I appreciated the sense of setting a scene for a heavy discussion in Plato’s Phaedrus. There is, a sense of empirical rationalism in teaching and learning about writing. I often think of the planes in which different aspects of these two shared experiences exist and in what realm of metaphysics and emotions each plane finds itself. When we teach about genre and experience with society we are also teaching aspects of boundaries and appropriateness but this is not done with a sense of restriction so much as structure for the sake of learning.
On page 6 Socrates says:
“Well, but are you and I expected to praise the sentiments of the author, or only the clearness, and roundness, and finish, and tournure of the language?”
I keep thinking of the word roundness in relationship to this description of love and language (as two separate endeavors) in relationship to students and their investment in learning. I think, as Phaedrus discusses, there is a separation between a sense of devotion that is long-term and that which is short-term and more passionate. We expect students to have both sides of learning but I wonder if there is a way to more concretely link these aspects of rhetoric and discussion of meaning to their work.
I catch myself sometimes thinking in terms of grades and boundaries in a sense that is unhealthy when I myself have started to lose focus of the overall goals in my classroom. I re-group, I think about ways to make lesson plans and assignments more meaningful. What ultimately ends up happening is a sense of honesty with my students, truth in the sense of the capital ‘T’.
This reminds me of what Socrates says on page 8:
“All good counsel begins in the same way; a man should know what he is advising about, or his cousel will all come to nought. But people imagine that they know about the nature of things, when they don’t know about them, and, not having come to an understanding at first because they think that they know, they end, as might be expected, in contradicting one another and themselves. “
And it reminds me of my second semester of teaching when one of my exhausted students looked up at me and said in all earnestness, “Why on earth are we writing about this?” The assignment at that moment was geared toward dissecting aspects of genres and conventions in different communities. I told the student that I would sleep on it and come up with an answer as big as the question.
That following Thursday I came into class with pictures of a Bison cave painting. I asked them what they thought the artist of this picture was trying to convey. The answers roughly included,
“A buffalo. A cow. A picture of what was outside his cave window. Something to eat.”
I pushed them further and made them think about the meaning of the picture. I made them think about the perspective of the caveman and the importance of the bison. Their answers developed into a general explanation of survival and protection: a foodsource, something to feed his family, keep them warm, bring the other cave people together over. Then I asked them what the difference was between the picture of the bison and what they were doing observing other communities. The entire tone of the classroom changed, a sense of love was built into the assignment through meaning and context. The language had become round.
You can imagine how rhetorically geeked I was to read The Evolution of Writing and discover a discussion of “creative explosions” through cultural context such as cave drawings. There was, from discussing the picture of the bison, a sense of connection through symbolism, of understanding how important a genuine sense of expression can become. I agree that “the expansion in cognitive ability is tied to the development of symbolic behavior.”
Our students have become symbolic creatures and even in an ‘objective’ delivery of information we sill impart symbolism to create a sense of roundness. This is something I continually think about in terms of classroom honesty and assignment development. More research to come on this…
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
Communication as Shared Interpretation
The aspect of miscommunication is something I deal with on an everyday basis as an English teacher. I share an office with two other lovely adjuncts and we use each other as a think-tank resource every single day. Something we often do is trade assignment sheets to make sure the language we're using is accessible to a large audience in terms of wording and presentation. The most basic sentences, can often be the most confusing to students.
The balance of what Walzer and Gross mention in Positivists, Postmodernists, Aristotelians, and the Challenger occurs in the three components discussed on pg. 20,
"reality, knowledge, and language."
I was particularly struck by the description of positivism described as, "naively premising a reality somehow understood as separate from human cognition that could be apprehended directly if the safeguards the scientific method provides against subjectivity and prejudice, politics and rhetoric, were honored."
In the eyes of most composition students language seems to be a flat plain: the assumption is that there is one answer, one "right" grade, and that their presumptions about a particular assignment description aren't necessarily wrong. But what often happens is that one or two words give way in the assignment sheet. In the very beginning of my teaching career I realized very quickly that I had to use language that was common and yet complex, full of examples that give way to the ability for language to be deciphered and promote individuality and creativity but to also appeal to students in a non-confusing way. Its something my officemates and I still work on all the time.
