideas that Anson and Moran discuss? Can we argue that long distant learning universities are treated at the same level and same way as community and junior colleges?  I have a lot more questions but I am going to leave the rest of them for class.

Week Six Blog: Basic Writing

This week I read the Nancy Sommers, Mina P. Shaughnessy and Deborah Mutnick articles. I felt that the articles were focused not only on defining basic writing but on each author’s take and proper placement of it in the scholastic world.  The simplest definition of basic writers is “students [that are] not quite ready for the tasks of college literacy” therefore their basic writing courses are to instruct them in either the missing parts of their education or to strengthen a student’s weak foundation (qtd. in Villanueva 2). Each author also view Basic writers curriculum as instructing the student based on the belief that writing is a process and not a product. Thus, the reader will see how each author examines this idea of process and its impact on the students and syllabi.

Nancy Sommers’ article title, Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers, basically sums up her whole article. She is focused on viewing “what professional writers do when they revise that students in writing classes don’t do, and what Basic Writers… do when they write” (qtd. in Villanueva 2). The main area of the process that she feels greatly differs between more mature writers and students is that of the revision process. She believes that for years people have neglected the importance of this step and that it is not a “linear structure” because there “is the recursive shaping of thought by language… it fails to take into account… revision” (qtd. in Villanueva 43). She believes that too many scholars have focused on closely linking writing and speech processes together and thus, they have overlooked the vital need for revision in writing. She states that “What is impossible in speech is revision… revision in speech is an afterthought” (qtd. in Villanueva 44). Since most scholars have equated speech and writing processes together it is of little wonder that they view the revision of a written document as “simply the repetition of writing” (qtd. in Villanueva 44). Sommers defines revision “as a sequence of changes in a composition- changes which are initiated by cues and occur continually throughout the writing of a work” (qtd. in Villanueva 45). She sets out in her article to not only redefine revision but to showcase its important by studying its use in students writings and more matured authors, as well as, to look at the difference in the revision jargon that each group uses.

In her case study, she outlines for us the background of her subjects, their common assignments and how each assignment was reviewed. She discovers through the data that not only were both groups defining certain terms differently but that they also had different concerns arise throughout the process. I thought that it was interesting how she talked about having a “scale of concerns for each writer” (qtd. in Villanueva 46). At first, I did not know what to think. I thought that all writers’ main concern while writing was the deadline. After one was sure they could reach their deadline, they could than focus on their audience and create an outline of their paper. What was interesting was that I started to see how from this idea I easily came up with five major concerns. Thus, I too had for years believed that there was only one concern when in actuality there are several and they are sequential. Only after we have cleared the first concern can we move on to the next. Then I wondered if these concerns were the same throughout the whole writing process or if while revising we change our initial concerns. I realized that  yes we do change our primary concerns because we are revising our initial product and have new issues to address. Thus, we can see that writing and revising are not such simple tasks as previously believed.

What I found most interesting with this article, besides of course the obvious differences in the revision jargon between the two groups, is how the same ideas from throughout this semester are still showing up. Sommers talks about how students view writing as simply informing the teacher of their topic. She writes that they don’t realize the possibility for anything to “be discovered or acted upon, but simply communicated” (qtd. in Villanueva 47). She also uncovers that students feel that revision is just restating the same idea over and over again only using different words.  She writes “that students are aware of lexical repetition, but not conceptual repetition” since “They only notice the repetition if they can ‘hear’ it…” (qtd. in Villanueva 47). Thus, students are able to change the choice of the words while failing to either add to the point or move on to another point. She points out that basic writers are ill equipped with methods to form and write an essay. Instead, an instructor must walk them through sentence by sentence to aid them in choosing different words and creating new paragraphs for new ideas (qtd. in Villanueva 48).  The last point of interest to her is the fact that students are so rule driven. She writes that “students decide to stop revising when they decide that they have not violated any of the rules for revising” (qtd. in Villanueva 49). She also states that “ In general, students will subordinate the demands of the specific problems of their text to the demands of the rules” and that they “are bound to the rules which they have been taught” (Villanueva 49). Hence, we see how another author is pointing to the fatal flaw of teaching our students rules without reminding them that they are guidelines.

Her research data from the more mature authors reveals that they see writing not as a way to inform but to express their inner most ideas. Indeed, one gets the feeling that they see writing as a form of art. They are mindful of their readers and the structure of their work (qtd in Villanueva 50). Instead of seeing these forces as negative, they view them as a positive influence on their work. She also finds that they are able to use different techniques and their work is able to reach different audiences which comes from their practice of “narrowing the topic and delimiting their ideas” (qtd. in Villanueva 52). She sums up the difference between the two groups when she writes that “It is a sense of writing as discovery- a repeated process of beginning over again, starting out new- that the students failed to have” (qtd. in Villanueva 53).

                Mina P. Shaughnessy’s article is basically an article that introduces the scholastic world to “the term ‘Basic Writers’” (qtd. in Villanueva 272). She argues that instead of viewing these challenged students in the way medical personnel would, we should view them as educators (qtd. in Villanueva 311). Her article is basically an establishment “of developmental schemes to discuss how teachers come to consider basic writers, when first confronted with them” (qtd. in Villanueva 272). She argues for too long people have blamed these students and told them that something “is wrong with” them and that they “must do the changing” when she feels that the teachers are also responsible and capable of also changing if they want to aid these students (qtd. in Villanueva 311).  She states how in her first group teachers are too focus on the rules, while teachers in the second group are teaching to only the select few whom they feel can be educated.  In her third group, the teachers are starting to be enlightened and see themselves as both a “writer and teacher” (qtd. in Villanueva 314). The last group is for the few select teachers, who can muster “professional courage” to teach and be educated by the students (qtd. in Villanueva 317). This fourth group “is simply deciding that teaching them to write well is not only suitable but challenging work for those who would be teachers and scholars in a democracy” (qtd. in Villanueva 317). Thus, we see that teachers must also revise not only their writing but their teaching methods for their Basic Writers.

                The last article by Deborah Mutnick is a history of the Basic Writers issue. She talks about Mina Shaughnessy’s important research and all the good and bad theories that have since followed the start of the Basic Writers program. Mutnick like Shaughnessy believes that these students “are indeed educable” (qtd. in Tate, Rupiper and Schick 185). Mutnick herself views the Basic Writers program as a consequence of years of elitist education. For years, the Harvard Influence ruled and the 1960’s and ‘70’s changed the collegiate atmosphere. Since universities were now open to almost all people, there arose some new issues that threatened the new collegiate era. Basic Writers program “signifies [the] struggles for inclusion, diversity, and equal opportunity; debates over standards and linguistic hegemony; exploitation of faculty and staff on the academic margins; and the policies that opened and now threaten to close higher education’s doors to masses of people… also illuminated the politics of writing in terms of race, class, ethnicity, and other social structures that would have remained invisible in the mostly white, middle-classed classrooms…” (qtd. in Tate, Rupiper and Schick 183). She ends her article with the discussion of the present debates on the Basic Writers syllabi. What is interesting is that some want these students to have traditional lecture courses, others want them to have the “writing studio” which allows students to work on their writing and successfully pass at their own rate, and others call for a combined curriculum of both lecture and nontraditional methods (peer review, etc) (qtd. in Tate, Rupiper and Schick 197-198). Thus, this debate marks a new chapter on the Basic Writers program and only time will tell which theory will work best for both students and teachers.

                I enjoyed this week’s readings and I have a couple of questions that I will bring to class. I will write again next week after reading the next week’s assignment.

Week Five Blog: Situation, Situation, Situation!

