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09/02/2004 Archived Entry: "CC VS University"

John wants to know if community college folks should be informed by the same kinds of intellectual work the university folks are. I guess it's a good question when we frame it as one of differing student bodies. But I'm not sure what it is John is asking for. Since I don't see how comments work and are listed on his blog, and since he calls out my list of readings (Hey John!), I'll respond here. John (and since this is really for John, maybe I’ll just say “you”) writes:

The second premise assumes that CC comp courses differ in no essential or important way from university courses, so what is true for the U must be true for the CC. Again, this is an assumption.

Posted by John @ 09/06/2004 06:07 PM EST

I guess I still don't see your argument. Differences exist? Yes. But differences exist from university to university as well. Pedagogy cannot accomodate all those differences in one course nor in one text.

And that you don't agree with my notion of the type of student you serve...but that student does attend community colleges. And if that student doesn't, and it's only middle class, could get into the university, like you contend, than what does it matter if we recognize difference? You're then saying there is no difference.

Posted by jeff @ 09/05/2004 09:40 PM EST

Fair enough. Our pedagogical approach is similar: provoke student thinking and get them going beyond the assigned material to develop their own well-grounded positions.

What I find curious is that you have firmly held beliefs about community colleges, how they work and their role in composition, but I've yet to see what scholarship lies behind those beliefs. Teaching a year at Santa Fe does not meet the standard of scholarly inquiry.

In this regard, your beliefs are widely held by the senior compositionists I've met through CCCC and NCTE work the last 8 years. And, in my view, those beliefs are equally unearned. If you haven't seen it yet, you might look at Mike Edwards' posting on "Two year colleges and class." Mike sees the blind spot I've argued exists.

Posted by John @ 09/05/2004 08:25 PM EST

Well - as far as the "Which University" section is concerned, there will always be gaps in any reading list. It is the students' responsibility to add to any reading list additional issues. And while the CC isn't mentioned in these readings, I still think the ideas apply as much to CC education as to any other part of higher education.

In terms of jobs after graduation, I agree that the community college is one of many options for the Phd grad (four year school, research school, high school are others). But in terms of the kinds of knowledges in circualtion regarding the teaching of writing, I'm not sure I'm agreeing with you. My job is to put a number of positions and ideas out there for students to mull over and digest, be inspired by, disagree with, use for other work, etc.

The list is not as important as what one does with the list. This is not a canon I'm teaching; it's a series of ideas which must be built upon and used to have any value at any level of teaching.

Posted by jeff @ 09/05/2004 11:22 AM EST

Let me try to focus my critique. I'm not challenging your choices, since they are ones that would allow raising of many important issues related to teaching writing in higher education.

But the section where you have Bartholomae, Yancey, Harris presumably interrogates "which university". As framed, that seems to exclude CC lower division transfer courses from consideration. If they are considered, perhaps a source grounded in a CC should be included.

No university program in Rhetoric or English knows exactly where its graduates will end up. But an awful lot of English graduate students end up making careers in two-year colleges. In TYC, we have developmental students that no university ever sees. These are students that start two or three levels below FYC. Many never go beyond the CC; the ones who do make it to the university don't present themselves as writers the way they did when they started the CC.

All of those situations seem worthy of research and scholarship, ideally cooperatively between U's and CCs.

My use of empirical did not refer to assessment of student writing. It has to do with getting good descriptive studies of students and programs across institutions. Almost all of this conversation comes from each of our personal experiences because we (the profession) don't do many surveys. And the ones that have been reported in CCC over the past 20 years do not include CCs in the institutions surveyed.

Posted by John @ 09/04/2004 09:49 PM EST

John and Joanna have addressed many of the points I would have had I checked in here yesterday, but just two bits of info concerning my CC, located in the northeast. An adjunct salary for a section of basic writing is around $4,000 for a 4-credit class (I'm not implying this is great, just that it is very different from less than $2,000). Also, students attend our college for more reasons than can be listed.

And, why the assumption that only a *woman* might be in the position of being married and not in need of extra income?

Posted by cindy @ 09/04/2004 01:02 PM EST

Hey Joanna
Actually, I really don't like the term "basic writing" in general (for the obvious reasons that it makes students into something "basic")...but if have to use it, I'm using it to mean developmental English (its most common usage). But even the word developmental brings with it problems.

Posted by jeff @ 09/04/2004 10:31 AM EST

Hey Jeff--here's another question : when you use the phrase "basic writing," do you mean developmental English or do you mean freshman comp?

Posted by joanna @ 09/04/2004 10:19 AM EST

I agree that the teaching situation at the university is out of control. During my two year stint as WPA I hired people who should never have been hired. But no one else would teach for $2200 a course. I've joined the Crowley camp on the notion of doing away with the comp requirement as long as labor conditions are as they are.

Still - I don't get your critique. What is it in the teaching of Bartholomae, Sirc, Sommers, Haynes, etc. on my reading list (or whoever on Derek's) that cannot apply to the CC student, or CC comp pedagogy, as well (and you assume I agree with all the readings I assign. I don't. I pair them for certain reasons)? You say my evidence (whatever that may be) is anecdotal. I don't know what you mean by that. It's not empirical? I do not believe in empirical evaluation of student writing or writing. I have big problems with that tradition set forth by Braddock et al. and Kitzhaber (and that is a big part of what my work on the rhetoric of cool rejects). Students are not numbers (or variables as Braddock writes) to be counted and measured.

I can say that my year teaching basic writing at Sante Fe Community College way back when taught me a lot about how NOT to teach writing. Big lecture on grammar and five paragraph schemes. Small class work then on five paragraph schemes centered around mundane topics (credit card usage, school parking) - and more than three major errors - FAILURE. It was a business. Get a student to take the course three times (she pays three times) then boot her for not getting the run on right. That's pedagogy? No way.

