Last blog for Garth :)

My Dearest Garth, I have to say I am a little disappointed that this seems to be our last letter exchange. I have found these blog style Q & A discussions to be quite fun and an entertaining way to learn. I think that this is something I would like to do in the future with my own students if this hiring freeze ever thaws and I can land a job lol. I have greatly enjoyed your questions and your responses to my questions. It’s nice to discuss my thoughts with someone who is also involved with the same materials and digesting them through their own process and then discussing what we have each rendered from the materials. So with a heavy heart I give you our last blog exchange. I won’t really discuss the ND chapter because it was a review of what we have already learned. I would like to start with the Berlin piece. On page 766 bottom of the first paragraph he states that “To teach writing is to argue a version of reality, and the best way of knowing and communicating it to deal as a Paul Kameen has pointed out in the metarhetorical realm of epistemology and linguistics.” At first read I had a bit of a hard time with this statement but then when I made a second pass after reading the entire article I began to agree with it. How do you feel about this statement? Later on page 771 third paragraph down Berlin then elaborates on his discussion of truth telling or relaying. Because he believes that writing is just the relay of truths as we see them. “…truth is not based on sensory experience since the material world is always in flux and thus unreliable, Truth is instead discovered through an internal apprehension, a private vision of a world that transcends the physical.” I had a lot of trouble with Berlins theories on truth and this statement in particular. Personally I feel that truth is very cut and dry and there needs to be no internal exploration it either is or isn’t. What are your thoughts on how a person deciphers truth? Do you agree or disagree with Berlin? On page 777 in the last paragraph Berlin states that “The numerous recommendations of the “process” centered approaches to writing instruction as superior to the “product” centered approaches are not very useful.” I disagree with this because I find that both of these approaches have their place because without the product centered approach you may not learn the mechanics of writing and how to write effectively. And since Berlin states earlier in the article that each composition writing teacher teaches their own process how do we know if they will be effective in conveying the mechanics of writing? Your thoughts? This quickly appears to be becoming one of you typically long winded exchanges so I will list the last of my questions: What did you think of McCarthy’s David in his progress with his writing? Do you think that this was an accurate portrayal of a student learning to write in various discourse areas? In McCarthy’s article the poetry professor sites mimicry as a way of learning to write then in WACNM Villanueva quotes Grosfoguel, Negron-Muntaner, and Georas as saying that mimicry could just be someone copying the actions but not actually learning the intricacies to understand and work within these roles and use these tools. Do you think mimicry is a good learning tool? Why or why not?

Blog #6: Garth’s Response to Naomi’s Letter

Dear Naomi,

Can this be the last of our missives? “So we’ll go no more a roving / So late into the night / Though the heart be still as loving, / and the moon be still as bright[?] (Byron). Well, with only 200 words at my disposal, I guess I’d better get to it. The first question you asked is how I felt about Berlin’s assertion that “to teach writing is to argue for a version of reality, and the best way of knowing and communicating it . . . [is] in the metarhetorical realm of epistemology and linguistics” (766). To answer succinctly, I don’t believe that I purposely teach a version of reality; however, if I did it would be this: There is no such thing as reality; there is only perception. Of all the places to pick this up, I got this from Dr. Phil. Nonetheless, I believe it’s true. Obviously, there is such a thing as shared perception, but we have no way of proving that our senses are picking up the exact same thing even when we agree. As I learned in a long ago philosophy course, we have no way of proving that we are even here. We can be reasonably sure that we are here, but we can never be positive, nor can we present any scientific evidence to prove that we are here. “We think; therefore, we are” is a reasonable syllogism and a probable one, but not one that any of us can prove.

I have a feeling that Berlin’s chief fear is that positivist writers will only write what can be proved. He even claims that for “Common Sense Realis[ts]—the branch he claims that Positivists spring from—the certain existence of the material world is indisputable” (769). While this may be true, it is nonsense to claim it as a common approach for contemporary writing educators. Like Bean, I am concerned with the exploration of ideas in writing. A thesis and a paper that argues an idea, a theory, a hypothesis, a supposition or a particular point of view that cannot be proved is all right with me as long as the thesis is argued. In talking about the philosophies of Aristotle and Plato, Berlin is attempting to cover a lot of ground—too much ground for the thirteen pages his essay comprises. One could devote a book alone to Aristotle’s idea that “sense impressions in themselves reveal nothing, [and] to arrive at a true knowledge it is necessary for the mind to perform an operation upon sense data” (767).

