Birkerts

I've been reading Sven Birkerts' essay, "Into the Electronic Millennium," this afternoon. I'm always amazed, when I read this essay, that it was written in 1994-- some 17 years ago. (In fact, there might even be a student or two in the class who is younger than this essay!)

While there are some awkward moments that date the essay--the limitation of the e-reader he discusses to one book, for example--his ideas remain pertinent.  It is still difficult, maybe even more difficult, to see how the web of electronic communication is surrounding us.  Certain of his predictions--banking by phone, for example--have recently come to be realities, but have we really progressed in thinking about what that means?

As a writing teacher, Birkerts' observations about language erosion and changes in education naturally interest me.  And again, I'm surprised by how current this argument sounds.  It's true that we have made some significant strides in using new technologies in education. Certainly we now know ways beyond making little videos to use the energy of networks and collaboration to foster new kinds of thinking.  But the arguments remain: should education "tailor itself to the aptitudes of its students" (125)?  Or should education--perhaps using some new technologies--continue to hold students responsible for genuinely significant ideas, ideas that require sustained attention to the written word (no matter how it might be accessed)?

That attention, of course, brings me to Birkerts' prediction that there will be ongoing language erosion. Recent studies seem to confirm his prediction--but we aren't in an entirely language-poor world yet.  Are we? Are we going there or are there trends that are stopping us from really going down that road? In any event, his framing of this question, and his careful reflections upon it, make him entirely relevant to 2011.

Banned Books

In the fall semester, Banned Books week (starts Sept 24 this year) always falls around Unit 2--just as we are discussing some of the long term and large scale effects of reading.

It seems like an important moment to remember that literacy has not always been easy to come by--and still isn't in some places in the world. It also seems like a good moment to remember that many people, both through time and in the present day, have been/ are actively prohibited from learning to read. Some of those who can read have been / are actively prohibited from having choice about what they read. In this country, most book challenges are made in school libraries--ostensibly to protect children-- but worldwide, censorship at all levels is alive and well.

 So read a banned book!

Or look at the lists of banned/ challenged books and see which ones you have already read.

banned books week, american library association

banned and challenged classics

challenged books by year (you'll be surprised!)

Print Technology

Here are a few videos that show what printing and typesetting looked like in the early days of print.  Compare this to hitting the 'print' button!
demo of hand press
typesetting video
typesetting video (2)

Print and thinking

In Understanding Media, McLuhan writes that print (or typography, to use his term) "had psychic and social consequences that suddenly shifted previous boundaries and patterns of culture" (233).  We can, with some thought about the historical period he is discussing, grasp what he mean by shifting social boundaries. But "psychic"?? It's a wacky word with supernatural connotations.Careful reading of the rest of McLuhan's chapter suggests that he is really thinking about thinking: print makes it possible to think in new ways.

Of course, from Plato to McLuhan and including hundreds of commentators in between, people have wondered and worried about what forms of media might do to our minds. It is only relatively recently, though, that scientists have had the tools to actually study what happens in the brain when it encounters and processes different forms of media stimulation.

As Hayles notes in the class reading ("Hyper and Deep Attention"), all of the evidence from a variety of branches of science suggest that there are changes in the brain when it encounters various media stimulation:  "the brain's synaptic connections are evolving with an environment in which media consumption is a dominant factor"  (192).  But as she points out, to note that we can now see  such changes (with technology like the functional MRI) is not the same as evaluating the changes, or evaluating which kinds of attention, hyper or deep, we should cultivate. In fact, she argues, we need to be more conscious of how we might deploy both kinds of attention. She uses the example of video games, then, as one way we might "buil[d] bridges between deep and hyper attention" (114).

What do you think of the idea of using video games in classrooms? Does this argument seem persuasive to you? More importantly perhaps, she suggests that hyper attention evolved before deep attention; other scholars note that reading is a very unnatural act for our brains to master.  Should we let our brains do what seems to come more naturally, using games in education for example? Or should we carefully train them?

More McLuhan

McLuhan can be difficult--as we discussed in class, this is often because he moves between different moments in time (different stages of history) within the same paragraph or sentence. So, as you review and start to work with McLuhan's ideas, you should ask yourself the following three questions:  

• Is this phrase/sentence discussing the time before print? 
• Is it discussing the explosion of print? 
• Or is it discussing the implosion of electric communication?

