The Penn State sex abuse scandal has rocked the core of our campus. Students, Faculty, and Staff are reeling as they struggle to find ways to talk about an issue of this magnitude and complexity amidst the swirl of information and misinformation. This situation is unprecedented, which makes it all the more important for us to remember that the higher-level administrators are not the only leaders at this institution and that leadership comes from a variety of people on this campus. While it is difficult to know how to guide conversations about a still-unfolding crisis, there is nevertheless more to do than to speculate about motives or to call for firings.

The Center for Democratic Deliberation believes that deliberation about such an emotionally fraught issue is most fruitful when it begins in established communities, particularly when those communities care about inquiry. At the end of the term, such communities of inquiry have been built in Penn State’s classrooms, student groups, residence halls, fraternities and sororities, as well as many social and interest-based organizations.

We are grateful for resources such as CAPS to help individuals work through personal turmoil. At the same time, we believe in the importance of 1) thinking about these issues collectively in groups, and 2) learning how to deliberate about community and social issues in real time. It might not seem like it now, but the discussions we have today and in the coming weeks and months will shape our campus and community—both in how we live together and how we are perceived. Penn State is a lot of things, but it is foremost an institution of higher learning, and there is learning to do in this midst of this crisis. In the week leading up to Thanksgiving, the Center for Democratic Deliberation urges instructors to devote class time—or to continue to devote class time—to structured conversations about issues important to the Penn State community. Finally, we urge students to remember that this is their conversation as much as anyone’s.

To these ends, we invite instructors and students to use the questions and resources on this page to help generate productive dialogue.

The following was sent to faculty and graduate students in the English Department and Communication Arts and Sciences Department:

The Center for Democratic Deliberation believes that deliberation about emotionally fraught issues is most fruitful when it begins in established communities, particularly when those communities care about inquiry. At the end of the term, such communities of inquiry have been built in Penn State’s classrooms. The CDD is urging a teach-in for intro GWS courses (English 15 and 30; CAS 100) for classes held on Wednesday and Thursday, November 16 and 17. We invite instructors of other courses to participate as well. During this time, we hope that you will devote at least part of your class to discussing issues raised by the recent scandal.

Crowley uses her history to claim that first-year composition should “become a part of the disciplinary practices of composition studies,” and thus part of a sequence of non-required composition courses that students would elect to take (9, 29, 241).

Crowley also chronicles the ideological shifts in the pedagogy of first-year composition, arguing that the humanist approach (which focuses on the improvement of student character through reading great works in literature) is not the best approach. Part of Crowley’s reasoning for this is that humanist literary study focuses on completed texts, while composition needs to focus on the production and development of texts, and that humanism is more metaphysical than it is rhetorical (13-14).

To briefly summarize Crowley’s history:
• The nineteenth century saw a decline in the study of rhetoric—a “focus on public, civic, discourse”—in the United States and an increased focus on “developing taste in their students” instead (34). This was due in part to the creation of the modern university, modeled after German universities. The developed requirement of freshman composition also helped to legitimize English studies (esp. since freshman composition usually focused on literature) (58-59).
• Part of the legitimizing of literature as an area of study in the late nineteenth century involved alienating students from their language, which Crowley argues was done in three steps: “The first step in the process was to define English as a language from which its native speakers were alienated. The second step was to establish an entrance examination in English that was very difficult to pass. The third step, necessitated by the large number of failures on the exam, was to install a course of study that would remediate the lack demonstrated by the exam” (60).
• Because composition was taught from a humanist/literary perspective, it was easily tied to current-traditional rhetoric, which “is not a rhetoric at all” because it is not situated, but is focused on forms or genres: “exposition, description, narrative, and argument” (94). Humanism and current-traditional rhetoric could be tied together so easily because both required “that students’ expression of character be put under the constant surveillance so that they could be ‘improved’ by correction” (97).
• During World War II, composition began to focus more on communication skills because the military was asking that soldiers be taught communication skills. Because of this, composition teachers created professional associations (CCCC) and some composition teachers turned to rhetorical theory to understand communication (instead of simply expression) (155-156). The 1940s saw an increase in progressive thought (influenced by Dewey) in composition courses, and a focus on education for the benefit of democracy. While the communication skills focus flourished in some ways, it was intellectually demanding on teachers and required administrative support (testing, labs, etc.)—along with these problems, many English departments were resistant to communication skills, and the trend largely faded out by 1960 (183).
• Starting in the 1970s, process pedagogy began to develop, which brought about three changes: 1) the professionalization of teaching FYC with research; 2) the idea that students are writers rather than people whose grammar needs policed; and 3) composition became more fun to teach (191). While there are differences between product pedagogy and process pedagogy, Crowley doubts that this shift was that big: textbooks still espoused current-traditional models, and process pedagogy did little to question modernist notions of a required course and composition’s situatedness in the university (212-213). One important effect of process pedagogy, however, is that it altered the ideology of composition programs from conservative to liberal (218)

