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10/26/2005 Archived Entry: "writing"

Writing

But I also think a lot about the courses I teach; I think about the students who come in, who are asked to write, who listen to me discuss processes and idea development, research and discovery, details, connections, and patterns, and in the end say: "I don't know what to write."
It hasn't been awhile for them. It's been never.
The fallacy of "basic writing" or levels of writing courses (first you take first year writing, then intermediate, then. . . .) is that it fails to recognize the need to write first of all. Confusion of ability ("Our students can't write") and the conditions of writing (materiality, desire, work habits, response, reflection) is seldom, if ever, deconstructed. WPAs have failed here as well because they continue to find comfort in standardized testing (when they react, it is not to the concept but to a desire to expand the concept), placement exams, observation over production (not to mention hostility towards technological innovations that bring writing more openly into our work), and so on. None of these acts deals with writing. When we sit back and wonder: what happened here, why are you not engaged, why do you only report a few points, why can’t you form connections, why can’t you talk openly about your work, why don’t you have a sense of inquiry, why are you distant from your work, we are saying: “Why have you never wanted or been show what it means to write?”

Some of this is the question of perception. McLuhan aptly noted that new media expands our senses of perception so that media works us over completely. It is the exposure to all kinds of ideas and thoughts and experiences at once - like the Web, like the emerging world of social software and social browsers, like what CNN was to be at first - that makes that limited fixed point of perception yield to a networked interlinking world. But pedagogy, and here I mean pedagogy in its "traditional” or “high school working towards the state’s standardized service” or “first year curricula made the same across the board for all” is still stuck in the fixed perspective.

There isn’t basic writing. There’s basic teaching.

He said.. Then he wrote it down.

Posted by William @ 10/29/2005 07:35 PM EST

BTW, William, how come you only post on Rice's site? There's lots of silly pomo stuff to comment over at my site! Come on over and post!

Posted by jenny @ 10/29/2005 03:25 PM EST

Oh, now, William. Don't be like that. How about we have a drink or two at CCCC? To be honest, I don't believe in any of this theory garbage, either. I just thought it'd get me a job. I'm actually a die hard foundationlist. Let me treat you to a drink or something! Maybe dinner?

Posted by jenny @ 10/29/2005 03:19 PM EST

That is a normal thing to ask, Jenny. And I would be inclined to respond. But I fear that people who read these weblogs like you and even the person whose blog this is would retaliate against me if they had the chance. Let's just say that I'm in this field and that I probably gave too much away already by posting an email similiar to my own.
Needless to say, I read all of your blogs and am amazed at the arrogance and postmodern gibberish you all use and show. I probably should not have responded to the ones in this comment section, but I couldn't control myself anymore. Do you all really believe what you write? Your poor students.
In the future, I will continue to read your blogs (your lack of knowledge intrigues me) and I will try not to respond so much. Still, it is hard to resist responding to the silly posts I find on many of your sites.

Posted by William @ 10/29/2005 03:06 PM EST

Hey, William, where are you from?

Posted by jenny @ 10/29/2005 01:12 PM EST

take it off blog you guys. no fighting.

Posted by jeff @ 10/28/2005 08:02 PM EST

Let's go w/ Jeff's less sense: "calming down," and perhaps moving on and "getting down" to something else ...

Am I a student ?

Yes, if you mean student of the unmeasured bass of the funky Meters

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Here's a link to my basic G.roove:

http://www.funkymeters.com/

Posted by G. @ 10/28/2005 07:09 PM EST

Ok. That makes less sense than your last comment. Are you a student?

Posted by William @ 10/27/2005 08:50 PM EST

Calm down guys.

Posted by jeff @ 10/27/2005 08:35 PM EST

Well, William, I was simply stuttering around Jeff's solid sense.

I agree w/ this sense for the most part, and so I was dis/engaging it further by seeing what might happen if it was expressed in reverse:

"Teaching basic is there."

or

"Teaching basic there is."

===

In some French theory, the sense of "there is" is expressed by way of "il y a," and finding that register, I attempted to play further on what might described as a "minor" effort.

Of curse, all this might sound like nonsense, and this might not be the best place to experiment with such good sense, but then --well-- there's also the sense of nonsense that is expressed by way of the book.less -Logic of Sense-

I can tone down the pun bass, and express things this way:

Whatever !

Posted by G. @ 10/27/2005 07:57 PM EST

Huh?
"G," what you wrote makes no sense.
Or it's nonesense. No pun intended.

Posted by William @ 10/27/2005 03:01 PM EST

chill ya: "There isn't basic writing. There's basic teaching."

This is, perhaps, a new 'less on' teaching that gets 'back to basics' by way of the sense of 'there is' that in French is expressed 'il y a.'

Basic: t.here is ...

teaching basic t.here is, which is a un/kind of 'less on' that agamben's bartleby expresses by way of impotentiality (adynamia)

B.asic : impotentiality ...

Teaching the ability to be ... basic, rather than merely focusing on writing.

"There isn't basic writing. There's basic teaching."

Yes, a bass.(sic) less on

Posted by G. @ 10/27/2005 01:38 PM EST

You nailed it, pal. That's one of the many reasons why I'm writing my own BW text. Students have to become comfortable writing AND thinking or else they'll never move beyond those ghastly tepid five-paragraph papers. And it's the ability to think elastically that they lack and which makes revision a very tough concept to teach (but I persevere.). I've often wanted to ask them what they are afraid of when I ask them to revise and think more deeply about something. Or to feel comfortable moving things around. This is a facet of the BW experience that I've been meditating on this semester, and it leads me to think that writing to be writing (rather than to produce any kind of generic or non-generic) text is the way to go with the students. In other words, be much less concerned with the final form and more comncerned with their ability to think about ideas and develop them (and redevelop them). I could write about this forever, but I'll stop here before I get too tangential.

Posted by joanna @ 10/27/2005 12:25 PM EST

"There isn’t basic writing. There’s basic teaching."

Touche.

Posted by B. @ 10/26/2005 09:38 PM EST