A
Review of Race, Rhetoric, and Technology: Searching for Higher Ground
Discussion with Banks
Thread 2 - a foot in each discourse community
A reoccurring question for my students in the course was: How do we encourage and design writing courses that help those traditionally not at home in the discourses of the academy? Chapter seven’s discussion of “racial justice” and its pedagogical implications (at least theoretically) helped generate the following exchange. My students also were urged to see tensions in the literacy practices of some students, especially students of color who often find the academy’s “ways with words” different from their own, and stemming from very different technologies. Adam’s response reminds my students about the institutional demands placed on writing courses, and our pedagogical and practical concerns as teachers who design courses with/through technology.
Melissa
Lately (or perhaps all semester), our class has discussed the situation
of a person having a foot in each discourse community (college and race).
I am not defining this well. We learn to write, think, and relate within
and toward the academic community, yet prior to that experience, we have
learned to think and communicate in other racial, regional, class, and
cultural ways. Villanueva walks in both, as we noticed in his
writing (Bootstraps). How do we explain or help a student understand that
she does not need to forget/ dismiss/ negate her previous understanding
of the world when she enters academia but can build from her view of the
world with this new approach? I admit that I was startled when I hit this
topic earlier this semester in a conference with a student. Freshman English
classes are required. Some students want to learn; some students see English
as the conformity to something other than their world. This is the notion
that English or writing only exists in the English Department. Yes, we
know better, but how do we convince students? As Banks says, how do we
help them "feel at home in language" (141) [ . . . ]
Shannon
I'm also thinking about the student I had in 101 (and the one you, Melissa,
tutored in the Writing Center) who resisted the conformity to academic
writing. Many students do see English as just a required course and detach
what they've learned. "I won't need this in my other classes,"
etc. We have a lot of responsibility as teachers of writing. We need to
show students the value of the course, how writing will help them in future
classes, how writing will help them in their chosen profession, and how
writing should encourage them to think critically about issues of education,
race, gender, etc. This is a tall task and our pedagogies determine who
gets it and who doesn't. Yet, we still have to question what it is that
we want them to get -- will they leave the course with something valuable?
Jane
I get the sense, Melissa, that the bigger issue in your teaching experience
is gender. Technology has been considered for many years to be the province
of men. We all know the statistics that show more men are in the sciences,
more men make the scientific discoveries (or at least get credit for them),
more men make the scientific decisions, etc. Even so, the Black or Hispanic
or Latino man, is in a similar position. A further stereotype is the Asian
man as being smarter, a harder worker, where the white male is seen inventing,
using, and exploiting technology. So where does the oral tradition and
the practice of prose writing fit into today's technology where the shorter
and quicker the sound byte the more likely you are going to win over new
buyers and clients? [ . . . ] How can we make composition classes appealing
for the sake of learning to be better communicators rather than something
a college student has to get through?
Adam
As writing teachers we end up in service to so many ideas, ideals, constituents,
and the pull of the more "official" ones is so strong that often
we feel we don't have any room to interrupt curricula, make spaces for
those who have been excluded.
What I will say for now is that the answer to your question, Melissa, reaches through everything we do. Some people would consider this a challenge and think about bringing different kinds of texts into our teaching. That's a good start, a crucial one. But just like there's curricular diversity, or range, that can include and honor people, there's evaluation, there's teacher stance, there's feedback, there are the assignments we give, there are the ways we structure a course. All of these are spaces to interrogate the ways we make that home for people in language. Ideally, we would at the very least, design curricula that our students can see themselves in...and especially those who have traditionally been excluded. At our best, we would/will interrogate all of these spaces in our teaching and begin to synthesize them to begin to do real anti-racist work.
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