Vitia faults / sins / abuses

9Jun/03Off

More Uses of Weblogs

There's an interesting post about weblogs and discourse over at Kairosnews; I found the attitudes evidenced in the linked Blogtalk conference paper considerably more engaging than the ideas. And cel4145 even mentions Kenneth Bruffee.

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  1. Oliver Wrede
    June 9th, 2003 - 17:53

    Interesting. Can you be a little more specific about the »attitudes« evidenced in that paper?

  2. Mike
    June 10th, 2003 - 12:29

    I go into more detail in my response to cel4145′s original post at kairosnews, but I should certainly clear up what “attitudes” I’m replying to, particularly after a second reading of your paper, which illuminated some of the subtleties I originally missed.

    Like I said at kairosnews, I appreciated your point about monologic versus dialogic weblogs. I also think the way you define weblogs not according to the technologies used but according to the multi-/interdisciplinary approaches they offer/require (you talk about practices and authorship, and the connection to processes, discouses, communities) is really valuable; however, the thing I stumbled over was the way you placed your definition within the context of an understanding of the university as having a purely vocational function. At least, that’s what I took from your remark that “If the certificate does not get you a job — why studying at all?”

    While this “vocational” understanding of the university as existing for job training is a fairly common conception among students, and one that has grown enormously in popularity, it is also historically a very recent development, as opposed to its ideological counterpart, the 2000-year-old notion of the liberal education. Upon a second look at your paper, I read you as connecting the vocational model and the multidisciplinary skills associated with weblogging in a provocative way. You contend that “If professors want students to become autonomous, creative, helpful, and cooperative, educational institutions must actually allow students to practice exactly these skills (and allow students to be autonomous, creative, helpful, and cooperative)”. My difficulty is with the words “become” and “allow”, which carry the apparent assumption that students do not possess these qualities upon entering the university, and that they will not possess them unless the university makes it so. This seems to me to take the informational model described by Paulo Freire in “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education” and move it into something almost approaching moral instruction: the professor is the only one with the capacity to make students into better people. (Well, OK, now I’m exaggerating: I apologize.)

    Still, the interpretations I’m drawing from your essay concerning professorial and institutional power mesh well with your contention that “gatekeeping” has “served us well,” with which I cannot disagree strongly enough. Gatekeeping, to me, is directly opposed to the mission of education in a democratic society: education ought to open up prospects for everyone, not shut them down for all but a select few. (This is why I find President Bush’s educational testing agenda so disturbing.)

    My position is somewhat inconsistent: in the U.S., universities associated with the vocational education model have been considered to be more democratic and egalitarian, whereas the liberal education model is more often associated with exclusive, elitist institutions. At the same time, I would make an argument that one could understand the vocational model as contributing to societal hierarchization, as I think you get at in your remark about universities perpetuating difference: those able to afford college get better jobs and so get wealthier, thereby increasing the gap between the rich and poor. Moreover, the liberal education model could be seen as fostering societal commonalties and intercommunication, resulting in a more democratic and egalitarian society.

    In any case: thanks for the request for clarification. I found your paper provocative; it certainly helped me to think about a number of things that have been on my mind, and I hope you’ll let me know where I’ve misread you.

    By the way: regarding your remark about the dearth of interest in academic discourse, folks in rhetoric and composition are doing a lot of interesting, insightful work on the topic; I’d be happy to point you towards some links, if you’re interested.

  3. Thomas Meal
    June 11th, 2003 - 20:57

    Just a comment about your opposition to gatekeeping: Doesn’t the value of gatekeeping depend on the way it’s practiced? As a simple case in point, I (and most people I know) find it helpful to be informed, eg after orals or diss defenses or while drafting an article, that we’re doing work others we respect recognize as valuable/competent–or that our work doesn’t yet pass muster and needs revision.

    As another simple example, I found it personally helpful to discover in college that I just wasn’t acing my music classes, especially in comparison to my performance in other areas, so I would either need to break my back to pursue that or else (slack and!) stick with what came more easily to me.

