Poor Professor Higgins Indeed
(A few thoughts on assessment inspired by Henry Higgins)
In its best formulation, "assessment" represents a genre of communication. It communicates the effects of pedagogic practice to interested parties. In the most common scenario, assessment is a channel of communication between instructor and student, informing the student of how they are "living up to" the expectations of the instructor. But assessment also communicates in other, very interesting ways. For instance, instructors often rely on technologies of assessment to understand themselves as educators, using data generated by assessment (whether it be numbers, narratives, grades, or even moods and emotions) to construct an identity or notion of self (for example, an effective instructor, a challenging instructor, or perhaps even, a bad instructor.)
In addition to this, assessment communicates to interested groups external to the classroom, whether they be administrators, legislators, parents, or even other instructors and other students, information about what goes on in the classroom. And it is here where we can most easily see what exactly is being communicated. A figured world, as Holland et al define them, is a "socially and culturally constructed realm of interpretation in which particular characters and actors are recognized, significance is assigned to certain acts, and particular outcomes are valued over others," and this is exactly the mechanism through which meaningful signs or artifacts are produced that are then communicated through assessment. To back up and put that in simpler terms, in order to assess something we first have to project an ideal to which we can then compare the actual. The space between the two, the ideal and the actual, thus becomes the product of assessment. This ideal, though, is through and through culturally mediated. It represents ideological positions, often those of groups with a disproportionate amount of power. In a sense, then, assessment communicates a particular imagined social reality (or a figured world) to students. It tells them how closely they are aligned to that social reality. For some students, assessment may tell them that they are "in the club." For other students, assessment may simply remind them that they are not wanted by the club.
The ultimate goal of assessment, then, is to make visible the relative social positions and statuses of all engaged in education, from taxpayers to legislators to teachers to students. Consequently, one way we can define and think of assessment is as a technology for producing difference. In it's most simplest formation, all students are "equal" prior to measurement. I say "equal" with quotation marks though because we know students are unequal prior to entering the classroom simply because we live in a society that is unequal. The examination, part of assessment, is the mechanism through which structural inequality inherent to individual student experience is converted to an artifact or tool. It is exactly this measurement, or examination, or assessment that marks difference, hierarchalizes, normalizes, and stratifies. And not just with students either, I might add. As a technology of power in the Foucauldian sense, it quite efficiently determines the conduct of individuals and submits them to certain ends or domination. Assessment is not just a technology but is also collective action that can be thought of as an interconnected and interdependent network of various positions and statuses through which each has a role and function to play. This applies to instructors, administrators, legislators, parents, taxpayers, and indeed students.
To illustrate this concept of assessment as interconnected activity, consider the following. Instructors rely on assessment to construct an identity of self, as mentioned before. They also rely on it to satisfy certain demands by administrators. Administrators rely on assessment to monitor and track the effectiveness and thus value of teachers. Students rely on assessment to help them position themselves within specific fields through which they can then similarly construct an identity of self (for example, a bad student, a resistant student, a good student). Further, students require the tokens or artifacts created by assessment that they can then hopefully convert into usable cultural capital when they attempt to "cash in" their education in the job market. As such, employers rely on assessment to assign a market value to potential labor in terms of future hires and the compensation they will demand. And of course, as we all know, assessment often enters the realm of political posturing, serving as fodder for claims concerning the need for various forms of education, all of which support diverse ideological desires. As a system, all engaged in assessment have a stake in it. What those stakes are for each position (student, teacher, parent, etc) are determined by social status, experience, position, age, class, and so forth. What is remarkable, and the final point I want to make before moving on, is that it is thus impossible to wholly transcend this structured collective activity. To put it in very blunt terms, assessment cannot be avoided. Even if, for example, if one teacher in a class refuses to grade papers, to offer a rubric, to rank students, the logic of the educational system will do it anyway. To even be in a classroom is itself a form of assessment. Schools as an institution are in the business of assessment, if only because we exist in a culture that demands the thorough and rigorous marking of subjects so that social goods can be distributed unequally. The question, then, is not whether to assess or not nor simply "how to" assess. Rather, the appropriate question to ask is how can we engage in assessment that also explores the function and effect assessment has on students, teachers, and our society. I will have a bit more to say on this a little later.
So what does any of this have to do with Professor Higgins? For those not familiar, the play (and later the movie) My Fair Lady is based off of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. In the plot, a common flower girl (Eliza) comes to desire speech lessons from a famous linguist (Higgins) who had indicated that he could teach her to "speak like a lady." From this, a wager is set: Higgins will teach Eliza to speak so properly that the upper-crust society in England would not know her lower class gutter background. Above all, it is a story about transformation brought by a change in the ways we use words. In this way, My Fair Lady represents the master myth for those who work in writing instruction.
While there are innumerable strands and motifs that could be used to illustrate and understand key aspects of our practice as writing instructors, there are two major ones that I wish to focus on. The first concerns the ultimate nature of language as being primarily ideological. While it is easy to read the character of Professor Higgins as an unrepentant, overbearing tyrant that cares for no one beside himself, there are a couple key moments which reveal a deeper, highly progressive side to Higgins which profoundly complicates superficial readings.
The first moment comes at the crucial breakthrough of Eliza's speech patterns. In the midst of a grueling all night lesson in which Higgins is attempting to teach Eliza to say "The rain in spain falls mainly on the plain," Eliza comes to a near mental breakdown brought on by constant frustration, lack of success, and dangerously little sleep. After she proclaims that she can't and that she is tired, Higgins responds by saying:
Eliza, I know you're tired. I know your head aches. I know your nerves are as raw as meat in a butcher's window. But think of what you're trying to accomplish. Think of what you're dealing with. The majesty and grandeur of the English Language. It's the greatest possession we have. The noblest sentiments that ever flowed in the hearts of men are contained in its extraordinary, imaginative and musical mixtures of sounds. That's what you've set yourself to conquer, Eliza. And conquer it you will.
