1/1/2009
Let’s be in an uproar. Ethics have fallen in our society. Kids these days are apathetic and don’t care. No matter what we teach them, it is seen as irrelevant.
The recent “2008 Report Card on the Ethics of America’s Youth” by the Josephson Institute is getting wide press amongst educators, many eager to defend the behavior of teens. Sixty-four percent of students admitted to cheating on a test in the past year; over a third have plagiarized by using the internet. Yet 93% said they were satisfied with their ethics and 77% said they were better than most people they know. More than a quarter even said they lied on the survey questions.
It’s easy to see statistical anomalies in a study like this (how could 77% be better than most, for instance), but I’m curious about what cheating must mean to students who do it and yet are satisfied with their characters. I’d like to hypothesize about a rationale: to many, the content of testing is irrelevant. [And, for that matter, so are surveys on ethics to about a quarter of them.]
We talk a lot about “high stakes” testing, about ACTs and MMEs and SATs and APs and GREs and other exams which set the bars beyond which we cannot gain admission to college, secure scholarships, be “qualified citizens.” And there’s no question, this anxiety is spread to both teachers and students alike. My grade-conscious sophomores worry about whether their impromptu scores will appear on a permanent record, my AP students worry about reaching that arbitrary essay score of 5. My instruction follows suit, spending precious class periods (and for my colleagues, class weeks) analyzing the rubrics, looking for aids to “bump” scores by a point or two. Other students see their low ACT scores as evidence that they weren’t worthy of the university, after all.
What matters, then, is the high score, not what is on the test. We have built a system that teaches results, not learning; teaches scores, not the value of idea.
Bush’s educational legacy will be increased school accountability, no matter the costs. By demanding teachers compel students to improve scores, we end up focusing our attention on the political drives to get there, though these, too, are statistically impossible to achieve. Royal Oak High School school improvement efforts are only about improving MME scores to reach Adequate Yearly Progress; we spend no time discussing anything else. As our recent joint administration-union committee on assessing our work recently observed, one reason we are scoring low is that the middle school teachers are preparing their eighth grade students to achieve MME results and the high school teachers are prepping students for ACT results. And—no surprise—the objectives and rubrics for each do not match.
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We have built a system that teaches results, not learning; teaches scores, not the value of idea. |
But wait. Instead of raising the question, “Should we question whether school improvement should focus on test achievement?” the district will now seek to align the teaching across these two tests. Because, after all, scores are important, not the idea. Teachers are then subject to the same motivational forces as our students. We do not ask what we should teach; we ask only how we can raise scores.
Let’s not talk, then, about how cheating by teachers in Chicago and now South Carolina occurs around high-stakes testing. Is it a question of ethics? Is it a question about how we are taught to think about education?
For me, the question is less about ethics of students (or teachers) and more about what we are given time and incentive to think about. Political public policy-making around “academic rigor” merely creates a tunnel-vision for survival, not a reflective critical environment for education. The fact that this very essay would find no place in my district (let alone time to discuss it amongst my colleagues) suggests that our educational system limits opportunities for critical literacy. (I won’t here elaborate on our long and failing efforts to build collaborative collegial time into our work days.)
And I am not surprised, then, by a recent study which tends to corroborate my hypothesis. Heinrich Mintrop, of the Leadership for Educational Equity Program at UC Berkeley, writes that:
Given that schools these days are fundamentally driven by external assessments, we would have to start by constructing assessment systems with different incentives and indicators that train the lens of what we value in education beyond test scores. (Education Week, 10 Dec. 2008, 25)
The study of California schools examined several which believed that “tightening up, curricular alignment, more literacy remediation, and de-emphasizing nontest subjects” would be most effective in scores. But then it correlated such schools with ratings in instructional quality and student engagement, both in high-performing and low-performing schools. Simply put, “tightening up” created overall higher test scores, but little student engagement. There was no correlation between high scores (however they were achieved) and instructional quality.
This, perhaps, is the key to our failed ethic, both for students and teachers. We have stopped talking about motivation for learning, about instructional quality, and have asked only for the numbers at the end of the process. The reason we go to schools as teachers and students has become backgrounded, and—after all, ethics is not on the test.
In the end, we need to be less concerned with student cheating than with the educators who pursue score performance without question, itself an un-critical—and therefore, I suggest—unethical practice. At best we engage in a very narrow definition of quality. At worst we endorse a critical illiteracy in our students. Why should we expect them to be reflective?
Humans respond to stimuli, in economics terms, incentives and disincentives. Is it a surprise that Obama has nominated Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education? He’s the guy who worked with economist Steve Levitt in exposing the Chicago cheating teacher scandal; wow, and he’s only 44! Am I hopeful? Not until engaging educators as critically literate professionals in designing instruction is part of the test. 10/11/2008
Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a
terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must function
also as a deflection of reality.
