Number 8: for the week of March 11, 2010

My dear readers,

The overall theme I see in this week's articles is the idea of inclusion. Namely, what does it involve, and how should it be done? Moreover, what would be the result if and when it is done? This is a type of subject that resonates with me deeply given my physical condition and the sorts of adaptations to the composition process and the thinking that goes with it that I have had to make as a result. In a nutshell, this week's articles remind us that the world is changing no longer are the literary or composition assumptions of dead white males sufficient for everyone. Mind you, while traditional Anglo-American culture is not as world dominating as it used to be, its perceived dominance can lend a sense of marginality to other voices in literary and composition studies.

Flynn makes the assertion in "Composing As a Woman" that composition studies has been marginalized because those who teach it are marginalized both socially and politically. I mostly agree with this, I would simply caution her if I could, that it is not only women who teach composition or literature. Regardless, I believe that the marginality of composition studies comes as much from a lack of understanding of its importance as from the gender demographics of its dedicated instructors. After all, as we have read over and over again there is still a strong segment in English that believes writing is a finite skill that can be ultimately mastered very early on in a person's academic career and therefore should be flawless by the time a student reaches college. Well, anyone who has taught English 101 or 102 knows that this is not the case. I admit, the bulk of comments I have to put on student papers do not have to do with content but instead with mechanical issues. What can I do? I can't just ignore such mistakes, or else the students may never stop making them, and that isn't a good thing either.

I am all in favor of including women writers in discussions of composition and literature in the way described in "Feminism in Composition". When I introduce my students to various literary styles and movements through their 10 minute writings I do my best to have a good balance of male and female writers. The trouble with it is, partially owing to the fact that I am a male when I introduce my students to a female writer, many of my students, both male and female, seem to cop an attitude that I am only introducing said female writer for the sake of "political correctness". I assure you this is not the case, but I sometimes have a hell of a time convincing them of that. Is it just that they are so conditioned to accept male writers as legitimate and female writers as marginal?

Royster's article touches on the same idea of marginality when she describes having to sit through diatribes about her own experience by people who know little about her. You might think as a white male of Southern lineage that I would have no experience with this. However, as a physically disabled student I have had to deal with this many times throughout my life. Particularly, in junior high and high school my teachers often made assumptions about what they thought I could and couldn't do based on their own estimations of disabled people they had previously known but who had not had the same or even a similar disability to my own. Yet because they were the authority figures I had to, at least in the beginning, conform to their expectations and only gradually be able to show them what I could actually do. Frustratingly, coming to college did not end this scenario. In college though at least I had the option of dropping a course if the professor seemed unwilling to accommodate me physically.

I love how "on the rhetoric and precedents of racism gives the example of the Spanish missionaries talking to the Incan wise men, and how when the natives did not automatically understand and agree with what the Spaniards were saying the Spaniards became angry, attacked, and robbed them. In an academic sense, isn't that what happens every time a teacher runs across a student who just can't or won't get with the program? Most professors, when faced with a student who just cannot manage to grasp the ideas behind standard English will first try to pawn the student off on anybody they can, and then invariably when that doesn't work will become frustrated with the student and probably issue a bad grade. I can say this, knowing that I have done it myself.

It's like the second teacher comment in the Zamel article where the professor says that the ESL students he has encountered are not adequately prepared to do the work he asks of them. Well no, if you focus only on surface correctness, standards of which can vary from language to language and even dialect to dialect then maybe they aren't prepared, but is that all there is? How are these same students performing other aspects of the class? Like it talks about in "the Place the world Englishes" English is now a truly multi-national language. England America Canada and Australia no longer necessarily are the standard bearers of English. The Caribbean and other parts of the former British Empire have begun to take over that role.
Despite this, standard English composition as almost wholeheartedly refused to adapt to any other dialect than that of upper-class white bred Anglo America. Please understand, as I say this I am fully aware that I am a white male of European American ancestry but the fact remains high, and those like me are no longer a majority. Although I found the article by Silva the least comprehensible of those we dealt with this week I do think it made some important points. This is especially true when he talked about the idea that second language students appeared to expel more of their energy on trying to achieve surface correctness. Well, of course, if you're trying to fit into a culture that is not your own because you think it would benefit you to do so then you are going to try to emulate those whose position you desire as much as possible.

It hasn't necessarily to do with composition, but the entire time I was growing up, my family, particularly my mother, insisted I appear as "normal" as I possibly could in every aspect of my life. That included entering mainstream classes several years before I thought I was ready, and after a while even refusing to associate with many of my former special-education classmates. Why did I do this? Because that's what "normal" people were supposed to do, I thought. It's funny to think back on it now, but in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I considered it the greatest compliment in the world for someone to say to me "you don't act disabled". I would smile ear to ear every time someone said that. It was not until years later that I realized how ridiculous that was. Of course I act disabled, because I am disabled. The people giving me that "complement" were the ones who didn't act disabled because they weren't. I can only imagine that ESL students and other minorities go through the same types of situations everyday.

Thank you so much for your time,

James Altman