I have moved so many times in my life and there was always one phrase that every realtor told my parents. Thus, it is forever ingrained in my mind. They told my folks that the most important part of buying or selling a home is based on “location, location, location.” After reading this week’s readings, I could not help but to see how instead of “location, location, location,” the author’s emphasizes the situation, situation, situation of a text. The idea of the situation of the text being important is one that James Kinneavy focuses on in his article, The Basic Aims of Discourse, which we read at the start of the semester. This week I read the Berthoff, the Haefner, and the George articles.

            In Anne Berthoff’s article, Is Teaching Still Possible? Writing, Meaning, and High Order Reasoning, she highlights James Kinneavy’s point that

“‘Discourse’ here means the full text, oral, or written, delivered at a specific time and place or delivered at several instances. A discourse may be a single sentence… or a joke, or a sonnet, or a three-hour talk, or a tragedy, or Toynbee’s twelve volumes of A Study of History…. By aim of discourse is meant the effect that the discourse is oriented to achieve in the average listener or reader for whom it is intended” (qtd in Villanueva 129).

The first example which demonstrates her shared belief with Kinneavy that situation is important to a text is manifested when she writes that “What the child does or does not do may look like what the incompetent or deficient or uneducated adult does or does not do, but it does not follow that the two instances are alike so far as motivation or function concerned” (qtd in Villanueva 331).In this statement she is stating that it is the situation that separates the child and the adult act and in turn they are than labeled as it befits their position. She elaborates on the idea of the importance of the situation in studying text, when she states that “Just so, the savage is not a child; the lunatic is not a poet; the chimp who has been taught sign language cannot be said to be using it as either the hearing or deaf human does. [Thus] To see the similarities without noting the differences is to settle for pseudo-concepts…” (qtd in Villanueva 331). This phrase beautifully portrays Kinneavy’s point on the important and influential relationship between situation of a text and the work itself. One cannot just simply generalize or give a broad definition of discourse because the setting will be varied and should therefore elicit a different response. I think that a good modern day example is that of political races. In most cases, the candidates will repeat the same speech but emphasize certain points over others or change the tone of it to fit the venue in which the speech is taking place. Berthoff uses another and more common example to demonstrate Kinneavy’s point. She writes that “A boy is seen to wink; another boy has a tic which involves his eyelid; a third boy is seen practicing an imitation of the boy with the tic. Try describing these ‘behaviors’ as the empirical researcher would call them, and watch two of them become human acts, motivated and meaningful” (qtd in Villanueva 332). The act of winking is a subject that is scenario differs based on the situation it takes place and even the first boy and the third boy’s reason for winking vary based on their setting. She goes on to state that “Speech is not articulated sound plus intention, it is not speech until and unless it is meaningful. Neither language nor thought is meaningful outside a social context…” (qtd in Villanueva 335). Thus, she clearly points out that all discourse would be nothing if it were not for the social situation it is rooted in. Her last well defined argument for the importance of situation to a text is when she asserts that

“The discourse we find familiar to the point of being able to reproduce it has nothing to do with developmental stages, once childhood is passed- or maybe even before. You may be sure that prepubescent Presbyterians in the eighteenth century were capable of composing arguments on natural depravity, while pre-pubescent Baptists were writing on grace abounding unto the chief of sinners, and little Methodists were writing on topics like ‘Must the drunkard be an unhappy man?’ My advanced composition students find almost intolerably difficult Huxley’s On a Piece of Chalk, a published lecture which a century ago famously enthralled workers with no secondary education- but Huxley’s audience had heard two or three sermons every week of their lives… I mean only that the capacity to manage disputation is a culture bound skill…” (qtd in Villanueva 341).

 Thus, one is able to see how Berthoff is supporting Kinneavy’s idea that the social situation is an important part of the formation and understanding of a text or speech.

            In the next article, Democracy, Pedagogy, and the Personal Essay, by Joel Haefner, one once again is able to see how the idea of the vital marriage between discourse and a social situation is supported. Haefner states that “Behind these premises lies the shibboleth of individualism, and concomitantly, the ideology of American democracy. But this distorts the adaptability of the essay for different writers and different audiences at different moments” (qtd in Villanueva 509). He believes that by stating that a personal essay is easily understood or accessible is wrong. He believes in Kinneavy’s belief that a situation plays an important role in the formation of a text or speech and not the other way around. Haefner continues to express his support of Kinneavy’s ideals when he states that “I think, that it makes more sense to see the essay as a cultural product, as a special kind of collective discourse” (qtd in Villanueva 509). Thus, essays are created in a certain fashion for a particular group of readers and a specific period of history. Its ideas are best understood by those who clearly can relate to its subject. He writes that “the context in which the essays are written and published affects the form and nature of the genre, and since those contexts change it is impossible to talk about an ‘essential’ or ‘original’ form of the essay. Even informal essays… are historically situated and generically contextualized” (qtd in Villanueva 510).  He also declares that “it is on the principle that texts are not, after all, autonomous and self-contained that the meaning of any text… depends… on other texts and textualized frames of reference” (qtd in Villanueva 516). This idea leads to his argument that courses should not be centered around simply reading the work but should also “present the ‘cultural text’… to our students… drawing together earlier essays, other works by the essayist, the essayist’s biography, newspaper accounts, movies, music, art, politics – whatever illuminated and broadened the context of the essay… in trying to grasp the full context of a particular essay” (qtd in Villanueva 517).  In other words, Haefner, like Kinneavy, wishes to “teach not the texts themselves but how we situate ourselves in reference to those texts”(qtd in Villanueva 518). Thus, we see that another author pointing out Kinneavy’s idea on the importance of studying the situation of a text besides the text itself.

            In the last article, Critical Pedagogy: Dreaming of Democracy, written by Ann George, the reader learns of the hardship of creating a syllabus that meets both the demands of the university and Kinneavy’s belief in studying both situation and text. George states that she desires “to empower students, to engage them in cultural critique, to make a change” (qtd in Tate, Rupiper and Schick 92). She also writes that “‘To propose a pedagogy… is to propose a political vision,’ a ‘[dream] for ourselves , our children, and our communities’” (qtd in Tate, Rupiper and Schick 92). Thus, one is able to see how a syllabus is not only trying to incorporate an understanding of a work’s certain situation but that a syllabus itself is also one based in a particular social situation and will change over time. She wants her students “to know oneself as a subject in history capable of understanding and transforming the world” (qtd in Tate, Rupiper and Schick 93). George also wants students to realize that colleges are places of “‘cultural production’ rather than cultural reproductions” (qtd in Tate, Rupiper and Schick 96). Thus, she showcases how colleges and syllabi too often neglect or overlook their role in Kinneavy’s idea of a text or speech fitting a particular situation. Instead, college curriculums focus around studying only the bare minimum of a text and neglect the situations that create it. Thus, she hopes that students, teachers and administrators will come to respect the idea that “Dialogue takes place inside some kind of program and context” (qtd in Tate, Rupiper and Schick 105).

My last point for this blog is whether or not the movie Hook could perfectly demonstrate Berthoff’s argument about the difference between the terms “Abstraction” and “Generalization” and in particular her belief that “What we do have to do is to show students how to reclaim their imaginations”  (qtd in Villanueva 337). I was babysitting the other night and the movie was playing. I had already read this week’s readings and was taken with the way the movie clearly supports her arguments. In one scene the children or the Lost Boys, most rely on their imagination for dinner time. Peter Pan played by Robin Williams is all grown up and is having a hard time filling up his plate and stomach. The boys imagine that there is a feast before them, but the now grown Peter Pan, who has lost is imagination, is unable to at first see it. Suddenly, they have a food fight and the viewers watch the bully get hit with multi colored mashed potatoes and a table filled with tons of delicious foods. What really is fascinating is that the adults or pirates are seen as bad because they have lost their imaginations, while the Lost Boys thrive and indeed survive solely on imagination. What is interesting is that the grown up Peter Pan and Wendy are the only two characters that are able to handle both their imagination and empirical ideas. In fact, they are portrayed as the perfect adults since they can still imagine adventures while working in the world. This is what colleges also want from students. They want them to be creative enough to come up with their own ideas but practical in their research and approaches. Just thought this was interesting and wondered what everyone else thinks?