I'm sure it's different where you teach. And I'm sure I have experienced different situations in three universities (or three counting my new gig) of different sizes with different student populations. But what is the critique exactly over the reading lists?

Take Sirc over at General College then as example. Is his work informed by theory? Yes, it is (including art theory, music, Bataille, etc). Is General College a good example of basic writing practices that don't dumb down the work for students. As far as I can see, yes. Are the General College students similiar to CC students? Maybe. I'd have to ask him what he thinks. It sounds like they might be.

Posted by jeff @ 09/03/2004 08:05 PM EST

Sorry about the comments feature in Manila. It works if you register, but it's not a very satisfactory format.

To clarify about "not looking": for the most part, university compositionists do not look first hand at two-year college courses, classes, programs. Your only data here is anecdotal--and you haven't said that you've actually spent time at Miami-Dade or Oakland. Most university researchers--in all disciplines--do not include CC students when they do studies of undergraduates.

If the Susan Miller you reference is the Textual Carnivals one (we have a few in the field), I don't think she's ever looked at community colleges.

The question of the academic preparation of those who teach FYC in American colleges and universities is an empirical one. What percentage of sections of FYC at Wayne State are taught by TAs? What percent are brand-new teachers with BAs? How does that compare to the situation at Oakland CC?

In my 4C's Chair's address, I documented new practices at Duke and Stanford that are trying to upgrade the quality and pay of writing faculty (although not with tenure-track positions). I'd love to know that such patterns are being followed by most universities, but I guess I'm skeptical.

Wendy Bishop told me that when staffing at FSU got to 60 adjuncts, she couldn't in conscience continue as WPA. About two years before she died, she told me the numbers had grown to over 100.

My main point is that CCs do composition differently than U's. I also argue that some CCs have practices that Us could learn from just as the reverse is true. But there's enormous resistance among U compositionists to looking closely at CC practice. When Geoff Sirc and I were on an NCTE committee together, I raised these points about Basic Writing. I think he saw the BW program at Minnesota as basically the same as at the CC. But he hadn't really spent time at the area CCs.

Finally, in California, a lot of highly qualified students come to the CC by choice--or by parental financial circumstance--so students here include many qualified for University of California and Cal state campuses. One anecdote to illustrate: a strong student who graduated from the local Jesuit high school ended up in my 3rd quarter comp class. He had planned on a UC, but early his senior year, his parents divorced and his dad told him the college money went in the divorce. That's not the prototypical CC student, but we have hundreds in similar circumstances at De Anza.

Posted by John @ 09/03/2004 07:08 PM EST

I completely agree that an instructor can be nurturing and know what's up. I'm only trying to bring up the ways schools often try to keep costs down by targeting specific types of instructors (the "in between things" type is another)

CNA - Certified Nursing Assistant, no?

Some students have to go to the CC first b/c of SAT/grades. That's all. When I taught in Florida's second largest CC, we had mostly students waiting to get into the University of Florida. In Miami, where the state's largest CC is, they are waiting to go to UF or UM. Here in Metro Detroit, Oakland Community College is sending students off to Oakland University and Wayne State.

Posted by jeff @ 09/03/2004 05:06 PM EST

Got it. I still don't see that kind of temperament (sp?)in the women who are adjuncts at our school--they are pretty assertive about things, including going elsewhere. And I am racking my mind for examples of people, male or female, who are in a position to be altruistic and teach in low-wage positions for a long time without there being some kind of plan at work--to work on a doctorate, help support the family, be hired as a fulltime instructor. I'm sure that they exist on our campuses, but here in DC the day is long gone when that kind of teacher (and yes, it was usually a woman)was the rule. The economy here works against it.

Here's a question: can a woman (the married, goodhearted adjunct)be both nurturing and have a clear eye on the bottom line? Hell yes, I say.

Thanks for clarifying what you meant about the CC student. But, a new question comes up: who is doing the asking? Our students choose to come to our CC because, yes, some of them couldn't get into the universities around here, but others are coming to save money, to take part in our honors or other special programs, or because they want to have professors(instead of TA's) teaching them in small classes. Your commment reads like students are being told by either the university or their guidance counselor to go to the CC first for remediation. Am I reading you correctly? Let me know.

And. . .what is a CNA student?

Posted by joanna @ 09/03/2004 04:53 PM EST

No doubt it's a statement that can cause bad reaction. I knew that when I wrote it. But the truth is that one target of the labor pool is an individual not affected by low wages, who is doing the job at of the goodness of her heart, who is nurturing, who is the kind of instructor Susan Miller notes as "in the basement"....which doesn't mean that there won't be qualified individuals. It does mean that a good number of the individuals won't rock the boat, won't boltfor higher paying jobs, will fit in nicely with the day to day operations, etc. It's also not my definition but one that I know is already in circulation.

The CC student is often stigmatized as unprepared. Thus, she is asked to go to the CC before the university. Some exceptions like the CNA student exist, but many of them will go to the university as well.

Posted by j @ 09/03/2004 03:41 PM EST

I'm confused. Are you saying that a financially secure, married woman is an example of (oh, the horror!)a kind of labor that causes CC's to "suffer"? I've hired such women to teach at our CC, and to a person, they've been dynamic go-getters, willing to keep up with both pedagogy and theory.
And now that I think about it, I am a financially secure married woman who could live off of her husband's income, but who comes from a long line of financially secure professional women who work because they want to. And I'm a fulltime instructor. And my credentials aren't too shabby, either.
And, where is the CC student stigmatized as being unprepared? I honestly didn't track with that sentence. Is he unprepared at the CC, or unprepared as a transfer student?

Posted by joanna @ 09/03/2004 03:00 PM EST