When I started writing these blogs, I kept folder for them, numbering and filing them for my recollection. According to this folder, I’ve written fourteen different posts across these eighteen weeks (though, I haven’t necessarily posted everything I’ve written). It has been an interesting experience. I’ve experimented with a number of different styles and genres, and responded to a wide variety of texts. I’m not quite sure how to feel about closing the chapter on this experience. I can honestly say that these posts are one of the few times that I have actually enjoyed myself while working on assignments in grad school. While writing these blogs I felt like I had a chance to actually exercises my mind. That was often both a blessing and a curse. I probably spent way more time than I should have pondering over some of the things that I’ve discussed.
A Farewell to Crosswhite
This week, we finished reading A Rhetoric of Reason by James Crosswhite. The book ends on a rather bleak note. After several hundred pages of selling me a dream, Crosswhite basically says “Oh, wait. I was joking. Everything I said is impossible in the real world, and colleges are just going to get worse and worse.” Sadly, I’d have to say that Crosswhite’s assessment of the system was both accurate and prophetic. I decided to look up the cost of a Cal State education around the time that Crosswhite published the book. This period of time, as described by Crosswhite and others, was a period of time where tuition costs had been ballooning as schools focused more on administration and pumping out business students. The earliest I was able to find was in 1998, where the annual tuition and fees for the Cal States averaged a whopping $2000. Adjusting for inflation, the “bloated” $2000 cost works out to $3,000 in 2014. Currently, it costs roughly $6,500 for a undergraduate student to attend SFSU for a year. College isn’t about education. It’s a ponzi scheme of proportions that Crosswhite couldn’t have possibly imagined twenty years ago. Over a trillion dollars of student loan debt, and teachers become increasingly marginalized. The idea that anybody from my generation is every going to see a tenure tract position is laughable. All future professorships will be adjunct positions, and groveling for scraps will be the norm. Those who already have what they want will insist that things can be fixed, or that people just need to work harder. But it’s all a joke. The future is royally screwed, and as Crosswhite says, the best we can do is pretend like we actually matter in a system designed to negate our existence.
Beyond that, I’d like to return to the penultimate chapter of Crosswhite’s book, which was overlooked on here due to another writing commitment.
The Missing Class Section
A “Super Storm” passed through the bay area this past Thursday, December 11th. This storm was severe enough that schools in the area were closed down. Because of this, the in-class section of this class was cancelled, and nobody had a chance to discuss their blog posts or ideas in person. Ironically, I wasn’t planning to show up to class that day anyway, as an illness had left me so under the weather I couldn’t function. I’ll spare you the details, but I’m barely getting back to functioning. I was actually looking forward to class and the opportunity to discuss the chapter, and its removal left a hole in my heart bigger than I anticipated. As a way to alleviate some of this feeling, I decided I would take a shot at responding to every single blog posted by a classmate this week. I’m not presuming that my replies here are the final answer, but merely my attempt to mentally work through the questions and ideas they present. If I disagree with something or seem contentious, it is not my intent, and I am purely trying to engage with their works.
Aaron’s Post
When reflecting on the call to action that Crosswhite makes, Aaron ends up asking “What happened to inquiry for knowledge creation? Is the production of good citizens our goal as teachers?”
Although I’m not Crosswhite, and I can’t be sure that I’m answering correctly, I would like to take a stab at answering that question with my own reasoning. As a fan of science, I believe in the idea of inquiry for the sake of knowledge creation. Indeed, this is the fundamental basis of scientific development. However, inquiry for inquiry’s sake is completely without morals beyond itself. The information produced and developed is completely unconcerned with what uses it will be put to.
This issue, of inquiry being so far removed from morality, has been a rather popular topic of fiction and scientific discussions in the past few centuries. In particular, the invention of dynamite and the atomic bomb have stood out as moments where traditional human morality would argue that knowledge acquisition went beyond appropriate boundaries. Whenever I’m asked about my favorite book, I tend to vacillate between a number of different options. One of these options is Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. Although not his most popular novel, Cat’s Cradle is intriguing in that it is largely a character profile of two different heroes- Bokonon, and Dr. Hoenikker. Bokonon is painted as something of a master rhetorician. Through a mixture of charisma and an understanding of human nature, he is able to manipulate an island nation into practicing a religion that he openly admits to being fraudulent. In comparison, Dr. Hoenikker is the master inquirer, the master scientist. Hoenikker has absolutely no interest in anything but learning more, exploring new avenues of thought. Without spoiling too much, Bokonon’s methodology ends up leading to a dictatorship enmeshed in a bizarre civil war, while Hoenikker’s methodology ends up killing every last thing on earth. It is Hoenikker’s behavior that I would like to focus on here, as I think it serves as the answer to Aaron’s question. When Hoenikker was engaging in his inquiry, he never asked any questions of morality. He simply explored for the sake of discovery, and ended up being responsible for an invention called Ice-9, a wildly dangerous product that eventually leads to the aforementioned apocalypse.
