Week 3 - September 6th Post

Today’s Readings (September 6^th):

Faigley, Lester. "Literacy after the Revolution." College Composition and Communication 48.1 (1997): 30-43.

Selfe, Cynthia L. "Technology and Literacy: A Story about the Perils of Not Paying Attention." College Composition and Communication 50.3 (1999): 411-436.

CCCC Position Statement on Teaching, Learning, and Assessing Writing in Digital Environments. Conference on College Composition and Communication. (2004).

These early technologically-related C’s addresses were both fascinating and a little depressing. Both made strong calls to action but both also strongly lamented our field’s lack of engagement in technological literacy and, therefore, the social issues that accompany this type of literacy. Faigley seems to blame the educational and economic system for these literacy inequities and, while Selfe also puts some blame on our capitalistic American society, she ultimately rebukes the composition and rhetoric field for its lack of action on this matter.

Faigley’s hopes that our discipline would be able to do great things and that we would be able to make systemic differences in exploring anti-authoritarian ways of teaching and in the working conditions of our peers was met with seemingly insurmountable institutional barriers. He goes on to explain the revolution of the rich in a time when the US was highly polarized financially, culturally, and racially and where the government favors the wealthy was “identified with bureaucracy, inefficiency, and waste” (p.34). For Faigley, colleges are now run more like business and we’re constantly fighting an uphill battle to maintain class sizes and workloads.

In his address, Faigley explains how the revolution of the rich ultimately begat the digital revolution since only those who were wealthy were able to lay claim to the benefits of the digital age. He is disillusioned by the technological abilities of students who choose to do little for the greater good with these impressive skills and he is further disillusioned by the digital inequality in terms of income, gender, race, culture, and location.

Despite this somewhat hopeless critique of power hierarchies, Faigley does suggest that comp/rhet scholars must work together to stop the decline in publically supported education. He encourages us to be smarter and more aware of what is going on and to organize to protect our discipline and our students.

Similarly, Cyndie Selfe encourages comp/rhet scholars to simply pay attention to technology since, in order to remain active and relevant scholars, we must realize the essential role that technology plays in our lives (whether we like it or not). She specifically recommends that we “pay attention to, how technology is inextricably linked to literacy and literacy education in this country” (p.414). In this way, Selfe is much more specific than Faigley as she responds to the lackluster and even apathetic view that many comp/rhet scholars take towards technology.

Like Faigley, though, Selfe is very concerned with issues of access. She brings up the literacy myth that dispels the notion that the literate (the reading public) will be successful. If we believe that those who are literate (including technologically literate) will be successful, then we must realize that “computers continue to be distributed differentially along the related axes of races and socioeconomic status and this distribution continues to ongoing patterns of racism and to the continuation of poverty” (Selfe, p.420). This is much like the earlier Selfe and Cooper and Selfe and Hawisher articles that argued that technology without advanced literacy or without careful purpose merely advance hegemonic classroom roles.

Selfe admonishes the discipline for allowing technological literacy become a part of general literacy throughout education as we (as a discipline) have very little real impact on these definitions. For her, we allow legislation like the 1996 Clinton-Gore legislation to go forward without providing “adequate guidance about how to get teachers and students thinking critically about such use” (p.419). In this way, students may be materially or maybe even functionally literate in technology but they may not develop the necessary ability to critique such technology.

The fact that capitalism has always shaped our definitions of literacy is problematic for Selfe since those who are technologically literate continue to improves and become successful in life, much like Faigley’s revolution of the rich, while the technically illiterate individuals “provide the unskilled, low-paid labor necessary to sustain the system” (p.427).

Selfe is, again, a bit more specific than Faigley in her final call to action. She recommends (or maybe even demands) that we stitch our understandings of technology together locally, then branch out to make connections with other writing professionals in order to engage in essential activist towards access.

Luckily for me (I was getting seriously bummed out by these readings), the CCCC Position Statement on Teaching, Learning, and Assessing Writing in Digital Environments provided some hope that our field is moving in the right direction. Most specifically, the Assumptions section was especially helpful.

The first goal is to introduce students critically to technology and information technology. For me, this is a recommendation that class discussions and assignments encourage students to consider issues like access and hegemony (something that I am already attempting to include in my classroom). The second goal asks us to provide students with multiple opportunities to solve myriad problems in their lives (including education, personal lives, etc.) using technology. Such a recommendation is easily accomplished based on the type of assignment that the teacher chooses. In my case, I assign multiple assignments throughout the semester that allow students to choose the technology that they find most rhetorically suitable. The third goal is to give students hands on time with technologies. This is something that I strive to accomplish but, based on the busy schedules of the campus labs and the fact that my class meets during peak lab hours, such instruction proves to be quite difficult. To counteract this issue, I’m considering occasionally holding office hours in the AML to help students with technical issues. The fourth goal is to “engage students in the critical evaluation of information” based on information literacy. In addition to significant library time, students are encouraged to use a variety of sources and, in their cover letters, defend their choice of sources and media. Finally, the last goal is to “prepare students to be reflective practitioners” of technology? For me, this is the vaguest of all the goals. I suppose that, by encourage students in all of the other goals, they will hopefully become “reflective practitioners.”

Overall, I am relieved to see that there is a CCCC’s Position Statement on Teaching, Learning, and Assessing Writing in Digital Environments. I would imagine that this is a result of the addresses of Faigley and Selfe, at least to some degree, and that this statement will be fluid and dynamic in its continued response to technological literacy.