Mina P. Shaughnessy’s Introduction to Errors and Expectations - A Guide for the Teacher of Basic Writing gives the example of the City University of New York (CUNY), which in 1970 “adopted an admissions policy that guarantees to every city resident with a high-school diploma a place in one of its eighteen tuition-free colleges.” Shaughnessy goes on to describe this new admission policy as CUNY “opening its doors not only to a larger population of students than it had ever had before…but to a wider range of students than any college had probably ever admitted or thought of admitting to its campus.” According to Shaughnessy, these students were “academic winners and losers from the best and worst high schools in the country, the children of the lettered and the illiterate, the blue-collared, the whitecollared (sic), and the unemployed, some who could barely afford the subway fare to school and a few who came in the new cars their parents had given them as a reward for staying in New York to go to college; in short, the sons and daughters of New Yorkers, reflecting that city’s intense, troubled version of America.”
What Shaughnessy fails to mention is that CUNY was started in 1847 as a "a Free Academy for the purpose of extending the benefits of education gratuitously to persons who have been pupils in the common schools of the city and county of New York."[1] Further, “CUNY has historically served a diverse student body, especially those excluded from or unable to afford private universities. CUNY offered a high quality, tuition-free education to the poor, the working class and the immigrants of New York City until 1975, when the City's fiscal crisis forced the imposition of tuition.” CUNY is known as "the Harvard of the proletariat."[2] The 1970 admission, with its diverse student body, should have been nothing new to the teachers at CUNY, yet this fact goes unrecognized by Shaughnessy.
Dr. Kemp, in an early podcast, introduced the concept of hubris. Loosely translated, hubris refers to false pride in one’s own abilities. The hubris arises from the use of rhetoric to describe the students. Shaughnessy attributes to the teachers comments such as “ineducable” students, “nothing…short of a miracle was going to turn such students into writers”, “teachers announced to their supervisors…after only a week of class that everyone was probably going to fail”, and even describes some students as “outsiders”. I believe that this rhetoric is an example of hubris because it is patronizing in tone, for surely the teachers at CUNY would have had a great deal of experience in teaching the illiterate their belletristic style--123 years at least since the college was founded.
Shaughnessy’s English teachers at CUNY in 1970 are “trained to analyze the belletristic achievements of the centuries marooned in basic writing classrooms with adult student writers who appeared…to be illiterate.” But how can they be unaware of the diverse nature of their students, when their university has been teaching this same demographic since it was founded? Yes, the number of students increased “from 174,000 in 1969 to 266,000 in 1975” (by 92,000 or more than 50%), but the student demographic did not change—there were just more of them—which fact certainly presents logistical problems of class sizes and physical accommodation, but should not have come as a surprise to any CUNY teacher from 1847 to 1970 and beyond.
Shaughnessy’s English teachers at CUNY in 1970 are “trained to analyze the belletristic achievements of the centuries marooned in basic writing classrooms with adult student writers who appeared…to be illiterate.” But how can they be unaware of the diverse nature of their students, when their university has been teaching this same demographic since it was founded? Yes, the number of students increased “from 174,000 in 1969 to 266,000 in 1975” (by 92,000 or more than 50%), but the student demographic did not change—there were just more of them—which fact certainly presents logistical problems of class sizes and physical accommodation, but should not have come as a surprise to any CUNY teacher from 1847 to 1970 and beyond.
In reading Shaughnessy’s introduction, I was transported back in time to my own experience with English instruction. In 1968, I was a 6 year old immigrant child with an unusual name who’s first language was not English (my parents emigrated to Canada from Croatia, and my given name is Dubravka). As I recall, I had to work much harder to be recognized as a competent writer by my English teachers. One of these, in Grade 9, expressed amazement that my ideas were so logically presented. Another in Grade 13 (at the time the province of Ontario, where I live, had a 5-year high school program) marveled that I’d been accepted by one of the top journalism schools. And an English teacher that was the mother of a classmate compared my essay to her child’s (I’d received an A and he’d only received a B) and pronounced my essay very good for an immigrant. By referring to the CUNY teachers as “marooned in basic writing classrooms”, Shaughnessy’s teachers are no different than my early English teachers.
