Professional Disagreement

In order to avoid working on my prospectus, I’ve spent some time perusing other blogs or incessantly checking my Facebook page. Since she is now working in a new setting a friend (Italian at Heart)started a new blog about her teaching. I understand her joy at being in a new department, but I want to point out something.

In her blog the IaH mentioned that at her new school composition is clearly labeled as, and clearly understood to be, a service course. She also said that everyone here at her old school “was so caught up in making sure tat the course wasn’t designated ‘service,’ they really lost focus that it WAS A SERVICE COURSE!”

The IaH used to teach at the junior high level. Her experience with the requirements made of teachers and students at that level would make teaching writing seem like a service course. I mean that when the goal of a course is meeting certain benchmarks any course becomes a service course.

However, at the University teaching writing (composition) carries both a different function and a different history. The failure of this department does not lie in the desire to make sure that composition is not a service course, but the failure of the department to really explain why composition should not be seen as a service course.

There are several reasons for not thinking of composition as a service course, which I have to note does not mean that grammar or writing basics are ignored. The easiest place for me to start is to ask you to step back for a moment and imagine a general education course in mathematics. No one would expect that if you took Math 101 you were ready for Accounting 201 or Chemistry 320. Why is that? Well, because while both Accounting and Chemistry require math, they require different types of math. Math 101 just cannot do it all, which is why Accounting and Chemistry have their own beginning courses.

Since writing is such an integral part of so many disciplines it becomes easy for the history professor to say, “I can’t believe these kids can’t write. What do they learn in Composition?” In that moment the History professor forgets that History as a discipline actually asks students to write in a very different way from English. The DH and I cannot read each others papers because the way our disciplines (History & English respectively) use verbs and voice is so vastly different. I tell him to take out all the passive voice and he tells me to put it back in. The same is true of the writing in Chemistry, Dance, Theatre, etc. It boils down to the same problem as the fictional Math 101. Composition cannot teach every kind of writing.

So, what does composition teach?

Well, I believe that composition should teach critical thinking. I don’t teach my student about the rhetorical triangle in a vacuum. I teach them about the rhetorical triangle because it is a tool for them to use when reading anything – Math, History, Dance, and more importantly the assignments they receive in those courses. When they leave my composition class, they are not ready to write in any discipline; however, they are, hopefully, ready to read and understand any discipline.

Isn’t that a service to other disciplines? Why does labeling composition as a service course matter?

As I have explained there is the perception among other disciplines that if there is a section of the University teaching writing, then it is no longer their responsibility to teach the writing that is important to their field.

The history of Composition and its place within the University are an element of this discussion as well. If you are really interested in this topic you should check out the work of Eileen Schell, Nell Noddings, Gary A. Olson and Susan Miller. Historically, Composition has functioned as an underling to “English” which stood for Literature. Historically, Composition has been taught by women and graduate students. These are groups who would do such intensive work to free-up the tenured faculty to teach courses in their specialty and/or research; they would also do the work at a much cheaper rate. Keeping women in these “service” courses was one way to allow women into the academy, but not allow them to participate fully in all of its functions.

As Kenneth Burke taught us, we view the world through terministic screens. The language we use to build those screens matters. When we label one particular course subservient to others, it keeps the people who teach those courses also subservient. The movement to recognize Composition as a field was a movement to remove that subservient status. When we continue to think of Composition as a service course it is a disservice to all of those who worked long and hard to make sure that what we do in the classroom matters as much as anyone else in the field of English.

It's Dr. if you're nasty

It's not exactly a great start to the day. At least for once I didn't wake up at 7:30am, the problem is I woke up at 5:15am. I took the puppy out and tried to get back to sleep for about 40 minutes before giving up to go make some coffee and oatmeal.

Then I opened the email and this article from the LA Times came through. In case you can't get to it. The article is about how "pompous" it is for Jill Biden to expect to be called Dr. Biden when she only has a PhD in Education. I understand it's historic for a second lady to keep her day job, but if you really want to get all worked up about that then really talk about it.

Don't just thrown in as an aside the paragraph about how little she'll make as an adjunct faculty member.

McClellan declined to say exactly how much Biden would earn, but said she was teaching 10 hours a week and that the range of pay for her adjunct position was $900 to $1,227 per credit hour. (That means each semester her pay could be from $9,000 to $12,270.)

Point out the fact that this "not that much amount" is what most adjunct family members LIVE ON. Or maybe that she is making that much IN SPITE of the fact that she got her PhD, IN SPITE of the fact that she has 20 years of experience.

Or, maybe we should talk about the fact that she chose to work at a community college and what that means for everyone involved. Jim McClellan, the Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at Northern Virginia Community College, (notice how unlike in the article I showed respect for his position by capitalizing his title --you, know like you should for anyone) said,

"She could have done anything with her time and make a difference, but she chose to teach, and teach at a community college. That says to our students that they are important and that community colleges are an important piece of the American educational system."

