I’ll admit that many of the technical, jargon-laden passages in Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s Planned Obsolescence failed to resonate with me, solely because I wasn’t quite sure what she was talking about (like the performance of metadata in OS 10.5 vs OS 10.4, for example, or the HTML coding required to permit for open commenting), but her overall message was very clear: scholarly publishing and the humanities in general must be reimagined within a digital framework. It is no longer a question of if such a digital revolution will occur, but when; as Fitzpatrick says in her conclusion: “The contradictions in our current system are simply too great to be sustained…I am certain that a revolution in scholarly publishing is unavoidable” (194). I am in complete agreement here, and I appreciated the optimism that Fitzpatrick maintains throughout her text. In a time in which the university’s death is constantly being heralded, it was heartening to read a treatise on the ways in which the humanities and the academy can be revitalized through technology, not destroyed by it. Her chapter on “Texts” and the digital reconfiguring of the book was especially interesting to me; namely, that we need to abandon the fatalistic narrative of the death of print or literacy, and realize that this is simply the transition from one form of print (the codex) to another, and that furthermore, situating print within a digital network will ultimately reward readers and scholars.
Yet this optimism that I so appreciated was also, paradoxically, one of my main complaints of the book; some of her suggestions simply did not seem feasible to me, like the recommendation for university presses to shift to an open-access mode of digital publishing. She notes that such a move would “make clear the extent to which the academy’s interests are the public interest” (161), and while I agree with that sentiment, I still struggle to imagine an industry willingly abandoning capitalistic gain while still operating in a capitalistic market. Ultimately, I wish that Fitzpatrick had tempered her optimism with slightly less radical suggestions, with the understanding that such moves are simply stepping stones that will gradually lead the academy to a full digital revolution.

Discussion of pedagogy continues to mystify, and our recent discussion of Freire and Postman reminded me once again of this personal difficulty.  I found much to be inspired by in both texts but have similar questions about application that Michael and others have voiced.  However, I think my questions  might be a little more severe on account of my own naiveté.  Quite frankly, I find the haste in which pedagogy is discussed as if having the singular aim of producing critical subjects to completely  ignore, or efface, the practical goals of education. Furthermore, pedagogy described as such challenges our own choices as students who, at least during the application process, have articulated the express interest in studying English.  And so, I’m interested in hearing how others in the class mediate their interest in English as a subject matter with the goals of critical pedagogy, both as students and as present or potential teachers. Is English, as a language and a body of literature, merely a vehicle for stimulating critical consciousness (as it once was for Christianity, humanism, etc), or is there something else that we find in literature that is worthwhile to study and transmit merely for its own sake?   I wonder about this a lot! What do you think? Tell me!

First, let me explain a little of my history with this word pedagogy, because it wasn’t until grad school that I realized it was one to which I should pay attention. In my going-on-four years at the Graduate Center I’ve heard  pedagogy discussed at great length and with great passion.  I was first exposed to the seriousness which GC students regarded pedagogy during a required course for the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy certificate program (which I highly recommend for those interested in exploring their own hopes and fears regarding technology & education).  It was the beginning of my second year, I had not yet taught (still haven’t!), and was feeling rather alien to the university experience since I had been out of school  for six or seven years before returning.  During the course,  we discussed topics ranging from MOOCs to digital dissertations. Steve Brier, our instructor (and another wonderful figure at the GC), exhorted us to keep in mind this singular question: How might we evaluate these new tools and practices for the purposes of pedagogy?

Pedagogy, I kept thinking, what on earth is this mysterious pedagogy.  I was astonished by the passion which students argued about what constituted good or bad pedagogy, mainly because in all my years in a classroom, it was not a topic I considered much.  But  after getting over the initial shock, I found much to warm to in these discussion. Pedagogy, I realized, was a way of talking about a lot of the same social issues I cared about.  Bad pedagogy was the type produced by oppressive political structures for the preservation of said oppressive political structures. Good pedagogy was the sort that would create subjects capable of undermining, or at least seeing through, said oppressive political structures.  Thus the pedagogically-concerned, both green and vet, spent a lot of time agreeing how bad bad pedagogy was, and how good good pedagogy was. It was a cozy a time.