The hubris also comes from the English teachers’ innate sense of their own specialness (and dare I say it, smugness). The “trained” teachers possess knowledge of the belletristic achievements of centuries, yet they are “unready in mind and heart to face their students, the students weighted by the disadvantages of poor training”. This type of thinking is very reminiscent of that described in Schank’s “What is an educated Mind” preface: “as a society we believe that those educated in literature and history and other humanities are in some way better informed, more knowledgeable, and somehow more worthy of the descriptor well educated. ” [3] And the CUNY students “were in college now for one reason: that their lives might be better than their parents', that the lives of their children might be better than theirs so far had been.” So the path to a better life is through knowledge of belletristic writing taught by English teachers who thought themselves so special that they were stunned by the poor quality of student essays? I'm not so sure.
From its large and diverse student body, CUNY has produced 12 Nobel Laureates (from 1959 to 2005), leading thinkers and social activists, corporate leaders, writers, and teachers.[4] Yet the English teachers were dismayed with the calibre of the students they had to teach!
However, Shaughnessy’s book is considered a useful and popular guide book: some 12,000 hardcover copies were sold within six months after it was published, and by 1979, more than 40,000 paperback copies had been sold. Today, the book is still considered by some to be an important and influential study of basic writing, relevant for teachers of both remedial courses and writing in general.[5]
If we accept the premise that some system (of English instruction) is better than no system (as “there were no studies nor guides, nor even suitable textbooks to turn to”), then Shaughnessy’s guidebook is a good thing. Interestingly, as a guidebook on teaching the “ineducable”, the book devotes a number of its chapters to grammar instruction, despite the fact that Shaughnessy tells us grammar should not be the only focus of instruction (five of six chapters focus on the correct way to do things, the current-traditionalist teaching method referenced by Dr. Kemp in his latest podcast on the four instructional emphases). However, Shaughnessy does posit that there is a pattern to student error and gives us techniques for its mitigation.
If we accept the premise that some system (of English instruction) is better than no system (as “there were no studies nor guides, nor even suitable textbooks to turn to”), then Shaughnessy’s guidebook is a good thing. Interestingly, as a guidebook on teaching the “ineducable”, the book devotes a number of its chapters to grammar instruction, despite the fact that Shaughnessy tells us grammar should not be the only focus of instruction (five of six chapters focus on the correct way to do things, the current-traditionalist teaching method referenced by Dr. Kemp in his latest podcast on the four instructional emphases). However, Shaughnessy does posit that there is a pattern to student error and gives us techniques for its mitigation.
[2] Leveling the Playing Field: Justice, Politics, and College Admissions by Robert K. Fullinwider, Judith Lichtenberg (Rowman & Littlefield 2004); City on a Hill: Testing the American Dream at City College by James Traub (Perseus 1995). As referenced in http://www.answers.com/topic/city-university-of-new-york
[3] Schank, Roger. Preface to Making Minds Less Educated Than Our Own, 2005. Artificial Intelligence and Nature of Learning Scholar.
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_University_of_New_York
Howdy Debbie! Do you get back to Croatia much? I visited in 2002 and was enchanted. What a lovely place it is.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about the situation at CUNY, but I think this purgatorial attitude about composition often comes from literaturists who find themselves stuck in a composition classroom who would much rather be teaching literature and poetry. The service composition course is seen as a dues-paying job.
It seems to me that many literaturists (but certainly not all) seem to subscribe to the 19th century attitude Dr. Kemp describes in the podcast: literature elevates a person. And they also subscribe to a much earlier attitude: that it indicates one's "quality."
