Week 3: Executive Summary

Berlin, James A. "Chapter 6: The Renaissance of Rhetoric: 1960-1975". Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-1985. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1987. 120-138. Print.

            Berlin begins his sixth chapter by explaining—what he believes to be—the three developments that focused on improving high school English instruction.  The first was the passage of the National Defense Education Act in 1958.  The NDEA was meant to, “improve school instruction in math and sciences, but by 1964 also included the study of literature, language, and composition—especially the later two” (121).  The second was the Ford Foundation’s “Basic Issues” conferences established in 1958.  These conferences were meant to, “examine the teaching of high school English” (121).  The third development was the appearance of the Commission on English which was founded by the College Entrance Examination Board in 1959.  The CEEB, “extended the work of the Basic Issues conferences, publishing Freedom and Discipline in English in 1965” (122).  I believe that Berlin mentions these three developments, among others, as improving high school English instruction because these developments focused explicitly on high school English instruction where I feel other developments we have previously read about dealt with post-secondary English improvement.

            The second half of the chapter consists of approaches Berlin thinks will improve writing strategies.  Berlin explains Jerome Bruner’s strategy by saying, “Teachers may supply information about writing or direct students in its structural stages, but their main job is to create an environment in which students can learn for themselves the behavior appropriate to successful writing” (123).  Another person that Berlin feels supports his improving high school English instruction cause is Warner G. Rice.  Berlin says of Rice’s stance on the subject, “Students should learn to write in high schools, and not much could be done in college for those who had not” (125).  Berlin also mentions the work of Albert R. Kitzhaber by saying that, “English departments needed to become cooperatively involved with high school teachers in developing better methods for teaching writing” (126).  I can see why Berlin chooses these men to support his cause.  I, too, feel that writing instruction should at least start in high school and be perfected in college.  As a future high school English teacher, I will try to live up to Berlin’s standards.

Week 2: Reading Responses

·         Berlin’s Chapter 2: The Nineteenth-Century Background

o   Berlin writes, “Since the language of learning at the new university was to be English, it seemed appropriate that entering students be tested in this language.  Furthermore, the test in English ensured that the new open university would not become too open, allowing the new immigrants, for example, to earn degrees in science or mathematics without demonstrating by their use of language that they belonged in the middle class” (23).

§  When I read this statement, I could not help but think about the current conversation taking place in today’s Educational system: What says American schools have to teach their curriculum in English?  I can see how the new universities saw how making immigrants and non-English speaking students take tests in English—that would eventually mean that their educational experience would be completely in English—would be beneficial to the student. However, while the new universities were hoping to further the student’s rhetoric (in English), little to nothing was being done to protect the student’s personal, first-language rhetoric… Something I feel the current educational system is struggling with even today.

·         Berlin’s Chapter 3: The Growth of the Discipline: 1900-1920

o   Berlin writes, “The fact that current-traditional rhetoric was a product of the new, elective university is crucial.  This university, a uniquely American phenomenon at the time, was at once committed to the scientific method and to the creation of a professional meritocracy consisting of an emerging middle class.  The old American college had been aristocratic in its clientele and classical in its curriculum” (36).

§  I guess being educated when I was, I take for granted the educational system hasn’t always been the machine it is today.  Knowing better, I appreciate how Berlin talks in this chapter about the shift in education from a “aristocratic” endeavor to a “professional meritocracy”.  Just as the who is education is changing, so too, is the how they are educated.  As Berlin mentions in this chapter, this is one of the first times that the middle class is being educated, and therefore, becoming literate. 

·         Berlin’s Chapter 4: The Influence of Progressive Education: 1920-1940

o   Berlin writes, “The proponents of liberal culture, on the other hand, looked upon the university as the preparatory school for an elite, aristocratic group of individualists.  Rather than being trained in the ways of a profession, students were to be immersed in the traditional learning of literature, language, and art. For the proponents of liberal culture, the purpose of the English teacher was to cultivate the exceptional students, the geniuses, and at the most, to tolerate all others” (72).

§  This selection and the selection from Chapter 3 tie-in well together for me.  As a future teacher of English, I cannot imagine looking at education in the way Berlin writes about. What does it mean to “tolerate all others”?  Were they not literate at all? Were they not as literate or advanced as the “exceptional students, the geniuses”? While labels are still a very real and relevant occurrence in today’s educational system,  I can see where a great deal of teachers today would even look at education the same way as they did 80 years ago.

·         Arnove and Graff’s "National Literacy Campaigns"

o   Arnove and Graff write, “Literacy is almost never itself an isolated or absolute goal.  It is rather one part of a larger process and a vehicle for that process.  Literacy is invested with a special significance, but seldom in and of itself.  Learning to read, possibly to write, involves the acquisition or conferral of a new status.  Literacy often carries tremendous symbolic weight, quite apart from any power and new capabilities it may bring.  The attainment of literacy per se operates as a badge, a sign of initiation into a select group and/or a larger community” (596).

§  I feel like we’ve read so much already in the three weeks we’ve been in the class that, for me at least, state that literacy is the final goal—that we should all strive for the ability to read and write mostly to say we can.  It wasn’t until this article that it made me realize that while the previous articles/chapters may have not explicitly said so, literacy is not a means to an end, but rather the a way of getting there.  Arnove and Graff make it clear that the ability to read and write mean nothing if there is nothing to read and write about.

Week 2: Executive Summary

Berlin, James A. "Chapter 1: An Overview." Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-1985. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1987. 1-19. Print.

