Oppression or direction? There seems to be a fine line between guidance and the overbearing hand of "the man." God'sChild notes that, "Giroux speaks upon school being a political building." But that isn't to say that many good ideas and thinkers haven't come from classical, institutional settings. Some settings like this work quite well for students that cannot sit and focus on their own. Sure, democracy has its problems, but what institution doesn't? I disagree that schools only teach one way to "think." It would be fair to say that they teach with only one method, but not that they can--with their methods--control the human mind. True, there is a great emphasis on the American English teacher, because this is the primary language in this country. And language is what is responsible for conveying higher thoughts. However, it would be unfair to say that the literature causes an identity conflict because of the roles conveyed in the stories. There is a great diversity in literature, now more than ever. I believe that it is this, and the infinite curiosity of the human mind, that will never let one be confined for a long period in a "box." Sure, literature teaches morals, patriotism, right and wrong, but it is about so much more. These themes or motifs show up often, but they do not dominate the literature of our culture. If this is what makes the classes and the literature seem fake, then maybe it needs to be approached differently. These things are necessities of life for the American people, and must be taught so that one can function fully, without fret. And this worry about a lack of multiculturalism seemingly appearing until the secondary and post-secondary levels is not something that I have ever noticed. My experience, and my son's schooling leads me to believe conversely.

Reading Texts Later

Cultural capital: the brainwashing material used in schools to shape the way students interact in life. Legitimate cultural capital: the “right” interpretation of the text and not the student’s personal thoughts or interpretation. When in middle school and beyond students are seen as teenagers who need one path of guidance. Many teachers are either taught or have guidelines that prohibit them from allowing a student to have his/her own minds outside the box. The box in this article seems to be school, which is the cultural oppression. Oppression itself sounds like an unhappy word which it is and for school to have that unhappy period in textbooks that depicts what students should be, and how they should think. Giroux speaks upon school being a political building, and I feel that the statement is true. Students are taught the different ways of ruling, but are mostly taught how democracy is the better than any other ruling method, and how democracy should be dominant throughout the world, but they rarely point out the problems that democracy has as well. In school children are taught there is only one way of thinking and it shows students the impression of how the world thinks of people and how we, as a democracy, should act. With everything put on teachers, especially English teachers, they are looked at as Giroux says “ responsible for advancing the knowledge and values to historical Western cultures. It is made important that we transform our students into what society thinks is good for t world, but they do not seem the harm we are able to do. Teaching a student that they should be a housewife because over 90% of stories are about women stuck in the house taking care of it and the children, that when students get to a certain age they sometimes get confused of what they would like to be. It makes students stay within the box of “safety” such as career wise. In more ways than one students are pushed to believe in one way of doing something. We, students are taught that democracy is a one way track that we as American citizens are to be on and if we somehow are not agree on things we become terrorists. The American way of teaching schools has become a representation of what we want to believe and not of what we interpret something meaning. The way people are taught throughout English classes in all grades seems fake. We seem to not learn about different cultures and different ways of living until we reach a college level and we have an opinion about what we would like to take. America seems so scared to introduce students into a international view that they shape our children through literature brainwashing.

BBB gets an AAA from me!

BBBtheDad's article was a breath of fresh air to me! Bravo on thoroughly linking those two rather lengthy and convoluted articles. I find myself agreeing with the point that the system is working upside down. Eckert's beliefs that the student could benefit more from using literary theory as the backbone of literacy education is spot on with my own personal beliefs about education in general. I think "the system" is doing a great disservice to those who wish to enter the discourse (even with reservations) by having them infer the rules of that community. This is a poor way for the learner to be granted a real shot at gaining authority within the commonplace. I believe this is the reason there is so many cases of "sink or swim" in public schools these days. You either "get" the coded message or you don't.