I really enjoyed this week’s readings and I cannot wait to discuss it on Wednesday. I will write again next week after reading the assigned texts.

Week Four Blog: Hello Harvard and other thoughts!

            Hello Readers,

            Greetings! This week’s readings were incredible and thought provoking! My main focus of this blog is on the Harvard Influence. I will end this blog with a few comments and questions.

            I hate to write this but I feel I must. (Thank you to my kindergarten teacher who made me recite George Washington’s famous cherry tree line- I cannot tell a lie. It was I who cut the tree down.) The Harvard Influence is still alive and at work in our education system! This week’s readings from Emig, Berlin, Elbow, and Burnham not only confirmed the workings of the Influence in today’s classrooms, but they offer ways to try and combat its ugly and narrow minded ways from the Progressive Education perspective.

            Janet Emig, in her article, Writing as a Mode of Learning, celebrates the idea of the student as a writer and writing as vital to the educational system. She states that “Writing represents a unique mode of learning- not merely valuable, not merely special, but unique” (qtd in Villanueva 7). In this powerful statement, Emig is declaring her belief that writing is not something to be ignored, passed over or dreaded. Instead of fearing writing, students and teachers should be embracing it, for it is a powerful tool to cultivate our intellect and academic journey. Thus, she is already setting up her argument against the Harvard Influence and its utter disgust with writing.  One should recall that according to Francis J. Child and the Harvard Influence, “composition was a second-class subject”, while literature reigned as the supreme scholastic field of study (Bedford, A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition, par. 21). Emig fights this bias point when she writes that “the uniqueness of writing among the verbal languaging processes does not need to be established and supported if only because so many curricula and courses in English still consist almost exclusively of reading and listening” (qtd. in Villanueva 8). This inflated emphasis on reading and listening in today’s classrooms is directly linked to the Harvard Influence. Child is noted for “developing the English literature curriculum” which focused and restricted academic attention to reading and studying certain texts. In fact, “the works of literature to be studied were strictly specified in lists of standard authors…” (Bedford, A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition, par. 21, 22). This is still a major problem today. We have not only declared what texts are important and scholarly but we have trained our students to focus their attention only on these “golden” texts. Thus, one can see how we must ask ourselves if we are truly free from the oppressive conventions of the Harvard Influence.

            Emig tries to offer us insights into ways to defeat the Influence. She states that to have “A silent classroom or one filled only with the teacher’s voice is anathema to learning” (qtd. in Villanueva 8).  This idea emphasizes the Progressive’s belief in speech in the classrooms, which under the Harvard Influence, “was hardly mentioned” (Bedford, A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition, par. 21). Emig draws upon this idea when she states that “Talking” are “creating and originating a verbal construct” (qtd. in Villanueva 8). She even supports James Moffett’s belief that “talking is a valuable form of pre-writing” (qtd. in Villanueva 8, 9). Appreciating writing is another important factor in progressive education. Fred Newton Scott “prompted an understanding of writing that reemphasized self-expression” (Bedford, A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition, par. 23). Emig builds on this statement when she declares that “Because writing is often our representation of the world made visible,… writing is more readily a form and source of learning than talking” (qtd. in Villanueva 10). Thus, we are able to see that writing and talking are important because they are showing and expressing our individual point of view. This is what is most important to Progressives. Unlike the Harvard Influence, which wants students to merely follow a set of rules and not to attempt to rebel against them, Progressives want to see their student’s brain at work.

Another way Emig shows her Progressive ideals is through her discussion of science and its relationship to writing. According to the Bedford article, “Progressive education was also innovative in its interest in the social sciences as a source of information. Progressive education… aimed to study students’ abilities, needs, and achievements scientifically and to redesign curricula accordingly” (Bedford, A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition, par. 28). Emig builds on this idea when she is discussing the importance of the brain and psychology on pages 11 to 13. She informs us that “Writing is markedly bispheral”, that “The right hemisphere seems to make at least three, perhaps four, major contributions to the writing process” and that “man as a scientist steadily and actively engaged in making and re-making his hypotheses about the nature of the universe” (qtd. in Villanueva 11, 12). She even argues that “unless the losses to learners of not writing are compellingly described and substantiated by experimental and speculative research, writing itself as a central academic process may not long endure” (qtd. in Villanueva 14). Thus, we are able to see how Janet Emig, who wrote this article in the late 1970’s, is still fighting the Harvard Influence and using Progressive techniques to counter it.

James Berlin, in his article, Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class, which was written in the late 1980’s also addresses the still present Harvard Influence issues and offers some Progressive viewpoints. He talks about “power relationships in a group or society, in deciding who has power and in determining what power can be expected to achieve” and the trend “to support the hegemony of the dominant class” (qtd. in Villanueva 720). This idea of power and class is important because the Harvard influence set up college admissions as based on power and class (since their education would prepare them for the exam) and this “made it hard for other colleges to avoid similar requirements” (Bedford, A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition, par 22). Indeed, it was this “standard lists of works generated at Harvard and other elite eastern schools” that prompted the formation of the National Council if Teachers (NCTE) whose creation coincided with the “progressive reform movement, which directly challenged the idea that the goal of higher education in America should be to empower an elite. The progressives believes that the purpose of education is to integrate a diverse population into a community of productive citizens… equip students with intellectual and social skills they would need as adults” (Bedford, A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition, par 23, 25). Berlin’s discussion of cognitive rhetoric is actually based on the Harvard Influence. He states that “The university… was to provide a center for experts… to establish a body of knowledge… making it more efficient, more manageable, and, of course, more profitable. These experts were also charged with preparing the managers who were to take this… practical knowledge into the marketplace” (qtd. in Villanueva 720). He also states that “the concern is ‘adapting your writing to the needs of the reader’” and that “Their [a college graduate’s] work life is designed to turn goal-seeking and problem-solving behavior into profits” (qtd. in Villanueva 724). This shows the two main focuses of the Harvard influence. Students reading and learning were tailored for their employment. They learned the “rules for correct grammar, style, and organization” which were “rigidly applied to student essays” and would aid them in their jobs since writing was geared towards their corporate employment. (Bedford, A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition, par. 20, 22). This idea of teaching for their job still applies to today. We are training our students for their designated jobs and for those deemed intelligent, college. This is made evident by the track systems we have in schools, which can start in some school districts in fifth grade. We gear our curriculum for the track and if a student is in honors or AP, we are preparing them for college, while lower tracks are preparing for just graduating high school and getting a job. Last year, I had two students in my general history and literature classes. These students had the grades to go to a community college and were often persuaded by their other general track teachers to save their money and “pain of rejection” and get a job as a plumber or maid. I encouraged them and aided them with extra assignments and a copy of the next track’s textbooks in science and math. Both of them were accepted into their community college and wrote me a letter this week letting me know that they had passed all their summer courses and thanking me for believing that they could do it. In colleges, certain majors are only educated in their department. They may take a course or two in another area but they are introductory classes and needed to complete their two liberal arts requirements for graduation. As we all know, introduction courses are just skimming the surface and we can argue that these students are not really learning anything about that particular subject. Thus, we can see how the Harvard Influence idea on educating students for a job are still happening today.  