In the case of the challenger it seems as though the two viewpoints, engineer and managers, created a dichotomy of information. I wonder, if the language I use to express myself in an 'objective' manner in my assignment sheets carries the same kind of interpreted weight. For example, if a student was highly involved in engineering, would they have difficulties viewing this form of information because they have been specially trained to think of communication in different ways.
It all seems to come back to the aspect of middle ground: of thinking of knowledge and information in a way that attemps (though I don't quite understand how it could fully succeed in terms of mass audience comprehansion) to maintain a level of neutrality. This seems to also be a very politically charged issue in terms of choosing an audience to "write to".
I assume in my assignments that my students are on the same page with me in terms of comprehension of the given description. I in no way would ever think of this as "dumbing down" information but would think of it instead as attempting to find that ground of neutrality. Even still, as Winsor mentions, knowledge even in a factual statistical format has room for mass communication problems. Seeing communication as shared interpretation seems like an exhausting task. ha.
This description of communication makes me think of my use of description in a very interesting light. Something to possibly research further in terms of student teacher communication styles...
The balance of what Walzer and Gross mention in Positivists, Postmodernists, Aristotelians, and the Challenger occurs in the three components discussed on pg. 20,
"reality, knowledge, and language."
I was particularly struck by the description of positivism described as, "naively premising a reality somehow understood as separate from human cognition that could be apprehended directly if the safeguards the scientific method provides against subjectivity and prejudice, politics and rhetoric, were honored."
In the eyes of most composition students language seems to be a flat plain: the assumption is that there is one answer, one "right" grade, and that their presumptions about a particular assignment description aren't necessarily wrong. But what often happens is that one or two words give way in the assignment sheet. In the very beginning of my teaching career I realized very quickly that I had to use language that was common and yet complex, full of examples that give way to the ability for language to be deciphered and promote individuality and creativity but to also appeal to students in a non-confusing way. Its something my officemates and I still work on all the time.
In the case of the challenger it seems as though the two viewpoints, engineer and managers, created a dichotomy of information. I wonder, if the language I use to express myself in an 'objective' manner in my assignment sheets carries the same kind of interpreted weight. For example, if a student was highly involved in engineering, would they have difficulties viewing this form of information because they have been specially trained to think of communication in different ways.
It all seems to come back to the aspect of middle ground: of thinking of knowledge and information in a way that attemps (though I don't quite understand how it could fully succeed in terms of mass audience comprehansion) to maintain a level of neutrality. This seems to also be a very politically charged issue in terms of choosing an audience to "write to".
I assume in my assignments that my students are on the same page with me in terms of comprehension of the given description. I in no way would ever think of this as "dumbing down" information but would think of it instead as attempting to find that ground of neutrality. Even still, as Winsor mentions, knowledge even in a factual statistical format has room for mass communication problems. Seeing communication as shared interpretation seems like an exhausting task. ha.
This description of communication makes me think of my use of description in a very interesting light. Something to possibly research further in terms of student teacher communication styles...
Sunday, September 14, 2008
deep english rhetoric thoughts with amandine abraham...
I've been thinking about our earlier discussion of truth during the first class period. With writing, the sense of truth seems to be two-fold: the truth of the writer and what that writer is trying to express and the receiving end of how the audience interprets what has been written. I'm not well versed in technical writing but what it seems like Miller was trying to express was a sense of middle ground where information plateaus. What I mean by this is by reducing the metaphysical emotional aspects of expression that both parties are better able to decipher and understand a common language. Where this gets sticky is in the process: assuming the associations of a wide general audience. In this light, I can completely understand the psychological associations of language and what might be considered the human element of objectivity. Who defines this aspect of objectivity and why we're not taught to view emotions through language in a secondary stance is even more interesting (a possible paper topic for later, hmmm...)