It would also be necessary to write a volume addressing all the implications of your second question of which I give you the corollary now: You asked whether or not I agreed with Plato’s assertion that “truth is not based on sensory experience since the material world is always in flux and thus unreliable. Truth is instead discovered through an internal apprehension, a private vision of the world that transcends the physical.” Naomi, the other half of this argument is only a few lines down the page, and I’m sure that you saw it, but I will quote it here before I tell you what I think: “A striking corollary of this view is that ultimate truth can be discovered by the individual, but cannot be communicated. Truth can be learned but not taught” (771). Now, here’s what I think: I think that there is such a thing as truth, and I think that I can communicate a truth that I have discovered to you or to someone else. I believe in spiritual truth. However, at the same time, I believe that everyone’s perception is different in varying degrees. It will be very difficult for you or for anyone else to completely accept my whole version of the truth because while we probably all share the same reality, more or less, our perceptions are different.

Listen: In his effort to sell it to us, Berlin makes some outrageous claims for the New Rhetoric: “For the New Rhetoric truth is impossible without language since it is language that embodies and generates truth” (774). Wow! Are you kidding me? Truth is impossible without language? Language embodies and generates truth? Where in the world do he get this #*@!? Here is another good one: “Language is prior to truth . . .(775)! Mr. Berlin, please have no fears; WAC educators will continue to explore ideas no matter what you may think is their philosophical bent.

While I have my boxing gloves on, I may as well tell you what I thought of Villanueva. Reading his essay, it became clear to me that in his youth, he must have experienced some traumatic event regarding his skin color. In an effort to compensate for this sleight, he now throws around intellectual abstract terms and asserts that the teaching of writing is political. Villanueva needs to go into politics. He needs to run for office where he can more efficiently bring about the social changes that he feels we need. He is very dour, and I do not think he will draw many votes. He agrees with Gee, who is also political, that “language and dialect are always steeped in convention” (169). Villanueva exceeds Gee’s social ideas of learning with this cynical question: “Why pretend to the scientistic [his spelling] notion of objectivity in discourse when such a thing is unobtainable?” (169). That kind of statement could put a hole in Berlin’s gut.

It’s very interesting to see that McCarthy speaks of David as a stranger in a strange land. This sounds like the title of Hemingway short story, In a Strange Land, although there is no story by him with this title. There is a story called “In Another Country.” David’s difficulty is in trying to figure out how to write for these courses when he has never written anything else like this before. I wonder why McCarthy thought that it would be meaningful to follow a student across the curriculum when she only presents the findings of one student. How can we know her findings would indicate any broad trend?

Now you asked me what I thought of David’s progress in writing. Dave’s concerns were constant across the courses, and his concern was in figuring out what the teachers wanted. Dave was consistent in his ability to figure this out as successful students must be, but he was so caught up worrying about the new literacies that he was attempting to write in that his previous training failed to help him. It is as if his fear of the language of the new semiotic domains kept locked into a helpless position. His instructors only wanted him to become comfortable with the languages of the respective domains, not to explore ideas, yet he failed in this regard. It was interesting to note that David wanted to get the true meaning of the poem, and that he thought his instructor knew the true meaning. This may seem like a harsh judgment, but I think David failed in his poetry course, and in a way, I think his teacher failed him too.

Reflection

I don’t mind writing letters to Naomi about the readings, but I can’t stop thinking about the letters as a technique for galvanizing me into doing the readings, not that I wouldn’t do the readings because I try very hard to always do my class readings. But I recognize it as a check on my reading, and I also know that you, Dr. Muhlhauser, are coming behind and reading every word, so these letters, of course, are not just to Naomi. I cannot stop thinking about these things. On the high school level, I cannot imagine doing this on regular basis, but it would be an interesting variance for a short period of time, maybe an exchange of two letters. This last letter in particular was difficult for me because you asked for a maximum of 200 words. How can I read an article like Berlin’s and comment in 200 words? That’s not even one typed page. Some of these essays, like Villanueva’s, make me angry. At 30 odd pages, McCarthy’s is tedious to say the least, and I will say here that as a student who will need practice setting up a web site—I will need to embody those actions—and time to do his Proof & Practice research, I find some of these essays a maddening waste of time. (Bean generally gets right to it in a positive and utilitarian manner.) And that’s another thing that kind of bothers me; I so often seem to only have negative criticism. On the positive side, you are probably really looking for an exchange of ideas. I have tried to give you that. Sorry to complain, but this is how I feel.

