I thought Royster and Pratt's articles both very directly reflected the presentation by ALANA students. Royster reflects on her personal experience, combined an academic view, to pinpoint the way in which her voice, along with other of her race, becomes silenced in the classroom setting. ALANA students highlighted this same point of feeling that their particular language and experiences are largely not taken into account. Marginalized groups feel so invisible and taken for granted, it is no wonder why non-white students feel the desire to get their degrees, get out, and never look back at Ithaca College.

Like Ava, I appreciated Royster's examples of the reason's she so often feels she has to resist"speaking without clenching her teeth." It puts the misunderstandings and subtle acts of racism that often are swept under the rug. She presents us with the idea of the "hybrid person" who has the ability to understand a variety of discourses. She claims that we all have this ability if we engage in better practices that allow us to exchange perspectives and negotiate between differences in language.

Hairston: Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing

In her article, Hairston explains her concern that, after the major gains college introductory writing courses have had over the years, that they have begun to regress. Instead of the classes being about allowing inexperienced writers to become competent in their writing skills and be able to effectively express themselves, she fears that classes have now become politically charged. By forcing students to write about a specific social issue in their essays, rather than about what they know, "...they are likely to take refuge in generalities and responses that please the teacher" (189). Not only is individual expression denied, but they will have learned only that there is a "correct way to think" (189).

While I agree with Hairston that basic writing classes should be strictly student-centered and kept away from the political realm, I think she goes a bit overboard in her argument, and I have issues with the majority of page 188 of the article. Although it is dangerous to allow teachers to hold a power that they could abuse by forcing their political opinions upon students, I doubt that the majority of teachers have that kind of motive. Hairston almost makes it sound like every writing teacher who assigns essays about social or racial injustice is attempting to recruit their own little political army. I highly doubt this is the case. Even if the teacher did express his or her opinions upon the class, Hairston has to realize that college students aren't as impressionable as she is assuming them to be. If they made it to the college level, chances are many of them have their own political opinions, so if anything, the classroom setting would turn into more of a heated political argument amongst the students.

Also, I know Hairston was talking specifically about intro writing classes, but I don't see how writing essays about current social and political events in writing classes is necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I found that I've applied concepts I learned in my women's studies and sociology classes to some of my writing classes, in both discussion and papers. Isn't that the point of college? To bridge that gap between all of the disciplines (in their respective "ivory towers") and apply them to the real world?

Cushman: The Public Intellectual

Cushman presents a rather idealistic theory in order to resolve the social issue of disconnect between "intellectuals" and "common people." She believes that by making social service part of the university curriculum, it would bridge the gap between the elite, educated people and those in our community who do not have access to the same educational activities. By doing so, the educational system will better serve the community as a whole, by creating a mutualistic learning experience for both educated and uneducated people.

I like the idea that Cushman presents as a way to connect the community and benefit those who would not otherwise have access to educational opportunities. However, although she makes a point to say that participating students should not act the "savior role," I can't help but shake the feeling that they play a superior role in the interaction with other community members. It feels like a front, like the students aren't as genuinely invested in learning from others as they are in pouring their own "superior" knowledge into the minds of others.

Not to be a downer, but I do feel like on the whole, the relationship between the "intellectual elites" and "common people" will always be a little strained. Still, attempting to bridge the gap is bettwe than allowing the gap to become wider, and I have hope that eventually, if this system of mutualistic learning persists, Cushman's theory and ideals will stand on their own in our society.

Anson: Writing in a Culture of Technology

It was interesting for me to compare Anson's article on implementing technology ino the classroom with the article I found by Webb, which discusses almost the exact same concept, except TWELVE YEARS LATER. The main difference is that Anson's article is mostly theoretical, things he believes will happen in the years to come based on our rapidly developing era of technology.

Maybe it's just me, but I've always been a little wary on becoming too dependent on technology. Anson's ideas of individualized learning, though seemingly ideal for a person attempting to foster his or her own writing style, somehow just doesn't appeal to me. Of course, after meeting face-to-face with other students and a professor in all of my writing classes, I go home and apply what I've learned to my own style and ideas, so the independent writing process is still in place (and I believe writing alone IS one of the most important aspects of learning about one's own thought process). However, losing that group discussion and interaction, the ability to comepare oneself with the works of other students and learn from their ideas (and even their mistakes), well, I just don't think we'd be doing ourselves any favors, and in the end, technology is really only about efficiency rather than improvement.