Kenneth Burke
I appreciate your problematizing of the word “literacy.” Despite your concern regarding the “list” approach, I think it serves the purpose of illustrating the dangers of defining literacy in narrow terms such as “comprehension of printed matter.” It may be easier to test and evaluate a limited definition of literacy, but for those who become entrenched in the “reflection” suggested by the definition, they forget that it is a “selection” of the possible definitions, and ultimately engage in tactics—consciously or unconsciously—that can lead to a “deflection” of a broader discussion of literacy. Yes, literacy is political, and we do students a disservice when we don’t acknowledge its political nature.
For this post I’d like to discuss Oakland University’s First-Year Writing Program (FYWP), in part because it’s what I’ve been thinking about lately, but also because I think it will provide an interesting case example of how the politics of literacy can play out in higher education. When I first started teaching in the Department of Rhetoric at OU in 1995, the FYWP was defined by terminology that characterized the two courses in the program, Composition I and Composition II, as “service courses.” The descriptions of these two courses emphasized teaching the conventions of “academic discourse” (admittedly, an ambiguous phrase) that would enable students to write successfully in their other college courses. In short, the FYWP was meant to serve the rest of the university, placing it in a position of servitude, a marginal place with limited political power, funding, etc. This position of Composition in higher education, of course, isn’t unusual. FYWP’s have traditionally resided in the margins of English Departments, the courses taught primarily by T.A.’s and adjuncts, those with the least amount of power in academia. Interestingly, OU’s FYWP was not part of the English Department but instead was run by the Department of Rhetoric, which had married itself to the Department of Communication and Journalism, two departments that offered programs leading to a major and a minor. However, despite this amalgamation—three departments in one—Rhetoric remained the weakest of the three. This marginal position was largely due to the fact that Rhetoric course offerings were mainly comprised of “service courses” taught primarily by non-tenure faculty who, although they were members of the American Association of University Professors, were still near the bottom of the university hierarchy. At this time, the “research paper” was the assessment benchmark used to evaluate both students and the FYWP. In the case of the former, students were required to receive a 2.0 on their research papers in Composition II in order to pass the course and fulfill the university writing requirement, regardless of the grades received on the rest of their coursework. In the case of the latter, the Department of Rhetoric engaged in a multi-year self-assessment in the late 1990’s that required all instructors to submit randomly selected student research papers for evaluation.
Fast-forward to 2008. The Department of Rhetoric has recently separated from the Department of Communication and Journalism. It is now called the Department of Writing and Rhetoric and offers a program leading to a major and a minor. Based on credit hours offered in the Fall 2008 Semester, it is the largest department in the College of Arts and Sciences. In short, the Department of Writing and Rhetoric has moved from a marginal position in the university to a place where it has more political power. With that move, it appeared the department had acquired the power to define the FYWP as something other than “service courses.” When an overview of the new curriculum was first announced, it decisively identified three core components: (1) rhetorical theory, (2) new media and multimodal composition, and (3) civic engagement. But as the discussion regarding the FYWP progressed, the terminology “shifted” and began to sound reminiscent of my early days at OU. The phrase “writing in the disciplines” was introduced into the conversation, a phrase that might sound less ambiguous than “academic discourse” but none-the-less implies that the FYWP is responsible for preparing students for writing in their other college courses. For the moment, it appears the framework of the FYWP as “service courses” has been given a seat at the discussion table.
Now I’m not saying that the FYWP doesn’t have a responsibility to the rest of the university in regards to fostering academic literacy. Composition II is part of the core courses that make up the University General Education Requirements. As such, it operates in relationship to the other courses students are taking at OU. What I question is the extent of the power the Department of Writing and Rhetoric has to define the FYWP. It’s true that the department holds more political power in its current conception, but it’s not the only department that holds a stake in the definition of literacy promoted in the FYWP. This is all troubling to me because I’m not sure at this point how “writing in the disciplines," if adopted as a defining terminology of the FYWP, will redefine or possibly even marginalize the three core components originally articulated. Already I’ve heard that “civic engagement” could be as simple as writing an op-ed. Yes, this communication act could be considered “civic engagement,” but the terminology “op-ed” could act as a “selection of reality” that limits the discussion of what civic engagement could be in the context of the FYWP. Since I place a high value on critical literacy—or authentic literacy, the term you prefer, which is less politically neutral—I’m concerned about the FYWP being limited once again to the definition of “service courses.” 9/20/2008
And so our discussion must thicken.