For the essay assignment in Unit 2, you should also focus on the specific "social and psychic consequences" of print.  A brief list would include:

• spread of knowledge and ideas
• shattering tribal bonds (questioning traditional, hierarchical structures of power and social organization)
• emergence /strengthening of individuality
• individual self-expression; change in the idea of authorship
• private point of view
• acting without reacting (detachment, dissociation, objectivity, analytic thought) [key]
• transparency and openness based on repeatable, regular printed materials (think school and laws)

Questions you might start to ask as you move into writing your own essay might include:

• What are the dangers (the 'torpedoes' in McLuhan's final image) that moving forward might expose us to?
• What do we stand to lose or gain by moving into the use of 'newer' media? Are we becoming a global village? Are there costs for entering the global village? 
• McLuhan tells us not to panic about the threat of new media, but could he be wrong? Are there reasons to panic?

McLuhan

I'll post more about McLuhan and our new readings later this week, but in the meantime, here's the link to a previous post with further links to  videos about McLuhan.
McLuhan videos

Writing Advice

My last post was trying to make this point: take all writing advice (even advice masquerading as a 'rule') under advisement. Don't let rules stop you from being clear.


This last bit is something of a paraphrase from a well-known essay by George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language." As he writes, after providing his own list of rules, "Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous." *


The essay is often standard reading for college writing students; you can find a copy here--or in any library! And you can find a discussion of it here, by a colleague of mine who used to teach at OU and now teaches in California. His blog is listed on the right.


I encourage you to not only check out his blog, but to investigate other online resources that might help you think about your writing.  I have already mentioned the Grammar Girl; the OU Writing Center (with links to citation guides) is here and I will be adding more links (see pages to the right) as I find good resources.  Let me know if you find a good online resource.


* From A Collection of Essays, Harcourt (1946, 1981), 170.

Rules, Rules, Rules

Or maybe not. There are rules that everyone who writes has to follow--usage rules, like the difference between affect and effect, or grammatical rules like the fact that a sentence must have a subject and a verb.** 

But I’m always astonished at the kinds of rules students tell me that other writing teachers imposed upon them.  I certainly don't want to attack other writing instructors--especially teachers in public high schools who are often dealing with well over a hundred students at a time. And  I sense the logic behind some rules--forbidding “I” might make students more likely to argue rather than assert unfounded positions. But some I can’t fathom at all--don’t use contractions ( I suppose they say “do not use contractions”), don’t use “because,” never start a sentence with “but”  or “and.” What really gets me about some of these rules that students seem to carry around in their heads is that is STOPS them from writing--and often stops them from writing clearly.  If you have to torture a sentence to avoid a perfectly good work ( like “I” or “but” or “we”), it often makes the already hard work of writing even harder.

Again, I’m not writing this to criticize other teachers, because I think ALL writing practice is good.  And maybe the discipline of being told DON’T DO THIS, whatever this is, is helpful, too.

Perhaps I’m just too freethinking, but I have very few rules, and I’m certainly not interested in creating a lot of strange little arbitrary rules. General approaches seem more useful and take into account the fact that individuals are, well, individual.  If you want to challenge one of my general approaches and you have a good reason, I’ll be open to that. 

In fact, if I do have a rule it is this: know what choices you’ve made in your writing and be able to defend them.  Used a strange word, or a used a word in an unusual manner? Fine, as long as you say, or suggest, why (in whatever you are writing). Don’t have a thesis statement? Ok, as long as your argument is crystal clear from the body paragraphs. Want to write a one sentence paragraph? Go for it, as long as that brevity is warranted by its position in the development of your argument.

I have a few pet peeves based on widespread misuses (number v. amount  is one, I may reveal more in later posts), but here is my general advice (advice--not rules!): 

• You should do whatever you need to do to write in a way that sounds like you at your most articulate. Write in your own voice, not a colloquial, slangy voice, but the voice you would use if you could have 5 minutes to think through every thing you say.    
• You should do whatever you need to do to write in a way that reflects your best thinking. That thinking should be reflected in grammatical sentences--syntax, as Stanley Fish tells us being a way of logically organizing the world. *

Finally: Don’t censor yourself by trying to avoid this word, or that kind of construction, or by following a formula that isn't helping. 


