We'll use this course blog for posting weekly responses to the readings, commenting on each other's posts, and posting other content related to the course.
When you post, try not to piss too many people off, use
links, and include some visual content.
Please forgive my lack of tech savvy-ness because unfortunately I do not know how to incorporate pictures into this space. Limitations aside I still felt compelled to bring up an article I recently read as it is related to the FIRE article we were assigned to read regarding the limitations on student speech/behavior and what the the university can/can't do. The Fire article is over 6 years old but it's oobvious the problems it identifies still persist...
ReplyDeletehttp://colorlines.com/archives/2012/08/osu_haters_tumblr_puts_ohio_states_racist_tweets_on_blast.html
Wow. This is an extreme case of what I meant by throwing racism into the open. It ALMOST surprises me that people think their racist remarks on the internet are private. I hope that every instance of this "blasting" is as productive as in the case of the "former hater" mentioned.
DeleteThe Fault Lines essay really had me question an item I took for granted as one of the most basic components of the syllabus: the "Classroom Etiquette" paragraph. Does my statement, "Racism, homophobia, sexism, and generally idiotic behavior will not be tolerated in class" really stifle genuine discussion or writing? I have always been of the opinion that points of contact, including racism, sexism, and homophobia should not be censored but thrown into the the open (into the light), so that they may be confronted and discussed. Now, I feel, I am already contradicting my own philosophy.
ReplyDeleteCertainly, contact zones are hard to "deal with": the excruciating process in sorting out how to respond to the example essay in Miller's article only affirms this difficulty. But is it possible to even affect students' thinking for the better (which, I feel, is the highest purpose of the comp class) if you do not really know what they are thinking? If we were discussing such material as does Miller's class in the "Fault Lines" article, my syllabus statement may have already prevented any real debate. I may already be witnessing some lack of genuineness in some of my students' responses to their first homework assignments.
However, if I were to exclude this statement from my syllabus, what (what kind of chaos!!!) would result? Miller's class reminds me something of a more extreme version of my own comp class in undergrad. The professor provided my classmates and me with readings that forced us to confront some of the biases apparent in our own thinking, focusing especially upon gender roles (even the idea of gender as a social construct), racial tension, and consumerism. This is something worth considering in my future RHET classes and I think there are practical ways of incorporating some short essays into class workload.
The Miller article also made me confront my own self-righteous criticism. I was very difficult on one of the student essays we examined in the tutorial session before the first week of classes. This paper concerned the isolation of English-Language-Learning Students. At various points in the paper, the authors describe female Chinese, Korean, and Japanese students as "Asian girls." The irritation this incited in me I feel clouded my judgment and I failed to see the paper's several virtues including a relatively sophisticated concept of questioning the University of Illinois' diversity statement while realizing the difficulty of the problem: are the students "self-segregating"? To what extent is the University to blame for English native speakers' reluctance to interact with speakers of other languages? Certainly, the occasionally patronizing language should not be ignored, nor should it be over-emphasized.
The Miller article has certainly made me question my approach. It is just another instance in which I am learning along with my students.
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DeleteI meant to put this up earlier: I found a link to the full video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHzTUYAOkPM&feature=related
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