It is at this moment that Eliza ceases to say "the rhine in spine" and, for the first time, articulates it as "the rain in spain..." In the movie, this is the moment of ultimate transition. In our practices, it is the moment we all yearn for. It is a moment of intense compassion in which Higgins reveals that he understand the enormity of the task at hand, but that he also will not back down until Eliza succeeds.
Think of what you're trying to accomplish.
Maybe, just maybe, this is what we're trying to do when we set out to assess our students. Maybe we're trying to lay bare just what it is that the students are trying to accomplish, thus forming some sort of solidarity with them.
Think of what you're trying to accomplish
Now obviously Rex Harrison delivers the line much better than I can write it, but it is here that we can see an uncanny foreshadowing of what is essentially Lisa Delpit's argument concerning "genres of power." For Delpit, one of the biggest problems concerning much "expressivist" and "progressive" writing instruction in the 1980s was that it ignored the fact that specific "codes" or "genres" inherent to those in power were not explicitly taught to underprivileged groups in schools. Whereas affluent students would pick up these "discourses" at home and had no need to learn them in school, non-affluent students had no ability to come in contact with these discourses and as such oppressive social structures were in large part simply replicated. For Delpit, the solution was to first discern the nature and function of these "codes of power" and then to explicitly and directly teach them to students. Even though the term "assessment" had not necessarily arrived yet, In this scenario, assessment becomes an incredibly powerful tool for clearly articulating these "codes of power" as well as explicitly communicating to students when and where they do not have mastery over these codes of power.
But is this the last word on the matter? How do we respond to Higgins's "Think of what you're trying to do?" Eliza's response, articulated first by others and then finally and forcefully by herself is perhaps the most powerful refrain in the entire play: "What is to become of me?"
In the beginning before Eliza knows what transformations will happen to her, it is the housekeeper who speaks for Eliza, asking Higgins what is to happen to her after her lessons. Higgins, for his part, speaking on our behalf, is in large part unconcerned with what commences after the final lesson. And how could Eliza speak for herself yet? While it was her choice to seek out lessons, there is no way to communicate the effects of education on someone. Yes, our students choose to come into our classrooms, but what have they really chosen?
Oh, what is to become of me?
Once Eliza has mastered the speaking patterns of the well to do, the question takes on the utmost poignancy, and should for us as well. What is lacking in many forms of assessment, and what, potentially is the most important thing, is an ability for outcomes based assessment to say much about what the results of "assessment" might be. Eliza's "what is to become of me" is beyond the scope of measuring the success of our efforts. By the end of the movie, she has passed all her tests and has truly learned to speak like a lady. However, proficiency, as demonstrated by successful testing and positive assessment, does not, will not, and cannot transcend prevailing social conditions external to the test, the classroom, the university. Eliza now has the language of power, but that power does not translate into usable cultural capital. Her options are still constrained by gender roles (among others), leaving her with only "false" options. As Higgins points out, she could get married, and perhaps that's the best she can hope for, still squarely within the overarching logic of the cultural system, to which she only temporarily left.
One of Allan Luke's devastating critiques of genre approaches to literacy takes mention of the fact that "codes of power," by definition, cannot be made explicit. For doing so would mean they are no longer codes of power. Imagine a world in which all students honestly and sincerely passed all their classes at identical levels of competency and mastery. What would we do then? We would have to reconfigure our conceptions of competency so that difference is produced. It is not within the system's goals to have everyone be equal, despite the overture to "equality" often made by proponents of standards based assessment. This takes on additional meaning when we consider the current economic crisis we find ourselves in. What do we make of our students who do everything we ask of them, perform to their best abilities, and still cannot find employment due to the fact that our economy is in shambles? What have these students "done wrong?" How does assessment handle these realities that more and more of our students are facing?
While there are many more things that could be discussed in relation to My Fair Lady and the teaching of writing, I want to close with one final thought on how we might approach "assessment" in our classrooms.
I was told this story a few months ago, and I am positive this story has been told to so many people in so many different ways that it most assuredly has been embellished. But even if it has moved into the realm of fiction, it is still (I think), a useful fiction.
A while ago an instructor at a high school in a Minnesota public school district decided that, because of his personal beliefs, he could not in good conscious administer a new standards based test to his students. But instead of just openly resisting, he kept his job and continued to prepare his students for the tests he found so offensive. But instead of just preparing his students for the test, he also spoke with them frankly about his opposition to the test, the social and political function of testing, and why he believed this approach to education was fundamentally flawed.
When it came time to administer the test, a deal was worked out with the teachers union to allow other teachers to administer the test for him.
While the students prepared for and ultimately took the test, I guarantee you that no one in that class will ever take a test again in the same way. In a sense, this act on the part of the teacher had fundamentally changed the way students understand and engage in assessment practices.
Since I don't believe we can ever exist in a utopian world in which we can simply not grade or assess students, this story offers a potential way out: If we engage in assessment while also being open about the function and role of assessment from a social and cultural perspective, assessment then becomes a powerful form of cultural critique. We can help students get past the gatekeepers so integral to education, to perform at high levels, and to pick up discourses or genres they may not have been born into all while helping students to understand how the question "what will become of me" will also apply to them.