I can't remember if it was Anson or Webb who claimed this, but yes, I do agree that accessible technology makes people want to write more often, but that does not necessarily mean it makes us write better. In fact, thanks to Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites, our grammar has gone to shit, and we have trouble having thoughts that are any more than 160 characters. Call me old fashioned, but I think that, as valuable as technology is in terms of researching, convenience of emails, and having a template on which to organize one's thoughts, there is no replacement for face-to-face interaction. Technology should remain a back-up, not a substitute, for dicect contact, both student-to-student, and student-to-teacher.

Article on Writing & Technology

"Rhizomatics": Following the roots in writing and research heuristics." Adam Webb.

Webb basically takes someone else's theory (referred to as Cormier), which is called a "rhizomatic model of education," and applies it to the classroom setting. "Rhizome" is a concept which provides a "flexible conception of knowledge for the information age" (3). Cormier beleives that knowledge can be negotiated and that learning is a contextual, collaborative endeavor, and using web-based programs, students can greatly expand their ability to research and write. With this kind of information technology now commonplace in society, students can now explore different perspectives of an issue or topic, develop their own perspectives, create a narrative that allows the audience to come up with their own perspective on the subject. Webb provides questions for students to ask themselves, as well as activities for teachers to conduct in the classrooms to make the shift into a more technology-based classroom learning experience.

The article is significant in today's world because, unlike my generation, who grew up as this technology was first becoming available to us, kids and adolescents today are expected to know how to use the technology that they've always known to exist, as well as be able to utilize the information that is so easily accessible. Classrooms absolutely need to make this shift (if they haven't already) to incorporate this type of learning in the classroom.

Rose and Apstein

In his article, Rose targets the issues that face unskilled writers in the college setting (what a new and intriguing topic!). He claims that today's writing curriculum focuses on only improving the technical skills of these writers through remedial drills and practices. What is wrong with this system, Rose says, is that "such work is built on a set of highly questionable assumptions: that a writer has a relatively fixed repository of linguistic blunders that can be pinpointed and corrected through drill..." (345). In reality, this offers only a simplistic understanding of where the problems truly lie, which are within the institution itself, and the scientific, quantifiable way in which it deals with students who are not adequately prepared for college-level writing. There is inherent danger in this method, because it focuses only on technical errors, rather on how we are able to present the knowledge we have gleaned from various courses through our writing.

I remember taking short-answer or short-essay tests in high school, and even in some finals for college classes, and I cringe at how bad my writing probably was. The only thing I (and most other students) concentrate on is getting the facts down on paper, to prove our understanding of a subject. This method, however, completely trivializes the discipline of writing, because isn't part of learning about the ability to not only restate what you have learned, but to eloquently write about how these facts relate to the real world, or even questioning what you've learned? The alternative is basically regurgitating facts out of a textbook, and let's face it, anyone can do that. Higher education is about applying what we've learned to our lives outside of the classroom, and writing aids us in doing just that.

All I really learned from Apstein's short article was how she agreed with Rose's article, but believes that, in order to give merit to his argument, he would have to specify the type of writinghe means, the kind in which one interprets the curriculum, which ilustrates how one actively engages in building one's knowledge on a subject.

Brooke: Underlife and Writing Instruction

I found that Brooke's argument overlapped with a few of the key ideas from Delpit's article, as well as from Elbow's article about ignoring audience. Brook argues, like Delpit, that all students feel the need to distance themselves from the classroom, to express themselves as people with interests and personalities that extend beyond the identity of "student." Current institutions, however, tend to be in conflict with the student/writer's need to express him or herself as an individual, in the same way that a teacher's desire to teach writing as a "freeing process" has gone against the "idealogical purposes of the institution" (149).

Brooke offers a suggestion to shift the identity roles in the classroom, to make students into writers in order to facilitate original thinking, as opposed to what they believe a teacher would want. He makes a good point to say that in order for writers be become good at what they do, they absolutely need to see themselves as more than just "good students," because in the real world outside the classroom, what they learned about their underlife identity is what will really matter.