    Those seem to me only two of innumerable positive species of gatekeeping–and I would go so far as to say that standardized testing can be positive too–it’s just a question of what alternaties there are; eg how else would you recommend that grad programs sort through a thousand applications? Subjective valuations, eg letters from profs, don’t seem any more reliable, do they?

    Bush’s standardized testing proposals do sound bad to me, but that’s b/c of their particulars, not b/c gatekeeping is inherently bad. To think otherwise seems to invoke so-to-speak a pre-Foucaultian conception of power, no?!

    Best, TM

    PS Weren’t the early German universities (implicitly at least) vocational schools for clergyman? The 17thC modernization of the German university came to set the standard for Europe explicitly b/c it aimed to train people for (vocational) roles in the state bureaucracy, rather than (just) for the clergy. It’s argued that Kantian humanism results from (to put it oversimplistically) bridging those clerical and state-bureaucratic aims into a remystified conception of ethics.

  4. Mike
    June 12th, 2003 - 11:10

    Thanks for the comment. As far as gatekeeping goes, you ask, “How else would you recommend that grad programs sort through a thousand applications?” and I get from your “how else” that the sorting is assumed to be necessary. CCNY’s radical experiment with open admissions in 1970 assumed otherwise, and the research that came out of it did great things for writing instruction. The optimist (or, if you prefer, naive liberal) in me wants to believe that we can find ways around saying, “These people can receive higher education, and these other people can’t.” The gatekeeping mindset is a sort of mental shibboleth, and I think the two examples you offer really aren’t gatekeeping at all: they’re actually forms of feedback that facilitate access, not deny it. However, what you’ve helped me realize is that Oliver was using the term “gatekeeping” in your sense, not mine — so I was wrong to take issue with him on that topic. I stand corrected. (As far as conceptions of power go, I think Foucault’s ideas are eminently useful, but I think your “pre” implies a progression that doesn’t necessarily exist: the analysis of microtechnologies of power and negotiations at what F. calls the “capillary level” hardly preclude the analysis of negotiations and hierarchies on a much broader scale; one can have a simultaneously structuralist and poststructuralist understanding of the operations of power.)

    Regarding being vocational: well, yes, of course they were “implicitly” vocational, just as Cicero’s conception of the broad, multidisciplinary training of the orator that became our notion of the liberal education was implicitly vocational, since it was training for the orator. But the distinction I’m talking about is much more recent. According to James Berlin’s Rhetoric and Reality, “The ‘new’ [nineteenth century] university had arisen to provide an agency for certifying members of the new professions, professions that an expanding economy had created (Wiebe). These college graduates constituted a new middle class, a body claiming and receiving economic privilege and political power on the basis of its certified, professional status. The old university had been elitist and had prepared students of means and status for the three major professions: law, medicine, and the church” (21). So, yes, again, job training, but the new (what I’m calling vocational, as opposed to professional) model involves class mobility on the basis of the skills taught. Later, Berlin follows up on his distinction by talking about practical training for middle-class professionals as being opposed to the elitist, aristocratic emphasis on liberal culture — and that second thing is what American universities did with Cicero’s idea, several hundred years after the German universities. My impulse is to call a life in the clergy a profession, rather than a vocation (the Latin root, pro fessio, seems particularly apt here), and that’s where my use of the term “vocational” in response to Oliver is coming from.

    With all this talk about the ends of education, I feel compelled to point out the terrific discussion over at Metafilter — http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/26327 — about Blair Hornstine, especially the late comments of Five Fresh Fish, which — for me — raise the question of how far this notion of vocationalization might go. Bowles and Gintis, in Schooling in Capitalist America, make some compelling and disturbing points on this topic.

  5. Oliver Wrede
    June 12th, 2003 - 18:28

    Dear Mike.

    Thank you very much for the clarification. In fact I had to re-read my own paper to understand what might be the reason for some of your concerns. I am quite aware that the issues I raise are complex and to be able to actually write that paper in time I needed to skip some areas for clarification on my behalf.

    1.
    Vocational education

    There are some statements in my text that can be read at least in two ways: either I am favouring that thought or not. For instance you quote me:

    “If the certificate does not get you a job — why studying at all?”

