Archived Weblog Entry - 08/10/2005: "Uniformity"

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08/10/2005 Archived Entry: "Uniformity"

Uniformity
One project I'm working on right now deals with, among other issues, this rhetoric of uniformity stressed throughout composition studies (a recent post to WPA-L requested that we all remember the importance of uniformity, that “agreements are
essential for our field, as for any field, and we should not ignore or
depreciate them when we talk about the interesting issues we like to debate.”) The desire to be uniform seems to come from a few factors:

Psychological: Let's unite against the enemy. Persecution complex leads many to want to adopt a united front because the literature and related colleagues still don't respect composition. A unified front is the only way to exist; i.e., we can't turn on ourselves. We need to always show how we’re on the ball.

Taylorism. The belief in generating an assembly line system of "producing" students for the rest of the university. Taylorism is somewhat a response to the university claim "Our students can't write" - it attempts to unify writing instruction in order to minimize this complaint. WAC is fairly (not completely) Tayloristic. But Taylorism is also a way to deal with enormous, under-staffed programs that can appear to be running on anarchy if the machine is not well oiled enough. WPA work as scientific management is not as far fetched as many want to believe. “We need results” “We need proof” “We need studies to show…” – all typical responses to non-Tayloristic approaches (or to ideas in general) and all parallel to the conventions of Taylorism.

Clarity. A misdirected desire inherited (somewhat) from The Rhetoric, a good rhetoric is clear and coherent. Lack of uniformity leads to lack of clarity. The need for clarity is, of course, related to point 1 (we need to present a clear perspective on what we do to the outside world) and to point 2 (let's be clear about what we expect from students).

And out of these points, we have a conservatism that is hard to break. The desire to be uniform is also the desire to conserve specific ideals and practices (Change is not Us).
Much of this has been condensed in the infamous need for Outcomes. Outcomes, like any other catch phrase entered into a conservative vocabulary, is hard to argue against. Who would be against having outcomes? What's so unreasonable about outcomes? (In Bush-speak: How can you note be “for the children?”) Nothing really. Except that outcomes strive for uniformity. As vague as you want to make them (or claim them to be) they still insist on a unified product to emerge at the end of the process (the outcome for this assembly line is a finished Chevy; or in Fordist terms, you can have any composition student you want, as long as she is X).

So let's employ a little cultural studies methodology here: question the assumption (we need outcomes) we assume to be true.
What other area of English Studies demands an outcomes statement: Victorianists? American Lit folks? British Lit folks? Who? Where? The ALA gets together and drafts an outcomes? Do they? Does SCS (or whatever they are called today) ask for outcomes in teaching film and media? I’d like to see these statements if they exist (and I don’t really know if they do).
What critical theory (instead of area of study within the discipline) demands outcomes? Poststructuralism? Cultural Studies? Media Studies?
These areas of thought, it seems to me, resist by the very nature the notion of uniformity (differance!).

Another question: Do we really believe that our area of study will collapse or be vanished if we don’t agree on what we do?
Seriously. How can we be that naļve?

Replies: 4 comments

Oh, absolutely. That's what makes the work you do so interesting and, I think, vital.

I'm talking off the top of my head here, but I do like Bradley's addition of ease to the conversation, because the conservatism of uniformity (uniformity of conservatism?) is much easier that working outside the agreed upon consensus, and the rhetoric surrounding outcomes is also about ease -- outcomes is about assessment and its easier to assess a program if the goal is uniformity.

Posted by john @ 08/10/2005 01:06 PM EST

Thanks guys for you comments on outcomes.
I still want to push this further, however. I'm not convinced that the rhetoric which surrounds outcomes equates much in the long term. In the short term, there is a feeling of accomplishment (this is what we will strive for); in the long term, uniformity seems to be the goal (every student will do X).
But - as you both note, it's not an either/or situation (or you have 'em or you don't). I'm not interested in an argument against outcomes so much as a mapping out of why they stand for specific conservative threads of thought in the work we do.

Posted by jeff @ 08/10/2005 11:08 AM EST

At CBD's repeated suggestion, I've set listservs to nomail for a while, so I've missed the WPA-L post to which you're referring, but I understand the frustration.

Closely related to your items 1 and 3 is the conflation of uniformity with the notion of community and discipline. As you note, the misguided assumption that consensus equals a discipline (an assumption I deconstructed during the "retooling" thread back in May), leads to an obsession with uniformity, and since no discipline or community has uniformity at the micro-level, the people who equate uniformity with discipline spend their time in a vicious cycle of regarding composition studies as forever an "emerging field." Does the artificial intelligence community still walk around calling itself an "emerging field"? Does cultural studies? Does broadcast journalism or genetic engineering or postcolonial studies?

It's not healthy. There are tenured scientists across the country who are doing work that wasn't thought possible when they were in graduate school and they took composition as undergrads. Composition studies isn't emerging. Methods, practices, ideas, and interests emerge, but a discipline which was being taught in the 18th Century and has its roots in Classical Greece is not an emerging field and no amount of consensus or lack of it is going to change that.

But as for outcomes assessment, while Victorian studies, poststructuralism, media studies, Brit lit, etc. aren't worried about outcomes, departments and programs are. It's one of the trends tied to accreditation concerns (among others). So while the medievalists or Americanists in my department aren't worried about outcomes for medieval or American studies, the department as a whole is concerned about outcomes for undergraduate literature and composition.

I think it was on Rich Rice's blog where I read the statement that writing program administration is its own discipline separate from composition studies. The conflation of these two, it seems to me, is also helping drive this desire for uniformity (the Taylorism you already noted).

Keep up the good fight.

Posted by John @ 08/10/2005 11:00 AM EST

I think a large part of the psychological impulse, or maybe a related and separate one, is nepotism and/or cliquish behavior. I was reading Inman's Computers and Writing yesterday, and while there's a lot good in that book, my first impression was that I was reading the history of a club.

Of course, I'd replace "clarity" with "ease" :)

I have to differ a little on outcomes, however; if they are done right, they can be flexible enough to allow articulation and not necessarily enforce uniformity. To be sure, they are often intended to work as you write here. I see that as more a symptom of overall conservatism in the field than a problem in and of itself.

Posted by cbd @ 08/10/2005 10:57 AM EST