Crowley closes her book with a few important arguments that she takes out of her history: 1) teaching is always political (Chapter 10); 2) the requirement of FYC produces student subjectivity as “docile student” (217); 3) it’s doubtful whether a required course can be turned “to radical purposes” (235); 4) composition as a requirement should be abolished (241). This last point Crowley argues because required FYC exploits part-time teachers and graduate students, as well as students; the curriculum is harmed by trying to reach every student; the classroom environment is harmed by being a requirement; and the requirement harms the discipline of composition because it becomes a gatekeeping course and sits low on the hierarchy at universities (241-243).

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Today’s television child [. . .] is bewildered when he enters the nineteenth-century environment that still characterizes the educational establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns, subjects, and schedules. It is naturally an environment much like any factory set-up with its inventories and assembly lines.

The “child” is an invention of the seventeenth century; he did not exist in, say, Shakespeare’s day. He had, up until that time, been merged into the adult world and there was nothing that could be called childhood in our sense.

Today’s child is growing up absurd, because he lives in two worlds, and neither of them inclines him to grow up. Growing up—that is our new work, and it is total. Mere instruction will not suffice. (18)

McLuhan, Marshall, and Quentin Fiore. The Medium is the Massage. New York: Bantam, 1967.

• Boing Boing: A great graphic highlighting the text of Jacksonville State University President William Meehan’s dissertation, showing how much was plagiarized. Neither JSU nore Meehan’s alma mater, Alabama, plan to do anything about the issue.

• Open Education: “The Future of Books (and Authors) in the Digital Age.”

• Read/Write Web: The ereader and ebook market is read to grow?

• Read/Write Web: A history professor uses Twitter in his class.

• NY Times: Interesting piece on the definition of the potato chip and its relationship to judicial opinions and law interpretation. (via the philosophist)

According to Republican lawmakers in Georgia and the Christian Coalition, queer theory is not a legitimate course of study.

On CNN’s American Morning today, Carol Costello reported on Georgia’s recent variation of the age-old debate over what should be taught in our schools. Georgia State University is under fire for employing professors who are listed in an annual faculty guide as experts in ‘Oral Sex’ and ‘Male Prostitution.’ State Representative Charlice Byrd announced on February 4 that she is starting a “grassroots” effort to oust these professors, AP reported.

[. . .]

Calvin Hill, another State Representative, took issue with the University of Georgia’s graduate program on queer theory. “Our job is to educate our people in sciences, business, math,” said Hill, a vice chairman of the budget-writing House Appropriations Committee. He said professors aren’t going to meet those needs “by teaching a class in queer theory.” (read the whole thing)

My favorite part is that the goal of universities is, according to Hill, to “educate our people in sciences, business, math.” There is no room for humanities research or teaching with a variety of methodologies and epistemologies.

But this brings up all sorts of questions — questions which keep coming up. What is the role of the humanities, and how do humanities scholars convey that role to the public (or to a variety of publics)? This is particularly true of fields like English, which is misread as being about studying “great books”; queer theory, which, as Lisa Duggan points out, is often not recognizable as legitimate in liberal discourses; composition, which is painted as being about “fixing” basic writers; and rhetoric, which has all too often been relegated to simply problem solving (as Vatz argues).

UPDATED: I ended this post quickly, as I had to finish reading something, so I wound up leaving this post with only a few questions of the “all sorts” that I mentioned. Someone else on the listserv I’m on suggested that this says nothing about Georgia or about higher education, but rather about the scapegoating and attacks against LGBTQ folks across this country. I somewhat agree. In fact, I completely agree that this says nothing about Georgia per se (my twitter update, in which I announced I don’t want to teach in Georgia, aside). And I agree that this is part of a general trend in this country by conservatives to use queers as scapegoats and targets of verbal (and physical!) assaults. That seems obvious. But I think it does say something about public views of higher ed, and also public views of queer epistemology. Jonathan Alexander (I think it was) has written (somewhere!) about how when he comes out to his students, his epistemology becomes suspect: students cannot trust his interpretation of things like they could before he comes out. Certain ways of knowing and interpretive acts are suspect in our society, and deemed not credible for academia. Of course, the assault on queers and on disciplinary/methodological plurality are intricately linked. (Note that it is much less likely that a “straight”-forward science experiment about oral sex would not be critiqued in the same way as a Mindy Stombler’s research on the connections between oral sex practices and public discourse is critiqued and dismissed.) Too, there is the connection made by conservative forces in this country between academia and a “liberal, leftist elite” that also makes this critique much more salient. Also, I need to go get lunch, so I’ll end here.