I was particularly moved when Miller wrote:
"Good technical writing becomes, rather than the revelation of absolute reality, a persuasive version of experience. (616)"
In this description, it seems as though rhetoric would be theorized as a sense of honest persuasian. Where that honesty resides is multi-layered: wedged somewhere between personal experience associations and the ultimate goal of whatever piece of writing the writer is currently invested in. Every writer has their own set of agendas but the ones I find myself coming back to over and over again are those that are trying, with every association they have, to seek some kind of ultimate truth (with room for interpretation, heh...)
It's like I tell my freshmen when they stare up at me with that look that screams, "Tell me what to write!" I tell them that knowledge and its exploration is a very big stew each of them is creating that is meant to taste differently. A lot of what I notice of being lost in the work of my students--is a sense of personal identity as writer/interpreter/analyst. Somehow, this movement toward blanketed information has seemingly left its students without a sense of conviction (another vague but possibly interesting paper topic).
The sense of compliance described by Herrick, takes away from the individuality of questioning the nature of any document. I understand and appreciate rhetoric in terms of setting a kind of stage of argumentation but where I see problems in teaching writing is in who is setting the stage and what their ultimate intentions are.
Herrick mentions Deirdre McClosky who states,"persuasian has become astonishingly important (3)" to the economy.
Most of my training and learning has been in the aspect of creative writing (that which makes no money, HA). But where I see problems with this is in the American culture of passive consumerism and its extension into higher education classrooms. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a professor say, "Ask a question, you paid for it," to a dead-pan room of students who have no idea why they would need to ask a question to a person in authority outside of technical aspects (ie, when is this assignment due, how many pages do you want it) etc. Unless there is a sense of investment in the growth and development of the student, there is no room for guided persuasian into any body of knowledge.
Maybe I'm being a little too idealistic about teaching writing and rhetoric, but these are the larger questions I think about on a daily basis when considering lesson plans and in-class activities that attempt to harness a sense of genuine investment on the part of the student.
I'm learning...
I was particularly moved when Miller wrote:
"Good technical writing becomes, rather than the revelation of absolute reality, a persuasive version of experience. (616)"
In this description, it seems as though rhetoric would be theorized as a sense of honest persuasian. Where that honesty resides is multi-layered: wedged somewhere between personal experience associations and the ultimate goal of whatever piece of writing the writer is currently invested in. Every writer has their own set of agendas but the ones I find myself coming back to over and over again are those that are trying, with every association they have, to seek some kind of ultimate truth (with room for interpretation, heh...)
It's like I tell my freshmen when they stare up at me with that look that screams, "Tell me what to write!" I tell them that knowledge and its exploration is a very big stew each of them is creating that is meant to taste differently. A lot of what I notice of being lost in the work of my students--is a sense of personal identity as writer/interpreter/analyst. Somehow, this movement toward blanketed information has seemingly left its students without a sense of conviction (another vague but possibly interesting paper topic).
The sense of compliance described by Herrick, takes away from the individuality of questioning the nature of any document. I understand and appreciate rhetoric in terms of setting a kind of stage of argumentation but where I see problems in teaching writing is in who is setting the stage and what their ultimate intentions are.
Herrick mentions Deirdre McClosky who states,"persuasian has become astonishingly important (3)" to the economy.
Most of my training and learning has been in the aspect of creative writing (that which makes no money, HA). But where I see problems with this is in the American culture of passive consumerism and its extension into higher education classrooms. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a professor say, "Ask a question, you paid for it," to a dead-pan room of students who have no idea why they would need to ask a question to a person in authority outside of technical aspects (ie, when is this assignment due, how many pages do you want it) etc. Unless there is a sense of investment in the growth and development of the student, there is no room for guided persuasian into any body of knowledge.
Maybe I'm being a little too idealistic about teaching writing and rhetoric, but these are the larger questions I think about on a daily basis when considering lesson plans and in-class activities that attempt to harness a sense of genuine investment on the part of the student.
I'm learning...
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