But I don't think that attitude is unqiue. Talk to any web developer, programmer, or help desk analyst and you'll hear hilarious stories about hapless clients/users/customers who made some very ignorant or silly choices. Implicit in these discussions is the desire to build oneself up as an authority - as better than the madding crowd. "We are the holders of the special knowledge. Can you believe they didn't know that?!"
I suspect that Comp. teachers often find themselves in this ignoble position. Composition has always been relatively easy to us. It seems self-evident. After all, who will become composition teachers but people who are good with words? So naturally, we look down on those who don't share our background.
While I sympathize with teachers who are dealing with woefully unprepared students, I agree with you that it's very easy and dangerous to fall into condescension. So I really appreciate your attitude and unique experience.
Hi, Dan...
ReplyDeleteThanks for asking, the last time I was in Croatia was in 1989, a few years before you. Perceptions of immigrants (in Canada) have changed quite a bit since 1968 in a good way...Shaughnessy, if she were to write her book today, would probably say things differently, I would imagine.
What I didn't get from Shaughnessy is an understanding of why the English teachers would think so poorly of their students, particularly because CUNY was an institution that always had a diverse student body. When CUNY had its great increase in student numbers, I found it difficult to believe that the English teachers would be as broadsided as Shaughnessy said they were.
I think you are right that composition teachers have a bit of an "ivory tower" attitude, particularly to those that don't share their "tribal knowledge". And no doubt they resent having to teach down to their students' levels, when they'd much rather be teaching literature. I read somewhere that James Joyce, who was often forced to teach English out of necessity, thought his students were a nuisance.
Dr. Kemp quoted Kitzhaber who in 1960 pointed out that "literature graduates find a terrible market for literature and therefore migrate into teaching composition. Often (but not always) these writing instructors are not happy campers and not entirely sympathetic with their instructional mission."
I've also seen the "literature elevates a person" paradigm, and think it may be a uniquely English-speaking world phenomenon. Year ago, I worked with an engineer from England who told me he felt "inferior" to one of the Vice Presidents because the Vice President had studied classics at Oxford and he'd only studied engineering (as engineering wasn't has intellectual as Classics). Now, there were other factors at play with this man's self deprecation (like his personality), but it was a telling comment none the less.
Dr. Kemp asked in one of the lectures what makes an intellectual. I'd answer that an intellectual is one who can communicate their ideas (otherwise what good are they, as one of our readings emphasized). So teaching composition is very very important, for us and our societies.
First, I love how you did background research on CUNY. Gives me another way of thinking about the readings. I’ll have to do something like that in the future.
ReplyDeleteAs far as hubris is concerned, I have something that might not make you feel better about life in general, but might shed a little light on things. I should caveat, before I continue, that what I say below mostly applies to American R1 universities.
I have been in higher ed admin for over a decade, and I have seen A LOT of faculty hubris. From what I can gather anecdotally, the general professor disposition in most (not all) research universities is that freshman students are a nuisance in almost every major. Intro courses in nearly all disciplines are treated the same way English treats FYC: usually taught by adjuncts, grad students, or underprepared junior faculty. I suspect we’ll dive into the staffing issue more in class, so I won’t explicate my reasons for it yet; for now it’s suffice to note that the status issue is not unique to English departments.
What the staffing issues mean for introductory courses, including FYC, at R1 universities is that the instructors are unmotivated (I won't go so far as to say "disgusted") to teach the basics of their subject. They find it boring--beneath them. And the students are little more than a nuisance; after all, they (students) struggle with concepts that the instructor mastered years ago and with some ease (or at least intense passion to learn). That students cannot grasp (or, worse, don’t CARE about) the material is frustrating and often demoralizing.
The hubris seems to stem from several sources: 1) an attempt to shield oneself against the students’ boredom/loathing of beloved material, 2) the incredulity at students’ inability to grasp “easy” concepts, and 3) general faculty personality/social problems, which are more common than one would like to know. I’m sure there are other reasons, but that’s just my brainstorm.