Number 3: for the week of Thursday, February 4, 2010

My dear readers,

Overall, this week’s articles concern the Bell curve although it is not mentioned in so many words in any articles, by which I mean than the typical students up to an acceptable level somewhere near the middle of academic expectations. Hence all the different labels used in the two Rose articles to describe writers in need of assistance. The label “handicapped” especially reminded me not only my own substandard often degrading experiences in special-education classrooms but also Rose's seminal book Lives on the Boundary. The basic thesis of which I take to be if you're not up to par, then in society's view, there must be something inherently wrong with you.

The reason this is such a big thing for me is not only have I both attended and taught special-education courses, but also I was initially, briefly, denied the right to graduate from high school because some district administrators believed that no one who ever been in special-education at any time in their lives could possibly succeed beyond a high school level. Beyond the personal I believe the article “Inventing the University” sums up the core problem addressed in these articles in its title. Every one of this week articles talks about students having to invent the university, that is, having to learn the culture of the University and adapt to it as quickly as possible.

It’s the cold hard truth that in most university situations an individual students experience does not matter except to the extent to which it can be phrased in terms of experiences which traditional academics will understand. In a purely academic sense it does not matter that I nearly died on the operating table only a few short weeks ago. That experience only matters, academically speaking, if I can interweave it into an academic point which connects to a particular assignment I've been given. Any other mention of my experience then is, technically speaking, completely irrelevant. Different attitudes and cultural mores are only important in academia, as it stands now, to the extent to which they can make themselves sound virtually identical to that type of reality with which conventional academics are already comfortable.

The whole idea of academics being comfortable or uncomfortable with a situation underlines the article Diving In: an introduction to basic writing which outlines the five stages that teachers of writing have to go through to reconcile themselves to the task of teaching their students. The stages described sounds somewhat reminiscent of the stages of grief after the death of a loved one. After all in the first stage guarding the Tower tries to act as if nothing has changed at all, as if students are just waiting breathlessly for your knowledge with nothing else on their minds or in their lives. Mind you, it is actually sounding the depths which is most interesting to me. It talked about teachers being reflective about themselves about their teaching style about conditions in which they teach. But honestly how many teachers actually do that? How many teachers actually look critically at their own teaching style and when something isn't going well are willing to say to themselves maybe I'm not doing what I should. Maybe it's not the students’ fault? I constantly try to think about my own teaching style and I try not to lay the blame for what if anything that goes wrong onto student until I have made sure that I'm doing everything that I can do right.

Mind you, I would say that because of my position, but the fact remains I am trying. But how many people do that? How many teachers think consciously or not, that students simply are not worthy of their talents? How many teachers are willing to dive in and try to get at what is really lying behind actual student troubles with writing? Unfortunately I would say not nearly enough. This may lead to the idea mentioned in several the articles including “stretch at 10” about basic writing courses being outsourced community colleges and the varying results of such decisions. Well, of course if you feel like the problems with beginner student writing come entirely from the students and not all from the instructors, then of course someone especially with tenure status won't want to deal with the frustration of trying to bring the students up to par. I wouldn't either.
Of course, as mentioned in the “Stretch” article many of the students who took the outsourced writing classes never came back for the full university experience or if they did they didn't do well because the basic curriculum they had been taught didn't match up. How could it have? It wasn't taught by the same people with the same goals. Also I would almost bet that the students who took such basic writing classes probably faced some sort of stigma about having to do so.

Hence, unfortunately, we get to the point in the “Scarlet P” article about students plagiarizing for various reasons. One of the main ones being simply to avoid remedial classes and the stigma that may come with them. Mind you, I did think it was funny to read all the mentioning of a rising tide of plagiarism. Is that really the case? Or is it simply the fact that we started looking for it? I don't have to rethink the tide is really It's a bit like steroids in baseball I don't believe there are more players using steroids now I just think the cases of steroid users are more public right now. However the public believes that there are more than ever before. That sends another main theme of this week article the idea of perception who has the right to observe the situation and make determinations about it?

Thank you so much for your time,

James Altman