Christine Murray wrote:

> Hi Ken,
> glad to see your comments back on this.
>
> Though I haven't taught comp for several years (I taught it for 7 years,
> here and before that, in northern Arizona; since 1999 I've been teaching
> literature, advanced theory of writing courses on argument and expository
> prose, and creative writing), first year comp is one of my favorite
> challenges, for exactly the kinds and the spread of student responses you
> mention.  We can't reach all in each group, but we do try, no?

We do indeed.  In a way, for all the bitching and whining I've done over
the years about not being able to get a full-time academic job, I
suspect that elbowing my way sort of late in life into the profession
through the WalMart route of Adjunct probably helped me.  First, it was
not my only source of income; second I brought the full weight of the
non-academic world into the classroom with me.  I could speak about
writing to my students from the point of view of someone who's made his
living writing since 1976, and more often than not in formats and about
things where I had no choice in the matter.  "You wanna be a poet, go
home and write poetry."

So if my kids complained about the assignment or that they weren't
interested, I had several variations on a two word phrase.  The first
word is "Tough."

I love the part where we discuss literature or expository essays: not
the mechanics of how it's assembled but how effects get built.  "WHY do
you feel that way?  How does author X get you to react the way you do?
What did you read?"  The risk, of course, in such a freereading
environment, is that some of the kids expose themselves as jerks.  The
even bigger risk I found is that the same thing can happen to the
teacher, i.e., me.  And that could be the critical crossover moment when
I learned things from my community college students--for all their
naivete and occasional stridency, they made me look at things in ways
outside the literary box into which years of education had placed me.

And then, yes, there were the kids who sat there with "Duh" looks on
their faces, waiting for the ten-minute cigarette break.  I found myself
wondering at times--with a bit too much moral superiority--whether some
of these students cared about anything, and what it would take to move
them.  I haven't found out yet.

   Although it
> may not appear so, comp is really one of the most radical points in
> education--one of the only opportunities students have for being in a
> community where they can voice their opinions and then have their opinions
> tested in turn, as well as to question others, and their own cultural
> assumptions and expectations.  That's a tall order for an entry level
> situation.  Pedagogically, it's a situation that depends on as much active,
> intellectual curiosity as possible, so there is a lot at stake for teaching
> and for learning if curiosity is faltering.  I guess that's why I have
> gotten into this thread, and am enjoying hearing all the variation in
> response, too.

I might have just covered this ground, at least as far as interchange
goes.  But somehow I discovered--without a hint of knowing theory of WAC
or formal composition--that these kids had a privilege as Freshmen that
the next three years (I'm thinking now of College of New Jersey) would
work to knock out of them.  I can in fact remember all but jumping on
the table and telling them that there WERE no wrong answers in my
classroom, there were only questions and explorations, and that the only
criterion for excellence was how well they defended their stated
beliefs.  Later, I warned them, they would be stuffed into boxes.  They
would have to play the footnote game I made them learn, the Let's Kiss
The Prof's Ass game, and eventually they'd have to take that sense of
subservience to the workplace.  How did I know this? I'd ask
rhetorically.  Because I worked in it, I lived it--and this room is the
last place you will have the privilege of being nobody but yourself.  It
was my playground as well as theirs.

There were no forbidden topics in my rooms: no bans on writing about
abortion (including a great paper from a girl who was right-to-life),
underage drinking, cafeteria food (that came from a student who did a de
facto economic deconstruction of institutional cuisine!).

But I also had to keep them inside the texts--some students love to go
outside if a text is involved and insert their own assumptions into
their reading.  One of my kids at Mercer County College decided Laura
Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie was a fulfilled and happy person
precisely because she lives in a fantasy world.  NOTHING I could do in
demonstrating her misery through the text shook this guy loose.

Another decided that Blake's "Chimney Sweep," the Experience version, is
unironic and that if we ARE good, God will reward us.  I found myself
speechless.  How do I know this guy is NOT right?

> I find the cliche that turns the tables to say how much teachers can learn
> from students very true: they teach me to keep thinking and to do so in
> complex ways, especially in writing courses, so comp courses included.
> Also, to monitor my own expectations of others.  It's really an intellectual
> "contact zone," a situation similar to what Mary Louise Pratt talks about in
> her work....

I have never heard of her or of her work.  Perhaps I should in the next
few weeks.

> More room, then, for innovation and learning outside
> the usual frames.  That can make good ground for critical thinking, thus for
> writing. As you say, though, for many it is not such productive ground,
> alas.

I fear for a lot of these kids, that they will lose their playfulness,
their irresponsibility to the world of received ideas, and will be
shoved into their little iron maidens of responsibility, corporate
blah-blah, and even advanced academic self-betrayal.  Oh yeah...I did
it.  I saw people select dissertations based not on "I love this author"
but on "What will get me a really hot job?"  Maybe that makes sense....

> That sense of "homo ludens"--playfulness, yes; or rather, the degree of lack
> of playfulness.  That adds another angle to this problematic.  My students
> this semester were tentative about their intellectual playfulness, but once
> it was understood that it's valued in my courses, then they loosened up.

I'd like to take one of your courses:-).
>
> Thanks very much for this input.  Also, I've been wanting to say I really
> like the David Antin quote you use in your signature.

Well, you won't see it here.  Here we are very corrrrrrrrrrrrrrect.  But
my thinking is not, I hope.

Ken <same one as uses the Antin quote>
--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538