Re: denny's

[kelley <kcwalker@xxxxxxx>]

katha writes:

>Kelley, you seem to consider as structurally racist-sexist or classist
>almost all the usual criteria for making judgments about students: you
>don't like admitting kids by using test scores (or grades,either, I'm
>assuming)

oh you assume too much!  or, at least, assume that i don't think we should
evaluate.  actually, i do think it would be great to get rid of grades.  i
didn't have any at the weird school i went to and look how great i turned
out! ;-)    i was evaluated tho:   4-5 type written pages worth on what i
did well and what i might to better and where i might want to go next.
very wonderful 'mirrors' back to me assessing what i'd done, the arguments
i'd made, etc.  my teachers were mentors and colleagues.  as you can
imagine i was ill-equipped for graduate school 'cause i didn't know how to
defer to authority.  that is, i thought they were my colleagues who i could
learn much from and actively engage not people i was supposed to tremble in
front of or imagine to be infallible.

IQ and SAT scores claim to *predict* what students might be capable of.
they aren't used to evaluate learning.  no.  they're used to predict who
will be college level material.  i fail to see how they are worthwhile,
particular when it's pretty clear that some cash and time will easily buy
you a higher score--up to 100 pts.

furthermore, underlying such testing is, of course, the assumption that
college educations must be rationed out.  why?  such policies are racist
when, as you say to wojtek, certain groups are disproportionately the
loosers in the testing game.  and, as long as we have structural systems of
social inequality those methods of weeding people out will always be
problematic.  the methods of evaluation themselves then are part of the
interlocking proceses of capitalism, racialization and sexuation.


or participation in extracurricular activities (there go
>athletic scholarships!),


katha, deans of admissions make decisions based on [non athetltic
scholarship] students participation in extra-curricular activities.  they
privilege volunteer work, student gov't, etc.  do they think of work after
school as part of that?  how about taking care of one's ill aunt?  or
caring for your cousins kids after school?  those aren't seen as worthwhile
endeavors in terms of the well rounded student and for good racist/classist
reasons no doubt.  and when they do consider work, surely you must know
that the summer internship at BRAND NAME corp has a lot more weight than
the 32 hr./wk job at McD's.

you don't think they should know or be taught
>mastery of standard English in speech or writing.

didn't say that.  i simply raised the issue, one raised here already, that
some people have said that teaching standard english is culturally
imperialist.  i'm not sure where i stand.  i *do* in fact the best i can do
in that regard b/c i know that my mentors taught me how to write and for
that i am eternally grateful.  it's a gift i want to give back to my
students.  fortunately, some really do appreciate it!  but it is true that,
at least at SU's english dept, there was a strong pedagogical current
against the imperialism of the english language.  i disagreed with their
position, in fact, but this is what they said:  "the student text is sacred
and we shouldn't mark it up"  by that they meant two things.  1.  students
of color had an indigenous language that should be allowed to flourish and
best to do that in the absence of authoritarian pedagogies of 'one right
way'.  2.  the writing process should be highly creative and allowed to
develop under individuals logics.  lots and lots of writing, exploring,
free writing, etc.  grading and correcting, iow, was seen as punitive and
crippling to the writing process.  that appeared to be a pretty widespread
idea for awhile there.  a couple of national conferences on pedagogy and
the controversy over that approach seems a good indicator that it wasn't
isolated on SUs campus.

of course, another thing they taught us in writing seminars for those of us
interested in using writing as part of student evaluation was that not
marking up the sacred student text was also good for the instructor who
didn't have to correct papers as much or write out grammatical rules or
hints on how to know when to use colon or semi-colon.  made your job less
time consuming, in short.  Jane Tompkins "pedagogy of the distressed" i
used to call it!

so, no, in fact i don't agree that we shouldn't teach std eng if only b/c
our students aren't going to do particularly well in the business world if
we don't.  otoh, what is useful about the claims made in this regard is
getting people to challenge and question their taken for granted assumption
that std eng. is superio, or any normative judgment they hold.  that's the
point.   that, in and of itself, is a good reason for examining this aspect
of structural racism.  moreover, once we question it people will be more
cognizant of the ways in which they treat student work.  for those of us
who don't primarily teach writing, this is probably an important thing
because, while we generally judge on substantive issues, many of us are
influenced by the form [style, grammar, etc] and this affects the overall
grade.

 So since a college
>can't admit everyone who applies,

well why is that the case?  what's the assumption behind that? is that a
good thing?  i don't think it is at all.  clearly a technological and
geo-politically complex world absolutely requires an educated citizenry.
surely limiting access to education is not a good thing.

 how DO you think it should go about
>choosing the freshman class?

