Words are Not Enough.

Are Rhetoric and Composition studies, graduate programs, pedagogies, and teachers up to the task of teaching Sorapure’s “composition?”  Flash and other media offer users tools requiring a multi-disciplinary approach to teaching composition, involving educators fluent in visual and aural arts, as well as the technological competency necessary for writing code, mixing media and migrating “compositions” to other platforms, like the internet.  I can imagine Comp 1 and Comp 2 being expanded to, at a minimum, 4.0 hour classes which include labs for exploring “composition” in all its richness.  Implementing this approach would require Rhetoric and Composition departments to either employee teachers proficient in all of these modes, or more likely work in conjunction with other departments like Music, Art and Computer Science. We are fortunate that Mary is not only a scholar but also an artist.  I would imagine most scholars and students in traditional Rhet. Comp. departments are not as motivated as she to explore these convergences.

Wysocki and Jasken’s notion of interface as “shared boundary where…communication is achieved…” encompasses the pen and paper as well as digital mediums like screens.  Images and sound replace and accompany text to form meaning. Digital interfaces, especially as they become increasingly adept at displaying images and sounds demand (I mean DEMAND!!!) more diverse content with ever higher production values.  I recall a class discussion followed a link in Henry Jenkins’ blog to Marc Prenky’s involving the visuals of Prensky’s simple blog.  At that point, his lack of design skills was used to further diminish his argument (most of the class already found his article objectionable). We included visual cues in our devaluation of his eloquence, reasoning and scholarship.  I would argue we are entering into a time when high multi-media production values carry equal if not greater rhetorical value than mere words, even with highly literate audiences.  The role and repertoire of the writing composition teacher will need to expand with these new literacies.

Making Space

When I hear or read a person expressing a sense of alienation, of exclusion, or of difference, I want to be very careful with my reaction.  I try to hold on loosely to my own perspective because I’ve recognized limitations and constraints on my ability to understand.  Not that I am without opinion and conviction or fearful about confrontation and disagreement.  Over ideas, politics, philosophies I am not so worried about believing what I believe and defending it.  However, people are special.  When encountering real flesh and blood people, who experience life differently, and their sense of worth or place in the world I want to be far less certain and far more careful.

The readings this week challenge me in this area.  How do I, as a teacher, create a learning environment open and friendly and accessible to all of my students without pigeonholing them into roles I create for them?  Is it my job, as Ms. Blackmon (I believe un-reflectively) imagines her own, to assign students to “discourse communities” and have them write private thoughts for a public show on how “difference is necessary for the formation of the individual?”  Is it my job, in a writing class, to use computers and the access they provide to various nooks and crannies of cyberspace in a way some might find offensive?  I found Tulley and Blair’s article helpful in giving me ideas on how to create open accessible environments, without social engineering. 

I also found Mary’s description of the interaction at conferences reminiscent of difficulties I’ve experienced, over the years, communicating with the women I hold dearest. My wife especially is the most competent person I know.  She is brilliant, thoughtful, accomplished and wise.  I want to be more like her in many ways.  Still, sometimes we have moments where we are speaking different languages.  We, as a couple, need “feminine interventions” to overcome the natural gaps in our perspective, thinking and communication.  We don’t need so many masculine ones, but when we do they seem easier for her to grasp.  I owned a construction company without any female employees or sub-contractors.  I can only imagine the kind of situations Mary described in her paper.  I always think about how many good ideas and how much talent is left on the table when people don’t bend and stretch to understand and make space for each other.

Rhet. Comp. at the Nexus

This week’s readings were fantastic.  Dr. Selfe’s deft tour through the minefield of challenges facing composition educators was both broad and deep.  In only a few pages and with impressive evidence she presents a landscape including sweeping national initiatives, real and dangerous socio-economic divides facing access to technology and to education, informed warnings against ignoring technologies potential threat to our very humanity, and intramural squabbling within the Rhet. Comp. community.  Selfe accomplished all of this without a sense of imposing doom, but rather as challenges for educators to solve.  I long to write this well. 

Prensky’s two papers on the generational divide between a new generation of students steeped in computer use and the entrenched educational system seems more timely now when it was written in 2001.  The first day of class I showed Dr. Hocks a book, The Shallows, about how, because of “neuroplasticity,” Internet use is not only effecting young minds but older users too.  Pedagogies failing to adapt to these changes risk becoming moribund and obsolete.  It is not hard to imagine newer more flexible post-secondary educational institutions, schools like University of Phoenix, or Devry, adapting to these realities and becoming more attractive destinations for future students, especially if the job market rewards their skills more highly.

Selber’s article showed me how much effort needs to be invested to effectively harness the computer for educational goals.  As we have discussed in class, it is easy to think getting students wired will, as if by some magical osmosis, teach them to think, write and communicate better.  An un-controlled technology is more a problem for the educator than a solution.  Understanding and effectively using ever changing information technology takes vigilance, study, thinking, experimentation and hard work.

It is fascinating to see composition studies standing smack in middle of the intersection of such powerful changes in our lives.  I am indifferent to much scholarship because it seems passive, irrelevant and easily ignored.  Some PhD’s curiosity about some small corner of the world often isn’t enough to fire my imagination. The issues discussed in this week's reading bundle are different.  The challenges presented to comp. educators here are not overstated, they will only increase as technologies converge.  They are challenges facing our future as a nation, a culture and, agreeing with Dr. Selfe, even our humanity.