Triply unjust now is that many of these students believe that the only way they can succeed is by entering a college that is not well prepared to receive them. (A college that doesn't have the SEEK program like CUNY of Shaugnessy's day) Then they take massive loans that can never be discharged, then they drop out of school because they are so inadequately prepared and inadequately taught. So now they are uneducated and in massive, undischargeable debt. What a crock of manure that is.
Then I remember that my job is not to fix all the injustices in the world -- my job is (I hope someday) to teach the students in my class, whoever they may be - wherever they come from. This is why I admire Shaughnessy. She doesn't spend any time belaboring the unpreparedness of her students or complaining about the impossibilty of her situation. She seems to take the tack that she is faced with a very difficult, but solveable problem. She made Basic Writing into a discipline and looked for ways to fix the problem. This is quite admirable.
There is no getting around the fact that Standard American English (SAE) is a shibboleth. It is the a very good way for students to enter the world of the middle class - the world of high salaries, good schools, good nutrition, and safe neighborhoods. Of course, the trades are another way into the good life, but it seems to me that as our service and manufacturing economy becomes more sophisticated that even the trades require a great deal more education than they did before. I'm certain that avionics technicians, diesel mechanics, microchip fab workers, paramedics, and other high-paying developed-world tradesmen and women are earning at least an associate's degree and thus taking the concomitant composition requirements.
So I like that Shaughnessy doesn't back down from this fact. She may not like that students are criminally unprepared. She may not like that errors are so distracting to educated readers that they destroy the message. But she knows she can't change these things. So she came up with an entire framework and a discipline for fixing what should could fix. So "Basic Writing"was born.
As for me, I'm very interested in this concept of "basic writing" and how it relates to my undergraduate degree in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. I'm particularly interested in the affective domain aspects of "basic writing,"not just whether students react well to instruction, but how their emotions affect their writing and their ability to learn. Is error correction freezing them in their tracks the same way it does for second language learners? I'll be exploring this question further.
Your paragraph on the job availability of less-formally educated persons reminds me of what I’ve always called the three-generation-rule for cultural assimilation in the U.S. The first generation had to settle for low-paying manual labor and needed only passing knowledge of spoken English. The next generation was better off, linguistically and economically, and the third generation was fully assimilated and ready to participate fully in the (mythical, IMHO) American dream of education and prosperity without back-breaking work. I think Mary C. Waters has done a lot of this research in sociology. We as educators have fallen heir to the restructured U.S. economy, and it looks as if the powers that be have taken a reactive rather than a proactive stance. Maybe we should be looking at the vocations you list as guides for the writing our BW students need.
ReplyDeleteDan, I wholeheartedly agree with your points here. Especially in light of the current economic and political entanglement that higher education finds itself in today, I think every teacher needs to start asking real questions about the education system’s structure and the inequalities it perpetuates. At the very least, we need to understand what those are (all three of your tiers seem valid). Perhaps then we can start to confront them.
ReplyDeleteI like Russell’s point about the three-generation-rule, and it led me to think about an article I was reading in the June 2011 CCC: “’Master’ and ‘Little’ Cultural Narratives in the Literacy Narrative Genre” by Kara Poe Alexander. Alexander discusses the “master” narrative of literacy is that success in literacy leads to success in life.
It’s a narrative that has been embraced by every generation, maybe even more so in ESL families. Knowing how to communicate with the dominant language, both in oral and written form, seems to have a much “truer” or “urgent” quality for those families. Though some of Alexander's method needs polishing, I think her article might be worth looking into, too, as maybe another facet of your research.
Dan - I think your angry reaction is understandable and also quite common. And while it's clearly not true for you, I think it's this sort of anger that's driving two major grammar-related attitudes toward education. First, there's this sense that we need to "get back to basics" and just drill kids on grammar. This is often linked with a nostalgic view of one's own past education, and, as Dr. K points out, a misconception about how effective this form of instruction ever was. (Drop out rates in the 1950 were extremely high, and I think a lot of English teachers were never "typical" students in the first place, so what worked for them is unlikely to work for most.) Coupled with this is something I've seen in my own experience with instruction across many levels. Every teacher, near as I can tell, believes students should have learned grammar in an earlier grade. Grad instructors blame FYC, which in turn blames high school, which blames middle-school, etc.
ReplyDeleteI too liked Shaughnessy's content-first approach where errors are seen as diagnostic tools. Like others in the class I think having a gramatically clean final draft is important, but I've also learned that teaching grammar seems to have no impact on this. I'm drawn back to one of Dr. K's comments from early in the semester, in which he suggested, as I've long believed, that most of us have learned good writing by starting with a huge base of reading. Maybe then the "back to basics" approach to grammar that we need in lower grades--and likely in our own courses as well--is just a major increase in assigned reading. Unfortunately, that doesn't really help FYC, so the question then becomes if good grammar can really be taught in that class.
(I'm also intrigued by the role of motivation in writing, and that's where I'm focusing my teaching revisions, by the way)
-steve
Dan, I've thoroughly enjoyed reading your post here as well as the three responses. Have you ever taught EFL? You've mentioned that you're intrigued by it.
ReplyDeleteI felt the same way when I was reading Shaughnessy. Wow, she seems so matter-of-fact about teaching the criminally unprepared! It would take a stronger man than me to deal with that on a daily basis. To think that so many of my EFL colleagues have to deal with so much less and complain so much more. Several times a semester I myself am presented with a student who clearly shouldn't have been admitted into the program. I think to myself, "Oh no, what do I do with this one?" Teach him. Guide her. Discover those learning styles that are the most appropriate. Be extra patient. Pair him / her up with a star student so that s/he doesn't feel so ostracized in the classroom. And do you know what? If s/he fails Freshman Comp, the student will most hopefully benefit from taking it again and being a little more prepared for upcoming Engineering courses.
I liked Russell's discussion about three-generation immigrants. Crikey, what our forefathers had to endure in order to make a place in the world. Reading Shaughnessy makes me not only realize how good I've got it (a lot less students, a lot less classes, more advanced than when the CUNY article was written), but...to be a bit more Zen about the whole thing: Things happen for a reason. Nobody (including educators) learns much from a smooth path. These experiences make us stronger somehow, and ultimately better people.
Dan
ReplyDeleteYour anger is well-deserved, and if you would like to use a stronger word than "manure", i don't think anyone would fault you for doing that! :) Being the lone 'non-teacher' of the bunch, I must ask you gentlemen, and Chalice, why the teaching profession as a whole doesn't see this as an industry-wide problem? I mean, are high school teachers ignorant of the deficiencies in their student's composition? Do they feel that it's the next guy's job to correct? From the outside looking in, it appears that HS teachers have no shame in passing their ill-prepared students along to the next stop in the assembly line. Now, of course, my comments are not meant to be universal; there are exceptions to every rule! I have actually seen adolescents that far exceed Russell's three-generation scenario; I will not presume to be so well informed as to know why, but their teachers may have had something to do with it. On a personal note, my brother is a inner-city, public HS principal, so I sympathize for the under-funded plight all teachers must face. Good teachers need more financial incentive and bad ones need to be replaced!!!!!!!