The problem with that, of course, is that it is simply not true. But what is more interesting is when these water levels shift a great amount in a short span of time we often times realize the fallacy of our static-oriented mindset.

Take for example Lake Delton in the Wisconsin Dells. It is a man-made lake, and for years stood as the cornerstone of a small economic machine that drove the local tourist economy. And then, during the floods, the man-made dam that held the water in broke open, and drained the entire lake.

What followed is what I'm trying to get at. For the first time in a long time, sans water, residents of the area saw the bed of Lake Delton. It was these startling images that reminded us that many assumptions people had about the way things work were simply wrong.

In that same vein, with the deepening of the recession we're in, the draining of our national economic lake is revealing for the first time in a long time several misconceptions and false assumptions/assertions we've been making for far too long. One of the biggest false assumptions we've been making here in higher-education that is now finally being exposed as the economy worsens concerns our relationship to preparing students for the job market.

Simply put: what goes on in the classroom is a small, insignificant part of very large and complex equation that results in gainful employment upon leaving college. Take for example the thousands upon thousands of incredibly qualified, highly intelligent college graduates who are unable to find any work simply because the economic situation shies away from hiring new employees. For these unfortunate individuals, the ability to thoughtfully draft a cogent argument has absolutely no effect on their ability to secure employment in any area that would require such a skill. In fact, it might make these individuals too expensive to hire in this economic climate.

This, of course, completely shoots a very large hole in the argument that we should be preparing students, through batteries of testable skills, for the job market. Frankly, it's not the skills that results in a student getting a job. Once a student has passed all but the most fundamental levels of "skills" in various areas (which most do well before they reach college), then whether they got an A or a C in a first year writing classroom is ultimately of absolutely no importance what-so-ever. The "skills" most employers need out of employees are usually the sorts of "skills" that are learned on the job, and simply cannot be provided for in college classrooms, especially college writing classrooms.

What lands a student a job? An expanding economy and luck. Not much else, as we're finding out. Take out the expanding economy part and NO student, regardless of how well they did in school, will fare well on the job market. "Job market skills training" helps only the ones who actually get jobs, and this number is falling sharply as the economy worsens. What of the ones who get squeezed out and cannot find a job that, while they may be highly qualified for, just does not exist? These are the ones I stay up at night worrying about.

In my mind, the question now turns to: what sorts of classrooms might make a student's life more worthy as they realize the job market doesn't care who they are when they are standing in the unemployment line with a college degree in one hand and an inside-out empty pocket in the next. We can't stake our role in society as an institution that gives people "skills" that ultimately are only worthwhile for the select few who wind up using them on the job market. We have to be about something else. Somehow I doubt any textbook is up to this task.

But every now and then, I get asked why I do what I do. The first question of what it is I do is hard to answer, but answering why I do what I do is actually really easy.

For many people, "writing" is something they usually take for granted. The simplistic understanding of writing is that it is a set of skills and techniques one masters and then employs. Sadly, even for many people who earn a living "teaching writing," this is as far as their understanding of writing goes. To people like this, the "key figures" in the field of composition are the authors of textbooks, handbooks, and style guides. People like James McCrimmon, Diana Hacker, and countless publishing houses that peddle exorbitantly expensive writing manuals to hapless freshman (e.g., the Longman's Writers Companion, The Bedford Writers Handbook, etc).

For me, one of the key documents in my work is Michel Foucault's "What is an author?" This essay describes the field of inquiry in composition studies as I understand it. That is, what is important are questions concerning the role and function of writing, authorship, creativity, and so forth within culture, not prior or external to it.

Ultimately, the most important thing about using Foucault's essay as the starting point in any composition setting is that it forces us to understand not only the rules of writing as being a product of culture, but writing itself to be a wholly cultural phenomena. Using this as the basis for any work in the field (be it in a classroom or through research), what we're talking about when we talk about writing is ourselves, not some eternal, external set of rules that exist prior to culture. When we talk about communication what we're talking about are the ways in which we extend our biological boundaries to include others in our environment. Or, to put it bluntly, anytime we talk about how we communicate, what we're really talking about is how we negotiate the ways we live together within a society; or, in other words, Dewey's definition of "culture." In essence, to talk of communication or writing is simply to talk about who we are as a culture and how our culture works. Thus, writing IS culture.

Writing, as a form of communication, is distinct and unique from other forms in that it exists within a temporal realm. Unlike vocal speech, writing persists through time. It is because of this that when we talk about writing in specific, not only are we talking about the ways we currently live together, but we are also in a position to talk about ways we want to live together. Learning to write is consequently learning to take the stuffs of the environment we find ourselves in and using those things to create something new. Writing is democracy as Whitman understood it. Writing is art as Dewey understood it.