            Berlin’s progressive views are seen in his explanations of the expressionistic rhetoric and the social-epistemic rhetoric. The names alone of these two rhetoric theories encompass the two main ideas of the progressive movement. The progressive movement believed that “writing reemphasized self-expression and the adaption of prose to its social purpose” (Bedford, A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition, par. 23). They also believed in respecting “the diverse cultural backgrounds of a school population that included record numbers of immigrants, progressive education stressed the communicative function of writing to help draw diverse groups together and integrate them onto the mainstream of American society”(Bedford, A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition, par. 23, 26). When he talks about expressionistic rhetoric, he believes that we can only write what we know or that “when he digs deeply into himself and is able to define himself, he will find others who will read with a shock of recognition what he has written” (qtd. in Villanueva 728). This shows that progressive tendency to move away from the elite idea of one size fits all and calls educators to take note of “students’ abilities, needs”, and to really “give attention to the needs of each individual student”” (Bedford, A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition, par. 25, 28,). This is still happening today. We want our students to develop into open, diversity welcoming, and reflective writers. One particular example is that of the journal I used for the journal review. I read the College English journal and its focus was on the multicultural voices in literature and how there needs to be a continued exploration of the voices and works of nonwhites. If we look at best selling books and movies, there is a degree of openness, diversity and virtue in them. The one book and movie that immediately comes to mind is Frances Mayes Under the Tuscan Sun. While reading it and watching the movie, I was amazed at how I could relate to her tale even though I was still in high school and had lived all of my life in America. I think that if I thought about it a little bit more, I could come up with more examples.

He next talks about social-epistemic rhetoric and this has a lot of progressive undertones. Berlin writes that “It [Social-epistemic rhetoric] offers both a detailed analysis of dehumanizing social experience and a self-critical and overtly historicized alternative based on democratic practices in the economic, social, political, and cultural spheres” (qtd. in Villanueva 735). In other words, our writings are going to reflect our experience within a certain society. This corresponds with the progressive view “that the purpose of education is to integrate a diverse population into a community…” and that “writing about literature became a way to understand one’s own responses to text. A class writing project, for example, might collect data about some local social problem and prepare a report to be sent to the appropriate public officials” (Bedford, A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition, par. 25, 26, 27). This also still is occurring in classrooms today. I know that one of my classmates mentioned about encouraging students to write a paper and send it into the “I Believe” contest. The essays vary depending upon our community and what we both give and get from it.

            In the article, Three Mysteries at the Heart of Writing, written by Peter Elbow, one is able to identify the Harvard influence in the classroom (article published in 2003) and his Progressive views and techniques. I really owe it to this article for inspiring my blog. It reinforced my theory and I am so glad we read this article. Peter Elbow writes that “Many students and parents want all writing to be graded; there’s been an explosion of externally mandated standards and testing” (qtd. in Bloom, Daiker and White, 13). This same idea is the main reason why the Harvard Influence moved its attentions to literature. The Harvard Influence graded writing based on the “long standards of grammatical, stylistic, and formal correctness” instead of writing being seen as “self expression” and for a “social purpose” (Bedford, A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition, par. 23, 29). He also talks about how students sometimes feel that they are not rightly expressing themselves. Elbow believes that it is because students are “paying so much attention to outer standards for words: whether our words are any good- right, valid, interesting, well said, or correct” (qtd. in Bloom, Daiker and White, 14). This also is a result of being too preoccupied with certain standards. My last example of the Harvard Influence in his text, although there are plenty more, is when he is talking about how students are asked literary questions and expected to answer them. Elbow writes that “class discussion of questions like these involve students trying silently and mentally, to infer interpretations of words they have never heard” (qtd. in Bloom, Daiker and White, 22). This references the Harvard Influence emphasis “to introduce students to literary study” (Bedford, A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition, par. 29). These students are paralyzed because they are told that there are specific and correct insights and so they reproduce them without much thought to other avenues. As if limiting their knowledge was not bad enough, we have instilled fear into the very soul of our students when we give them a writing assignment. We have created specific models of “excellence” in writing but we have failed to let them express their own knowledge. We, just like the Harvard Influence, have become obsessed with grammatically correct writing instead of writing that clearly demonstrates our student’s perspective and intellect. The Harvard Influence believed in following the “rules for correct grammar, style, and organization” and they mandated that prospective students “be required to write a short English composition, correct in spelling, punctuation, grammar, and expression, the subject to be taken from such works of standard authors….” (Bedford, A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition, par 20, 22). Thus, we are able to see that in 2003, the Harvard Influence still is functioning.

Elbow’s progressive views are seen in his use and practice of talking to others and reading out loud one’s works, as well as, “freewriting” (qtd. in Bloom, Daiker and White, 11, 12). He believes that like the progressives this “equips students with intellectual and social skills they would need as adults” (Bedford, A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition, par 25). Indeed, one could argue that all three elements that he discusses at greater length are progressive I will address this more in class since this blog is getting larger and I still have one more author left to discuss.

            The last author who article exposes the Harvard Influence still at work today and offers Progressive suggestions is Christopher Burnham. In his article, Expressive Pedagogy: Practice/Theory, Theory/Practice, he discusses expressive rhetoric, which has already been discussed as actually being progressive. The one main point of the Harvard Influence that he makes is that some critics of expressive rhetoric feel that “students need training in the conventions of academic discourse so that they can succeed in the institutions that will provide them access to economic and social power” (qtd. in Tate, Rupiper and Schick 31). This idea reflective of Berlin’s comments and is the Harvard Influence in a nutshell. His other two Harvard Influence charges are the lack of “passion” professors have and the use of “academic language of schools” (qtd. in Tate, Rupiper and Schick 20, 23). His progressive views are scattered throughout the text and numerous. The most striking and concrete example is that he too is for the use of “freewriting, journal keeping, reflective writing, and small group dialogic collaborative response to foster a writer’s aesthetic, cognitive, and moral development” (qtd. in Tate, Rupiper and Schick 19). This quote is the summation of the progressive ideal.

 Two Questions for the Class:

1. What constitutes “writing” and “talking” in Janet Emig’s article (I am focused on page 9 and the first listed difference). How can we prove it or claim its absolute truth.
2. Is Current- Traditionalist another term for Harvard Influence? (Burnham’s article – pg 22).

Thanks for reading! Sorry this was so long! I cannot wait to talk on Wednesday about these articles!!!!!

Week Three Blog: Relationship of Reader and Revision Process and More!

Dear Readers,

 Greetings! I have to admit that I really enjoyed the readings for this week. I read the Donald Murray, Lad Tobin, and the Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford articles.