            Berlin begins his first chapter by explaining his interest in the different forms of rhetoric.  He explains that, “rhetoric, the production of spoken and written texts, and poetic, the interpretation of texts, have been the indispensable foundation of schooling, regardless of the age or intellectual level of the student” (1).  Moreover, “rhetoric and poetic historically have enjoyed a dialectical relationship, the one’s function being defined and determined by the other’s” (1).  After explaining what rhetoric means to him—“the term rhetoric refers to a diverse discipline that historically has included a wide variety of incompatible system.  While one particular rhetorical theory may predominate at any historical moment, none remains dominant over time.  Each major system is destined to be replaced eventually.  Thus, we ought not to talk about rhetoric but of rhetorics” (3). 

            Berlin then goes on to explain his three theories of rhetoric: objective, “based on a positivistic epistemology, asserting that the real is located in the material world” (7); subjective, “located on truth either within the individual or within a realm that is accessible only through the individual’s internal apprehension, apart from the empirically verifiable sensory world” (11); and transactional, “based on an epistemology that sees truth as arising out of the interaction of the elements of the rhetorical situation: an interaction of the subject and object or of subject and audience or even all of the elements” (15).  While explaining the three theories of rhetoric, Berlin gives examples of each and one could use the theory to his/her advantage in writing.

Week 1: Reading Responses

·         Beth Daniell’s “Narratives of Literacy: Connecting Composition to Culture”

o   Daniell writes, “Studies and observations persuaded many in composition that what counts as literacy in a given time and place is determined by social, economic, and political factors rather than by some prior definition” (399).

§  I agree with this statement in that the definition of literacy is constantly changing and evolving.  What used to mean “I can read and write” now, in my opinion has changed into “I can read and write this”, whatever this is. For example, a state senator may be highly educated and be what we would consider literate, but he cannot read a text (written in text language) from his child. Does that make him illiterate? The senator can read and write manuscripts, bills, and the like, but he cannot read a text.

·         Sylvia Scribner’s “Literacy in Three Metaphors”

o   Scribner writes, “Most efforts in definitional determination are based on a conception of literacy as an attribute of individuals; they aim to describe constituents of literacy in terms of individual abilities” (72).

§  I think that defining literacy on an individual basis will be the only way to ever come anywhere near explaining what it means to be literate.  Scribner’s three metaphors of literacy (literacy of adaptation, literacy as power, and literacy as a state of grace) all support literacy as an individual achievement, on multiple levels.

·         Haas’ “Chapter 1: The Technology Question” in Writing Technologies

o   Haas asks, “What is the nature of language made material, what is the nature of writing?” (8)

§  In reading Haas’ piece, I could not stop asking myself, “Which writing technology is more powerful? Which one is more valued?” In our society today, there is always a better, but when it comes to writing, isn’t that a personal choice? Just with personally-defined literacy and audience, isn’t then the hierarchy of writing technologies also personally defined?  What does that say about ourselves? What does that about us to others? Should it matter?

·         Kathleen Yancey’s “Writing in the 21^st Century”

o   Yancey writes, “In much of this new composing, we are writing to share, yes; to encourage dialogue, perhaps; but mostly, I think, to participate” (5).

§  My question in response to this statement is, “Participate in what?”  What are writers of composition hoping to participate in?  I think it goes back to what Yancey mentioned at the beginning of her piece, talking about audience.  Who is the audience?  Are we actively participating in writing if the audience is our self?

Week 1: Executive Summary

Scribner, Sylvia, and Michael Cole. "Chapter 7: Unpacking Literacy." Literacy: a Critical Sourcebook. Ed. Ellen Cushman, Eugene R. Kintgen, Barry M. Kroll, and Mike Rose. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001. 123-37. Print.

                        Sylvia Scribner and Michael Cole’s paper “Unpacking Literacy” in chapter 7 of Literacy: a Critical Sourcebook, edited by Ellen Cushman, Eugene R. Kintgen, Barry M. Kroll, and Mike Rose, begins by questioning what is literacy? and how reading and writing can work with or against one another for the sake of literacy.  Scribner and Cole address the “writing crisis” (123) by asking 1. If there really is a writing crisis and 2. Of what concern is it? A national concern in need of vast amounts of resources to rectify the crisis or rather, which I feel they believe is more appropriate, “adjust our educational goals to new ‘technologies of communication’ which reduce the need for high levels of literacy skill” (124). The authors go on to question literacy in correlation with cognitive consequence, i.e. the writing down of the alphabet and, therefore, the spread of literacy.  Did this help literacy and hinder our memorization skills and thought process or did this enhance literacy as well as “lay the basis for development of new categories of understanding and new logical operations” (124)?

            The majority of the chapter is concerning the literacy practices of the Liberian Via people.  Within the Via people, three languages are read and written: Via, English, and Arabic.  However, some members of the Via people only read and write one of the languages or a combination of the three.  Only high ranking members of the via people can read and write in all three languages.  Scribner and Cole explain that the main form of literacy education for the Via people is not traditional schooling, but rather, informal letter writing among other known Via.  Scribner and Cole go on to explain the literacy of the Via by saying that the, “learning consists of committing the characters to memory and practice in reading” (130).  Within the Via community, there is a hierarchy for things that are written down and in what language they will be written down in.  For example, English is used to, “record court matters and to maintain official correspondences with administrative and political functionaries” (129); Arabic is used learned for Islamic religious and legal reasons (129); and Vai is used to communicate to a friend, family member, or neighbor about anything (129).  Scribner and Cole end the chapter by explaining that, “what writing is and what it leads to, appears in light of comparative data to fail to give full justice to the multiplicity of values, uses, and consequences which characterize writing as social practice” (137).