If we are teachers of composition, then this must be any meaningful assembly of symbols within a given literacy. Teachers of musical composition instruct us in the arrangement of notes to form harmony and melody, for instance. However, while composition and rhetoric have their own complications in definition, literacy is our opening topic, and trying to define literacy is problematic at best. Nevertheless, I’ll begin with a brief outline of the problem and go from there.
When schools discuss literacy (just as when governments do as they measure literacy rates), they nearly always mean the ability to read/decode written words on a static page. Enter the endless parade of grammar worksheets, weekly vocabulary quizzes, and ACT exams for college entry.
Now we’ve always known that there are more literacies than this. Just because a monk could read and write, this did not mean he understood the mathematics of the astronomer or the reading of the temper of iron that the blacksmith does. Perhaps I go too far in defining literacy in reading metals; but perhaps not: if by reading we mean the interpretation of signs in the making of meaning, a meteorologist interprets as much as any monk. But suppose we limit reading and literacy to the interpretation of man-made symbols. This might limit the number of literacies, but it by no means reduces them to successfully reading Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter.
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Knowledge and learning are only authentic
when they are connected
to the student’s consciousness
of how symbols enact social change. |
More, defining literacy is a political act, as well. Definitions of the literate and illiterate determine social class, productivity opportunities of citizenship, and social prejudices. The introduction of print media as a standard for literacy did not mean that prior to it there was none: oral literacy which dominated civilization for millennia was simply politically displaced. Today oral literacy is largely mocked, though we ironically revere Homer. We often call such societies “pre-literate;” which suggests that any society which eventually abandons the written word will be “post-literate.”
All this understood, defining types or categories of literacy is unavoidable, I think. For our purposes, it will raise implications of pedagogy, what we choose to teach. It will also redefine for us the notions of composition and rhetoric. In so doing, we cannot avoid thinking of the teacher of composition as an agent of some political or social agenda.
So what definitions do we consider? Forgive my “list” approach, but this might be a fair start, adapted from Gardner and others:
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Oral literacy (also orality, oracy) |
See Walter Ong’s work |
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Print literacy (also verbal/linguistic) |
20th century status quo definition; the use of printed language |
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Mathematical literacy (also logical, numeracy, statistical literacy) |
Number systems and reason (syllogistic systems) |
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Visual/Spatial literacy |
Images, such as art and design (Debes 1969) |
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Aural literacy (also, musical literacy) |
Including notation, instrumentation, etc. |
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Interpersonal literacy |
Social interactions |
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Intrapersonal literacy (emotional literacy) |
The language of feeling |
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Technological literacy (also elactracy, computer, information, multimedia) |
Communications and information tech for meaning-making; may include media literacy |
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Media literacy |
Decoding various media in analysis of propaganda and bias; television, radio, etc. may be here whereas hypertextual literacy might be placed above |
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Ecoliteracy |
Understanding natural systems and our relations with them (David Orr) |
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Cultural literacy |
Understanding symbols peculiar to the dominant culture (E.D. Hirsch) |
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Multicultural literacy (also, racial literacy, diaspora literacy) |
Understanding non-dominant cultures and their impacts (see France Twine’s and Veve Clark’s arguments) |
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Financial literacy |
Personal finance codes |
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Health literacy (also mental health,) |
Skills in context |
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Scientific literacy |
Concepts and processes |
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Civic literacy |
Understanding social systems in order to enact change |
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Alliteracy |
The unwillingness to engage in symbol systems |
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Transliteracy (also multi-modal) |
Composition across multiple media |
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Authentic literacy (also, dialogic, cognitive, argumentative, intellectual, critical) |
Reading, writing, and talking to build critical thinking |
I’ve reduced the list extensively and combined some definitions to which the authors of these literacies would undoubtedly object; I’ve also eliminated some. But here, I think, is a fair sampling of what is out there.
The final term, authentic literacy, is most commonly called “critical literacy,” but I prefer the term authentic because it goes to the heart of what a classroom is about no matter what literacy it approaches. All literacies depend upon active consciousness, what Freire would call “conscientization.” Learners recognize both the personal and social aspects of the symbol systems. No system exists outside its social context (or its omission from one); indeed by limiting our definitions to man-made symbols, this is self-evident. Therefore, any discussion of literacy must include the broader implications of meaning and, because literacy is inherently political by nature, the meanings any literacy uncovers are, as well.
I am, of course, using the term “political” in a broad sense, that of any act with a motive for social change. If symbols shape consciousness, the ability to rename and reshape symbols is critical or civic literacy. As Kutz and Roskelly in An Unquiet Pedagogy write, the “role of the teacher is to make these strategies conscious and systematic” (113). In other words, knowledge and learning are only authentic when they are connected to the student’s consciousness of how symbols enact social change.
On such foundations are democracies built. It shouldn’t surprise anyone of my fondness for an authentic civic literacy based upon dialogue.
