Grassi's critique of philosophers like Des Cartes and Kant speak to the reasons that composition studies do not fare well in academia. Grassi's critique focuses on the weaknesses of the scientific paradigm. Foss, Foss and Trapp explain Grassi in this way: "Grassi discusses various characteristics of the scientific paradigm, all of which he considers to be limitations of cience in terms of the knowing the world. The scientiric method seeks to discover first principles, yet it does not examine the source of such priniciples. In other words, knowledge exists within the boundaries of the system under examination, but no attempt is made to understand the origins of the system itself" (p. 55). Grassi (qtd in Foss, Foss, and Trapp) claims: "science is only applicable within th erange of a system based, in each field, on its own particular premises, and of course these premises cannot be proved because they form the system's own foundation" (p. 55).
The second problem for Grassi, according to Foss, Foss, and Trapp, is that scientific thought does not consider anything that cannot be generalized to the universe; there is no value in looking at specific cases for the sake of understanding the case only. Grassi (qtd in Foss, Foss and Trapp, p. 56)explains the problem as a "desperate effort of freeing oneself from relativity, from the subjectivity of what appears through the senses."
All of this leads to demoting/undervaluing the humanities, which Grassi explains is another limitation of the scientific paradigm. Any contribution offered by disciplines in the humanities is dismissed because, as Foss, Foss, and Trapp describe, "any discipline that is not grounded in logical processes is denigrated" (p. 56). Grassi explains that a scientific approach to the humanities is a "repudiation of history." Philology, art, and poetry face the same dilemma, and rhetoric "fars no better, because the passions impair the clairyt of though tand ocnsequently are not to be taken into account" (qtd. in Foss, Foss and Trapp, p. 56).
Foss, Foss, and Trapp: "Grassi seeks 'a proper appreciation of humanism's rejection of the rational' and devotes himself to showing how humanism, despite its domination by science, in fact offers perspectives not available to science" (p. 57).
All of this can be used in an argument that one of the primary reasons the field is under-valued is because of this mind set/epistemology.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Teacher Inquiry -- Saturday March 6
Here I am again in Burnham's TI class. I enjoy coming, even though my heart on Saturdays is always outside. This is a place where I can do professional work that I take no other time to do. In this mini-semester I hope to interrogate my approach to developmental writing pedagogy, with the aim of finding ways of inserting my experience into what I'm reading for my comprehensive exams. I know what I want in a way that can't tolerate doing something if it doesn't advance something. My comprehensive exams must advance more than just another step toward my Ph.D. I want the work I do in preparing for them and in actually writing them to inform my own pedagogy.
So I'm going to continue to talking about Miller's article "Composition as a Cultural Artifact." But first a word about Greg. At breakfast yesterday Pierre and I told him about the composition history question that we are both answering. It asks us to look at how the field has been under-valued. Miller makes the argument that it is under-valued as a result of a cultural imprint -- an imprint that is seemingly set in cement. This imprint places composition teachers in the roles of nurse/doctor (cure the ill student), maid (scrubb the student clean), mother (nurture the immature student), and priest (mediator between high -- academia, and low -- student). All of this makes perfect sense to me. I understand the metaphors at a gut level. But Greg seemed not to get any of this. He asked at least two times something like "who says we're undervalued?" It was a new idea to him. He talked about non-English faculty treating him as if he were a magician. Pierre said that the general public treated him like a saint. In public, I often feel like a leper once I've announced my profession. I don't feel like either a saint or a magician.
Why am I in this field? I came to it in a circuitous way, but the long and short of it is that I like to teach -- I don't know that it is specifically writing pedagogy that I love -- but language in general. I love language and I love to teach, and so here I am. Maybe I would have stayed in TESOL, my first career, except that it is even lower than the field of composition -- less professionalized and the textbooks even less about theories of second language acquisition than writing textbooks. I found like minds in composition -- colleagues who wanted to talk about the complexities of teaching somebody something that can't quite be considered content, but also can't be reduced to a skill, like learning how to write D'Nealian script as a style of penmanship. The idea that writing instruction needs to account for rhetoric, culture, specific skills, critical thinking, gender, class, identity, and the list goes on -- is exciting to me, but so hard to pin down in a world that loves to define and categorize and taxonomize -- a world that only wants to ask questions that can be answered by science instead of through reasoning and judgment -- a world that only valorizes the rational. How can this field of writing instruction -- especially basic writing instruction -- professionalize with in the rank and file? How can it resist the hallowed halls of empircal research? Maybe it shouldn't? Is there more than just two ways of conducting scholarly inquiry and doing scholarly work and producing knowledge?