The article doesn't pay much attention to what McClellan says, but I like that he equates teaching with a way to make a difference. Dr. Biden did her time in school, took the exams, wrote the dissertation all of it. She deserves her title. Notice how the article includes the title of Lynne Cheney's dissertation, but not Dr. Biden's.


Don't even get me started on how undervalued the Community College system is in this country. It's a personal soap box.

Redux

Today a fellow graduate student posted a comment about Stanley Fish's article in the NYT.

If you work in the Humanities, you know Stanley Fish. If you don't work in the humanities, think of a venerated, thoroughly established professor in your field. The one who actually helped to generate "new theory" in your field. That is who Stanley Fish is to the literary world. However, it's not necessarily who Stanley Fish is to the Rhetoric and Composition world.

This article is meant mainly to provide a book review for a former student, Frank Donoghue. In doing so, it must provide yet another description of how the University is not what it was...blah, blah, blah. Although, I think that Fish does a pretty good job of not falling too far into that trap. He does what he has to because the University if the subject of the book he is reviewing. It's good to see someone other than a rhet/comp person address the adjunct situation, but neither Fish nor Donoghue provide a solution.

Fish says of adjuncts, "Humanities professors like to think that this is a temporary imbalance and talk about was of redressing it, but Donoghue insists that this development, planned by no one but now well underway, cannot be reversed." It's true. I've spoken before about adjunct teaching and my desire to avoid that avenue, but let's face it, if it gives me a job, I'll do it. In reality adjuncts are now a part of the University system, which means two things. They need to be given some job security. In order to really do that the system of tenure needs to be revised.

From Fish's review, it doesn't seem like Donoghue addresses tenure, but it's a system that clearly needs an overhaul. Just think about life outside the University and you'll see that tenure no longer fits. It was designed in a time when people mostly stayed where they were...or, they went somewhere with the intention of staying. Now, even without the pressure of the job market, people move around more, change careers, etc. Tenure is designed to make sure you stay put in a world where that is not necessarily what people want.

I don't have a solution to the current issues with tenure, but it is something I wish Fish would have at least mentioned in his article. Until people like Fish, people who benefitted from that system can see, and say publically, that it no longer works there will be no impetus to change it.

Excuse me for the messed up formatting. I'm sick and I don't want to do this again. Also, there what ended up being a pretty big, cut and paste seciton. This is all from an article titled "The Adjunctification of English" at insidehighered.com. I saw this last week when Dr. Heidi posted it; however, I didn't read it until today. Dr. Heidi's take on this was more about the poor economy and the lack to tenure-track jobs. My take is a little different. Let's begin with the opening line....

Without anyone paying much attention, professors have substantially been replaced by part timers and those off the tenure track when it comes to teaching English and writing to undergraduates.

WTF? Are you serious? Whether or not the MLA has put out a press briefing, this is not a current issue. Anyone involved in teaching composition can tell you that. However, this is continually treated as a "new" development until well down into the article there is this quotation from Cheryl Glenn.

Cheryl Glenn, the chair and a professor of English and women’s studies at Pennsylvania State University, noted that there were many similarities between the MLA’s report and a statement adopted by the writing instructors in 1989, which lamented the “enormous academic underclass” created by the use of adjuncts to teach writing, and called for programs to rely on tenured and tenure-track professors. She said it saddened her that so little progress had been made since 1989, but that the MLA had framed the issues well.

Yes, people in composition and rhetoric have been writing about this "new" problem for years. In fact one of the reasons I continued on to my PhD program was to study this problem. Over the years, my ideas shifted, but that doesn't mean this problem was solved. Go back and read some Bill Readings and Eileen Schell.

Although I am not technically an adjunct, my "Teaching Assistantship" means I occupy a very similar place in the University. In fact, for the University, it is a better place. I do the work of an adjunct, for less, pay for credits while I do it, and they get to say they provide 'experience.' One of the reasons I do not, like many of my colleagues, seek other teaching employment is because it would mean being an "adjunct" somewhere else. Not everyone has the opportunity to eschew that position, but it is important to me to stay out of that system. Until there are jobs, there will always be a cheap labor pool. While there is a cheap labor pool, Universities will use it. Who knows, when I am done here I may have to adjunct somewhere, but there is always the option to be Dr. Barista somewhere.

I want to be clear about one thing. These are my views and only that. I am not saying no one else should ever adjunct; however, if I can avoid it, I will.

Just don't get me started on the other issue here, which is why this is all a problem now that MLA noticed it, but didn't seem to be a real issue before. That is an entirely different rant. Since, I've been told I am a closet Victorianist, I should probably keep my mouth shut about that.

Internal Imperatives

Since I seem to be on a writing binge today I wanted to tangentially join a discussion happening at some of the places I read. Over at Culture Cat, Clancy is participating in a carnival about Karen Kopelson's recent CCC article "Sp(l)itting Images; or, Back to the Future of (Rhetoric and?) Composition" I’m still pretty unsure of what a carnival is or whether it is considered rude to pick up the topic elsewhere, but here I go anyway.