Although undeniably an extreme example, I think that genocide serves as a good argument as to why we would prefer that inquiry for knowledge creation be tempered by our desire to be good citizens, even if it’s a biased goal. Sometimes, our biases do have some value. For what it’s worth, so far, I’ve preferred being alive to being dead.
On another point, Aaron asks “If we have scholarship that raises questions that can lead to knowledge production, why should we worry if they contradict?”
To this, I agree completely. I have never let a contradiction stop me from finding an answer. Sometimes, this leads to the completely absurd. I’m okay with that. Without a true universal audience, there’s no reason not to use the audience that is applicable for the situation.
Gabriela’s Post
I’m something of an outlier when it comes to upper academia. I really, really don’t belong here. As my prior statements might make apparent, I loathe the university system and everything it stands for. So, when Gabriela asks whether Crosswhite lists appropriate problems in academia, my only answer is that he doesn’t go nearly far enough.
Kristi’s Post
I would like to look at Kristi’s blog on the evolution of her rhetoric. She discusses the way in which her focuses evolved from an emphasis on a communal answer to embracing difference and conflict. This is a pretty radical change, and one I am impressed by. She then asks if any of us have experienced our own development and changes in regards to the rhetoric of our blogging. I wish I had as clear-cut an answer to provide. As I’ve stated, I’ve tried to do new things, but I’m not quite sure whether I’ve truly revolutionized my writing. I can say that I believe that I’ve made at least some little changes, and learned a lot, and I hope that is enough.
Nelson’s Post
Both Aaron and Nelson emphasize the idea of writing about writing. I feel a certain cognitive dissonance whenever I think about the concept. This is because my philosophy of teaching actually focuses a lot on the kind of principles that would lead to writing about writing, and yet I don’t feel enamored with the concepts. I feel like something of a troglodyte because of it, but a year and a half of graduate school has only cemented the ideas that I originally came in with. I believed that learning amounted to the processes of practice and self-reflection on said practice. “Writing about writing” falls pretty obviously into the “self-reflection” part of that philosophy. And, yet, I’m still troubled by it. The only thing I can think is that I have bad memories associated with prior methodologies, rather than the concept. It seems to evoke ideas of boredom and repetition. Part of the practice and self-reflection process is enthusiasm, and it’s so easy to become jaded or bored when navel-gazing goes on too long. I’m not sure what the answer to this problem is, but I would like to take the opportunity to admit my own weakness here and recommit myself to finding a way to integrate this concept into my belief system effectively.
Michael’s Posts
Jeez. I thought I was cynical. For the record, I actually read the blogs in this order: Nelson, Gabriela, Michael, Aaron, Laura, Emily, Alex, Michelle, Troy, and Kristi. There’s no preference to this order, and I don’t remember how it was produced.
Laura’s Post
Laura asked “I am wondering if other members of the class have ideas for the ways in which they are going to apply Crosswhite's tome to their lesson plans and pedagogies.”
At the start of the semester, I said something along the lines of “I couldn’t imagine teaching without using rhetoric as a central focus.” Looking back on this entire semester, and Crosswhite in particular, I finally see how I could do that. Or, more accurately, I see a number of ways I could end up doing that. Going back even further, at the end of Spring 2014, I said “I’m not sure I want to be a teacher anymore”. I’ve changed my opinion on that, by changing my definition of being a teacher. I cannot be complicit in this system. I don’t fault the people who are already in or those who believe things can be fixed from the inside (and I’ve actually loved 4/5 of my professors here at SFSU), but I’m increasingly feeling disconnected from the whole system and structure put in place. I’m not sure, and it’s easily possible that I could come crawling back eventually, but I think I’m going to get away from academia after I finish my degree (assuming I finish it. I hope I do).
So, what value is there in staying? Why do I continue to write, and why bother still learning about Crosswhite and others? Well, mainly, because I don’t see the situation as purely a sea of black. I think there are plenty of reasons that others would choose to stick around, and I was teetering on the edge for quite a while. I have always dreamed of being a teacher, of helping others through education. Although I no longer feel the need to do so through a formalized classroom, I can still see a number of benefits from learning and becoming certified through such a system. I don’t think I would have ever found Crosswhite without this class. With Crosswhite, I’ve argued with him quite a bit. We haven’t seen eye to eye on everything, and still firmly believe that he mischaracterizes a number of things. However, looking past those quibbles of presentation, he’s brilliant. Which means, as an answer to Laura’s question, I don’t believe that one even needs to have a classroom to help people have productive and meaningful conflicts.