    It is not my opinion that primary objective for universities is to get people into jobs. The question you quote is not a rhetorical question or _my_ question, but in fact a real question that remains unanswered. Students don’t ask that question and educators too often are unprepared to answer it anyway. If you have more students wanting to apply to a program than places are available there is usually no need to identify pros and cons at all. In the design area (where I teach) we have 6-10 students per seat in the program. The result: there is no “professional” quality management for the application procedures in place.

    My concern is that students miss to uncover own reasons for studying and so never develop “intrinsic” motivations. Grades and marks are a very limited reward system because the tend to push the extrinsic motivation.

    I don’t have any empirical data, but from my own conversations with students, the reasons for going to university usually are very superficial and very often related to definition of a working life. In some areas students select courses very pragmatically according to their expectations for later jobs (“Does this help me to be a good graphic designer?”). Few students relate personal life goals with possible reasons for studying – or at least its not very outspoken.

    So, while I think I am “on your side” on this, I have to say that some professors deliberately abandon “liberal education” in favour for “vocational education” – without actually debating that openly or backing some of their assumptions with relevant research.

    I need to clear up the context here in Germany: Many of the university educators in Germany can’t be fired for “bad performance”. In fact there are practically no evaluation systems in place that would even analyze any nuisance. And: Students usually have to pay nothing, so many start to study and “see what happens”. So while I like the fact that we don’t have money as a social differentiator, but we need something to compensate.

    I do believe that professions get less relevant. I talked about this in regard to the “hidden agenda”. Students might get expertise in a field from university education. But if that expertise is supposed to be anything worth after graduation, educators need to succeed with the “hidden agenda”.

    2.
    Quality students possess

    I wrote: »If professors want students to become autonomous, creative, helpful, and cooperative, educational institutions must actually allow students to practice exactly these skills (and allow students to be autonomous, creative, helpful, and cooperative).«

    You commented: »My difficulty is with the words “become” and “allow”, which carry the apparent assumption that students do not possess these qualities upon entering the university, and that they will not possess them unless the university makes it so.«

    In fact I do think students have a great deal of that qualities. What I criticize is that many curricula don’t really make much use of that! In some universites the didactic tradition has not changed for decades. I am a firm believer in continuity, but I think that there has been fundamental changes that have to be answered in more flexible curricula that let students decide how to move on. Most curricula are “over-engineered” and leave students little to no chance to develop strong personality by being responsible for own decisions.

    Again that may differ between countries.

    3.
    Gatekeeping

    I don’t really understand the blows I get for that. In the same sentence I write »but it needs to be updated: the gatekeeping has become obsolete and the professions start to blur into each other.«

    Parts of my paper was intended for skeptical people that still haven’t fully anticipated that the role of the educator is fundamentally changing. It is part of my argumentation for weblogs – so I needed to make that point very clear (and at the same time not chasing them away).

    I think you agree with that second part (so you didn’t see a need to quote that?). So the question just is whether or not there has been a time where the educator was »the bearer of wisdom, the gatekeeper to knowledge and the guide to profession« and if -at that time- this conception was useful looking back in time.

    I don’t want to go into science history (I am not knowledged ennough in that field to claim anything here). But what I _observe_ is that educators practically define themselves as “gatekeeper to knowledge”. They do this by certain teaching styles, where students rarely are activly involved in discussions that are really open (in terms of unknown outcome) and creative solutions that might turn away from very firm learning goals are not tolerated.

    I think many educators observe that. But the perception of the severity of this issue might be very different. It is depending if you work in a rather modern context or a very conservative and if the own teaching style is modern (whatever that means).

    4.
    egalitarian vs. elitist

    You write: »My position is somewhat inconsistent: in the U.S., universities associated with the vocational education model have been considered to be more democratic and egalitarian, whereas the liberal education model is more often associated with exclusive, elitist institutions.«

    I think there is another factor: the teaching traditions. These are usually much more resistant to change in exclusive/elitist institutions.

