Teaching Composition as Fun with Real Audio
One of the animated segments on Saturday Night Live that I always enjoyed was the "Fun with Real Audio" segment in which they would take the audio track of something, usually an interview, and then animate something else while the audio went on. The effect was to de-contextualize the audio and to turn it into something else. It was always comedic because the words, depending on the animation going on, took on drastically different meanings. Of course, on SNL, the goal was comedy, as many animations quickly evolved in to hilarious juxtapositions of serious interviews and bizarre and surreal animations. But there's an important process going on here that I was reminded of today. During our first year writing instruction symposium I was reminded several times that similar things could be brought upon our own teaching practices. For instance, for those who don't know, the current description of our FYC (first year composition) class reads as follows:
WRIT 1301 fulfills the first-year writing requirement. It involves critical reading, writing, and thinking as students practice some of the types of writing they may expect in their college career such as summaries, essays, academic arguments, bibliographies, and papers built on research. The course helps students develop, at a minimum, an approach to writing that relies on clear statement of a thesis and support of that thesis with appropriate sources and documentation. Time is spent discussing rhetorical elements of writing such as audience, purpose, and argumentative structure. Students also practice steps in the writing process such as invention, research, organization of ideas, paper drafting, revision, and editing. Students report, synthesize, and draw conclusions regarding the significance of what they read. Students become more aware of the rhetorical choices available to them and learn to make appropriate choices. Some sections may be taught in computer classroom. Some sections are offered online. Some sections may include a service-learning component.
As I see it, there are 5 key "terms" that the whole endeavor is built on. These are the 5 "Rs:" Reading, Research, Revision, Rhetoric, and Writing. I've highlighted them in the description. But returning to the idea of "Fun With Real Audio," one thing that struck me as I was listening to my colleagues at a FYW (first year writing) symposium today was that when we use these terms, we all assume we know that we all agree on what the terms mean, but in actuality we don't. For instance, during a panel discussion on teaching with "research," in my notes I had the question "what IS research" and "what is the function of research" written down several times. I also noted that with research, we all "know how to do it" but don't really know what "it" is when we teach it. The question of "well, what IS research anyway" seems so simple that we just neglect to ask it, let alone attempt to answer it. But returning to these terms themselves is fruitful and important if we're concerned with not just replicating the errors we've made in the past. So, this got me thinking: what happens to the writing class (real audio) when we change the definition of these terms that we use to describe it (the animation)? That is, what happens when we de-familiarize the familiar when we approach designing a writing class? As such, I offer "alternative" definitions to the 5 "Rs" (and yes, I know "writing" isn't an R word, but it sounds like one, so just play along, ok?).
Rhetoric: Since the formation of the new "writing studies" department that, in no small way, did not include the few compositionists from English, the term "rhetoric" has popped up virtually all over. When I was teaching composition for the English department, the term "rhetoric" was one that most people sort of knew, but really couldn't say much other than it had something to do with argumentation or persuasion. I can say, looking back now, that in the past year I have never heard so many people use the term "rhetoric" so many times in my entire life. And, as such, I and others have had to wrap our minds around what the hell people are talking about when they talk of "rhetoric" this and "rhetoric" that and "rhetorical" bla bla bla and "rhetorical" whatevers. If there ever was an instance of people throwing out a term but never really talking about what it means, "rhetoric" would be it. To think that even the term "rhetoric" is a static term that we can consult some book to discover the "True" definition of it is, like anything else, flat out wrong. But so help me there are those who do very high level work in "rhetoric" without even thinking about it. To them, rhetoric is, as Aristotle formulated it, simply the art of discovering the available means of persuasion, or some formulation of that idea. This ignores, however, others strands of rhetoric, most notably the "sophists," for which there have been several contemporary squabbles about their existence and meaning. It basically boils down like this: Plato claims there are eternal truths, or things that are true simply because they are. Other philosophers at the time had other views, and realized what is true depends on the context, contingency, and some sort of power. It is no mistake that this latter group was the first group to really set out to try to encode just how ideas are given power so that others might adopt them. As we know it today, Rhetoric owes much more to Aristotle than the Sophists. That is, there IS a real truth out there, and through formulaic forms of rhetoric, we can approximate some sort of control over what is believed and what is not. Or, in other words, to master rhetoric is to know what means of persuasion are available and to use them. The study is a study of method; the point is to force someone else to adopt your position or to prevent someone from doing it to you. But, keeping in mind these fringe roots of rhetoric, teaching "rhetoric" doesn't have to mean teaching "the available means of persuasion." Rather, the significance of rhetoric lies in an investigation of why such a thing as "rhetoric" exists in the first place: an acknowledgment that even Truths are not "self-evident" and that, further, the only thing separating a Truth and multiple (and consequently various forms of subjugated) truths is a system of cultural habits and understandings that privilege one truth over another. Put rather simply, teaching "rhetoric" should be leading an investigation over why some forms of knowledge are privileged and why others are subjugated, oppressed, and ignored. Teaching Toulman models are worthless and pointless if the discussion stops at "this is how to make an argument" with out ever talking about why "arguments" exist in the first place. To ignore the role "power" has in granting "Truth" status on various ways of thinking is to ignore the real lesson of rhetoric. Further, and this might be the most radical departure I am making with the people I work with, the real purpose of considering rhetoric is not as a means to "learn how to do it" but rather as a means to increase our sensitivity and awareness of the ways truth is constructed and not simply "discovered." Or, in short, the primary purpose of a study of rhetoric is learning to listen and not learning to foist a conclusion on someone else. While many scholars of rhetoric realize this in their research, rarely, it seems, does this understanding of rhetoric make it into our classrooms, where teaching "rhetoric" usually means teaching the styles or forms of argumentation. Unfortunately, to merely teach the "how" leaves the "why" (and by "why," I mean the moral/ethical aspect of creating truth) out of the picture. This, in my view, is a greatly impoverished view of what "rhetoric" is good for. The greatest gift Rhetoric has given the fields of human understanding is the acknowledgment that truth is not "given" but rather truth is created and employed through various forms of power and to understand this is, following Foucault, to understand the way things are now are not that way because they are "right" by some eternal authority and consequently we are free to imagine other possibilities of living.