The main idea that seemed to flow forth from all three articles is the idea of the importance of the revision process. I was always taught in school that you wrote multiple drafts but once you had committed to the format of one draft you stuck with it and wrote your final copy. After you got your final copy back, you could revise it for a better grade or “just learn from it for future assignments”.  Lad Tobin also talks about the neglect of revision in schools when he states that “We did no revision, except for the one paper we could choose to rewrite each quarter for a revised grade” (qtd. in.Tate, Rupiper and Schick 1). I found two more of his comments most striking. He states that “We didn’t get our essays back for a week or so… he [the professor] reluctantly took them out [of his briefcase], graded them, corrected them, meticulously marked them up in the margins, wrote a long end comment explaining or justifying the grade…” (qtd. in Tate, Rupiper, and Schick 1). It is interesting that as educators we spend time going over our students’ work and give them ideas for how to better it but we never require its true revision. We have a few students who after getting their third or fourth C, D, or F are forced to rewrite one, but that is a quick and easy task. Most of them will just make the corrections we have provided or hinted for them and they turn it in for a new grade. Thus, I wonder if our students have learned anything about the assignment (mainly the topic of their paper), their approach to it (what worked and what was unclear), or their readers or “audience” (qtd in Villanueva 77). We give them all this great feedback as readers but we fail to ask them to reapply it and show us that they have decided to either “accept or reject” the reader’s response (qtd. in Villanueva 5, 89).  Basically, why are we spending so much time examining written work from our students when they are never again going to look at it or reference it? I know that walking the halls after the school day, I am always amazed how many graded papers are in the hallway waiting to get swept up by our janitor’s broom and tossed. Are we teaching students that it is more important to get the grade than to learn about their unique talent? I know that in my sophomore year of high school, my AP English class had to write a ten page paper on some author’s work. We all turned it in on time and three months later, we were asked to turn in another ten research paper. I demanded that our first papers be returned. My teacher was shocked at my boldness. (I was rather a shy and quiet teenager, who never questioned my teachers.) She asked me why I wanted it back. I told her that I needed it back to help me understand if my work was understandable to her or if I needed to rework out my style or vocabulary. I did not care so much for the grade but I figured that if she spent all that time reviewing and reading my work, that her insights would be helpful for my future. According to Donald M. Murray, teachers “are not the initiator or the motivation” but they “are the reader, the recipient” (qtd. in Villanueva 5). As I am always telling my students, I already have the knowledge and the high school and college degrees to prove it. I am simply here to aid them on their quest. I want them to share their perspectives with me. I am not here to do their work for them and I tell my parents at parent-teacher conferences that they should not be doing their child’s work. As Murray states, ‘When you give him an assignment you tell him [or her] what to say and how to say it and thereby cheat your student if the opportunity to learn the process of discovery…” (qtd. in Villanueva 5). Otherwise, they will find themselves unprepared for many circumstances in life.  Thus, we must be the “coaches, encouragers, developers, creators of environments in which our students can experience the writing process for themselves” (qtd. in Villanueva 5). As for my sophomore teacher, she sheepishly informed us that she had lost our research papers and that was why she was requiring us to write another one.

The second quote from Tobin that greatly affected me was when he talks about the relationship of the reader and its importance to the revision process. This idea was another vital commonality of the three articles. All three mentioned how the writer needs an objective source to shed some insight on the writers ever evolving work. During his collegiate years, he states that “We never wrote during class; never read our own essays aloud; never peered review, workshopped, or even read each other’s essays…, or used revision to discover new meaning, focus, or form” (qtd. in Tate, Rupiper, and Schick 1). Later in the article, Tobin declares “that students are writers when they come to the classroom (even in kindergarten) and that the writing classroom should be a workshop in which they are encouraged through the supportive response of teachers and peers to use writing as a way to figure out what they think and feel and eventually to ‘publish’ their work to be read and celebrated by the community of writers they have become” (qtd. in Tate, Rupiper, and Schick 7). Basically, he believes that revision is important because it allows the writer to have multiple readers and advice before the writing is completed and available for all. This idea helped me better understand Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford’s article, Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked: The Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy. Both writers believe that “the writing process is not complete unless another person, someone other than the writer, reads the text also” (Villanueva 93). Donald Murray believes that a reader is vital to a writer. In his article, Teaching Writing as a Process Not Product, he mentions that “it is important to the writer, once he has discovered what he has to say, that nothing get between him and his reader” (qtd. in Villanueva 6). Throughout his article, he constantly advocates that the writer discovers how “He uses language to reveal the truth to himself so that he can tell it to others” (qtd. in Villanueva 4). One of my high school mentors always told me that if I could not explain or even understand my own point, than how could I expect my classmates to realize and acknowledge it. Thus, Tobin believes that students should “employ freewriting and journals and peer response groups” with “the idea that writing generates as well as reflects meaning” (qtd. in Tate, Rupiper, and Schick 7). Ede and Lunsford perfectly sum it these ideas when they state that “writers create readers and readers create writers. In the meeting of these two lies meaning, lies communication” (qtd. in Villanueva 93). They talk about their own journey in writing the article. They discovered that they had many readers who reviewed their article but that even just having one reader is enough because “one person can take on the role of several different audiences: friend, colleague, and critic” (qtd. in Villanueva 91).Thus, one is able to see that a reader will greatly help one’s writing and focus, by offering their various opinions and perspectives.

 I think it is interesting how the definition of reader is defined throughout the revision process. The first reader is actually the writer or writers. Ede and Lunsford talk about how their “long distance telephone bills and the miles we travelled up and down I-5 from Oregon to British Columbia attest most concretely to the power of a co-author’s expectations and criticism” (qtd. in Villanueva 91). While Donald M. Murray talks about the right of “the student” to be “encouraged to attempt any form of writing which may help him discover and communicate what he has to say” (qtd. in Villanueva 6). Tobin also believes “that students have something important and original to say and will find ways to say it if we can just get out of their way, give them the freedom to choose their own material… helping them gain access to their ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ voice” (qtd. in Tate, Rupiper, and Schick 5). Ede and Lunsford declare that the writer is the first reader since the writer “debated the ideas she was struggling to present to a group… invoked” (qtd. in Villanueva 91). Thus, the writer is the first reader because he or she is choosing an arrangement that they like and their “audience” (qtd. in Villanueva 77).  Their topic might even be from a diary or letter or song that they have created and not yet shared with anyone. Ede and Lunsford state in their article that “the writer is composing a diary or journal entry, intended only for the writer’s own eyes” (qtd. in Villanueva 93). After their first attempts at writing, they may ask a fellow classmate, the instructor or a family member or friend to look at their piece.  This person or persons are now the second group of readers. They are reading and reviewing your work with unbiased eyes. (Although one could argue that these readers already have an opinion of us and our work that they have already preconceived notions or assumptions about the text we present them. But that will be for another blog.) Tobin tells us how “Murray, who championed the weekly, one-to-one teacher-student writing conference, wrote… about the thrill of reading dozens, hundreds, even thousands of student essays in which he learned more…

       ‘I have been instructed in other lives, heard the voices of my students they had not heard before, shared their satisfaction in solving problems of writing with clarity and grace…’” (qtd. in Tate, Rupiper, and Schick 5).  

This quote shows us that an exchange of ideas and recognition of the writer’s style is the most key purpose for these exchanges. The second group of readers, one could argue, are the force guiding the writer on his or her envisioned path. Sometimes, they help us refocus or refine our work and its path. Ede and Lunsford explain that “the change in purpose and medium (no longer a seminar paper or a textbook) led us to a new audience [reader]” (qtd. in Villanueva 91). After modifying it, we give it to the next set of readers who are along our desire path. For Ede and Lunsford, their third reader was  the “editor of this [CCCC] journal” whose “questions, criticisms, and suggestions” opened up the opportunities for more readers, like the attendees of “the annual CCCC, most often picturing you as members of our own departments, a diverse group of individuals with widely varying degrees of interest in and knowledge of composition” and from this fourth group of readers’ (attendees of conference)opinions and advice, it is now available to its fifth group of readers, us (the students reading the text) (qtd. in Villanueva 91). For students the process of second, third and fourth readers, is manifested in “class time [devoted to] workshops, group work, writing activities, and discussion of invention and revision strategies” (qtd. in Tate, Rupiper, and Schick 16). Thus, one is able to see how closely related the role of the reader is to the revision process.