*real* assessments of students abilities?  giving everyone a chance and
then weeding them out if they prove unable to do the work and don't try?

frankly, i spent too many years teaching the children of the wealthy.
children who didnt' even want to be in college and i knew many who'd trade
places with them for anything.  *that* pissed me off katha.  and worse, the
students at high priced colleges that aren't as academically competitive
are not one wit more capable than the students i taught at state colleges.
 i have the most incredibly bright young eager students who are more than
likely going to waste away here in this degree machine in florida.  makes
me ill.  some of what i see, of course, is differences in student culture.
elite white students cultivate a sense of cynicism and disdain toward the
life of the mind.  they're not supposed to seem interested or excited about
what they learn.  bad for popularity you know.  all i know is that those
elite institutions could stand an infusion of white working class  students
and students of color.  and if admissions standards were challenged a bit,
then that would be an important achievement.  changing that will take lots
of reform, especially equalizing k-12 funding and reinvigorating public
schools in addition to affirmative action policies and a concerted effort
to integrate higher education.

 The same criticism -- that some kids get a
>veiled class advantage -- will be true of work portfolios, reference
>letters, interviews.

if that's acceptable to you....?  it's not to me and it belies our supposed
commitment to equality.


>  first come first serve? Flip a coin?
>  And if mastery of standard English and the transmission of cultural
>capital are not valid functions of education, what is?

isn't that important? what kind of culture are we transmitting?  the great
dead white guys?  the great men of history?   is it simply Kultur?  is
there only one?  what does it consist of?

education isn't the only way culture is transmitted.  students who grow up
in homes with pletny of cultural capital have a big advantage over those
who don't.  they tend to negotiate schooling much more adeptly as a result.
is that fair that they have such an advantage?

believe me, i want us to transmit it all!  i had friends whose parents were
professors and they introduced me to the life of the mind.  so i wanted
that too.  i wanted to know about all the books in their library and the
classical music wafting from the study.  and so i set about to teach myself
when i couldn't go to college as i'd hoped.  it was all foreign and strange
to me and lots of people around me wondered why i'd want to read those old
books.  that wasn't what people like me were supposed to do.  we got "real"
jobs in a unionized factory or joined the service or maybe as a cleark in
some gov't office.  i persisted.  when  i got to college and took my first
am lit course, i told my mentor that i wanted to read all the greats of am.
lit!  she handed me paul lautter's stuff on busting the canon.  well there
it was:    the right who see Kultur as the possession of a special class
wouldn't let me have at culture and the left was telling me it was all
hogwash!  so i've basically spent most of my life carving out some sort of
sanity in the liminal spaces in between those two approaches to culture. so
we don't disagree.  i'm simply asking that we be a bit more cognizant of
how certain kinds of culture clearly are privileged and how some people
benefit from that.  we need to ask ourselves if that is fair.


>ps.  Capitalization is not some arbitrary unecessary rule.  It's a
>grammatical cue, like punctuation, and a visual marker that makes it
>easier to read a page of print quickly and keep your place or find it
>again if you lose it. A page of uncapitalized prose is MUCH harder to
>read than a page with capitals in the standard places. Try it!


i wasn't arguing that it was.  i was using the example as a heuristic
device.  as i noted, i wasn't particularly concerned with a debate over the
issue.  what the thought exercise did for 'us' though is ask that we think
about those rules and give reasons for them.   caps certainly do have rules
and reasons.

>As for the argument that handicapped people may find conventional
>spelling etc an extra effort they shouldn't be expected to make because
>that's "ableism" -- I've seen fantastic amounts of bad spelling, poor
>grammar, weird capitalization and unproofread prose in my life as a
>teacher and editor.  No one was handicapped. They just hadn't been
>taught, or were lazy, or didn't care. I had one student who told me she
>was dyslexic, but specifically asked NOT to have special consideration
>for that, and one student who was totally deaf but wrote very good
>standard english. I think this handicapped supposition is a red herring.

perhaps.  i know of people who can't see their typos because they have a
certain form of dyslexia.  but again, i noted that it was likely a trivial
example.  but it's the process of questioning the taken-for- granted that
is what i'm getting at.  if we can give reasons for these rules, if we can
make ourselves aware of the ways in which we penalize some groups because
of that and be more cognizant then this is the point and why examining this
form of racialization and racism is important.

this is pretty standard stuff and i'm surprised it's so controversial???


>  My daughter has had several teachers who couldn't spell and used bad
>grammar ("could have went" "you really payed attention").  Looking at
>schools for her I've hardly been in a classroom that didn't have a
>pretty flagrant example of language misuse up on the wall in the
>teacher's handwriting ("heroin" for "heroine," "petrid dish" for "petri
>dish" etc). Many of the communications I've received from her schools
>have had typos, usage mistakes, mispellings.

i know all about this and that's a huge problem.  much of it has to do with
institutionalized sexism, no?  1.  the devaluation of teaching and teacher
education as "merely" professional schooling,  2.  we don't pay teachers
well and so the talented and capable writers end up doing something else
where they can make more money or at least enjoy the status of, say, a
member of the professoriate.  and even among the professoriate,  teaching
is devalued through and through.  but there are real, not arbitrary reasons
for why this is the case and it has much to do with sexism and the
devaluation of work historically associated with women.

kelley