Response 11 4/22/08

I have not read Freire in a few years and had forgotten how passionate and political his works can be on education. Even as a teacher, I forget how political literacy really is, especially for those who enjoy its luxuries. Freire discusses that men "Are not marginal to the structure, but oppressed men within it. Alienated men, they cannot overcome their dependency by "incorporation" into the very structure responsible for their dependency" (620). People who cannot read and write are trapped inside the system, within the eye of the storm. Due to financial needs, familial responsibilities, and many other factors of life, illiterate people do not have the resources or time to remedy their situation and therefore are repressed by it. The example that  came to mind was students who have children in middle school and high school, the majority of public schools do not offer daycare so that parents can return to school and finish their degrees. So, as a result of the government not wanting to further condone teen pregnancy, they don't offer programs that could significantly break  this very  cycle. Also empowering in the article were the methods in which the adult students were instructed, first interviewing them to observe what vocabulary they used and then to teach them not only the power of reading and writing through social mobility but the importance of culture

Reading Berlin had me analyzing which "school" of rhetoric my beliefs as a writer and teacher fall into among the categories of Cognitive, Expressionistic, or Social-Epistemic. What I realized as with anything, all of them have their faults and can be limiting to the student. Cognitive in its linear processes, Expressionistic in its freedoms to explore and almost total focus on the individual, and Social-Epistemic in its goals in realizing social consciousness. Berlin's explanations and critiques of each made me see the ideologies within all of them. He writes "Instead of rhetoric acting as the transcendental recorder or arbiter of competing ideological claims, rhetoric is regarded as always already ideological"(717). All of the ideas Berlin discusses each have their own great qualities but when they are laid out in the classroom, it is a totally different story, parts of them could be used with all or some students, but one isn't going to fit every student, teacher, or situation. 

Ira Shor's "Monday Morning Fever: Critical Literacy and the Generative Theme of Work" hit it out of the park for me! Everything that was written I reacted to with "Wow", "Amazing", and "Why didn't I think of that?" As he first discusses Freire's work with using "codifications" and then goes into his own work about building student bonds in the classroom first, creating a class culture, I was so in tune with what he was saying. This year I really focused more than ever on building a strong classroom community in each of my periods, by having students talk to each  other, present cultural artifacts, work on group projects, and lead discussions. I told them at the beginning of the year, that they needed to realize that their peers were their most valuable resource at school, I was just simply there to guide the way when I had to. Setting this up from the start has led to amazing developments and realizations from all parties involved. Shor's strategy on having students work in pairs to record their thoughts on a subject as a form of prewriting (108), is brilliant. Thus the "Why didn't I think of that?" comment. This can only work if the students feel comfortable with each other and the teacher. Which as I stated, takes a few weeks of building at the start of the school year but the pay off is worth the time spent. 

I also loved his strategies on voicing and prereading.  Voicing worked as a means to revise writing, what really made this meaningful is that is was a team effort. While one student read their paper aloud the other read silently, helping the student with errors they may have missed (112). The prereading part involved having students hypothesize questions they felt would be answered by the text (117). All of his methods and philosophies are about empowering the student, by allowing them to be the expert in what they are doing, giving them control, and teaching them skills that can be used outside of the classroom. He was not just helping students become more literate, he was helping them to become better citizens. 

Professors trying to impose their social and political views on students? That's absurd, that never happens in college. Hairston's main argument was definitely something that is obvious to those of us who are or have recently been in college. What I found quite appalling were some of the opinions of the people she quoted. Educators have to understand that students come in with already developed ideas and experiences about social and political events. We certainly may not agree with them and we have a small chance at totally changing their minds but what we can to is teach them how to learn and accept new things and ideas. Hairston writes "Unfortunately, when they (graduate students) try to teach an introductory composition course by concentrating on issues rather than on craft and critical thinking, large numbers of their students end up feeling confused, angry- and cheated" (705). If a teacher desires to incorporate social ideologies with composition, a balance must be struck between the two. It cannot be one or the other, writing has to be the most important factor. I agree with Hairston that this push to "educate" our youth on social issues is caused by two factors, immigration and political angst (705-706). Instead of teaching from one point of view, we have to teach from all of them, because all of our students are unique, we have to teach them that writing is a tool for change but that it won't necessarily be the change the teacher desires. 

Smith's article on "gatekeeping" in higher education made me reflect in a totally new and scary way. College itself is a gatekeeper, only accepting the desirables and students as Smith points out do not attend on the basis of learning, they attend because for them it is just passing through another, more expansive gate that will offer them more opportunities (302-303). Through the first few pages of the article, my mood towards gatekeeping was condescending, my pervading thought was that we have to throw out these elitist attitudes, the people attending college are changing and therefore the attitudes of the "gatekeepers" have to change. That was until I read this sentence "To turn one's nose up at gatekeeping is an expression of one's position within those structures just as much as gatekeeping itself" (315). We are all part of the system and depending on which part we are in, decides how many gates we have to get through or as Smith puts it our "means to an end". What we ultimately want out of our education and our life will depend on this.