So I'm going to continue to talking about Miller's article "Composition as a Cultural Artifact." But first a word about Greg. At breakfast yesterday Pierre and I told him about the composition history question that we are both answering. It asks us to look at how the field has been under-valued. Miller makes the argument that it is under-valued as a result of a cultural imprint -- an imprint that is seemingly set in cement. This imprint places composition teachers in the roles of nurse/doctor (cure the ill student), maid (scrubb the student clean), mother (nurture the immature student), and priest (mediator between high -- academia, and low -- student). All of this makes perfect sense to me. I understand the metaphors at a gut level. But Greg seemed not to get any of this. He asked at least two times something like "who says we're undervalued?" It was a new idea to him. He talked about non-English faculty treating him as if he were a magician. Pierre said that the general public treated him like a saint. In public, I often feel like a leper once I've announced my profession. I don't feel like either a saint or a magician.
Why am I in this field? I came to it in a circuitous way, but the long and short of it is that I like to teach -- I don't know that it is specifically writing pedagogy that I love -- but language in general. I love language and I love to teach, and so here I am. Maybe I would have stayed in TESOL, my first career, except that it is even lower than the field of composition -- less professionalized and the textbooks even less about theories of second language acquisition than writing textbooks. I found like minds in composition -- colleagues who wanted to talk about the complexities of teaching somebody something that can't quite be considered content, but also can't be reduced to a skill, like learning how to write D'Nealian script as a style of penmanship. The idea that writing instruction needs to account for rhetoric, culture, specific skills, critical thinking, gender, class, identity, and the list goes on -- is exciting to me, but so hard to pin down in a world that loves to define and categorize and taxonomize -- a world that only wants to ask questions that can be answered by science instead of through reasoning and judgment -- a world that only valorizes the rational. How can this field of writing instruction -- especially basic writing instruction -- professionalize with in the rank and file? How can it resist the hallowed halls of empircal research? Maybe it shouldn't? Is there more than just two ways of conducting scholarly inquiry and doing scholarly work and producing knowledge?
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
ipod touch
I'm most intrigued as we begin looking at gaming and gaming literacies with the "why" behind playing games. What is it that attracts someone to games in general and video or electronic games in particular? I suspect that they are related. Maybe someone who likes to play games in general will also like electronic games? I don't know. Or does it have to do with the way our brains function? It would be easy to say that it is about age and gender, but there are far to many exceptions to this generalization for it to be true. It is true that I don't know even one teenage or pre-teen boy who doesn't like electronic games, while I do know teenage and pre-teen girls who don't -- so maybe it is safe to say that it isn't quite a prevalent with girls -- but I don't know where that would get me. The same is true for age. I know lots and lots of men who love electronic games and plenty of women who like them. Take my own family, for instance. I have two brothers and four sisters. Both of my brothers (48 and 32) love electronic games. The 32-year old grew up with them, but the 48 year old didn't. Of my sisters and me, two of us don't play electronic games and three do. My sister and I who don't play them do not play other games much either. My attention span when it comes to gaming is so short. It's not that I don't like them -- it's just that they don't hold my attention for long. But then again, neither does chess, checkers, card, board games. When my children were young and wanted to play something like Trouble (the board game) with them, I would feel so anxious by the time we finished. I can't even imagine sitting through a game of Monopoly or Life.
I wonder what it would take for an electronic game to catch my attention or my sister's attention? I wonder if it is even possible... and this from someone who loves technology, gadgets, and the like. I wouldn't go for a run without my Garmin -- I love podcasts -- and I'm fascinated by online technologies for teaching... So it's not about it being electronic. And I don't have a sense that it is waste of time. In fact, I'm quite convinced by Gee's arguments. I think it's an interesting question because there is a chunk of the population who isn't consuming this very easily consummed good...