So, to answer the question of why I do what I do is rather simple. In my understanding of the task, the teaching of writing is ultimately engaging in an act and a process that is directly related to purposefully seeking out new and better ways to live both individually and as a society. I joke that I would rename the department of "writing studies" to "the department of democracy and hope." Cheesy, but not that far off the mark from how I understand what it is we should do as teachers of writing.

So, to stave off boredom, I'm baking bread and thinking of a reading list to try to tackle this summer. So, with no further ado...

OK, so that was weird enough. But even weirder? The man was Al Gore.

2. I remember a Stanley Fish essay once concerning how to know when you've encountered a poem. Frankly, I can't remember for the life of me what he said. No matter. Dewey answers it again for me. You know you've encountered a real poem (or any real work of art for that matter) when the past, the present, and the future all meet in a singular moment in time and experience and at the conclusion of that moment all three have changed. Of course, this greatly expands the definition of "poetry" beyond anything that can be captured in a literature class.

3. I am concerned about critical pedagogy. Let me explain what I mean by "concerned about." I am concerned because I agree with the basic premise that is the core of any conception of critical pedagogy; mainly, that the classroom is a culturally (and thus politically) situated space. Further, even IF it were possible to have a valueless, context-free classroom space, we still wouldn't want such a thing. If schools are an extension of our hope for a better tomorrow, the last thing we would ever want would be to remove the concepts of struggle and creation from sites of learning and understanding.

That said, the results of the post-structuralist moment we are still living in has cautioned us and taught us to be more careful of totalizing and universalizing agents or discourses in our thought. While we've learned to be more sensitive to voices and forms of knowledge that have been swept under the rug by desires to find the "ONE ANSWER" or the "true" route to social justice free from "false consciousness," the floor we now find ourselves standing on is weak at best. In fact, there is more than a little truth to the notion that post-modernism is best understood by what it avoids than by what it stands for. Dewey may give us back something that is relatively stable enough to go back into the classrooms as empowered educators.

4. The term "tacit tradition" is often used by people who want to talk about Dewey and want to talk about composition. To me, it is much more than a "tacit" tradition. Once we jettison the idea that we can, through drills and worksheets, "teach" anything about how to write, we are left in a vacuous space in which the only reason we have for existing is that we somehow work with something that has something very important to do with democracy (or, the way we live with each other). Dewey's work is our work. We just haven't realized it fully, yet.

5. I don't believe in the term "false consciousness" and neither does Dewey. But, that also does not mean that it is impossible to have an unexamined consciousness. Problems happen when we never take the time to sort through our experiences to come to some sort of understanding of why we have mapped out our experiences the way that we have. Sometimes, it's this reflection alone that is enough to dramatically alter the way we think about how we live.

6. For Dewey, it's not that our future is not set; it's that the world itself is still forming, changing, and becoming.

7. Dewey reminds us that even in the Genesis story, it took God a full 6 days to create the world. It's not enough to have something to work with, it also needs a little time. To demand otherwise is to expect the impossible

8. The scientific method does not guarantee the "Truth." But, making sure your ideas somehow correspond with how things happen in everyday experiences is a pretty good way to make sure that those ideas will be good enough to do what you want them to do. To do otherwise is to throw some feathers on a bus and expect it to fly. I've created a few chicken buses in my day. The trick, as I see it, is to create fewer chicken buses and to just see where a regular bus will go.

9. Parents, and sometimes students, continually complain when professors have "an agenda." Of course they do. If they didn't, nothing would get done. But if what they really mean is that professors have a vision of a sort of world they want to be in and conduct their classes accordingly, then of course they do. Instructors are as much a member of a community as parents, and to pretend otherwise is to live a lie.

10. Dewey wanted to change his use of the word "experience" to "culture." I find this significant. It is too easy to say "whose experience?" and to answer with "my own private ideas." Instead, if we are to ask "whose culture?" we are left with a whole other ballgame.

11. The goal of education has traditionally been seen as a process of mere transmission of the world; the point, as I understand it, is to make the world better through active participation in it.

However, even though this movie has been on my netflix queue for over a year, I still have not found the strength to ever let it reach the number one spot (thus sending it to me). I guess that's a complicated way of saying I haven't seen it.

I only have a general idea what it's about. It's about an idealistic young teacher who has problems in his own personal life. At some point, he finds it hard to separate the personal from the professional, and in this some barrier between him and his student(s) breaks down.

I'm assuming, since this is Hollywood, that somehow the teacher in the film finds salvation and consequently becomes a mythic hero figure.

I think this is why I've subconsciously been avoiding this movie. I don't want to see a screen representation of the teacher as a heroic figure. It frightens me. And the reason it frightens me is that teaching, to me, is not a heroic act at all. When I walk in a classroom, I don't feel like a hero. Instead, I feel a sense of tremendous humility and frailty. I feel exposed; and, consequently, I feel human.

