Blog....4? I lost track already

Rose: I loved Lives on the Boundary, so I knew I’d be into whatever Rose had to say in this essay. 548-549 refers to the idea that writing courses are offered outside the realm of academic classes and how pointless it is. I can’t emphasize how much I agree. How can we teach kids to write when they are not using the very curriculum they are writing for? Isn’t that the point? This obviously includes what Rose is talking about…college freshman courses. They can’t write, they are placed in a writing class, yet they are sent to other classes that require writing, and they are right back to where they started…not knowing how to write to explain or write research for the classes they are taking. They are learning “writing” in one class…the broad brush strokes anyway…but how can they apply it to other areas if they don’t practice in that specific area?

And he’s also right that there’s talk talk talk about writing in the natural environment( 550)—by administrators anyway---but either teachers don’t know how to do that or it just sounds good, but really all some teachers want is the product to be graded. Being able to quantify the writing. If we really want to teach kids to write, there almost has to be a time when there is no grade…just keep writing for different areas of the curriculum until it clicks. Those classes need to be offered in middle or high school…not just as a college remedial course. Grades? How about just pass/fail. This way, there is the feeling that they need to put effort in to pass…no effort is failure, effort and the consistent trying allows them to pass. The focus on error is what completely shifts what the student thinks they are there to accomplish. Do they want efficiency or do they want writing? (554) They can have both…but it’s a process admin wants done all at the same time, and it just can’t happen that way. That’s why kids’ writing is a mess. And to think that, at one time, this type of thing was considered a disability that was labeled by a medical professional is crazy.

Didn’t we do a literacy definition paper with Julie? I know I still have it. Literacy does not just mean reading. It’s so much more. (560) it’s social, cultural, technical, academic, it’s reading and writing…there is no one definition. That’s obvious when countries like Brazil consider the fact that an individual can write his or her name “literate”. If we see kids that are “illiterate”, we remediate, like Rose says. I agree with his idea that that (565) we don’t “remediate”, but instead take what they know and fill that basket even more. It’s not that they are lacking, it’s that they just don’t know yet.

Bizzell: Definitely influenced by Thought and Language by Vygotsky. I read a lot of these articles and feel like I’ve seen it before…over and over. Now it’s just Bizzell picking it apart and deciding what specialists feel to be relevant in the field and subsequently to the students. I like her ideas…the inner directed diagram and how it can be used with the outer-directed. Page 395: “We can know nothing but what he have words for, if knowledge is what language makes of experience.” This was on the heels of her discussion about “translating: and putting ideas into language. Again, I feel redundant. I like the way she writes, but I’ve seen this stuff before. The one thing I especially connected with was the idea that composition research is provisional (406). I feel like there’s this circular logic I get stuck in where I say…you can examine and research any group...and do it well…but can we really “see” inner thought even when the individuals involved in the experiment express as much as they can? No finding is absolute. The questions must continue to be asked. I just think writing is either innate or learned. Some kids have it, some need to be guided and learn to write by writing. For those who have it, they can be enriched and help others try to capture their words on paper.

G & T Ok Chris…I think that’s you …the ClaytonsZoo…I am a much better reader of the likes of Rose, Fletcher, Graves….but yes, this guy escaped me. I do have some thoughts tho…politics and composition pedagogy cannot be a forced match. Bad blind date. Nothing in common. He started out fine…but I then had a hard time figuring out what exactly he was trying to say. He posed lot of questions at the beginning…and I had a hard time finding where he tried to clarify those and get an answer. I think he had a direction by mentioning Reagan, etc…but lost it. Why he trying to show metaphor between the politics of writing and the politics of…America? Or how America got politically involved in education and composition? Even his examples of cultural studies…how did they relate to composition? Am I missing a big piece here? This seems largely to be about political writing…oh wait…is that the point? Writing politically. I think that’s it. Mixed in with lots of social studies lessons, like on page 75 and the references to state coercion. I don’t get that one. Political theory writing? Is that what this is? But then I read about the connection to classroom studies, and here again, it’s about classroom pedagogy, textbook usage, and cultural studies. I don’t see the writing connection.