Gee and Barton response

I tend to agree with Gee that a multitude of discourses can cause some confusion but I think that this also vital to have them. The readings we have seen before this have all seemed to point that out. The confusion can occur when the speaker chooses a discourse that they prefer and are incapable or unwilling to adapt or change when it is necessitated by society. Like Riley, Gee also was one of my favorite readings, I believe Gee is a naturalist when it comes to ideas on education, which coincide with my own beliefs on how instruction should be carried out. Aquisition is highly preferable to Learning in my opinion.

Struggling Through Writing for Yourself or for the Reader

This conversation conjurs up memories of past classes. When discussing academic discourses, and all they entail, it seems silly that one who wishes to become a part of that conversation concerns himself with an audience outside of that discourse. Part of the purk of writing in evelated language is that only those with the ability to read and understand that evelated language will read, understand, and partake in the conversation you have started. I understand that writing to your exclusive audience (if you will) excludes many individuals from your conversation, but that exclusion should not discourage outsiders, but instead motivate them to become allowed into the conversation.

Here I predict one's argument would begin with "they are just young students." And my response is, however harsh it comes out, so what! Education, I believe, should be wanted! Higher education is not free, as are public high schools, because it intentds to exlcude those students who are unmotivated, unwilling to continue in their education. It baffles me that any educated person would want to "dumb down" a text to inlcude everyone! Like it or not, there is a heirarchy. But in that heriarchy are those who strive for their best and those who settle for what's handed to them.

As far as university writing is concerned, of course a college freshman is going to struggle. But being that that freshman came to future his education and understanding of things, a struggle should not instill fear but rather promote a "go getter" attitude. Call me unsympathetic, but no one here can or will argue that they worked their butt of to be where they are now but its ok to lower the capabilities and drive for future students. Can you imagine the amount of unattachment that would be created if those same students who dispise English class, now had to heighten their awareness with texts they don't care about, nor do they want to try and understand??

Synthesizing the Pedagogical Gap and the Literary Inventor

David Bartholomae, in his article, “Inventing the University,” seems to address his voice toward teachers, and/or researchers concerned with the methods in which one acquires language and writing in university-level discourses; he also, inadvertently, gives insight to students interested in producing a more academic stance in their authorship. In the article, his focus centers around the delineation between writer-based and reader-based approaches, and their standings in the university. While rooting out what he believes to be the pitfalls of many remedial writers¾ as they relate to the two forms of writing¾ he offers teachers and writers ways to view revision, which he purports will help the writer conform to a discourse. In her article, “Bridging the Pedagogical Gap: Intersections between Literary and Reading Theories in Secondary and Postsecondary Literacy Instruction,” Lisa Eckert¾ like Bartholomae¾ is concerned with the level of production in the postsecondary setting; however, she approaches this concern from a completely separate stance. Whereas Bartholomae keeps his scope on writing, Eckert extends this scope to reading and literary theory, and pedagogical inconsistencies and miscommunications between secondary and postsecondary institutions; and, because of such, her audience becomes limited to teachers. Both articles offer solid support for their arguments, and make arguments well worth contemplation and assimilation; however, both fail to attend to avenues of import: what each other’s article discourses. Reading and writing cannot extricate from the larger body of cognizance, without losing something in the process. This reason creates a basis for my argument: that there needs to be a synthesis between bridging the pedagogical gap (which creates a greater understanding of theoretical processes) and pragmatic application of writing.

Bartholomae refers to basic writers as writers placed in remedial level writing classes (62). This view does not discredit the basic writer¾ in fact, he applauds the writer for “try[ing] on the peculiar ways of knowing, selecting, evaluating, reporting, concluding, and arguing as if the writer were in the discourse” (60). Bartholomae acknowledges that there is a level of apprenticeship in the process, but he attends to the idea that there is only one way to accurately approach analytical writing at the university level. To him, a writer must “appropriate (or be appropriated by) a specialized discourse” before the writer is able to find “some compromise between idiosyncrasy [sic], a personal history” and the precepts of the discourse (61). Difficulty arises here, as most apprentices are not instructed as to the ways in which academia runs¾ they must acquire the theories of a discourse by finding the commonplaces. Bartholomae defines a commonplace as a concept which will “dictate its own set of phrases, examples, and conclusions” (63). Rightfully, a commonplace will not achieve commonality until one has visited such place. Ergo one cannot suppose to assume an air of authority until one has learned a discourse. This approach seems post facto, in the sense that one must enter a world of expectations without being taught first the expectations. Even Bartholomae, in his argument, acknowledges that “it is very hard for them to take on the role - the voice, the persona - of an authority whose authority is rooted in scholarship, analysis, or research” (62). He goes on to express that a writer’s slips into an authoritative literary first-person come from lack of understanding: the discourse, and the audience.