Dear Naomi:

I think that you will agree with me that the most enjoyable, useful, and classroom applicable texts that we’ve read in WAC 630 are Williams and Bean. Certainly Bean has struck upon some great ideas and furnished us with critical writing concepts that we can utilize or implement in lessons for our classes. Nonetheless, I was a bit put off by his assertion that “traditional writing instruction . . . leads to a view of writing as a set of isolated skills unconnected to an authentic desire to converse with interested readers about real ideas” (15). To me, this seemed like an outrageously bold assertion, and one that as a writer I would be afraid to make without much documented evidence. Question #1: Did you feel as insulted as I did? What was your take on this? Does Bean imagine that he has a patent on thinking about ideas or on using writing to explore and express ideas? The real danger in writing is not an obsession with mechanics nor an inability for the writer to tell us what he really thinks (Bean 17). The danger is that we write what we think the teacher wants to hear—at least in academic writing.

Later in Young, when I read the first student essay on “My Utopia,” (6) I realized that I didn’t want to read anymore about what Young had to say, but instead I was seized with a desire to sit down with Thomas and talk about his Utopian ideas with him because despite the mechanical errors in his paper, it was the flawed ideas and (sorry to say and I wouldn’t say it to Thomas) shallow thinking that I would want to discuss. Of course, any human designed Utopia will be flawed, but I wanted to help Thomas develop his ideas. In other words, Bean is not the only educator that wants to talk about ideas in writing. By the way, why did Thomas’ instructor limit the amount of time the students should spend designing their Utopia? Not a good idea, either although I understand it was a writing to learn assignment.

Question #2: How would you as a teacher have handled Thomas’ paper? How would you have marked Thomas’s paper on his utopia? Would you have discussed and questioned his ideas in the margins? Would you have corrected his mechanical errors first, last, or not at all?

I was, however, in complete accord with Bean’s idea of a first draft as disordered chaos that must be brought to order. Put another way, when one starts to write an essay or a book, he or she is out at sea and will remain there until direction and order is found. Question #3: What did you think about Bean’s idea of a first draft as chaos, a vortex, a cauldron, that must find order with a plan? Should we call our first drafts “Chaos?”

Young’s book recounts his experiences conducting interdisciplinary workshops on the problems and possibilities of writing in various subjects. He organizes his workshops into two divisions: writing to learn & writing to communicate.

Naomi, my dear, my letter is already gettin long here, so I will just list the rest of my questions and please feel free to respond to the ones that you want to respond to.

Q: How do you feel about writing assignments divided up into two, not mutually exclusive, camps of Writing to Learn & Writing to Communicate (Young 9)? Are these two camps more heuristic than anything else as Young claims (12)? Are we ever really done writing to learn, or to put it another way, how often do we truly know that a piece of writing is finished?

Q: Are you, like Bean, afraid to call writing communicating? (See earlier Bean reading page 3.)

Q: Do you see this blog as a Writing to Learn or as a Writing to Communicate assignment? Or do you view it as both, neither mutually exclusive?

Q: Can you divorce yourself from the idea that you are being graded even in a Writing to Learn assignment? I cannot. How does one free one’s self from the compulsion to speak teachereez (Young 28)?

Q: Please expound on the connection between a chaotic first draft and an initial writing to learn assignment. Consider this question an overlap between Bean & Young.

Q: What kind of writing to learn assignments might you include in your classroom? Journals? One minute essays?

Q: Do you think that creative writing as a writing to learn strategy in a science course could lead to creative solutions to scientific problems (Young 19)? Or were Edison’s poems simply a diversion and a recreation for a mind much occupied in scientific matters? “Would writing creative poetry in a course “make a valuable contribution to students’ understanding” as Young believes (23)?

Q: I felt the note exchange in the electrical engineering class was a useful technique (Young 23-7)? How did you feel about it?

Q: Please comment on this Bean tenet: “We thus need to help our students see that academic writing involves intellectual and often emotional struggle . . . and that the writer’s thesis is a tentative, risky proposition in response to that problem” (Bean 19).

Q: on page 245, Rose denigrates an early twentieth century educator, Grace Ransom, for her study that asserts each student has a “vocabulary of errors,” i.e., a student repeatedly makes the same mistakes over and over until study & correction fix the problem. Is this really such an outdated notion? It makes perfect sense to me. What do you think?

Q: Considering Rose’s essay in general; are we really prepared to do away with grammar exercises? Is drilling and memorization of facts nothing more than a dead end? In my opinion, we had better think twice before we completely adapt an exploration of ideas approach that does not take time for simple rules of grammar and punctuation. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater! (Third time I’ve blogged that phrase this year!) What do you think?

