ANTI-RACIST ACTIVISM: TEACHING RHETORIC AND WRITING
As an instructor in the First-Year Composition (FYC) program and as a Writing Center consultant, I've been able to see student assignments from a couple of perspectives. At OU, FYC students all go through a similar first semester, and the first unit is similar between sections of the course. This first unit, entitled "Scholarly Discourse," is basically an introduction for students into the ways academic research is written, read, and analyzed. The content of the unit focuses around issues of equality in education and suggests that powerful literacies (in terms of having social, economic, cultural mobility and liberty) are based upon social standings. I was really enthusiastic about getting to teach this material and found that most of my students were engaged with it as well.
All of this places the first-year composition material in a unique place in the university, as students are faced with new material in a setting conducive to dialogue, discussion, and close reading. In essence, it has the capacity to set the stage for what students think will be expected of them as they continue at the university. If they realize the need to read, write, and think critically in their first-year composition course, their future course habits may likewise shift.
However, each semester as I received essays on our topic of educational equality, I found there were a couple of things being avoided in the student work. Students were often not willing to discuss the role that race played in determining social class. Our readings included some work by Jonathan Kozol (2005), whose research has always called attention to issues of segregation in the American education system, so I wasn't sure why it was being left out. We had even discussed Kozol's article at length after a group of students presented the material.
When I came to work at the Writing Center, other consultants, many of whom are writing this article with me, were noticing similar gaps in student papers. This was pretty troubling to all of us, and it still is as we write this. Why would students avoid such an important factor in determining the quality of education for K – 12 students? Our first reaction, as is so often the case, was to "blame the students" for not mentioning race as a predictive factor for educational equality and achievement. No matter that we are all students as well, it was clearly their mistake.
But as we began work on this article, Talisha, Jessie, J, and others suggested that I look at the assignment that my colleagues in the FYC program and I had been asking our students to complete. In all of our lesson plans, writing prompts, and homework assignments, did we ever ask students to specifically address race? The essay prompt from the FYC office provided to new instructors leaves out any mention of race; the entire 51 page unit new instructors receive doesn't mention the topic in what should be an important avenue to consider how education and language shape and are shaped by particular groups of people. While the reading material for the course often explicitly deals with race, instructors are not prompted in the basic guide they are given to make this a discussion or writing prompt for students.
Then I looked over my own essay prompt (below) and found, to my surprise, that I had left it out. When I most recently taught the course, I added material by Paul Slocumb (2004) and Ruby Payne (1996) as a way of emphasizing the complex relationships between class and race. Some academics and educators may take issue with these authors for their overarching descriptions about people in poverty, and with valid reasons (Bohn, 2006; Bomer, Dworin, May & Semingson, 2008). In our class, though, it was helpful because students did respond to some of the claims with hesitancy or criticism based on research methods. Through it all, it was a helpful resource for some of its content and for reading texts with a scholarly eye. Even with all this material dealing specifically with race, I had merely asked students to consider the relationship between education and class or educational institutions and students in regard to what I vaguely called "power."
This sets a troubling precedent for how incoming students at the university form their expectations about discussing race. If race is just another factor, or a minute detail to be mentioned but not analyzed, or if the difficult statistics about how educational opportunity and achievement are often defined along racial lines can be left as a side note, then should students think that race actually has an impact on their experience at the University? By no intentional design, my colleagues and I have made a grave omission that speaks to our own fears about student writing and discussion over generalizing complex issues of race. Villanueva (2006) points to this fear, showing that racism has lately become "more taboo than politics and religion for casual conversation" (p. 3). Obviously, the classroom is not simply a place of casual conversation. But this gets at some of the problems TAs like myself face. They (we) often do not feel the institutional or academic authority to set apart a space for talking about race in ways that are productive and rigorous. Because we do not always feel adequate to do this, we are afraid the conversation will turn "casual," to use Villanueva's term. If this were to happen, we would be given a new responsibility to address race as well as other writing concerns in student essays. As a consequence of this trepidation or dismissal, student writers are not directly confronted with the realities of racism that the course's texts suggest and are again carried along within an institutional racism within the university.
The problem of this "colorblind" reading and writing we were producing in FYC is that the colorblind notion is inherent with destructive irony. To quote Young (2010), this colorblindness "actually create(s) the racial problems [it] hopes to eliminate" (p. 3). If race is never part of the equation, the denial of racial profiling and favoritism is too easy to make. This can have enormously negative consequences for schools, the judicial system, and law enforcement (Villanueva, 2006). And it likewise has an impact on the academic formation of students who are asked to analyze these systems, which I was doing in my classroom.
Mr. Chambers
ENGL 1113
Scholarly Discourse Unit
Essay Assignment
In this unit, we will look at the way scholars communicate in the academic world. For this essay you are to synthesize three scholarly articles (which we have gone over in class) as a way of demonstrating your understanding of the scholarly discourse.
Task: Write a three to four page essay responding to one of the prompts below. The bulk of your essay should compare and combine the authors’ views on the topic. As well, you may wish to compare or contrast these ideas with your own as a part of the synthesis.
Your synthesis of ideas should accurately and succinctly summarize the authors you select and compare them in a meaningful and critical way. Keep in mind, the summarizing is a tool that is used to help develop your own synthesis and thoughts – it is not the assignment.
Guidelines: In response to any prompt, you are to choose three articles from the assigned unit readings, only one of which can be Kozol or Anyon. You may choose to focus on one of the following aspects of the articles
Prompt 1: the relationship between education (or the academic community) and students.
Prompt 2: the relationship between social class and education.
Prompt 3: the relationship between power and educational institutions (schools, etc.).
Some helpful questions to guide your essay (these are just ideas, not rules):
Basic Info:
If you have any questions, concerns, or want to run anything by me, please feel free to e-mail or come by the office. I will provide a grading rubric for you.
Zhang, Phil, St. Amand, Jessie, Quaynor, J, Haltiwanger, Talisha, Chambers, Evan, Canino, Geneva, & Ozias, Moira. (2013, August 7). "Going there": Peer writing consultants' perspectives on the new racism and peer writing pedagogies. Across the Disciplines, 10(3). Retrieved from http://wac.colostate.edu/atd/race/oziasetal/index.htm
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