Freire and bell hooks, among others, talk of "love" when they talk of teaching. This seems appropriate. The risks of teaching are the risks of love. Each day you have to put the fact that you care on the line, as others (both inside and outside the classroom) sometimes try to take advantage of that, drag you through the mud, and disrespect the humanness of the teacher that is often times taken for granted. We're not machines, we're feeling beings, too.

Of course, as with other forms of love, you love in spite of the risks. You get up with the dirt and grass still in your teeth and smile and ask for more. Maybe that's masochistic. I don't know. Maybe it explains why so many teachers, professors, instructors lead horrifically tormented lives that sometimes over take them. Again, I don't know.

Rarely there are Hollywood endings. As soon as you think you've made a break through, reached some sort of pedagogical salvation, new students come in who question your abilities, your credentials, your worth as a human being. You're not a human being to many, you're simply someone sent in to follow through on the predetermined rules of the game. They roll their eyes, administration never trusts you to do as you believe, and parents never think you're doing enough. Heroes? No.

For some of us, it's enough to know that somewhere something is happening out there. Sometimes we hear of it, many times years after the fact in a coffee shop, from a letter, a chance encounter outside of a lecture hall. Sometimes we'll hear those words that makes it worth it: "that class" and "changed me." It doesn't have to be big, but enough to know that somewhere something, even a minuscule realization, changed someone for the better and you were half of the cause.

But that's not a Hollywood ending. That's love in the real world. And there are times when it sits on the cold steel of a razor.

1). Style is what happens when rules are broken. If everyone used Strunk and White as their bible, then we'd all write like E.B. White. Boring. Diversity of language and composition is what makes it all interesting.

2). In elementary, junior high, and high school, we had to pass these "tests" for gym (physical education). One test in particular that I could never pass was the mile run. Most times I had trouble even completing it. However, looking back, I realized that this test consisted of going outside and running. Never ever did we spend weeks/months slowly working up to running a mile. Rather, the idea was either you could do it or you couldn't. In other words, we were never given the chance to succeed, and consequently were set up to fail. I felt hopeless to change the state of my fitness until I realized that maybe I should read up on it and educate myself. I started running 30 seconds and walking 4 minutes. Then I was running 1 minute and walking 3. After a summer, I ran my first 5k race in a time of under 24 minutes.

I felt hopeless about it because I was never given the sort of training that focused on what was possible. Instead, the only education I got was education that focused on what already was.

I find myself thinking about this when I hear young students speak of their apathy for politics and the community they live in. I think of this when I hear them say "what's the point?" and "my vote wouldn't matter anyway."

3). As of right now, I refuse to talk to anyone about our "situations" in Afghanistan and Iraq until they have read Steinbeck's The Moon is Down. Then we can have a good discussion.

4). The cost of a frozen pizza (a staple of poor grad students all over) has reached 5 dollars at many local grocery stores. Grad students in CLA haven't had a substantial raise since 2004 (and perhaps longer). Makes one wonder how much longer it'll be until they threaten to organize again. Starving your employees doesn't increase their sense of duty to their employers.

5). Liberty, equality, justice, and freedom are not privileges granted to those born out of dumb luck on American soil. They are an attitude about living; they are a duty towards one's community. Lou Dobbs, if he wasn't an idiot, might realize this.

6). Why are there shortages of teachers? Why are there even more shortages of male teachers? I don't know. I hope to get a greater perspective on this through the class I'm teaching this spring.

7). Dear Spring, I miss you.

Just now I saw a report on MSNBC in which a commentator tried to explain how Obama pulled off the "progressive dream" of having the youth turn out and that explains his victory.

Except, it doesn't. He also got out the vote with women. Across the board. Against a woman.

Again, attempting to use old frameworks and semantics to describe what is happening is futile. We are now in a period where the lines that have hardened over the past 40 years no longer matter. Both left and right.

And one further thought on all this: I don't think Obama created this. But, in this climate, he has been anointed by a pervasive social and political climate as the leader of what is to come. The times demand something else, and no one has control of that right now.

Further, Obama himself might not actually, in reality, be what people want. He might be just as much of a sneaky politician as anyone in the campaign. In substance, there might not be much difference. But this is not about the "reality" of Obama that makes this interesting. Rather, and I cannot stress this enough, it is what the caucus goers in Iowa committed themselves to believing what is true.

That is, what voters have decided to believe is what matters the most. Whether or not Obama truly represents this is a secondary concern.

The question remains, how will this affect liberal arts education, which for better or worse, have become the safe haven for critical theorists and post-structuralists in America. There will be those in denial, but it seems this era is starting to fall apart.