Despite the coziness, though, I kept waiting, for the moment we at least stated what subject matter our pedagogy was concerned with.  And I waited to no end.   We discussed pedagogy as if it was a practice that could be universalized across subject matter, institutions, age group and purpose.  We talked about pedagogy as if it was this contentless process that succeeded when the student finally learned, but learned what? Because we were a group of students from across disciplines,  the generalized nature of our discussion was perhaps understandable. What pedagogy was for was either besides the point, or so obvious to everyone else in the classroom that it wasn’t worth mentioning.  In this sense, I gathered, pedagogy simply meant the process of stimulating critical consciousness, regardless of subject matter. All the the little facts and methodologies that happened to make up said subject matter, or whether that subject matter had instrumental value, (never mind cultural value!), was of secondary importance.  What we talked about when we talked about pedagogy was about nothing more than the social production of free subjects.

Now the social production of free subjects is just the sort of tailgate party where I’d like to bring my beer.  And I would entertain the argument that the achievement of such would make all disciplines and subject matter obsolete forevermore, because, well, goes ask Stanley Aronowitz about that one.  But in the meantime, I really need some help, particularly from those in the class that obviously think and care a great deal about pedagogy.  How are we even supposed to talk about the incorporation of particular types of pedagogy when it isn’t clear what were teaching and why? Again, back to the application questions, the ones we probably have all hoped are long forgotten. Why study English, why teach it? For what end?

I originally planned to write something more isolated, but after reading Michael’s and Sarah’s blog posts I want to respond to some of the questions and points they raised in theirs, as I think they are germane to some of the things I’ve been thinking about in regards to this week’s readings.

I too was very taken with Pedagogy of the Oppressed, particularly because it conceives of liberatory education as a dialogical exchange which fundamentally recognizes the reality that oppressive ideologies are always already embedded in ontology (in our experiences and in our unconscious participation in symbolic networks), and that liberatory democratic projects necessitate cooperative, diaglogical frameworks that work towards (and make explicit their working towards) practical and local transformations. In fact (and I’m sure this is due to my own research interests/biases) I found a surprising amount of overlap between Freiere’s pedagogy and pragmatism broadly, even Jamesian and Deweyian pragmatism specifically, despite Freire’s neo-Marxist approach. I think there is a productive way to put Freiere in conversation with some of the digital humanist stuff we read this week and I will circle back to that later. Michael brought a really interesting question, so I will reproduce it here:

“My first question is: how do we as CUNY teachers help people realize that they are oppressed? I know that sounds very nasty. No one wants to realize he is oppressed. I’m sure it is very painful to learn. But, if I understand Freire correctly, in order to change the existing order of oppressors and oppressed then the oppressed need to realize their oppression. After all, how can we change something if we’re not aware of it?”

Michael also added this observant and very funny point/question as well:

“I believe […] telling the students “You’re oppressed” would be prescriptive, and not very good for anyone. It would be no different from the banking model of education: dumping information into docile students’ heads. But how does a person in authority (who, in my case, happens to be white, straight, male, if not Catholic then the son of lapsed Catholics, and bearded, which I understand is often unconsciously registered a symbol of authority, albeit a very stylish symbol) begin the process of addressing oppression in class?”

To me, Michael’s questions suggest two things: 1) How do we handle the personalization of oppression that Freire’s pedagogy seems to imply? In other words, how do we as teachers handle emotion in the classroom, trying not to dispel it but trying also not to allow it to over-influence the mood of the classroom? and 2) How do white male teachers, inherently in a position of political and social privilege, talk about the reality of oppression in a way that doesn’t amount to white “man-splaining.”

There is of course no definitive answer for this question, but I will share what I’ve done in the classroom and tie it into what Freire says about doing what he calls “The Word.”