Revision: The typical story on revision pretty much goes like this: Students, who are "apprentice writers" (an academic bullshit code word for "bad writers"), will always fail on their first draft to do something well. Consequently, the purpose of revision is to clean up the vulgarities of their ways of writing so that it is more like what we find to be pleasing or acceptable. Often times the term "polished" is used, which is all well and good but also implies that what came before was unclean and dirty. So to revise, students fix up their grammar, consult a thesaurus, possibly tinker with a few sentences, and "expand" areas to meet arbitrary page quotas. The "final" draft of this process is, in many ways, the same paper that was first written, but has been smoothed over to have an appearance of being "better." But the problem with this understanding of revision is that it says nothing about the quality of what is being said in the paper. Or, to put that another way, just because a paper is "polished" doesn't mean it says anything of any importance to anyone, let alone say it in a compelling and interesting way. Further, it understands the development of a paper as being a straight, simple, clean, and unproblematic line from A to B to C to D, with very little trouble along the way. Instead, if we think of revision as "re-vision," then we have something completely different. Instead of looking for error, we read our writing as a means to do it again. We look over our writing to understand what it is we're trying to say. Our act of reading is really an act of writing in which we re-create something else using an earlier draft as our starting point. In this form of writing, the act of re-vision means more composing and not mere "tinkering" or fixing. It means creating something new again. It means using the earlier draft as a storehouse of ideas to be further played with. And, in this formulation, there is no promise that the next draft will be any better than the first; instead, it could actually be worse! But that's not a problem, nor even the point. The point is to continue to try new things as an expression of experimentation in order to further develop and test out different ideas and different ways to express those ideas in writing. Further, it treats writing as a never-ending process of creation and interpretation, ebbing and flowing, stable and dynamic. "Drafts" do not progress quantitatively or even qualitatively, rather drafts progress experimentally in an effort to continually reformulate our understandings of the environment we live in.
Reading: That the "current-traditional" understanding of teaching writing from an English department ideology understands learning to write as a process of reading "good writers" and emulating has been so thoroughly written on that it is not worth repeating here. The problem, of course, is a problem of getting from A to B. If "good reading" is A, and "better writing" is B, then the assumption is IF A, then B. However, there is still no clear understanding of how one leads to the other. What this ideology has failed to address is the relationship reading has to WHY writing occurs. That is, it doesn't help to explain the phenomena of writing if we are to only understand it as an act of imitating what we read. It might partially explain HOW people come to write in certain ways, but says nothing of why. This problem is most evident in composition classes that are really "intro to literary analysis" classes. This is not to say that close reading is not important (although the idea of a "close reading" is problematic as well), but rather this is to say that in emphasizing "reading" often times "writing" is not even considered and taken for granted. Classes that are heavy on reading "great essays" and then engage in forced, dry, boring writing assignments really don't grasp the entire picture. So how can we understand the role of "reading" differently? The most important way to re-describe reading in a writing class is to simply flip the order of events. In the common understanding, you read and then you write. Instead, we can understand reading as the end result of writing. That is, we don't read to write, but instead we write to be read. In this formulation, we greatly expand the conditions involved in writing to include the totality of environment. Further, writing consequently becomes an act of creation and not merely an act of imitation. In short, the reason we write is to extend our biological boundaries outside of our bodies to enact a transactional engagement with the environment we find ourselves in. This environment includes, among other things, other people, culture, histories, and languages. In this guise, reading is part of taking fragments of our environment to use them as components of a piece of work that creates unity.