Q: On pages 349-352 Rose spends time worrying the medical roots, political ramifications, and possible psychological harm (Young 11) of the word remedial. In 1975, in my first year of junior college, I was placed in a remedial English class called Fundamentals of English and a basic composition course. I bear no scars, and, in fact, I was happy that I got the chance to remedy some defects and to develop new skills. What do you think of Rose’s fear of remedial? Is it justified?

Well my dear Naomi, all things must come to an end. The Nile Rivers ends and so must I. My flight to Miami Beach leaves out of Newark on the hour and I must hasten to it. Ahhh, these sun filled days of leisure. Where would we be without them? Please forgive this lengthy missive filled with importuning questions. As I said, pick out the ones that you would like to answer. And so . . .

Fare thee well, my dear,

Love & kisses,

Garth

Blog #4: Naomi’s Questioning Letter and Garth’s Response Letter

Hey Garth,

Ok so as I was reading Bean and since he clearly states that his ideas about critical thinking are based on Dewey’s principles of experiential learning it got me to thinking about how often these principles, ideas and theories are being used every day in classrooms by unassuming teachers. I know that when I first started teaching I thought that lecturing was the best way but then as I taught, and noticed the dreadfully bored faces of my participants, I realized that they needed to be doing something to engage in their learning. That’s when I first began integrating activities into my presentations. So this is what I was thinking about when I was reading Bean and mulling over his theories about critical thinking. I was also thinking about the different kinds of learners like the visual the auditory, and the textual learners. What I was thinking was that with all four types of learners critical thinking works. When you give kids a problem to solve no matter what the best way is that they learn they seem to be able to do this through the various ways critical thinking can be employed. Do you agree?

Further more it seems to me that Emig too employs the teachings of Dewey in that Emig believes that both reading and writing are actively engaged processes. Do you agree?

I felt very much like the theories of Emig and Bean were very similar. Britton however, seems not to share their sentiment that not every literary experience leads one to be actively engaged.

I was a bit put off by Britton’s theory on participant and spectator roles in reading and relaying stories. I do not believe in the inactivity of the spectator. I feel that the “spectator” at the very least needs to be doing one or a few of the following: Actively listening, imagining, asking clarifying questions, comprehending, understanding, agreeing, disagreeing , and the list could go on and on. For me the way that Britton described it was almost as if the spectator just sort of blankly sat there letting the story tellers words bounce off there skin and trickle to the floor in a big pile of syllables at their feet. I do believe that the participant aspect holds up but I believe that this can apply to more then just the story tellers intention of asking for something in return of telling the story be it advice or input otherwise.

What I do see that all three have in common is and active aspect, if not a belief that all learning is active, when it comes to their theories. I wish I had more time to pull out my old Dewy book and draw connections between the theories of both Bean and Emig, perhaps that is because I am a firm and there for biased believer in exploratory learning, but alas I just don’t have that kind of time. My friend I hope you find the following questions to be interesting or at least enough not to bore you to tears.

1) Do you feel that some of these ideas of active problem solving as a teaching method come inherently to many teachers?

2) Do you think that Bean and Dewey are in complete agreement or do they differ slightly?

3) I disagree with the spectator role that Britton describes. I believe that even his spectator is actively doing something, what do you think about the participant vs. spectator theory?

4) Do you see Emig as staying closely to the Dewey ideals as with bean?

5) What did you think of the misconceptions Bean discusses?

6) Do you think more teachers would be willing to integrate more writing into their courses if they had bean quick misconceptions tutorial?

Garth Priebe’s Response to Naomi’s Questioning Letter: Blog #4

Dear Naomi:

So nice to hear from you! One of your first questions was embedded in your letter, and I will respond to that first before I tackle the enumerated questions at the end of your text. Yes, I do believe that no matter what a student’s particular learning style, the most important aspect of active & critical learning is that the student must “wrest[le] with the conditions of the problem, seeking and finding his or her own way out” (Bean 2). As Dewey points out and as Bean concurs, it is only in this manner that the student really thinks—in fact, is forced to think. This can under certain conditions be a painful process, but as Aristotle pointed out in his Poetics, there is a joy in gaining knowledge. It seems to me that so often, students lie with their heads on their desks, bemoaning how boring a subject is, and the solution to this is where Bean, Dewey, and Aristotle completely agree. It is up to the instructor to awaken the students “to the existence of problems all around them,” problems that are naturally motivating and bring the pleasure and joy that Aristotle refers to (Bean 2).