    In Germany we have a two class university system: Universities and Universities of Applied Sciences. The latter are supposed to be more vocational. Applied Universities have been founded in the early 70ties, so their bases are much younger (e.g. you can’t get a PhD at a University of Applied Science – so there are no doctorates that support the courses, payment is also less – even for the student assistants).

    The big advantage of the Universities of Applied Sciences is that they are not burdened with many decades of reputation and traditions and so they might be more open to change and experimentation.

    5.
    dearth of interest in academic discourse

    I am very interested in that topic. Any links are very welcome.

  6. Thomas Meal
    June 12th, 2003 - 22:01

    Just a quick follow-up on gatekeeping: I’m wondering whether you would agree that CCNY’s “open” admissions program still “processed” students specific ways. That these processual gates were less exclusionary than recent powers, esp Giuliani, have since made them at CUNY–and that this relative openness produced what both of us consider positive effects for writing pedagogy–doesn’t mean that students weren’t processed, does it? To me, it means that CCNY established that, via particular processes, we can help more students pass through the gates of college-credentialized literacy than we might have otherwise thought possible. But students still had to qualify for such passage, eg via high school graduation (or its equivalence) and by the quality of their work in CCNY writing classes.

    Graduate education does seem to me to require more stringent gatekeeping, that is, for example, if we want students to receive the funding necessary to pursue their research–there just isn’t enough to go around otherwise. In a similar vein, there’s a cap on class-size where I teach–arguably the most brutal and arbitrary sort of gatekeeping (whoever registers first for any given course gets in)–but we would argue that such measures help us teach humanely and maintain long-term sanity.

    So, I understand people’s aversion to the term, but for me it’s helpful to retain “gatekeeping” precisely so we can say, for example, to Giuliani types: here’s what your model of gatekeeping does, and here’s what the CCNY model would do (better); or better yet, here are some of the ways our hands are dirty too and here’s how we’re trying to keep them relatively clean. If we just say that gatekeeping is implicitly bad, or that we ethical pedagogues never gatekeep, then I think we make it harder to analyze or improve the processing that education inevitably (or at least almost inevitably) involves. Plus, it seems to me just plain ol’ inaccurate to say that gatekeeping is bad: since both the capillary effects and the marks of distinction it helps bestow can be so enriching.

  7. Mike
    June 13th, 2003 - 17:54

    Oliver,

    As promised, here are some resources relating to academic discourse.

    I’ll assume you’re familiar with Bourdieu and Passeron’s Academic Discourse; Patricia Bizzell’s essays collected in the influential Academic Discourse and Critical Consciousness (Pittburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1992) give an excellent introduction to how the idea of academic discourse has played in American university writing instruction. There’s a good review of the book at the JAC site, a journal devoted to composition theory.

    Some other composition journals include College Composition and Communication, Kairos (of which Kairosnews, where I first found a link to your conference paper, is an aspect), and Academic Writing.

    In addition to Bizzell, the talk in composition about academic discourse owes perhaps its largest debt to David Bartholomae’s canonical and controversial essay, “Inventing the University.” I haven’t been able to find the full text of it anywhere online, but there’s an excellent analysis of it archived at JAC, and it’s widely anthologized. Vivian Zamel mentions it in her insightful discussion of how composition has engaged with academic discourse; her essay is worth checking out for the references alone. If your university library has access to past issues of the journal College English (I know our library can get at it through JSTOR), I highly recommend the Joseph Harris, Mike Rose, and Peter Elbow articles that Zamel cites.

    If you can’t get at those issues, the Bartholomae and Rose essays are anthologized in Victor Villanueva’s Cross-Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader (Urbana: NCTE, 1997), as well as one of the essays from Bizzell’s book, an engaging back-and-forth between Bartholomae and Elbow, and the Kenneth Bruffee article cel4145 makes reference to in his original mention of your paper at kairosnews: the book might be well worth trying to get through interlibrary loan, if you’re interested in the topic.

    I hope they’re helpful.


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My name's Mike. I'm an assistant professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point, but the ideas I express here are my own, and do not reflect the views of West Point, the Army, or the Department of Defense. I write here about rhetoric, composition, and technology. I like cats.

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