• Anne-Marie offers some information literacy tools for synonyms

• Matt offers some tools for annotated websites

• Matt also shares some videos about Twitter. This one on ambient intimacy is especially interesting.

• Irene Monreo at Bilerico: Gay is NOT the new black

• Feministe on the Rolling Stone article that blames gay organizing for Prop 8′s passing

• The Valve: Kugelmass believes it’s a mistake for Composition to be merged with Rhetoric. I disagree, but don’t have time or energy to write something. Perhaps once I’m in Iowa.

Tom Farber gives a lot of tests. He’s a calculus teacher, after all.

So when administrators at Rancho Bernardo, his suburban San Diego high school, announced the district was cutting spending on supplies by nearly a third, Farber had a problem. At 3 cents a page, his tests would cost more than $500 a year. His copying budget: $316. But he wanted to give students enough practice for the big tests they’ll face in the spring, such as the Advanced Placement exam.

“Tough times call for tough actions,” he says. So he started selling ads on his test papers: $10 for a quiz, $20 for a chapter test, $30 for a semester final.

This is a wee bit concerning. I don’t necessarily blame the teacher. If our government wasn’t so fucked up, they’d be financially supporting schools. Most of the messages on the test, the article reports, were actually inspirational messages from parents, which is kind of cool. But if this trend continues… or rather, if this becomes a trend… eek.

The article also reports, “The National Education Association says teachers spend about $430 out of their pockets each year for school supplies.” This seems pretty accurate from my experience. I don’t know how much I spent on folders, books for my classroom bookshelf, and other supplies when I taught 8th grade. I should have kept track for tax purposes, but I’m a poor data collector when it comes to money.

• Oregon State has joined iTunes University! I had students give a pretty good presentation on this arguing that OSU should start using iTunes U in my business writing class last year next year, arguing that OSU should get involved with iTunes U. I wonder if they were involved in this getting OSU on the iTunes boat at all (I somewhat doubt it, but I hope they were). I didn’t realize it until I just searched, but Penn State is on iTunes U as well.

• Stanley Fish discusses a new book on academic freedom. I generally agree with his (and the books’) take on the topic.

• via the Blogora, Texas A&M adviser to student conservative group resigns because he’s ashamed of the group’s tactics (especially after they publicly attacked four professors who signed a petition supporting William Ayers).

• New York Times: Blogging at a Snail’s Pace

• A Marriage Manifesto… of sorts: a young gay man decides he’s going to stop using marriage terms for married folks. Instead of “husband” and “wife,” he’s referring to people as “domestic partners” and the like. I kind of like this approach.

A nice coincidence.

Appiah remarks that education has two purposes in a liberal society: “preparing a child for an autonomous existence” and “the promulgation of at least some of [a self-perpetuating political order's] constitutive tenets” (199). Without recounting his entire theory of autonomy (which draws on Mills and spans parts of the previous four chapters), I’d like to point out that barring this student from wearing “goth” makeup harms his preparation for an autonomous existence. This rule is, in Lacanian terms, master discourse.

Appiah writes later “that the cultivation of individuality [is] the most social thing of all” (211), and, if we reason that autonomy and individuality (a la Appiah, Friere, Dewey) are inter-related (if not nearly the same), then the school seems to have infringed on this young man’s ability to cultivate himself.

Education and government, Appiah argues, should have a role in the soul-making of its citizens. He defines ‘soul-making’ as “the project of intervening in the process of interpretation through which each citizen develops an identity — and doing so with the aim of increasing her chances of living an ethically successful life” (164). Does barring this student from wearing goth makeup “increase his chances of living an ethically successful life”? Hardly. But we have to look at the school’s rationale for the decision: it was distracting to other students. “Distracting” is, of course, a term without clear meaning. Anything could be distracting to someone, so I think, as a term in and of itself, “distracting” isn’t a sound enough reason by itself to bar an appearance.

If we are concerned about the “legitimacy” of a goth identity, it isn’t “abhorrent,” a word Appiah uses for identities that are “morally, not merely ethically, impaired” (191). (Appiah uses Richard Dworkin’s distinction, that ethics “includes convictions about which kinds of lives are good or bad for a person to lead, and morality includes principles about how a person should treat other people” [Dworkin, qtd. in Appiah xiii].) The goth identity itself need not be cultivated by the school, but it is highly suspect to suppress it.

I think it would be within grounds for the school to provide tools that might lead to this youth to question his identity, but ultimately, this decision to suppress a goth identity is illiberal. Boo to this school’s administrators.