I wonder what it would take for an electronic game to catch my attention or my sister's attention? I wonder if it is even possible... and this from someone who loves technology, gadgets, and the like. I wouldn't go for a run without my Garmin -- I love podcasts -- and I'm fascinated by online technologies for teaching... So it's not about it being electronic. And I don't have a sense that it is waste of time. In fact, I'm quite convinced by Gee's arguments. I think it's an interesting question because there is a chunk of the population who isn't consuming this very easily consummed good...
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Brainstorming for end-of-semester paper
I want to write about the place of sound/aurality in the basic writing classroom. I will use info from the Selfe piece, and I will use my own experience with the audio comments in CCDE 110 (survey response).
I want to investigate the use of voice – real voice – in the basic writing class. If diversity is truly to be acknowledged, one must investigate the ways in which diversity is performed/demonstrated. One way is certainly through voice. Typically we think of voice as what? Style, mood, genre, tone, vocab choice. We allow “stars” to enact whatever voice they want – stars like bell hooks, Adrianne Rich, so forth. They have permission, or take it, to demonstrate voice through words, grammar, syntax, font, type face, etc.
How do we encourage/allow basic writers to enact their own voice? Much discussion about standard dialects of English verses non-standard – terms are troubling. As a result, like Selfe says, there is often “deafening silence” in basic writing classes. They have been pushed out of mainstream academy and so when we invite them to participate, they are hesitant – naturally.
Our (comp teachers) voice is also silenced in some ways. Yes, we speak at students, but do we have conversations with them? My using the audio comments feels more like I’m having a conversation with the text/with the students than when I offer written comments. They seemed confused by the audio comments – not what they expected – but eventually warmed up to it.
What about podcasts? Would that also be inviting sound back into the classroom? Could a student truly find his/her voice by producing an mp3 argument instead of a word-processed argument? Maybe they aren’t podcasts really – but audio files instead of text files. How would that affect the composing process? I feel like I’ve got to try this out. It’s different from a speech in that there is no audience when recorded – or at least an audience isn’t necessary. The student has voice as another rhetorical device at her disposal. How will it affect revision? I’m also curious about the practical elements…
Alright, so what information can I look for that will help me sort through these ideas and formulate an argument?
Selfe, C. The Movement of Air, The Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal Composing. ( has this been officially published somewhere?)
http://www.users.muohio.edu/sommerjd/files/Taped_Response.pdfAudio-Taped Response and the Two-Year Campus Writing Classroom: The
Two-Sided Desk, the “Guy with the Ax”, and the Chirping Birds
Teaching English in the Two-Year College, 31 (No. 1), 25-39.
by Cheryl Mellen and Jeff Sommers
Spoken Response: Space, Time, and Movies of the Mind.” Jeff Sommers. Writing with Elbow. Eds. Pat Belanoff, Marcia Dickson, Sheryl I. Fontaine, Charles Moran. Logan, Utah: Utah State Press, 2002.
http://www.users.muohio.edu/sommerjd/ (website)
http://www.write101.com/lethamfind.htm (traditional definition of “voice”)
http://hollylisle.com/fm/Articles/wc1-6.html -- gotta use this one – wow, what a definition!
I want to investigate the use of voice – real voice – in the basic writing class. If diversity is truly to be acknowledged, one must investigate the ways in which diversity is performed/demonstrated. One way is certainly through voice. Typically we think of voice as what? Style, mood, genre, tone, vocab choice. We allow “stars” to enact whatever voice they want – stars like bell hooks, Adrianne Rich, so forth. They have permission, or take it, to demonstrate voice through words, grammar, syntax, font, type face, etc.
How do we encourage/allow basic writers to enact their own voice? Much discussion about standard dialects of English verses non-standard – terms are troubling. As a result, like Selfe says, there is often “deafening silence” in basic writing classes. They have been pushed out of mainstream academy and so when we invite them to participate, they are hesitant – naturally.
Our (comp teachers) voice is also silenced in some ways. Yes, we speak at students, but do we have conversations with them? My using the audio comments feels more like I’m having a conversation with the text/with the students than when I offer written comments. They seemed confused by the audio comments – not what they expected – but eventually warmed up to it.