My last point is actually a question. I am wondering if we are heading back into a period of time in which “We never wrote during class; never read our own essays aloud [which was mentioned as important in Hartwell’s article page 223 from last week]; never peer review, workshopped, or even read each other’s essays…” and since the emphasis now on education is on preparing our students for testing, I am wondering if we are setting ourselves up again for living through another “Harvard influence” in which “ the works of literature to be studied were strictly specified in lists of standard authors” and in which “composition was a second-class subject” (qtd. in Tate, Rupiper, and Schick 1 ; Bedford, “A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition,” par. 19, 21 and 22)?  Remember, the “Harvard Influence” came about because “Francis J. Child bitterly resented the time he had to spend correcting student compositions… concentrated on enlarging Harvard’s offerings in Literature” ((Bedford, “A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition,” par. 19 and 21). Look forward to talking with you all about this on Wednesday! There are so many insightful and interesting points in the readings!

Just A Quick Note

Greeting Readers,

After reading our handout by North, one quote really stood out to me. “A community is located by finding people who interact regularly with one another in their work. They read and use each other’s ideas, discuss each other’s work, and sometimes collaboratre… Their interaction is facilitated by shared beliefs and values- goals, myths, terminology, self-concepts… Although they do not all use exactly the same procedure in their work, there is a great deal of similarity, and the differences are acepted as variant realizations of the same values” (North 2). This made me think about graduate school and in particular, the classes that we take. We are a community and we gather each week to look at texts and examine them from all our different perspectives.

The article also made me think about the importance of being part of a community and that until one finds it they are often in the middle of different communities.  As previously stipulated in my blog (nature vs. nurture), “In Britton’s article, he mentions how Clare had read Little Men and said that it was “a sort of a halfway one” (not quite “boyish” or “girlish”) (Villanueva 167). I love how she described that this text was a book that appealed to both natures within her. Britton mentions how many of Clare’s writings give “an account of her own struggle to establish herself in the family in competition with a more confident and more relaxed younger sister” (Villanueva 168-169). I think her desire to read more stereotypical boy stories is her way of changing her gender and ending the competition with her sister. I also think that by reading more male texts, she is learning strategies on how to win over her competition. I just thought it was fascinating how books a child reads is not just a simple manner but it is very insightful for adults. This allows adults to better understand a child’s internal workings and issues. Thus, one can see how a child’s reading list and writings showcase his or her struggles within their own world” (Nature vs. Nurture blog). Thus, one is able to see how important community is to an individual.

Week Two Blog: Nature vs. Nurture and Some Other Points!

Greeting Readers!

Once again, I really enjoyed both the assigned readings in our text. There are a few thoughts I would like to address in this week’s blog. I promise that this week, I will hold myself to these topics and not digress from them!

After reading, both James Britton and Patrick Hartwell’s articles, I was immediately struck with an idea. I could not believe that both men were debating about the idea of a compositional nature vs. nurture theory that is similar to the psychological debate of the two.  After spending three rigorous years studying nursing and having to take countless psychology course, I could not help noticing the language both gentlemen used and how it sounded similar to the nature vs. nurture jargon that psychologist utilize. The first statement that led to my belief that Britton and Hartwell believe that writing is a combination of nature and nurture is Britton’s opening statement when he quotes L.S. Vygotsky. Vygotsky states that “Only by understanding the entire history of sign development in the child and the place of writing in it can we approach a correct solution of the psychology of writing” (Villanueva 151). Not only does Britton use this quote to set up his argument that composition is not a simple matter of following and memorizing rules, but it is something deeper. It allows the author to have that “authentic voice” that was mentioned in the Berlin article from last week’s assigned readings (Villanueva 262). By using this quote, Britton is hinting to the idea that children learn first from their surrounding environment and then once they start their formal education and increase their reading, will their writing be better developed.  This idea of being able to communicate and write naturally is best illustrated by his “case study” of “Clare” (Villanueva 164). He talks about how “Her conversational speech was quite well developed”, her “Extended make-believe play” and “Her earliest recognizable drawings” all occurring between the ages of two and three. He also talks about her developing “an intention to write” when “they come to value the written language as a vehicle for stories” (Villanueva 166).  In each examined and chronological situation in the article, the reader is able to see how nature is at play in the young toddler’s life.

Nurturing the child’s writing skills only starts to appear at the age of six or when they start their official education. Britton writes that “Clare continued to read and write stories for many years. Animal fantasies predominated until the age of 7, pony stories and adventure stories (often featuring an animal) followed until, from the ages of 12 to 14 she gave herself up almost entirely to reading women’s magazine stories and writing herself at great length in that vein” (Villanueva 166). Her earliest schooled writings (the one with the “Teddy Bear” and “Snow”) show how she is combining both nature and nurture. When she was a toddler, she was extremely fascinated with animals and would use them as “the subject of the stories she told, of her drawings, and later of the stories she wrote,” thus, showcasing the impact of the dual roles of nature and nurture in her educational advancement (Villanueva165-166.)  It is only when she has outgrown her former nature, through the increase of her schooling, reading and mental development, that the nurture role prevails. Although, one could argue that her nature has changed to a new nature and thus, she is still being affected by the dual roles of nature and nurture. However, that could be another topic for a different blog.

 While reading Patrick Hartwell’s article, I was struck with his discussion of W. Nelson Francis’ explanation of the first “meaning of grammar”. He writes that “It is not necessary that we be able to discuss these patterns self-consciously in order to be able to use them. In fact, all speakers of a language above the age of five or six knows how to use its complex forms of organization with considerable skill… they are thoroughly familiar with its grammar” (Villanueva 209).For example, he looks at how people would “form the plural of the last name of the composer Johann Sebastian Bach”.  Hartwell discovers that “Native speakers of American English [will] overwhelmingly produce the plural as /baxs/. They use knowledge that Halle characterizes as unlearned and untaught” (Villanueva 213-214)  His first part reminded me of Britton’s main point that writing is not some science that needs to be learned but rather it is something innate within us.  While he argues that children under the age of six are not well invested with this knowledge, he should not discredit them with understanding that there is some order to writing. Britton states that Clare had a “curiosity about language [which] was in evidence early (When it’s one girl you say ‘girl’ and when it’s two three four girls you say ‘girl s’. Why when it’s two three four childs you say ‘child ren’” (Villanueva 164). He also states that “Knowledge of the linguistic conventions of stories- the Once upon a time and happily ever after conventions-are often familiar to children before they can read or write, as are more general features of the language of written stories. (I saw a story dictated by a 3-year-old which contained the sentence, The king went sadly home for he had nowhere else to go – a use of for which is certainly not a spoken form” (Villanueva 171). Hartwell believes that there is something to be said about the relationship between the oral and the written relationship of a writer. Instead of first speaking about a paper and then writing it, as a child does in Britton’s article, “students” do it the opposite. Hartwell states that “Most students, reading their writing aloud, will correct in essence all errors of spelling, grammar, and, by intonation, punctuation, but usually without noticing that what they read departs from what they wrote” (Villanueva 223). Britton also believes that “the writer must know from experience the sound of a written text read aloud” (Villanueva 171). Thus, both Britton and Hartwell agree that speech is a vital part and process of writing. While both men disagree about the age in which nature impacts a child, they do believe that there are some natural elements that we are equipped with that cannot be learned.