When educators measure literacy as comprehension of printed matter (itself no small ambition), we limit our students’ critical and human potential. To reduce the social applications of numeracy to a few story problems is to misunderstand our roles. To ignore, subvert, or limit the discussion of technological literacy as it increasingly surpasses printed matter is at its kindest, negligence of our responsibility.
9/15/2008
Steve,
I'd like to begin by echoing your excitement about The Briggs-Chisnell Project. The opportunity to participate with you (and others) in a dialogue concerning educational issues that are important to us has the potential to be transformative.
For this post, I'd like to take up one of your questions regarding mutiple literacies. You wrote:
"Where before we would see a form (i.e. a sonnet) and we would therefore know how to decode it (and we called this literacy), now the forms approach the limitless, and what as readers are we to deduce?"
To begin my response, I'd like to pose the following question: How do readers learn to decode a sonnet? Educational institutions is part of the answer, but it's not complete. A culture that values literature--sonnets, in particular--might be another part of the answer. (And when I speak of culture, I'm thinking of the words "pluralistic" and "evolving" and "interactive.")
The forms today are moving toward "limitless," thanks, in part, to technology, but it's also a result of an everchanging culture that we are both a product of and a participant in. Therefore the definitions of literacy are changing. Educational institutions, particularly those obsessed with testing and assessment, like to maintain rigid definitions of literacy. For example, a sonnet is a sonnet, not a mutimodal composition consisting of spoken word, still image, video, music, and sound. However, outside of the academic word, there's a lot more going on.
Kathleen Blake Yancey, current president of NCTE, wrote in her CCCC Chair's address in 2004:
"Never before has the proliferation of writings outside the academy so counterpointed the compositions inside. Never before have the technologies of writing contributed so quickly to the creation of new genres . . . the members of the writing public have learned . . . largely without instruction and, more to the point here, largely without our instruction. They need neither self-assessment nor our assessment: they have a rhetorical situation, a purpose, a potentially worldwide audience, a choice of technology and medium--and they write."
So to return to the original question, readers learn how to decode the new forms by participating as members of the writing public. This is what is happening--now! But this situation brings up another question: What role(s) do we, as teachers of literacy, play in this dance of signifiers?
Short answer: We help our students to become more critical consumers and producers of texts in a myriad of forms and mediums. 9/14/2008
Timothy,
First, I have to say that this is a welcome opportunity for me to keep my head sharp about subjects I too seldom consider alone. And though it is a likely poor substitute for a chat over organic pizza (or even Pizza Hut), I'm excited by the prospect.
That said, it would be wrong of me not to remark on the artificiality of the scene. Rather than speak spontaneously, composition is by its nature calculated, considered. There is a double-absence to it, in that I am not physically present nor may my ingenuousness be assumed. This is especially true as I consider that we are hardly writing a private discourse. I'm thinking of my composition as much in terms of potential student writers/readers as I am its benefits for us.
To one degree or another, this cannot be helped and would be true even over bites of zucchini and feta. As much as words are weighed, the presence of the spoken word is illusion. It pretends an openness it cannot sustain. All this is simply to say that what we write here is done with some measure of calculation as is all discourse, and readers would be wise to note it.
There's a dialogue, then, between writer and reader even before the reader enters the scene--or rather, a dialogue between writer and "expected reader." The writer attempts to anticipate readerly response and compensates accordingly. Readers encounter not a writer's intent, then, but a framed effort by a writer to cue that reader to intent, not quite the same thing at all.
It's this cueing that I'm interested in, this strategic push of signifiers into forms which we hope will evoke the meanings we wish. These forms look like structure, like syntax, like diction certainly; but they also look like their mediums: papyrus, cuneiform, No. 2 lead, wikis, lasers, Denny's napkins, and magazine clippings.
As a writer, I have a broader range of tools for composition now than ever before. I can juxtapose more signifiers in more diverse media than ever before, slamming together historical film clips and Hindu poetry, contemporary soap opera with the sounds of calculus. And somewhere in all of this lie my readerly cues.
I'm wondering now what that means for readers. Where before we would see a form (i.e. a sonnet) and we would therefore know how to decode it (and we called this literacy), now the forms approach the limitless, and what as readers are we to deduce?
This makes the notion of literacy a little more complicated than only 10 years ago. It cannot merely mean the "reading" of words but the deconstruction of symbols, what Toffler in Power Shift said in the early 1990s would be the new distinction between classes: those who could move symbols and those who could not.
Illiteracy is not just about failing to read but a political disempowerment. And if all I do is teach my students to compose essays on paper, I have rendered them illiterate while pretending the sincerity--the ingenuousness--of literacy.
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