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“develop common understanding.” And I know I did not exhibit “a certain openness – a visibility in [my] thinking, groping, doubts, and styles of communication.” And what were we left with in the end? As I wrote before … The same old thing all over again. But before I ride this train of my teaching’s past wholly off its rails, let me stop for a moment to look at those experiences from my freshman writing classes at the <strong>University</strong> of Delaware from a very different perspective. While I had used the theories and research of Perry-focused compositionists like Dinitz and Kiedaisch and Capossela to criticize them, I could also use those theories and research to defend them and, thus, to all but utterly relieve me of responsibility for what did or did not happen in those classes, because they do indeed offer me an “out.” A very easy “out.” In their 1990 essay for the Journal of Teaching Writing, Dinitz and Kiedaisch had claimed, again, that, “Perry’s work suggests that many eighteen-year-olds are struggling to maintain their dualistic world view and so may not be open to an assignment which requires them to take multiple points of view” (217). Their observational evidence read through this theory, they then conclude, “Rather than blaming our students for not working hard or questioning the quality of our teaching, we now attribute some of their problems to their present state of cognitive or ethical intellectual 224
development” (219). If my experiences during that year of teaching of freshman writing at the <strong>University</strong> of Delaware were read through such a conclusion, I could step away from that look in the mirror and reason that there was no “collaborative reconstruction” or “reshaping” or “imaginative recombinations” or “rethinking” - no “reflective thinking and no “relativistic pragmatism” – simply because I was trying to use my particular teaching philosophy and the practices I had put together to do so with students who simply were not cognitively or intellectually “mature” enough for the nature of discourse and questioning – the nature of the writing – that I had expected of them. Simply put, I was trying to teach towards “reflective thinking” and “relativistic pragmatism” with eighteen-year-old freshman writers and, although I was naïve enough to believe that the case would be otherwise, it simply was not going to happen because they were eighteen-year-old freshman writers. If the engendering of perspectives that allowed for idiosyncrasies, contraries, and uncertainties was ever going to happen with them and for them, it was going to happen when those students were, again, cognitively or intellectually “mature” enough for it to happen. When they were ready. Then and only then. Yes, I could try - and did try, even if it was on an “individual” front rather than a “community” - to intervene and confront them with assignments and readings and discussions that were intended to 225
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Stony Brook University The official
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Copyright by Leon Marcelo 2011 ii
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Abstract of the Dissertation The Un
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I dedicate this work to my daughter
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Introduction This work is the culmi
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But the way out of this philosophic
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through experiences in the writing
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the same old thing all over again.
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theory and research permeating thro
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I. With no reservations, I call mys
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fill in all of the empty variables.
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now have my doubts, which is what b
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the invisible, hearing the inaudibl
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“problem-posing education”: a
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“uncertainty.” But when it was
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After the study was finished, Perry
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a vehement belief in “writing wit
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philosophies of teaching. In his bo
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until sometime later - after confro
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eginnings of humanity itself. In th
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conversation and, in its place, pag
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[W]hat happened to rhetoric in Amer
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cannot be discussed because they ar
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States of America in the 1800s for
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making and doing” (6). And for De
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“Allegory of the Cave.” It took
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not a denigration of Christianity,
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severe, black or white: either foll
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easoning behind those words. Early
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transcendent reality and thus satis
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imaginative novelty and creative tr
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eality that the faithful were allow
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with which all other societies were
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field of composition was not, as Co
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ecause of its “epistemological su
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proclamation “Cogito Ergo Sum,”
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This power of modern Western scienc
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under the aegis of Western medicine
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the masters of nature ... Instead o
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and, during this time, “assimilat
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as in specific political, ideologic
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Darkness. For Said, it was in the p
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In its institutionalized form - fre
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III. Before I continue any further,
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It is an unavoidable fact of life.
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Tarnas refers to those “contradic
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news” of such pervasive and overw
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when writers shrink from that uncer
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Uncertainty and the prolonging of U
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falling away to such a “shift”
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Rhetoric. She would root that “sh
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For my real purpose here then, it i
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Although Hairston is writing about
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of them, I was enlightened. I was p
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All experiences, even the scientifi
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the tendency of that reality to mak
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asking the same question: What had
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and “truth” simply ends where i
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silence we have so often deplored [
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attempting to make room for the exc
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said, I would pose another question
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From [a theoretical] point of view,
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It was this “technical rhetoric
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synonym for doing or making as in
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former I will not really pay much a
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avoid Certainty put forward as Unce
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Derrida’s purpose for “deconstr
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“subversion” and there is no
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IV. As a teacher, how do you not be
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urge to “write with Uncertainty,
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his book Embracing Contraries, he e
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iochemical workings of the human bo
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with the densest, most unyielding o
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are, as LuMing Mao explains in his
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a compromise and a retreat, yet ano
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more fully human is curtailed. Eros
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“cooking”: “Between People,
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palpable. To teachers of writing st
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een greatly influenced by this conc
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attribute that movement, that progr
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But this is a somewhat vague answer
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where students perceive “all know
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with a graduation from college or u
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call for thinking. In essence, it i
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Difficulty or obstruction in the wa
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education, but it ends with his con
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is also the rise of the other. But,
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processes? “Morals”? Deliberate
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exactly is that teacher to evoke fo
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The more remote supplies the stimul
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Page 193 and 194: ibliography, and a final report, wh
Page 195 and 196: turned outward, towards society and
Page 197 and 198: as a whole. These essays attempted
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Page 201 and 202: teacher staring back at me. A lazy
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Page 205 and 206: Again, if I took that long, hard lo
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Page 213 and 214: ut what is thought and, possibly, w
Page 215 and 216: of the “Deweyan” community - th
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Page 219 and 220: Shapiro took those seventy essays a
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Page 223 and 224: in responding to drafts, in confere
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Page 231: that “perplexity” and “disequ
Page 235 and 236: e seen as “diverse” or “diffe
Page 237 and 238: from without, and, because of it, w
Page 239 and 240: twelve- to fourteen-week college se
Page 241 and 242: for granted. And once you have take
Page 243 and 244: learning community therein. Because
Page 245 and 246: or white” perceptions of reality
Page 247 and 248: to renovate his portrait, Elbow off
Page 249 and 250: Elbow, for example, have said about
Page 251 and 252: Works Consulted Aristotle. Rhetoric
Page 253 and 254: and Process Models of Composing"."
Page 255 and 256: ---. "The Winds of Change: Thomas K
Page 257 and 258: Ong, Walter J. Fighting for Life: C
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