Response to Timbur

To dissent or not to dissent, is that the question?

Timbur’s article was an eye opener for me on a couple of levels. I strongly agree that dissent is needed in social interaction for numerous reasons, because it creates new ways of thinking and it opens up new ideas to be considered among groups. However, I also think that dissent is problematic because too much of it can hinder progress towards the creation of new knowledge and bring conversation among groups to a halt. While consensus does seem appealing at first among group interaction, I do agree with Timbur in that it can bring group interaction to a halt as well. Much like a catch-22, this is how I view consensus and dissent; both can be good at certain times but too much of either can shutdown conversation and create problems.

I think dissent can be a powerful tool in a writing classroom, because as Dr. Kemp explained it allowed some students to voice their opinions that differed from the group. This created new ideas for the other students that originally formed a consensus on the topic, which ultimately led them to write a great deal about a topic they didn’t have much to write about at first. If everyone had originally agreed, would they have conversed as much as they did when they dissented? I don’t think so. However, the key factor to dissent is that when faced with an opinion that one doesn’t agree with, that person must vocalize their dissenting opinion, which isn’t always the case. There have been numerous times when I have been part of a group that forms a consensus with which I don’t agree with, but that I ultimately agree with in the end for the sake of consensus. The reason why? Because dissent takes time and effort, and when the group is faced with a deadline or when it’s under stressful conditions it doesn’t always have the luxury to dissent.

It’s funny that this is how I’ve come to view dissent. I agree with Timbur in that we need to examine why we do the things we do, especially in a literature class as he discusses. It’s part of critical thinking, which in turn is a crucial aspect of writing well. But most groups in a writing class don’t necessarily have the option to dissent among its members, because ultimately things need to get done. While dissenting does create new ideas to write about as an individual within a group, it often hinders group writing as well. So while dissent is a good thing, I think consensus is a good thing as well. It all depends on context.

Response to Berlin and mumblings

I greatly agree with Berlin’s piece in that it is important to consider the ideology of the classroom you want to achieve, since the ideology will greatly influence how you teach. I also like the idea, and we’ve discussed it before, of splitting the ideology of rhetoric into the three subsections: cognitive rhetoric, expressive rhetoric, and social epistemic rhetoric. I also agree with Berlin’s championing of the social epistemic, because most of what I’ve read during my short exposure in grad school so far has been about the idea that knowledge is constructed in the social realm. This makes sense to me and it has started shaping the world I once thought I knew.

Now going back to the classroom, it’s hard for me to visualize the social epistemic rhetoric as the primary ideology of the class. On one side of the rift I completely agree that the students should have authority in the classroom, because then they will be able to take control on their own learning. However, this side creates problems, one being maybe students don’t want any control in their learning. I have an extreme problem with visualizing this, because I loved learning and I wanted to learn about things that interested me. I wanted to be the one teaching myself. And a lot of these students don’t want anything to do with that. On the other side of the rift, I completely agree that the teacher should be in control. They should be the one that tells the students what to do and how to do it. But the problem with this is it gives the students no stake in their education, and at the end of the day they hate and resent the educational system more and more each day they have to experience it. It’s like being in a prison, and I imagine it’s pretty hard to learn in a prison.

So how do you bridge that rift? How do you make the students have a stake in their education? Certainly you can’t force them to have one, and certainly you can’t trust them to create one for themselves. Do you force the expressive rhetoric on them, and make them write about themselves each and everyday? Or do you stress the process of writing through the cognitive rhetoric so that they’ll have a messed up view of the writing process that’s set in stone for the rest of their lives? I don’t know, and I think a lot of teachers don’t know, and that’s why most of them are falling into the rift instead of trying to cross it. But I do think it’s important to cross it. We need to bridge the two sides and help these students care about their education, not just with writing but for most other things too. I think this struggle will probably never end, and that’s a big downer for me. But I think there’s hope to be found in all this. I just want to know where it is.