His remedy, as he agrees with Flowers, is that “teaching students to revise for readers, then, will better prepare them to write initially with the reader in mind” (Bartholomae 64). The problem with structuring revision around reader-based writing lies in the fact that ultimately the writer must find his own voice; which means that he must take another step¾ away from the reader. This concept couches in the ideas Flower and Hayes state on page 66: that a writer’s thinking and writing progresses through the process of revision for the reader, so that the writer becomes the “writer” uninvolved from the burden of the reader; and, that the writer’s own writing assumes a power of authority, and a new voice. The anomalous problem with this occurs when the discourse dictates the writer; so, is there such a thing as writer-based writing? This, as Bartholomae states, “is Barthes’s famous paradox” (67). The fact is that the reader must be taught to understand both methods, and be aware of both when he writes. Because, separate from one another, they are both ineffective and remedial.

Teaching to differentiate between effective and ineffective methods, as Lisa Eckert explains, before the time when it is necessary to have a mastery of these skills, is not being done. She notes that, as students progress, teachers expect them to have an understanding of the discourse “without explicitly teaching them how to do so” (111). Her approach decidedly offers that the problem originates long before the writer ever reaches the university. And, she notes that this lack of instruction leads to the student’s lack of “assuming an interpretive stance on their own, students come to class expecting¾ even requiring¾ teachers to explicate the nuances of the text for them” (111). Like Bartholomae, Eckert believes that the students are more than capable of performing the tasks required; where they agree is the fact that the students are not being given the tools of understanding and making cognizant the concepts behind the reasons why a particular discourse operates the way it does.

So it seems that, in both cases, there needs to be a precedent set for pedagogy. Eckert provides a succinct proposition for this:

Transfer can be mediated by introducing students to critical theory as scaffolding for metacognitively constructing meaning from text; in other words, by explicitly teaching theoretical approaches to literature, English teachers better enable students to transfer reading strategy skills to literary analysis and interpretation. (112)

The basis of this method for teaching the theories of a given discourse prior to expectation affronts the problems that archaic approaches produce. Additionally, it advocates awareness¾ just as Bartholomae advocates awareness of the reader.

Having an awareness of a discourse and its methods, theories, and audience thus becomes the goal; so, in that, it seems that the pedagogical model has been working upside down. Instead of allowing the student to acculturate to the discourse, while teaching fragments of it, the university should be teaching the discourse as a whole: allowing the student to interpret the fragments. In doing so, the teacher, student, and discourse itself must be taught (and gain) an awareness of the inextricability of each element making up that discourse.

Gee! He must be right

Gee addresses several aspects of what he calls "discourse" (later: Discourse--with a capital D) to suggest that one does not truly belong to a discourse until one becomes the discourse through acculturation. He calls this his "identity kit," which involves social networks and media within a social network. I think that Gee has a good perspective, here. Again, with Gee, we see that theorists attempt to stratify concepts of literacy and literacy acquisition into distinct categories, which do not contain any crossover. I think that this is a counterproductive approach to theory on literacy; however, I do believe that it is necessary to address when talking about the ways in which one acquires literacy. My understanding is that there are multiple literacies, not just one sense of literacy. To say, like Gee does, that one cannot belong to more than one group effectively is absurd. There is no such thing as Mushfaking. There is, I would agree, a level of apprenticeship--as there is in everything.

Barton gives us a sense of this breakdown and the ways in which it is seen. I thank him for his pyramid structure, but I would have liked for him to more clearly define "register."