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.
I think that part of the difficulty in bridging that rift lies in the fact that something else besides students and teachers must be taken into account when we think about teaching difficulties. That something would be the education system, which has some definitive problems.
ReplyDeleteFor instance, one reason that students may not want any control in their learning is because they've always been passive recipients of knowledge in the classroom rather than active participants. Their status as passive recipients is due (in a really big sense) to the traditionally authoritarian structure of the educational system at large. The teacher stands at the head of the class; all desks face the teacher. No one speaks unless they are called upon. Etc.
I don't have any good answers about how to bridge the rift. I only can add that the system needs to be taken into account when we think about it. As long as the system goes unchanged, the rift will always be there. I probably didn't give you any hope here-- but I do sympathize with your feelings.