Research: This term was the first term that got me thinking about all of this. As one person pointed out, it is very obvious in all the descriptions of what the "new" FYC should focus on: research. But what is "research" anyway? Do we simply mean teaching students to "do what we do?" Or, simply, to find smarty-pants things to impress an instructor so that they'll give you an A for being a miniature replica of them? And, if this is the case, I think we have good cause to categorically reject this idea of research in our classroom. At the least, we know that less than 1% of all our students will actually go on to get their PhDs and do what we (academics) do. In fact, 10-15% won't even remain in the U of MN after one year. So when I say research, what I'm talking about is "re-search." That is, to take already given assumptions and returning to them in an effort to establish a deeper understanding of the hows and whys things work and work together. The goal and the function of research is to take various experiences and questions and to, through inquiry, develop understandings of them that articulates the interdependence of their consequences as well as the roots of their causes. For Deweyans, this is not so different than his discussion of the function of Art, and I think this is purposeful. Research, as properly understood as an artistic act, underscores the importance of giving unity and coherence to fragmented and disjointed phenomena. The reason we DO research is to better understand how and why things work. We don't do research to "master" one methodology or another, or to show that we know how to find a book in the library. All things involved in research, to be sure. But those parts alone do not describe the "research" act nor why anyone should do it. The goal of research is to foster an attitude or way of being that is more intelligent than what each student was capable of before. Sadly, our focus is on much more trivial things: properly citing sources, finding "scholarly" journals to look at, etc. These are the ends as we understand "research" right now. But this speaks nothing of the richness of experience and our understandings of the world that are possible through inquiry. If that is our end result, the means we use to accomplish it could, justifiably, look radically different.
Writing: It all comes down to this term. After all, "writing" is what we're about. However, the typical understanding of writing is a foolishly simplistic understanding. That is, writing is simply a set of skills that one masters. Master the skills, and you are a good writer. If you know how to organize an essay, have good transitions, use proper grammar/mechanics, and essentially follow the rules, then you are virtually guaranteed success. Therefore, in order to teach writing, one merely needs to teach the skills involved. The fatal flaw with this understanding, though, is that it purports to understand the whole by naming and encoding the parts, with out ever understanding that the whole comes first and THEN we go back and ask "how the heck did that happen?" In short, writing happens; it is only after the fact that we can go back and dissect what occurred in the name of encoding and deciphering the phenomena. However, the mistake is to think that our interpretation of what constituted the whole IS the whole. It is not, it is merely various ways to break down the whole into parts that we can understand. These parts say nothing about writing and are instead merely a shadow of ourselves and our culture. Because of this, there is an infinite amount of ways to interpret or decipher a piece of writing. We can look at its structure, we can look at the meanings of words, we can linguistically investigate the syntax, we can culturally decode the histories of words used, we can look into the rhythm of consonants, we can try to figure out if it is persuasive, and so on and so on. There can never be an exhaustive list of the "parts" that will finally and firmly constitute the whole. So instead, we're left with a whole that can never be reached through the parts, even though the parts define the whole. To try to understand the teaching of writing as based on parts of writing will not really get us anywhere. Instead, when we look at the phenomena of writing as the outcome of certain circumstances, we can then seek to replicate these circumstances in the classroom to understand WHY writing might happen in the first place. Understood as such, writing, and the whole of communication, exists because it answers a certain or particular obstacle or problem we encounter in our environment. That is, we write because we live with others and are not in isolation. For us to survive, we have to find ways to cultivate these interdependencies, whether it be a child figuring out how to get the attention of a parent, or a compositionist trying to figure out how to reconfigure the field. Writing is one such way in which we can interact with our environment as a means to understand it and survive within it. As such, writing is a consequence of a transaction with the world we live in, a world that involves other people, cultures, power, inequities, histories, wants, desires, fears, hopes, and so forth. While writing can happen simply because an instructor demands that it happens, this sort of writing is an empty sort of writing that doesn't really do anything. Instead, if writing is understood as a culturally fixed act of creation that takes fragmented parts of our experience and seeks to unify them in order to understand something, then we're on to something. We don't write to show mastery of something or to shove our opinions down someone else's throat, but rather we write to find harmony in a world in which we must live with others and not against others.
To boil it all down, here is a condensed list of the 5 "R's" of composition with a brief definition:
* Rhetoric: A recognition of subjugated knowledges and the related inquiry into why some forms of knowledge are validated and others are not.
* Revision: An act of creation using a previous draft plus new understandings and insights.
* Reading: The end result of writing; part of the environment from which the phenomena of writing comes from.
* Research: The act of returning to habits of thought/action in order to deepen our understanding of them as well as to revise them.
* Writing: The consequence of the living body in transaction with its environment that includes other people, cultures, histories, and circumstances.
A composition class built upon THESE definitions will obviously be radically different than other composition classrooms, all while still using the same "Rs" as mandated by administration.