Emily’s Post
Emily questions whether or not Crosswhite’s claim of “They [meaning basic writers and other writing students] need to acquire the habits of written conversation, the experience of reasoning in writing. If the researchers are right, then as basic writers gain these habits, the competence they already display in speech and informal writing will begin to show up in their performance in written reasoning,” constitutes a form of “magical thinking”.
Again, I doubt I have definitive answer to a colleague’s question, but I would still like to take a shot at answering with what I think is a potentially meaningful solution. It seems to me that the appearance of these competencies and skills is not a result of magical thinking, but simple adaptive development. When an individual encounters an electrified cupcake, all but the most slow-witted do not persist in trying to pick up the cupcake after the first try or two. If somebody comes up with the idea to knock the cupcake off the electrifying mechanism with a stick, we don’t presume that they magically developed electrified cupcake displacement technology. Instead, we assume (and have evidence indicating as much) that the person activated prior schema on stick technology, and was able to adapt it to the situation at hand. At no pint are we expecting our students to create something out of nothing. It is instead our goal to provide them with the frameworks that allow them to unleash those skills and processes- we provide them with a place to experiment with sticks, in the event they ever come upon an electrified cupcake.
Of course, a corollary caveat to this is the way that learned behavior can also become detrimental to an individual’s development. A famous, yet apocryphal, example of this learned fear is the “Five Monkeys Experiment”. Although it is generally accepted that the experiment likely didn’t actually occur as described, its popularity as a story has endured as a model for where learning can go wrong. In the story, a group of monkeys is trained to fear climbing a ladder, despite a banana reward at the top of the ladder. This is achieved by punishing all the monkeys whenever a single monkey would go for the banana. Then, one by one, the monkeys are replaced with new subjects. In each case, the new subject is quickly taught by the other monkeys to avoid the ladder, resulting in a group of completely new monkeys who all avoid the ladder as a learned response, without ever actually becoming aware of any sort of punishment. In this situation, there becomes a failure of learned behavior, as the rational reasoning behind the action is slowly phased out over time. Therefore, to me, at least, it seems like the problem with having students express their competencies is not a matter of getting them to magically appear, but avoiding having them suppressed by unreasonable behavior and pressures.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/games-primates-play/201203/what-monkeys-can-teach-us-about-human-behavior-facts-fiction
Troy’s Post
Troy’s post contains a surprising amount of optimism, to a level I don’t think I would be capable of. Reading about the Summer Bridge coordinator, I could feel my blood beginning to boil. Although an unsurprising result (I’ll be shocked the day a college administration makes a decision not tied to the factory system and the almighty dollar), I still want Troy and our teachers to be able to help people gain critical thinking skills. Because of this, I continue to wonder whether there is some other avenue of education that we can push forward, one independent of the system. I look at Troy and our class, and I see potentially brilliant teachers. And then the administration just shoves us into some arbitrary, meaningless mold that could be filled by a chimpanzee (they’d probably prefer the ones that fear the ladder). People deserve more respect than that.
Michelle’s Post
I agree with Michelle that students have a number of opportunities to engage in social contexts of reasoning before they receive a formal education in college. However, I do see a caveat to the disagreement that Michelle makes with Crosswhite. At the time when Crosswhite was writing this book (in the 90’s presumably), written social contexts would have likely been extremely rare for students in pre-college situations. In this modern era, people have become increasingly text-driven creatures. Up until the early-mid-2000’s, the idea of even sending a text message as a form of communication was socially verboten. Now, making a phone call makes you the weird one. A similar shift has occurred in regards to online message boards and distribution systems. Although Youtube is popular, the primary means of digital social communication are still text-driven medium such as Facebook. In short, it seems that time has obsoleted one of Crosswhite’s claims regarding the availability of written social contexts. I’m not sure how we would take advantage of that as teachers, however.
Alex’s Post
Alex’s post presents an interesting conundrum for teachers of writing through debate. By his own estimations, he was able to lead the students to the debates, but he was unable to get them to engage with them beyond a game of “winning” or “losing”. Crosswhite seemed to peg “argument as inquiry” as one of the tougher aspects to teach, and it seems that this is definitely a problem with no easy answer. Without teaching experience, there’s no answer I can think to offer Alex. I do, however, want to request that he keep us updated, should he ever manage to find an answer.
Postscript
When I started this endeavor, it seemed like a good way to make up for missing class and the lateness of the post. Now, I mostly feel sad. This class has been an amazing experience, even if it’s probably for reasons that wouldn’t inspire joy in most teachers. I’m grateful for all of you.