What are some rules you've learned about writing? Were they helpful or are they rules you are ready to break?
***************

** Some very good writers frequently use sentence fragments --but this is one of those cases where you really have to know the rule before you can break it! Also, confused about affect v effect? Check this out:grammar girl on affect/effect
* In How to Write a Sentence (Harper Collins)

Great Expectations

Unit 1 is the most difficult and exhausting unit of the semester. First there are just the logistical issues--When is this due? What’s the difference between our prelims and the conference draft? What’s a conference? Where’s your office? When is the final draft due again? And why is Plato so worked up about writing anyway???

Somewhere, in all of this, I am supposed to answer this question:  What exactly, is an academic essay?

If I seem breathless in class, it’s only because I’m trying to preview an entire semester’s worth of ideas about expository writing.  Now’s the time to take a bit of a breather, let some of this settle down and focus in on the two key aspects of writing an academic essay that are most important for essay 1--and, I would argue, probably the most fundamental elements of academic essays in general.  They are your argument and your use of sources.** Get these right, and (almost) everything else follows.

Use of sources.  The academic essay starts with the assumption that there are ideas in the world outside of your head. Your sources are not just providing “quotes to back up your ideas”; rather, they should help you to develop new ideas and new ways of thinking about problems. Generally speaking, if someone does research with an "answer" or argument in mind, we would probably suggest that that person is a bit close-minded, maybe even biased. So, when working with sources keep an open mind, learn from them, and let them teach you something. At the most basic level, this involves being able to neutrally summarize.

Your argument.  But thinking should never stop with thoroughly understanding a source--rather it only starts there. Moreover, argument goes well beyond simply agreeing or disagreeing. As you build an argument in conversation with your sources, think about how ideas are useful, or how perspectives might be limited or qualified. Think about how an idea might be right, but only in some cases, or up to a certain point. For this first unit, I ask you to consider what you, as a person living in 2011, can add to Plato’s concerns about writing.  We live in a culture that places enormous significance on writing and yet many of Plato’s concerns and warning ring true.  So how do YOU add to our knowledge about the world by building on and extending his ideas? 

So, to sum up, here’s the bottom line for unit 1:

Argument/ project.  Do you know what you are arguing? Does your essay follow through on that? Strong claims throughout help--that’s why we’ve focused on them so much. Do you state your argument (thesis statement) early on? Does the opening move (a paragraph or two) of your essay help set up your argument and what’s at stake in your argument? Are there places along the way where it is echoed in your claims? Why should we care about your argument? Do you suggest an answer to the “So What” question? Does your essay take a position that moves beyond summary and even beyond simply agreeing or disagreeing to work in conversation with your source?

Sources: Do you explain your source/s to your reader? Do you show how your thinking builds on, develops from, or works in conversation with sources? Do you show how your thinking is different from your source? All of the work with context, orienting (or framing quotations) and explaining and analyzing passages is part of this process of moving from the source to your own ideas.

To reiterate, here’s the list:

Strong opener that sets up argument and suggests why your argument matters.

Thesis statement.

Strong claims in most paragraphs that echo the thesis statement.

Framed, or contextualized citations (set up the source for your reader).

Explanation or analysis of the source (show how you interpret the source and how it relates your argument).

* They Say/ I say is a deceptively simple book, but you should notice that these two elements are the ones represented by the title of the book.

Why I Love My Job

Conferences. Really. It's true that conferences mean that I might have to get up at 5 am to read and comment on drafts and I'll still be talking with a student at 7 that evening, but conferences are the best part of my job. I get to talk to people about ideas--and I get paid for that!

In spite of the work they require, and the exhaustion that sets in after talking and listening for hours and hours, conferences are are exciting because they allow us to glimpse those great ideas that are behind an essay--and that, no matter how much it's revised, an essay only partially captures. Conferences are all about potential.

Even though we talk about how to capture those fleeting ideas in writing, in the conference that frustration is held at bay for a while.  Likewise, the fact that I eventually have to grade each essay (something I hate) can be pushed aside as we focus on thinking and developing thoughts.