In my classroom experience, I assume a degree of agreement between me and the students to some of the realities of oppression. That being said, I invite students to air out their objections, confusions, and disagreements with anything that’s being said and/or assumed as experientially evident. This allows for a fluid exchange that recognizes basic realities we collectively inhabit. I believe this is similar to what Freire talks about in Chapter 3, the dialogue chapter. On the subject of doing what he calls “The Word,” Friere says: “dialogue cannot occur between those who want to name the world and those who do not wish this naming–between those who deny others the right to speak their world and those whose right to speak has been denied to them” (88). This is because open and productive dialogue is necessitated by “the encounter between [people], mediated by the world” (88). “Naming” implies an active process, whereby interlocutors try out descriptions of experience in order to better improve the collective episteme, but not to come to any final conclusions. Hence, it is always processual and collaborative. “Mediated through the world” has two meanings. One, it implies that this dialogue is historical and situated within concrete relations and experiences, and two, that our knowledge of one another is always colored by the constitutive discourses we inhabit and that inhabit us.

So, what does this mean in terms of Michael’s question? Well, one thing I would offer from my point of view is that the idea of oppression, as personal as it may be at certain times, is also concretely observable, or can be. Thus, it need not be highly personalized in the classroom. If a student wants to bring his or her own experience into the discussion that’s fine, but generally these issues, while having personal effects, go beyond the personal.

Friere’s approach is situated within praxis, that is, mutual contemplation between student and teacher and student and student. This is what Freire means when he talks about humility within the dialogic process, as well as producing objects of contemplation that mediate student-teacher relationships (again, ch. 3). As I said before, this strikes me as a very pragmatistic enterprise in that it engages collaborative processes which foreground humility and limitation.

In Hacking the Academy: New Approaches to Scholarship and Teaching from Digital Humanities edited by Daniel J. Cohen and Tom Scheinfeldt, interesting claims are made about the physical space of the educational institution. In “Dear Students,” Gideon Burton writes: “The campus for your education isn’t made principally of buildings and books; it’s made mostly of microchips and media. Any other school is a satellite now, subordinate to the main, digital campus where you reside and thrive.” Burton de-emphasizes the material classroom by labeling it “subordinate,” drawing attention instead to the way technology has created a seemingly limitless virtual place of learning, which we reside in long before entering college, and never escape post-graduation. In his justification of what he believes will be the timely demise of the resume, he goes on to claim that: “Cyberspace is already more real to you than the physical space of your college campus—and it is becoming so for your future employers.” By using this rhetoric, he continues to establish a structural hierarchy in which the digital clearly trumps the material world by being “more real” and thus, presumably, more valuable.

While I agree that cyberspace plays an increasing, and often beneficial, role in education, I find myself hostile to the idea that it could ever outweigh or replace the physical environment. I believe the material classroom, as well as the wider college campus, is still pivotal to the learning process – providing elements that get lost when translated into cyberspace. There is still something to be gained from interacting face-to-face with peers, professors, and material objects that cannot be replicated through online learning. I’m wondering why Burton feels the need to pit these two worlds against each other as opposed to allowing one to complement the other. I would not consider cyberspace “more real” than the physical space of a campus, nor would I try to claim that cyberspace is irrelevant to education. What I’d prefer would be to discover a more helpful way of linking the material and immaterial worlds that would allow students to envision the direct consequences their online activity has on the physical environment and vice versa.

In this line of thinking, I am seconding Michael Welsh in “From Knowledgeable to Knowledge-able” who, instead of labeling the physical campus obsolete, suggests: “we need to start redesigning our learning environments to address, leverage, and harness the new media environment now permeating our classrooms.” It’s not that the material environment has become useless, or will soon be discarded, but that we are no longer utilizing it to its fullest potential. Welsh explains that “there are many structures working against us” and that “Our physical structures were built prior to an age of infinite information.” Considering the age of our educational institution’s architecture, it is no surprise that it could now use some updating. As technology changes our lifestyles, it also alters the ways we interact with our environments – especially those we have built ourselves. Thus, how we construct those environments also needs to change. The question that remains is how to do this. How do we best integrate technology and the digital world into our classrooms? Is there a way we can orient the physical space of a campus towards these goals? How would this alter the aesthetics of education?

