Just when I thought I was jaded enough to be realistic about how my first teaching experiences will be I read James Berlin's article Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class. Now, again, I have the feeling that I will be able to hand my students the world- as long as I can teach them to write.
I think everyone has had a teacher who made them feel like that (above). Just this week I had a teacher (yes college level, no not a professor) define a term, using the same term in addition to saying it was more than a different term that she had not defined, and had not planned on. When I asked her for an example of the undefined term in the definition she said that it wasn't important and we didn't need to know it. She got very flustered when I persisted, explaining my inability to fully comprehend the new term with out knowing the meaning of the words in its defenition, telling me she would tell me (only me) after class. I know there were others who wanted this level of comprehension as well. Ahhh the "[l]oveless, arrogant, hopeless, mistrustful, acritical (Shor (95) in Berlin 734) classroom.
How does this relate to writing and the readings?
"...a way of teaching is never innocent. Every pedagogy is imbricated in ideology, in a set of tacit assumptions about what is real, what is good, what is possible, and how power ought to be distributed" (Berlin 735).
1 comment:
Knowledge is power, but how we communicate the connections to our lives becomes the challenge. Effective writing opens up the ability for the reader to imagine from the words of expressive writing. Imagination allows us to go beyond the written word and make the experience our own. The value we give to the words may differ from that of the writer. I belief the words connects the reader and the writer when the words are effectively written.
Post a Comment