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.