To answer your first enumerated question, I think that teachers learn how to engage students in active problem solving. This is a learned skill, and to give education colleges their due, I think most teachers learn it there. Interestingly, some of the worst instruction I have ever had came at the hands of college professors who had never taken an education course. These instructors lectured for the entire class period with no student activities. Obviously, this is not true of Dr. Muhlhauser, or we would not be discussing the merits of “the power of well-designed problems to awaken and stimulate the passive and unmotivated student,” nor would we be addressing the link between both writing and thinking as critical thought processes. But now, let me address your second question.

Judging only from Bean’s first chapter, I believe that Dewey and Bean are in complete accord with one exception; Bean believes that “the act of writing itself is an act of discovery” (Bean 4). In other words, Bean is a strong advocate of writing as a critical learning process, while Dewey seems to focus most heavily on the quality and exploration of a problem divorced from the advocacy of a particular process such as writing, but the truth is that these men would disagree on very little. For example, Bean tells his students that “good writing . . . grows out of good talking—either talking with classmates or talking dialogically with oneself through exploratory writing” (7). So really, what would these men argue about? Nothing.

In response to your third question, yes, I agree with you, the spectator is always doing something, and I have serious reservations and concerns about Britton’s contention that “poetic discourse is the form that most fully meets the demands associated with the role of spectator . . . making something with language rather than doing something with it” (Britton 58). Now, of course “making something with language” is the same as doing something with it as we contend, but our (yours & mine, Naomi) chief objection to Britton is that he has divorced “poetic discourse” from the “transactional,” a form of discourse that uses language to get things done (158). This is where Britton seriously needs to rethink his definitions. There are so many poems, short stories, and novels (fiction) in which the author’s purpose is a transactional one, i.e., he or she wants to change our minds about something, wants to plant an idea in our minds, and wants us, the readers, to take action on a subject. We, the readers are therefore, forced into some kind of action/decision. Remember that even a no decision is a decision. The author of a serious fictional work has something to get done, some purpose and drive behind the work, and its intended effect is that we take action also. If a poem wants to change our mind about something, then, it is a transactional form, not a poetic one, so Britton’s definition of poetic discourse is, in fact, a misnomer. In other words, Britton is wrong.

Britton complains early in his essay that “literature, as far as schools and universities were concerned, was not something that students do, but always something that other people have done” (154). This suggests to me that he realizes the importance of a student becoming a participant rather than a spectator. Furthermore, when Britton writes that literature is something that students do, he means creating, the cognitive act of creating graphic symbols on a page into mental meaning. This is very comparable to Emig’s contention that “Reading is creating or recreating a verbal construct that is graphically recorded” (123). This is where the overlap lies; Bean, Emig, and Britton all realize that the greatest learning must come from participation in the creative or critical act of writing about literature, with this proviso; Britton wants us to realize that it is when the child “come[s] to value the written language as a vehicle for stories,” it is then that he or she will form an intention to write (166). The connection that we as educators of middle school and high school students must make is that our students already know how to write, so if we can only awaken them to the exciting world of problems they will be ready to go, i.e., ready to write critically and persuasively.

In answer to questions 5 & 6, Bean’s four misconceptions, explaining why teachers don’t implement critical writing into their classrooms, seem perfect to me, for I have often heard associates voice these same concerns. As an English teacher who is teaching Social Studies, I, too, am very concerned with covering the breadth of material that I am expected to cover. In fact, even now I can hear my administrator worrying over whether or not my class is on pace with our calendar. But the truth is that if I don’t slow down and stop the constant flow of facts that supposedly, my students are expected to read & memorize, I will lose them. Time must be allowed for the students to engage with critical thinking and writing. For example, last week I stopped worrying about covering endless facts and gave the students time to address a problem in Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Many people don’t know that Jefferson was forced to censor an anti-slavery attack against King George because our southern colonial delegates would not affix their signature to a document that criticized slavery, one of their cherished economic and cultural practices. Because Jefferson’s document was tantamount to a declaration of war, he was forced to censor the offending section so that the thirteen colonies would present a united front to King George and Parliament. The question that I asked my students was whether or not they agreed with Jefferson’s concession. They were asked to explain in writing why or why not, and to offer alternative actions that Jefferson and the Second Continental Congress might have employed. Doing this as an writing exercise took days, but I felt constrained to give my students some kind of participation in Social Studies and its endless stream of facts besides discussions, lectures, questions, graphic organizers, and so on. As to how many teachers might be convinced to employ critical writing in their classrooms after reading Bean, I don’t know. Surely, Bean’s essay would persuade those who were serious about learning to at least give it a try. After all, it is not a revolutionary concept that teachers are supposed to have their students writing in the classroom. I hear it a lot these days, and of course, I agree with it wholeheartedly.

Sincerely,

Garth Priebe