Whatever arguments the men have over age and limit of nature in a child’s development, they do agree in the nurturing aspects of children in their intellectual growth. Hartwell quoting David T. Hales, believes that “the optimal conditions for becoming metalinguistically competent involve growing up in a literate environment with adult models who are themselves metalinguistically competent and who foster the growth of that competence in a variety of ways as yet little understood” Hartwell is in agreement with Hales and he declares that “as literal stuff, verbal clay, to be molded and probed, shaped and reshaped, and, above all, enjoyed” (Villanueva 226). Thus, he believes that children who grow up in a household where reading is valued and placed as important will yield confident students and sound adults. Britton also believes that children must grow up in an intellectual environment but he points out that one can also learn a lot from simple, ordinary items.  He states that “a knowledge of the written code itself, the formation of letters, words, sentences… picked up from alphabet books and cornflake packets, picture books, TV advertisements, and street signs…” (Villanueva 171). Thus, one is able to see how both men hint to the idea of a compositional nature vs. nurture debate.

One part of the Hartwell article reminded me of an experiment that I participated in for my intercultural class. The experiment was called B-B. There was another name for it and if I find it, I will later place it in here. We were separated into two groups and two rooms. When we entered our special room, we were given instructions about how to communicate and told not to tell visitors from the other room how we communicated. However, they were told how our language worked. I was selected by my group to go observe the other room and to try and figure out their communication process. At the end of class, we did this experiment for the full fifty minutes of class, my group was starting to get a picture about how the other group was communicating and had actually managed to trade four horses and two cows in the process, while the other group, who knew our language, only managed to get two chickens from us.  This experiment reminded me of Hartwell’s point “that providing subjects with formal rules…remarkably degrades performance: subjects given the ‘rules of the language’ do much less well in acquiring the rules than do subjects not given the rules” (Villanueva 218). It is a real fun experience and I would recommend it to anyone.

I also was elated to see that a young girl has read a Louisa May Alcott text other than Little Women. In Britton’s article, he mentions how Clare had read Little Men and said that it was “a sort of a halfway one” (not quite “boyish” or “girlish”) (Villanueva 167). I love how she described that this text was a book that appealed to both natures within her. Britton mentions how many of Clare’s writings give “an account of her own struggle to establish herself in the family in competition with a more confident and more relaxed younger sister” (Villanueva 168-169). I think her desire to read more stereotypical boy stories is her way of changing her gender and ending the competition with her sister. I also think that by reading more male texts, she is learning strategies on how to win over her competition. I just thought it was fascinating how books a child reads is not just a simple manner but it is very insightful for adults. This allows adults to better understand a child’s internal workings and issues. Thus, one can see how a child’s reading list and writings showcase his or her struggles within their own world.

I have a few questions but I will wait to ask them in class since this blog is longer than I had at first desired. Thanks for reading and I hope everyone had a nice weekend. I will write again next week on our new assignment.

Week One: Reflections and Questions

Hey Readers,

 I am not trying to overwhelm you with my blogs and I apologize about the very long winded blog I wrote on Sunday. Sometimes, I become so focused on a point that I just talk nonstop about it. I realize that I was not short and concise and so I would like to make amends for my rather lengthy first blog.

 All three articles were very interesting and I enjoyed reading them. I learned a lot about the history of composition history. I have never formally studied composition theories or history and I found myself fascinated with all the information. I think what I found most interesting  in the Bedford article was the mention of the “Harvard Influence” (Bedford, “A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition,” par. 19). What really intrigued me was the idea that the university decided what texts were deemed valuable and vital to the formation of a scholar’s mind while completely ignoring other texts. Students were expected to know these texts and this decision in turn changed the course of secondary English courses. While the teachers across the country did eventually form a collective force to fight this outrageous limitation to students, I wonder what they would be thinking about today’s issues with state testing of students for graduation. I know that Pennsylvania has opted for this option and I am well aware of it happening in other states (I am particular informed about its workings in the state of Indiana). Would they applaud this effort or fight it?

A former classmate of mine in from my undergraduate college told me that she enjoyed working at a public school because she had more “freedom” in her decision making about the direction of her instruction of her English course, while she felt that private schools were left to enforce the administrations ideals.  Yet, I wonder if we teachers can state that we are truly free. Do we not select course readings that match state requirements and furthermore when we are allowed to incorporate texts of our choice, do we not pick texts that we deem important to our student’s education and development of their skills. In a sense do we not also, like 19^th century Harvard, have our own prejudices and opinions on books? I guess what I am wondering is if we can truly declare that the Harvard issue is resolved. Many colleges today still expect that students have read certain literary treasures and are quite shocked when a rare student has not read all of Shakespeare’s plays or Homer Odyssey in high school. Indeed, many colleges are now giving incoming freshman a required reading list or book(s) for their freshman English course. So I guess I venture to explore the possibility that while the “Harvard influence” may not be as noticeable as it was in the 19^th century that it is still somewhat present and working under new appearances  (Bedford, “A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition,” par. 19).    

The following quote from the Bedford article happens to be another favorite and thought provoking quote to me: “In the post-process era, if we are there yet, what remains vividly clear is that pedagogical and programmatic concerns cannot be separated from political contexts: Mary Soliday argues, for example, that remediation exists to serve institutional needs, and Tom Fox identifies lack of access, not a crisis of standards, as the most pressing problem in higher education” (Bedford, “A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition,” par. 70). While pursuing my undergraduate degree, I had the opportunity to be an aid in an inner city school system. I had been mentoring a few students at a near-by private school and was shocked and horrified with the injustices in the two educational systems.  While the young ladies at this private institution were reading Chaucer and Plato, their female counterparts at the inner city schools were just starting to read out of eight grade reading textbooks. A dear friend and mentor once told me that the best way to fight the cycle of poverty was to get an education that could take one places. Instead of aiding these women to better educate themselves to even afford them the opportunity to go to college, the schools were allowing them to stay unchallenged. I formed along with my college a mentor program that not only challenged the girls to think about bettering their education and going to college, but to fight for the girls and their family with the schools. We provided tutor programs and encouraged the girls to create a reading list of texts that they had read. We counseled them on how to dress and conduct themselves at college visits and class, while we also had them attend our classes with us (they had to even read the material that their mentee had read to prepare for the class). It was an extremely rewarding experience to watch all fifteen ladies graduate with honors from their schools and go on to colleges with scholarships. They are all still in college and doing well. What was most remarkable to me was working with the schools. I was appalled at the limited resources they had. The schools had experienced several large budgetary cuts and were left with little resources. While, they knew that some of their students were testing well and out of their classrooms, they had no room or other opportunities for them and left them in their unchallenged classroom. While the teachers did try to give additional homework to the girls, they found that their resources could only afford giving the girls about three weeks worth of extra homework. Luckily, we were able to aid the schools in applying to the state for education grants and found private donors who gave of their time, talents and resources to aid the willing students. I agree that this is a huge problem with education. In a way, one could argue that we are still providing an elitist educated class and ignoring the idea of educating the masses. If education is the key to ending poverty than why is our education system hurting, especially right now in PA with the budget being late. It is the students and teachers who are most hurt when a school is denied or limited its resources to help prepare and inspire its students. The program at my undergraduate school has continues to grown and I just found out two days ago that the program now has 42 young girls in it for this year!    

My last points will be mainly questions that I had about certain materials in the other two readings.  I found it interesting that in the Kinneavy article, The Basic Aims of Discourse, that it seems that he is fighting for a more “scientific” approach to discourse (Villanueva 131). While he talks about the importance of content of an article, book or speech, it seems that he believes that all emotional content should be treated as a second class citizen. He talks about how the “typical aims” of discourse are “to delight or to persuade or to inform or to demonstrate the logical proof of a position” (Villanueva 130).  He points out to the reader that the most important “systems of aims of discourse” and all of them start off and value the “scientific” approach rather than an emotional method (Villanueva 132). I guess I am wondering if he is for the logical method so that writing can become an important component to all courses or if he likes to image that discourse can be a little of both, emotional and empirical, and it is up to the writer and the circumstances? I admit that at times I thought he supported the methodical arguments and then at other times I thought that he was for both methods as long as they work. I know that he wants the students to have studied “grammar, rhetoric and dialect”, but I cannot help thinking that while he wants the student to understand fully their course and method that he still believes there is room to navigate one’s discourse in any setting (Villanueva 138). I was just wondering if anyone else had the same idea or if they saw his article in a different light.