What about podcasts? Would that also be inviting sound back into the classroom? Could a student truly find his/her voice by producing an mp3 argument instead of a word-processed argument? Maybe they aren’t podcasts really – but audio files instead of text files. How would that affect the composing process? I feel like I’ve got to try this out. It’s different from a speech in that there is no audience when recorded – or at least an audience isn’t necessary. The student has voice as another rhetorical device at her disposal. How will it affect revision? I’m also curious about the practical elements…
Alright, so what information can I look for that will help me sort through these ideas and formulate an argument?
Selfe, C. The Movement of Air, The Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal Composing. ( has this been officially published somewhere?)
http://www.users.muohio.edu/sommerjd/files/Taped_Response.pdfAudio-Taped Response and the Two-Year Campus Writing Classroom: The
Two-Sided Desk, the “Guy with the Ax”, and the Chirping Birds
Teaching English in the Two-Year College, 31 (No. 1), 25-39.
by Cheryl Mellen and Jeff Sommers
Spoken Response: Space, Time, and Movies of the Mind.” Jeff Sommers. Writing with Elbow. Eds. Pat Belanoff, Marcia Dickson, Sheryl I. Fontaine, Charles Moran. Logan, Utah: Utah State Press, 2002.
http://www.users.muohio.edu/sommerjd/ (website)
http://www.write101.com/lethamfind.htm (traditional definition of “voice”)
http://hollylisle.com/fm/Articles/wc1-6.html -- gotta use this one – wow, what a definition!
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Web 2.0
These articles have captivated my attention for a number of reasons -- some having to do with the potential to use Web 2.0 technologies in my teaching, and others having to do with the ways in which I and my family are now using the web.
Teaching: I'm not really sure which technologies might help with teaching, but I have this feeling that as I hear the presentations from my classmates in the next few weeks about the different areas (? I'm not sure what noun to use to talk about web 2.0 technologies -- are they applications? no... what are they? What language can we use to refer to them?) I'll start to get ideas. Two that seem a little more obvious are podcasting and moodling (can I add -ing to moodle?) I can see the possibility of my podcasting as the instructor, but also the students podcasting... I think I need to get one of those cool microphones for my ipod. And I want to learn more about how teachers in higher ed are using moodles in their classes. I've heard of it for middle school and high school, but what about college?
Personal use: What I think is fascinating is the way in which I and my family use Web 2.0 technologies without question. My husband, who is a ludite, uses google earth to recreate battles of the Korean War. He then saves his data points with 80+ year-old Korean Vets over the internet. He's figured it out mostly on his own. The google earth part wasn't too hard. You add little images of push pins to various locations... But then you have to save your work in such a way that it can be shared with others. That part wasn't easy -- but isn't it fascinating that neither of us tried to figure out what technology was behind his being able to ultimately figure it out. We didn't ask ourselves: "What application am I using to accomplish this task?" I suppose the same is true for my kids interacting with their friends on MySpace -- or my sharing photos of my kids' cross country meets with other parents on a picture-sharing website. We just all accept that technology can do work for us that we don't even understand its doing. Does that make sense?
Teaching: I'm not really sure which technologies might help with teaching, but I have this feeling that as I hear the presentations from my classmates in the next few weeks about the different areas (? I'm not sure what noun to use to talk about web 2.0 technologies -- are they applications? no... what are they? What language can we use to refer to them?) I'll start to get ideas. Two that seem a little more obvious are podcasting and moodling (can I add -ing to moodle?) I can see the possibility of my podcasting as the instructor, but also the students podcasting... I think I need to get one of those cool microphones for my ipod. And I want to learn more about how teachers in higher ed are using moodles in their classes. I've heard of it for middle school and high school, but what about college?
Personal use: What I think is fascinating is the way in which I and my family use Web 2.0 technologies without question. My husband, who is a ludite, uses google earth to recreate battles of the Korean War. He then saves his data points with 80+ year-old Korean Vets over the internet. He's figured it out mostly on his own. The google earth part wasn't too hard. You add little images of push pins to various locations... But then you have to save your work in such a way that it can be shared with others. That part wasn't easy -- but isn't it fascinating that neither of us tried to figure out what technology was behind his being able to ultimately figure it out. We didn't ask ourselves: "What application am I using to accomplish this task?" I suppose the same is true for my kids interacting with their friends on MySpace -- or my sharing photos of my kids' cross country meets with other parents on a picture-sharing website. We just all accept that technology can do work for us that we don't even understand its doing. Does that make sense?
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