The Random Thought Post

Grammar is a subject that confuses me, and not in an understanding it kind of way, but in the way that I’m confused about my own feelings towards the subject. On the one hand I think it’s a tremendously valuable thing to know to be able to write well, however on the other hand I think it’s a waste of time to teach it in schools. The reason why I believe this is, for the most part, based on my own personal experience with the nasty subject of grammar. All throughout my years in grade school, any class I had that was primarily about grammar was torture to me. I hated grammar. I despised grammar. It was torture, and not because I didn’t understand it. It was because I did get it, and it felt like such a waste of time to me because there were so many other things we could’ve spent learning about in class that we didn’t have a chance to all because of stupid grammar class. And the reason why I understood grammar back then was because I read. I read a lot. And so I was able to build up the pattern recognition system that told me when something was wrong and when something was right.

However, I still consider grammar a valuable tool to know and understand when writing; because it helps you make sense of your thoughts and communicate them in a clear and concise manner. Without grammar we would have no uniform way to communicate in written form, because then it would all be a matter of personal preference. But the way it has been taught in school is much like what the world would be without it. The grammar classes are not uniform and rather seem to be taught through personal preference and in my opinion, it just isn’t working. However, I don’t know how to fix it either. I think the model Dr. Kemp champions, the peer-editing model, is a good way to start, but I don’t think it’ll solve all the problems either, because at the end of the day the students still don’t know how to discover and fix bad grammar. They can only make an educated guess that something is wrong, and that is definitely important, but it still doesn’t solve the fact that they don’t know the grammar. I think the problem lies in the fact that the students don’t read anymore. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, the kids just don’t read. And it’s sad.

I don’t know. I still have all these thoughts on the matter coursing through my head and I’ve yet to make sense out of them. Solving the matter of teaching grammar involves lots of things, things that I haven’t considered and things that I don’t even know about. But I think one of the biggest issues is getting the students to read again. I love reading and I don’t see how anyone couldn’t love reading. But that’s a post for another day.

Response to Fulkerson, Hairston, and other thoughts too.

The readings this week seem to hark on most of what we’ve been discussing so far, in that the current model of teaching composition isn’t working, and hasn’t been working for some time. I have no complaints with both arguments, especially with Fulkerson’s main argument of teaching A,B,C and grading X,Y,Z is complete nonsense and shouldn’t be happening inside of the composition classroom. I completely agree with the notion that teachers should be reflective of their teaching so that they understand what they’re teaching and why. Also, Hairston’s article was very interesting in understanding the current composition paradigm is product focused and lacks focus on the process of writing. The exercise we did in class really made me reflect on my own writing process and how I come to achieve the end product. I hadn’t considered how I write in depth before class on Thursday and what I discovered was that most of my writing process focuses on the brainstorming part. I like to think a lot about what I write before I actually start writing, and even during the writing part I often stop and think about what I’ve written. I’m honestly glad we did the exercise in class, because not only does it reconfirm Hairston’s notion that teachers of writing should be people who write and are reflective of how they write, but also because it was helpful in reflecting on how I write as well.

It’s sad however, that we didn’t experience the paradigm shift that Hairston was calling for and was expecting to come, because I feel that it would’ve improved composition courses on a massive scale. I think a big problem that we need to overcome, and one of the problems Kemp mentioned, is that what is being discussed at the composition conferences and the theories that are being created are not trickling down into the classrooms since most of the composition teachers don’t read the research that is being produced. It’s understandable that they don’t read the research since they’re constantly weighed down with the amount of sections they’re teaching. On a whole, the composition course is riddled with problems and I’m glad we’re bringing those problems to light in class, but it also intimidates the hell out of me because I’m not sure I’ll be able to change or even fix any of those problems when I teach the course. I guess we’ll see when the time comes for that, but for now I’ll just relax and reflect on my own writing and grading because as they say, change comes one course at a time.