Ong/Baron post

I plan to address in my final essay the relationship between writing and language and how each relates to the other by examining the ideas of Ong and Baron's essays. I have been working on a theory discussing the concrete nature of written text and how it affects human education and discourse. After reviewing my Baron response I noticed that I fixated on advances in writing technology and how human ideology usually rejects then comes to terms with it. I could possibly discuss in my final esay how ideology must adapt to new writing technologies and how this relates to academic discourse and pedagogy. I also hope to further analyze the quote I addressed in Ong's essay, "[Writing] initiated what printing and electronics only continued, the physical reduction of dynamic sound to quiescent space, the separation of the word from the living present, where alone real, spoken words exist" (22). I feel this statement gives us a strong summation of one of Ong's main points.

I tried to keep it short and to the point...

Being born to two college graduate parents, who experienced highschool and college during the late 60's and 70's has placed me in interesting territory as far as education theory is concerned. While the total college experience between my father and mother totals over 20 years of attendance and 2 Master's Degrees in different fields, my parents each are born from "working class" families. My father is the son of a local german-american family that has lived in Wisconsin for generations, my grandfather worked as a carpenter and later at a Hardware store until he was paralyzed by strokes. My grandmother on the same side is a first generation Danish immigrant who came through Ellis island in the late 40's, and worked as a School Secretary for the majority of her adult life. On my Mother's side she is an Eisenhower High School graduate from New Berlin, Wisconsin the youngest of a family of four. Her mother was a school teacher for the majority of her working life, and interestingly enough is a female graduate of UWMilwaukee herself in an era where women were not expected to attain higher education. My grandfather on this side was the owner of a Camera store, not necessarily the purebred aesthetic-cultural stock as presented in Kosut's text. The criticism I hope to insight by combining the ideas, vocabulary and theories of these academic writings, is that in victimizing the working class or underprivileged students and developing theories of primary discursive inadequacy, I feel academics are only increasing the ideological divide between those who are taught and those who learn. I also wish to tackle the common misconception of grouping the ideologies of "working class" and "uneducated" this false attribution was something that stuck out like a sore thumb as I completed each reading.

Delpit

I felt that reading Delpit's essay has significantly effected my understanding of discursive theories limits. While I agree with the idea of discourse as a specific collection of ideas and analytical strategies relating to a certain academic field, I feel that Discourse be it primary or secondary is too broad a generalization of behaviors, environment and specific personalities to be held as a valid theory. The conceptualization of "at-risk" youth being of another realm of understanding and learning is a degrading inference in my opinion.

Rodriguez post C

I fear this response may be brief, but the importance is none the less. I feel that Rodriguez and Gee's readings have brought to light an important concept to be sought after by aspiring students. Rodriguez has through his writing affected the future and state of his academic discourse. He has done this by relating his own individual experience, or as Bartholomae would say, "finding some compromise between idiosyncrasy, a personal history, and the requirements of convention, the history of a discipline," (511). Rodriguez gives us a prime example of a student whose upbringing has overtly affected his writing later as an academic.

Gee response

Gee's definition of Discourse is similar to my understanding of ideology. Primary Discourse and secondary Discourses under this definition could be combined to encompass the entirety of an individual's ideology, their thoughts, desires and actions as shaped by their sociopolitical standing and individual experiences. Though I do wish to complicate Gee's sense of Discourses especially the relationship between primary and secondary. Gee writes, "Aspects and pieces of the primary Discourse become a 'carrier' or 'foundation' for Discourses acquired later in life. Primary Discourses differ significantly across various social (cultural, ethnic, regional, and economic) groups in the United States," (527). He goes on to say that depending on the Primary Discourse from which one hails, for example an affluent white middle class Discourse, it increases the ease with which one can become fluent in secondary Discourses. This statement displaces agency from certain socioeconomic classes arguing that they are less able to develop secondary Discursive literacy as a result of their natural conditioning. I would argue that this inference is inaccurate and devalues too much one's ability to be literate in meta-knowledge, which gives agency and fluency to anyone who understands how to wield meta-knowledge.

Assignment C Bartholomae

David Bartholomae introduces multiple critical points in his article, through which we can understand the development of writers within a discourse. His initial reaction to the "Composing Songs" essay I felt was particularly important. Bartholomae writes of the student, "This writer is consistently and dramatically conscious of herself forming something to say out of what has been said and out of what she has been saying in the act of writing this paper," (521). The writer establishes her perspective on creativity by addressing a commonplace, the idea of being creative, challenging it and drawing conclusions regarding her initial statement. In her work she offers a common definition of creativity as the production of an "original creation", then continues by questioning whether or not she had been creative under this interpretation of the word. I believe the value Bartholomae finds in this essay is that the writer is challenging a commonly held belief by placing herself in a vulnerable state in order to draw new conclusions. By critically examining her own experience with creativity she is able to through the process of writing create a new personal discourse regarding creativity.

This relates directly to the next passage I wish to analyze in Bartholomae's essay. Later in the paragraph he writes, "the movement toward a more specialized discourse begins (or perhaps, best begins) when a student can both define a position of privilege, a position that sets him against a "common" discourse, and when he can work self-consciously, critically, against not only the "common" code but his own." (521). I feel that Bartholomae is trying to say in this passage that, "the movement toward a more specialized discourse" or learning begins with a student's ability to define their own thoughts or beliefs, and their ability to question those beliefs through a process of critical and/or scientific examination. For example you could view the "Composing Songs" essay as such. I hypothesize that creativity is the production of an original creation (commonplace). When tested against my experiment in generating music, the conclusions I have drawn regarding creativity are... that creativity is a result of the work and inspiration of the creator. The argument I believe Bartholomae is making with this statement is that, in order to further oneself within a discourse, one must place them self in a vulnerable position separate from common assumptions and attempt to challenge what they believe they already know.

I do feel that my own essay would closest relate to the "Composing Songs" essay I analyzed above. I do feel in retrospect that a possible flaw in my own response lies in my forgetting to formally define the commonplace I was trying to challenge. I presented a moment in which I had been creative, but did not directly define my understanding of creativity before moving on to analyze it. I do feel that I was aware of my audience, and I attempted to challenge my own idea of creativity by asking how we determine something as creative. I then tried to present questions regarding "creative purpose" and how it relates to valuing the creativity of a chosen work. After reading Bartholomae and rereading my own work I feel that I am beginning to travel towards a more specialized discourse, but I need to continue to critically analyze my own work as well as the educational texts placed before me in order to grow as a student of English.