It also seems that conferences model the exchange of ideas that is, I believe, the best reason for the existence of universities--knowledge being created as individuals listen to each other and build their ideas.

Well Wrought Urns

In my last post I talked about how disordered the world seems because my vision is temporarily impaired.  At the same time (and somewhat ironically), in class last week I tried to describe how one might think about the overall shape of an essay--and all the different parts of an essay--as a building.  In other words, I was trying to provide a visual metaphor for thinking about essay structures and organization. 


Because I think about and read and write essays often, this kind of thinking comes fairly naturally to me.  In my building metaphor, I suggested that we might see the elevator shaft as the central thesis, while each floor could be a different source (or a different aspect of the same source).  The ever changing view from each floor evokes the way an essay can look at different angles of a problem--explore a complication or an implication, acknowledge the validity of a counterargument, or turn to look more closely at, and define or explain, what a key term means. The building metaphor also allows us to think, importantly, about the way our view of the initial problem is very different when we are at the top of the building than when we were on the ground floor.


People sometimes compare essays to roads.  Again we can see again the way the image allows us to see  development along a  pathway, but one that allows for side trips down smaller pathways, an ever changing view, and finally a destination that is not the same place we started.

When I think about my own writing and revising process, however, I most often think about my draft as a lump of clay that has to be smoothed and shaped; at some places odd bits of clay must be tossed aside while at others fresh clay needs to be added.  The traditional shape of a vase works well with the idea that an essay opens itself, by the end, to some new perspectives, while remaining closely bound to a central argument.  I'm thinking here of the way vases narrow at the neck and then bloom open again; in fact vases do that twice--starting with a foot (motive?), narrowing a bit (thesis?) and then opening up most fully in the middle (where I imagine the fullest discussions of a topic to occur).


But, all roads are not straight, and all buildings are not modern, straight up and down skyscrapers and all vases are not symmetrical.  What does your essay look like to you?

There brians posses grate abilties

There? Their? 


No, this isn't going to be a post about commonly confused spellings--or other 'pet peeves' of writing instructors. (But, if you want some excellent, easy to understand advice on commonly confused words and spellings, punctuation rules, and so on, check out the Grammar Girl.)


I have a recurring eye condition that causes blurry vision and pain.  But even before the pain starts--even before I consciously know that this inflammation has flared up again--I start misspelling words, like 'there' and 'their.' Believe me, it is extraordinarily disturbing for a person who reads, writes, and teaches reading and writing for a living to suddenly find herself making 6th grade level errors! Or do we learn that in 4th grade . . . .?

 I only know a bit about what happens in our brain when we read--but, as Stanislas Dehaene writes, reading "starts in our eyes."  The image of the word is processed by-or travels through-- several different areas of our brain as our complex "visual system progressively extracts graphemes, syllables, prefixes, suffixes, and word roots" (11;  if you are interested, Dehaene's Reading in the Brain is an accessible discussion of this subject). We spend years training these pathways as we learn to read. 

Cognitive neuroscientists often discover how the brain works by studying people with problems.  For example, by looking at the brain of someone who has lost the ability to read after a stroke, they can more closely pinpoint areas of the brain that is involved in the reading process (Dehaene 54-71).  So, I’m sure they could tell me more precisely what happens when I lose my ability to spell as my vision becomes compromised. They could also explain why you probably understood the title of this post even though each word is misspelled.

But, since I'm not a cognitive neuroscientist, I'm more interested in the implications of this problem at a moment when our culture seems to be moving away from written words. Losing the ability to spell seems minor, but the fact that it happens so quickly on an individual level, in someone who spends so much time with words, seems to have disturbing implications.

Reading isn’t natural for humans (isn’t that one of Plato’s points? Interesting that he saw that well before the neuroscientists.). Suddenly losing part of this ability makes it seem very fragile, indeed.  How fast could an entire society lost their ability to read if they didn’t practice it frequently?

I find that not only is my spelling bad during these spells, but my sense of logic and organization feels fuzzy--somehow I need to have a visual sense of how ideas are laid out, and blurred vision blurs the order of the world for me. To gesture again toward larger implications, if we spend lots of time with images--which can come at us all at once, or be arranged in juxtaposition, rather than linearly--does that change our sense of how the world is ordered? Is that necessarily bad?