Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository
Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository
“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 University 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 University 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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development” (219). If my experiences during that year of<br />
teaching of freshman writing at the <strong>University</strong> of Delaware were<br />
read through such a conclusion, I could step away from that look<br />
in the mirror and reason that there was no “collaborative<br />
reconstruction” or “reshaping” or “imaginative recombinations”<br />
or “rethinking” - no “reflective thinking and no “relativistic<br />
pragmatism” – simply because I was trying to use my particular<br />
teaching philosophy and the practices I had put together to do<br />
so with students who simply were not cognitively or<br />
intellectually “mature” enough for the nature of discourse and<br />
questioning – the nature of the writing – that I had expected of<br />
them. Simply put, I was trying to teach towards “reflective<br />
thinking” and “relativistic pragmatism” with eighteen-year-old<br />
freshman writers and, although I was naïve enough to believe<br />
that the case would be otherwise, it simply was not going to<br />
happen because they were eighteen-year-old freshman writers. If<br />
the engendering of perspectives that allowed for idiosyncrasies,<br />
contraries, and uncertainties was ever going to happen with them<br />
and for them, it was going to happen when those students were,<br />
again, cognitively or intellectually “mature” enough for it to<br />
happen. When they were ready. Then and only then. Yes, I<br />
could try - and did try, even if it was on an “individual” front<br />
rather than a “community” - to intervene and confront them with<br />
assignments and readings and discussions that were intended to<br />
225
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