1). While I generally find the concept of agonistic pluralism in various forms of "radical democracy" (as especially theorized by Mouffe and Laclau in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy) to be especially interesting and promising, the difficult jump from theory to practice is one that I find most fascinating in that it exposes a strange anti-Americanism rift in academia. If in an agonistic pluralist culture we are to embrace difference as our main mode of civic interaction, then we have to concede that the only way we can do this is to rely on an a priori set of "ground rules" or standards by which we can express our differences in ways that make our differences visible, understandable, and meaningful.

Why this exposes an anti-American rift in academia is that this is a really confusing way of re-inventing what the framers of the United States constitution set out to do by setting up a federal republic. Fearing a direct democracy in which minority rights could be trampled by majority decisions, the framers sought to ensure that all citizens were equal and subject to the laws of the country. Therefore, certain rights were deemed to be unalienable, or above discussion. It is these rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that consequently served as the tools of commensurability in which competing or divergent needs, desires, and wants of different groups in society could be understood, evaluated, and discussed.

Yet, to get there, we don't look to Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Paine, etc etc. We instead attempt to re-invent the wheel by going through Marx and a whole slew of other, non-American theorists to arrive at what our country, in many regards, was originally founded on. (And don't even get me started on Marx. John Adams was warning people about merchants and businessmen as early as 1776...some 42 years before Marx was even born).

This leads me to my second winter break thought:

2). Post 1960s/1970s, we've replaced Abe Lincoln with Foucault, John Quincy Adams with Derrida, and Henry Clay with Adorno. What this leads to is a situation in which young students feel no reason to participate in the politics and democracy of their own country. Why should they when every day the message they get is one of relentless criticism of America, even though many of the issues our founders sought to confront and solve are not so different than the ones critical theorists from other countries have commented on. The real danger of this sort of bias in education is that students honestly believe there is no way for them to achieve liberty and equality through the democratic participation in politics, and consequently don't bother. This allows a small minority of those who already are within power to further strengthen their grip on the political mechanisms that drive our country.

It seems to me that the regulative idea that we heirs of the Enlightenment, we Socratists, most frequently use to criticize the conduct of various conversational partners is that of ‘needing education in order to outgrow their primitive fear, hatreds, and superstitions’ . . . It is a concept which I, like most Americans who teach humanities or social science in colleges and universities, invoke when we try to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic, religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own . . . The fundamentalist parents of our fundamentalist students think that the entire ‘American liberal establishment’ is engaged in a conspiracy. The parents have a point. Their point is that we liberal teachers no more feel in a symmetrical communication situation when we talk with bigots than do kindergarten teachers talking with their students . . . When we American college teachers encounter religious fundamentalists, we do not consider the possibility of reformulating our own practices of justification so as to give more weight to the authority of the Christian scriptures. Instead, we do our best to convince these students of the benefits of secularization. We assign first-person accounts of growing up homosexual to our homophobic students for the same reasons that German schoolteachers in the postwar period assigned The Diary of Anne Frank. . . You have to be educated in order to be . . . a participant in our conversation . . . So we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable. We are not so inclusivist as to tolerate intolerance such as yours . . . I don’t see anything herrschaftsfrei [domination free] about my handling of my fundamentalist students. Rather, I think those students are lucky to find themselves under the benevolent Herrschaft [domination] of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents . . . I am just as provincial and contextualist as the Nazi teachers who made their students read Der Stürmer; the only difference is that I serve a better cause.

Take THAT critical pedagogues!

I ordered the book before really planning lessons around it as a symbol of my own personal commitment to doing something with the book. As T. L. and I talked about last year, even though neither of us are really sure what to think of it, there is some inherent value in putting a book like this in a group of adults and letting them mull it over.

I do know, however, what I do not want this book to do in the class.
These things are:
* To teach white people how "bad" they are
* To enforce racial "political correctness"
* To make the class a class about race
* To incite feelings of shame and serve as a confessor for racial sins
* To attempt to get students to articulate well worn "code words" for denying culpability when it comes to race.

However, trying to plan ahead to how the book DOES fit into the class is not so easy. It's not directly about writing. It's not even necessarily a "scholarly" work.

But what I do find fascinating is how it delves into the politics of racial representation. That is, Thandeka's notion of "non-white zones" as being a defining factor in how white people end up representing themselves and living their daily lives is, much more than superficially, very closely related to how many critical theorists view the dynamics of power at play in forms of discourse.

To me, trying to figure out just how it is that institutional power is internalized and consequently individualized in our own personal writing is one and the same with Thandeka's search to figure out just how it is that "whiteness" has disappeared from our vocabulary but instead turned into our secret mode of being that defines who "we," think, act, and dream.

The only thing I don't know is how students will react to it, and what they will get out of it. But, as always, that is always the big question that is never answered until it is brought up in class.