Clancy's posts made me think about how I came to Rhet/Comp, the pedagogical imperative, and sent me to the bookshelf to dig out the most recent CCC with the article. Since this was the first time I'd heard the term "pedagogical imperative" I was impressed without exactly it fit the way I felt (and sometimes still feel) about trying to find a dissertation project. During an advising meeting with Dr. Helpful in the spring of 2007 she asked what I thought my dissertation would be about. I told her I had no idea. In fact what I really said was something pretty close to:
"I don't know because I'm having a hard time relating any of the stuff I'm really interested in to the classroom. I don't know what my 'comp' aspect would be."

Dr. Helpful just looked at me and said, "You don't have to have a comp aspect. You can write a rhetoric dissertation."

My incredibly intelligent response was, "Really?"

It didn't even occur to me that my dissertation didn't have to have a composition/classroom aspect to it. So, while I don't recall any overt pressure to conform to a pedagogical imperative, I had clearly internalized it somewhere during my course work.

Actually my sense of the pedagogical imperative stems mostly from my understanding of the job market. Like Paul in Kopelson's article there is a sense that my ability to get a job "[depends] upon [my] ability to articulate [my] work's connections to pedagogy."(755) Kopelson says that job market pressures shouldn't be dismissed, but those pressures are clearly not the focus of her article. As nebulous as my dissertation topic is at the moment, I can guarantee there is not going to be a pedagogical aspect to it. And, frankly, that scares me a little. Growing up through grad school at Dr. Snarky's severely jaded knee I heard plenty of stories about how choosing to focus on rhetoric, and particularly on rhetorical theory, made it difficult for her to get a job. One result of those stories are the ways I've taken on positions in the department that will speak to my more practical/sell-able skills. Graduate Assistant Director of the Writing Center, Co-Editor of the in-house Composition Manual, Assistant to the Director of Composition all of these positions, all of the skills I've learned in these positions represent an attempt to ensure that future employers look past my theory-based dissertation to see that I also do the work of composition. Because, while the overall theory that I use could have applications to the classroom, that is not what interests me about the theory. I could easily have set out to create a dissertation that was "A Rhetoric of ___________: Issues in the Composition Classroom," but that is not what I want to do. At least not now. As Clancy points out, "Sometimes it takes TIME to figure out the connections of research and theory to pedagogy." And, frankly, I don't have that time in this program.

Where the day goes...

It amazes me how quickly a day can fill up with "stuff." Currently my schedule should be a dream. I'm not teaching, and I should have Fridays off. Since I'm not so great at making myself work on Fridays I started to organize a study group. We were supposed to start tomorrow at 1:00pm. Then I remembered that I agreed to take job candidates out to lunch, which also meant that I should attend at least one of the two job talks scheduled for the afternoon. Since all of that meant getting to campus at 11:00am, I figured why not go early and get some publicity for the Writing Center done. (Walk all over campus putting up posters.) So, before I had the day off. Now I'll be on campus from about 8:30 - 3:00, which pretty much guarantees I won't be in the mood to study when I get home.

I have the sneaking suspicion that when I get into "the real world" service and administrative duties will operate in this way as well.

Normally I enjoy volunteering to take candidates out to lunch. I like to meet new people and hear their stories. However, this year my department is doing an amazing amount of hiring. There are three positions open right now and I believe there will be something like three more in the fall. Everyone is nuts. I'm not sure how many more job talks any of us can sit through. The good side of it all is that the department dynamic will change with the addition of so many new people. It won't have too much of an effect on my studies, but it will be good for the newer graduate students.

Doing everything except what I love...

Last spring, in a moment of over confidence, I agreed to be a mentor to one of the new phd students (Little Momma). We get together every couple of weeks to have coffee and chat about this strange life we've chosen. Mostly, it's the blind leading the blind, but I think we do a fairly good job keeping each other sane.

This week was pretty hard for her so we got together on Saturday to talk things over. As we talked over the events of the week and discussed strategies to get through the semester she mentioned something that stuck with me. One of the things that draws each of us to this place is our love to read. Yet, when we get to this place all we seem to do is put off our reading. The thing we love to do becomes the very thing we avoid. Her observation probably made an impression because at the end of last semester I didn't read.

Normally, the promise of reading for pleasure gets me through the final push of writing seminar papers and grading student work. At the end of last spring I read four Val McDermid novels in three days. This year I couldn't do it. I started The Master and Margarita, but didn't finish. It's not because I didn't like it. I did. I just didn't feel like reading. Part of it was because I had other projects to complete, but that wasn't all of it. The heart of what we do is read, whether it's theory, student papers, or literature. Getting through this process shouldn't rob us of that love.

I have to hope that it doesn't. Hopefully, et just defers it for a while. I didn't share these thoughts with Little Momma. She has enough on her plate. I told her it probably all just boils down to one of the ways we are most like our students. We don't like to read things we are told to read. We want to read what we've chosen to read.

On that note, it's time to get to work reading On Rhetoric.