My last comment for this week’s blog is if anyone noticed that in James Berlin’s article,  Contemporary Composition, that there is a pattern among the four theories he explores. We start off studying about the Classicist who base their theory on the mental process. Indeed, “the Aristotelian scheme of things” is like a scientific process since one is “the observer” and that “to arrive at true knowledge it is necessary for the mind to perform an operation upon sense data” (Villanueva 257). Thus, one is able to see that it is a methodical process they follow. The Positivists who are rooted in “Common Sense Realism” believe that “the world is still rational, but its systems is to be discovered through the experimental methods” (Villanueva 259). Expressionist believe that it is vital for the writer “to sound, to explore, and to discover” (Villanueva 262). All three theories seem to be based on some notion of science while the New Rhetoric group believes that “truth… is created, not pre-existent and waiting to be discovered” (Villanueva 264). This group believes that it is the individual that decides “what will be perceived and not perceived, by indicating what has meaning and what is meaningless” (Villanueva 266).  I believe that while they claim not to be stuck in the empirical ideals of older theorists, I believe that they too have scientific undertones. Especially, when they make comments like, “The writer must first understand the nature of his own interpretations and how it differs from the interpretations of others… the writer can begin by asking how his way of segmenting and ordering experience differs from his reader’s…. How do units of time, space, the visible world, social organization, and so on differ…”(Villanueva 266). I was wondering if anyone else saw this pattern or not. I also thought it was interesting how according to some of these theories, knowledge can be freely sought and reached, while other theories believe that it is not so freely accessible. What are the all your thoughts on that? I think that there is a median, it can be taught but to reach it requires a great deal of time and scholarship so that you can be assured that you are teaching the correct concept to your class!

I also loved the idea that “Human differences are the raw materials of writing” (Villanueva 266). See my first blog on this idea!

Well I have written again a long blog but as you can see there is so much meat to all our readings that I wanted to touch upon as much of it as possible.

Thanks for reading and I will write a new blog next week on our new assignment!!

Week One: A Look at the History of Comp Theory and Different Comp Theories.

Greeting readers! Summer is over and I have now fully cleared the cobwebs from my brain. In this post I will be addressing points from the assigned reading for this week’s class.

The first point is actually a question to my classmates. Did anyone find that while reading James A. Berlin’s article, Contemporary Composition: A Major Pedagogical Theories, that they were at times cheering for the different theorist whenever he started discussing a new theory? I could not help myself. One minute I was agreeing with him on a particular theory’s body and the next moment I was trying to prove him wrong. I wanted to shout that Current- Traditionalists (Provisits) or CT as I affectionately named it were correct and that New Rhetoricians were wrong. Yet, I would find myself agreeing with his assessment and argument for the New Rhetoricians (Villanueva 256). I was just wondering if anyone else felt the same emotions I felt or if they too found themselves in a constant love and hate cycle with the theories that Berlin mentions. I will state that of the three articles we read, I thoroughly relished Berlin’s.

In Berlin’s article, there was one quote, by Ann E. Berthoff, that really struck an accord with me both as a writer and hopeful future college professor. Earlier in the paragraph, Berlin had been addressing how two of the theories’, Curent- Traditional and Neo-Aristotelian, ideas on the relationship between the author’s language and intended readers compared with the New Rhetoric’s belief. Berlin supported Berthoff’s point that what set these theories apart was the New Rhetoric’s vision of “the writer as a creator of meaning, a shaper of reality, rather than a passive receptor of the immutably given. When you write, you don’t follow somebody else’s scheme; you design your own. As a writer, you learn to make words behave the way you want them to… Learning to write is not a matter of learning the rules that govern the use of semicolon or the names of sentence structures, nor is it a matter of manipulating words; it is a matter of making meanings, and that is the work of the active mind” (Villanueva 267). I just love this quote! For years, writing was considered a scientific or mathematical practice and finally, Berthoff and Berlin inform their readers that it is not some emotional void process (Villanueva 257). Rather writing is much like the process of a woman giving birth to new possibilities and then raising that child to reflect the values and morals that you deem important for their success as independent adults. The writer has so much power and is not merely a slave to oppressive rules and regulations. Indeed, we could state that the New Rhetoric theory is as much an awakening and liberating experience to writers, comp professors and audiences as Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique book was to the woman’s movement. Writers are now free to mix and match different forms of writing together. They even can create new methods for writing their book, poem or even speech. (I have included speech since we are living in a time period post Aristotle’s grand oratory tradition, and can now mass produce a text. We also have been living in period of history in which we have multiple examples of exquisite speeches and speechmakers). The point of writing is not to exactly follow your predecessor’s outline but to let your own voice be heard by the every growing literary community. My high school English teacher told us that all twenty-six students had a different style, voice and story that needed to be heard. If you believe that all writers in a particular genre are writing about the same thing and in the same way you need to drive to a nearby bookstore (after reading the rest of my blog) and read the back of all the books on the first and second shelf (depending of course on the size of the shelf you may have to read more or less). While the writer’s in the science fiction area may be passionate about Sci-fi adventures, they have a different way of writing about that tale. They may even add bits and pieces of romance, history, fiction, and nonfiction in their book. Last year, I taught a course and we examined both Anne Frank’s Diary and Zlata’s Diary. While both books were diaries they were both written by two different voices and had two opposite writing styles. Yet, both of these books were able to evoke emotions from their readers. It is really the emotional connection that the reader is seeking. Reading the same story plot all day can get boring and quickly the reader is disengaged from it. The reader will tell you that they learnt nothing. As a writer, you want to leave your reader feeling that they learnt something from your book and that from reading your book, they will be different or changed in some way. You also hope that they will find their voice and go out and write. Berthoff talks about how there are no absolute truths, something that for years theorists fought over. Instead, she states “that we are all citizens of an extraordinary diverse and disturbed world, that the ‘truths’ we live by are tentative and subject to change, that we must be discoverers of new truths as well as preservers and transmitters of old, and that enlightened cooperationist the preeminent ethical goal of communication” (Villanueva 267). Basically, we are called to let our voices be heard through the creation of new styles or uses of new mediums, and to remember writers throughout the span of history who taught us the importance of placing different words together to evoke some emotion from the reader. In reading this article, we learn that it is not good enough to simply know the rules and regulations of grammar because it does not make us better writers. Instead, we are to seek the challenges and to try to understand the history of compositions so that as both writers and teachers we can help readers and students become wiser beings.

Since this blog is already very long, I will take leave of you. Before I post this, I had just one more question for my classmates. After reading the articles, I was struck how both James Kinneavy’s article and Berlin’s article talk about the importance of “context” and how it is important to spend time framing one’s work (Villanueva 127). I know that Berlin talks about as “prewriting, writing, and rewriting” (Villanueva 255). I was wondering if these are still taught in schools, and to what cases that Berlin mentions in his article that they are not used (Villanueva 255).

Welcome

Welcome fellow classmates! I am just trying this out as a test so that I know in the upcoming weeks how I actually type a blog!

Look forward to sharing some thoughts on the readings this semester!