This week’s reading (of Underwood) and discussion (of Graff and Comp) has sent me back to one of our own CUNY Lost and Found Initiative chapbooks, Adrienne Rich’s ” ‘What We Are Part Of’: Teaching at CUNY 1968-1974 (Parts I and II).” These little books trace Rich’s correspondence and notes around her pedagogy in teaching in CUNY’s SEEK program, described in the book’s introduction as “a result of the efforts of social activists and progressive politicians whose vision was to provide access to CUNY for poor students, then largely African-American and Puerto Rican, who graduated from high schools that had not prepared them for the rigors of college.” In a 1968 letter about her teaching to CCNY Pre-Bac Program director Mina Shaughnessy, Rich asks,

I meant to ask also about direct vocabulary work. Have people been telling students to look up words they don’t understand, and raise questions about them in class if the dictionary definition doesn’t satisfy? (As it won’t, in poems, of course.) How much stress on this is necessary? I’ve always been lazy about using the dictionary myself, words exist for me extremely contextually. But it seems to me that an active energetic vocabulary is important–more so–than the grammar. Has anyone tried doing a little with etymology?

It was Underwood’s section “Better Writing Through Etymology” that put me in mind of this question of Rich’s; the emphasis on etymology as a means of improving students’ skill as writers in pre-1840s literature pedagogy that he writes about surprised me, and I found myself curious if or how that emphasis still resonates in more recent times. I am used to thinking of etymology as a specialized, borderline-philosophical concern, the purview of linguists and poets. Its place in a Comp classroom (which Rich inquires about) seems hard to imagine, to me. But reading this part of the history of English literature pedagogy, I get a sense of the sheer diversity of relationships, over the centuries, between the teaching of etymology and radical, anti-oppressive teaching practices. I found myself reading really attentively for overlaps between the ideas of, say, teacher-activist John Horne Tooke and teacher-activist Rich, in entirely different centuries and contexts.

Shaugnessy wrote back to Rich,

Everyone agrees that vocabulary is terribly important. Students seem to ignore the things that they cannot deal with in words. The problem is how to get genuine vocabulary growth–that is, growth of awareness itself. This involves some kind of change that is difficult to bring about by any of the vocabulary-building methods I have encountered. We had a series of language lectures last semester that covered the history of English, usage, levels, prefixes-suffixes, metaphor, dialect etc. I don’t know what it accomplished–perhaps a sense that words can be the objects of study….slow as it is, I tend to trust the method that keeps the word in its setting, that gives it the special meaning that it gathers from its context (this by discussion, dictionary etc.) and trust that the students, following the same impulse for analogy that has produced his present vocabulary, will know where to take it from there.

What interests me is the huge difference between a teacher making use of “the impulse for analogy that has produced [a student’s] present vocabulary” and a teacher using vocabulary and the etymologies of words as ways of shaping a not only a student’s vocabulary, but her speech, writing and thought. I found Underwood’s description of Tooke’s investigation into the etymologies of “law” and “right” on page 89 fascinating, and something that Rich might have done in some form in her own classroom. I also zeroed in on this section of the Rich chapbook because I have almost never seen discussions of how to study individual words and etymologies meaningfully in a writing classroom (Comp or otherwise). I’d love to talk about this, as well as Underwood’s amazing articulation of periodization as an invention for the benefit of England’s middle classes, in class tomorrow!

Lastly and quickly, I am grateful for the illuminating words from Lindsay and Kate around teaching Comp versus teaching literature, and who has historically benefitted from, and been left out by, the teaching of each. Kate’s caution about insulting comp instructors by thinking of Comp as remedial is interesting to me; I have long been curious about the assumption that because of its perhaps-remedial nature, teaching Comp is somehow “easier” or less cool than teaching literature–or Creative Writing, for that matter. If I were to meet a writing professor, say, on an airplane, would I be more impressed if they told me that they taught Comp, or Medieval English Literature? My first instinct is that the latter is more impressive, but in light of what Lindsay wrote in her comments about the dazzling complexity of Comp (as well as what numerous and diverse thinkers have articulated for decades) I believe that addressing the historical, social, racial, and economic rifts in education systems in the alive space of a Comp classroom–while also teaching and engaging students– is very impressive indeed.