politics, history, identity, change, composing

My subject title is an attempt to mark out the pivot terms in this set of addresses. You get a sense in this group that the politics of literacy is integral to composition's formation, mission, and development. The political consciousness you see in a number of these pieces (Hill, Purnell, Chaplin, & Lunsford) is to me central to "the idea" of composition. Much scholarship since the 80s has sought to make visible buried rhetorics, literacies, ways of doing language in order to demonstrate the myriad ways in which language/speaking are tied up with identity and composing in the broad sense that Lunsford outlines. I really like her formulation, by the way, because she gets us thinking about composing as a primary act of being and being recognized, not simply a "process" of writing. She helps us see that there's a lot at stake in the act of composing--it can mean the difference between presence and absence. If no one takes up the work to compose Diotima, then women's long-standing role in rhetorical theory remains under-developed, and so forth.

You also see in these addresses comp's preoccupation with its own identity. The consensus seems to be that we do well to remain fluid, to resist static definitions and boundaries. Again, as in the first set of addresses, nearly all of the authors appeal to our interdisciplinary heritage as a strength, not something that fractures our work. This hybrid identity still captures the energy and variety of the field and, in my view, generates interesting ways for the field to continue to be relevant.

I like all of these addresses a lot. Too much to say, so I'll just end by saying that I find Hairston's speech provocative to the max! What a thing to say aloud and in print! Her speech seems a capstone to the views expressed in the earlier addresses (the suspicions about "the enemy," the sense of us vs. them, etc.). You get a real sense of the discipline's struggle to become, and this piece helps to grant an understanding of why there has always been tension between comp and lit (something that I think has changed dramatically over the past 5-10 years as more and more scholars come out of training programs that emphasize both areas).

A choice quote from H. about writing teachers do: "As writing teachers we are engaged in a dynamic and loosely-structured activity that involves intensive interacton with people. It is an activity that is tied to living language, that shifting and ambiguous medium that won't stand still to be examined and is never pure, and it is an activity that focuess on teaching a process for which there are no fixed rules and no predictably precise outcomes" (139). I couldn't agree more.

Last thought: history is important to many of these scholars. The early 90s saw a formidable movement around rewriting histories of rhetoric, excavating archives and uncovering lost histories in order to enlarge our understanding of rhetoric and its legacy.

A personal narrative in response to Hill

James Lee Hill’s 1982 speech reminds me to try to always meet my students where they are—instead of expecting them to be where I wish they already were. If I meet them where they are, I am a more effective teacher.

During my first quarter of teaching, I asked my students—all in the Criminal Justice learning community—why exactly were they in college. They were going around a circle, sharing responses; they were all giving statements like “To make more money,” and “my parents think I should,” and “To get a better job.” Not one of my eighteen students said anything remotely close to “I am here because I love to learn.”

At the time, I was so mad at them! So frustrated! Why were my students such shallow individuals? I remember repeating this little incident to friends, to mentors, to those willing to listening in 212.

Many months have passed. I've had time to look back and reflect. And here's the deal: a majority of those Criminal Justice students were what James Lee Hill refers to as “new students.” They have come to UC not out of love for academia, but because a degree is their “socioeconomic ticket” (94).

My frustration with them was a naive response. Hill helped to remind me what I think I already had started to figure out: that I need to remember to meet my students where they are...I need to remember they all have different backgrounds and passions...and maybe some of my students yearn to earn a bachelors in order to move out of the slums...maybe some of my students long to get that BA so they can be a manager at Ruby Tuesday...maybe some of my students aren't even sure why they are there--and maybe they won't even do anything with their degree at all.

But, each quarter, my students are there. They are there, and I have a responsibility to them--even if they don't long to hold a PhD someday.

I am sure that everyone reading this blog has felt frustration, from time to time, teaching students who do not share a passion for learning that we all have (or try to maintain, even when we’re not in the mood). Let’s try to keep that frustration in check. All we can do is model our own enthusiasm for learning, and try to do the best jobs as teachers that we can. And maybe, as happy biproduct, some of our students might catch on, might catch our craving for learning.

on skills

In response to Jamie, Heather writes:

"'Writing as more than a skill' is a way of talking about composition. And, yet, even though I love that idea, I am still troubled by it--because does it imply that if writing were only a skill that it would be barely worthwhile?"

You have to understand the context and history of the field to get the full meaning of the objection to "mere" skills. When non-writing specialists have argued for "skills instruction" in writing, they have usually meant writing instruction organized around grammar and mechanics. However, research has shown that teaching writing by teaching g/m doesn't work and that efforts to contextualize skills in rhetorical, conceptual, and intellectual questions and problems is both more promising and more transferable to other writing tasks. So, when compositionists resist the idea that writing equates to a skills, they are also resisting calls to de-teeth composition courses by making them so skills-oriented that they fail to account for the larger questions that arise when we attempt to put words together.