Writing Instruction in the Age of Digital Reproduction

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CAN COMPUTERS TEACH CHILDREN TO write better? Michael Jenkins,who teaches language arts at Estancia Middle School in central New Mexico, tells the story of Maria (a pseudonym), who so struggled to put her ideas on paper that she used to cry whenever he gave the class a writing assignment. That was before Jenkins began using writing-instruction software that provides feedback on students’ essays and offers suggestions on how to improve them, all within seconds. By the end of the school year, Maria had more confidence in her writing abilities—and passed the writing portion of the state assessment test. “It’s not a cure-all, but what a difference it’s made in what the kids have shown they can do,” says Jenkins, who began using the software last year.

Greg Miller, www.sciencemag.org, January 19, 2009

Unmistakably, reproduction as offered by picture magazines and newsreels differs from the image seen by the unarmed eye. Uniqueness and permanence are as closely linked in the latter as are transitoriness and reproducibility in the former. To pry an object from its shell, to destroy its aura, is the mark of a perception whose ‘sense of the universal equality of things’ has increased to such a degree that it extracts it even from a unique object by means of reproduction. Thus is manifested in the field of perception what in the theoretical sphere is noticeable in the increasing importance of statistics. The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception.

Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Benjamin, writing in the 1930s, famously argued that mechanical reproduction fundamentally changed the work of art by transforming our sense of originality. The unique, singular object, with its “aura of originality” was superseded by the “transitoriness” of infinite reproducibility. The painting is replaced by photography and the film.

You see the very same tension in the emergence of software designed to asses student writing, a fear that the machine will strip out the individuality, the unique aura of individual expressiveness that was supposedly the goal of composition instruction. Benjamin argued, I think, that there was no going back; you can’t unscramble the egg.

Who’d want a culture without film and photography anyway? And painting has survived just fine. That might be a good way to think about this software too. It can assist students in those aspects of writing, most associated with our shared ethos of written communication. It can help much less with those ineffable qualities of writing that mark individual style.

The real question is economic and political, as Benjamin suggested. Will we be willing to invest our time and money, in other words, both individually and socially, in this complex set of tensions and desires, sharp concision and sloppy art, both irreconcilable and both necessary? Or will we use the machine to make excuses for denaturing education.

Posted in: Language, Professional, Writing

How Change Happens

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Economic storms historically have prompted more adults to seek shelter in the classroom. But this time around, two-year colleges and private for-profit institutions are especially optimistic about attracting more students—and many of those older students will probably take courses online, according to one of the authors of a recent survey.

The 2008 Sloan Survey of Online Learning, released in November before the extent of the recession was clear, found that while all types of colleges anticipate enrollment bumps because of high unemployment, two-year and private for-profit institutions expect to increase their rolls more than others since they “tend to offer programs that have traditionally been tailored to serve working adults.

Recession May Drive More Adult Students to Take Online Courses, STEVE KOLOWICH, January 9, 2009

Step by step, we are creating a new education system without any sense of where we are going. The outlines of the new system have begun to become a little clearer, however. Much of this change is dependent on historical timing. There was the internet boom, which led to the dot-com crash, and then the housing boom. This created a new sort of infrastructure fed by an Utopian ideology that said these technologies ought to be in every home and classroom.

The internet boom jump-started the internet infrastructure, and the collapse of that bubble fed the housing boom, which bought everyone enough time to get these technologies to the point where their effects cannot be reversed. Utopia got us over the rough spots. Now that the housing bubble has burst, dragging the entire economy with it, more people will take advantage of the new infrastructure to use education to improve their chances on the job market, once the bust plays itself out.

All of this is just the public theater of change; behind the scenes, more profound transformations are taking place. As a profession and a public service, higher education has become lopsidedly bifurcated. An increasingly small minority have what was once a relatively secure position in full-time, tenure track positions. The majority do not. Similarly, the old liberal arts model of education threatens to become the privileged experience of a minority.

I understand the funding concerns but I don’t think this is a funding problem. if something is a priority– say, a bank or auto bail out– the money is available. The real questions have to do with the nature of jobs and job security and with the purposes of education. Conservative ideology has made the notion of job security seem antiquated. That magical force, “the market” has supposedly made such a thing impossible. Why should professors be any different?

And technology, rather than education in the old liberal arts mode, has the Utopian edge that pushes people into long term commitments and projects. Don’t get me wrong. I make my living teaching on the internet and I can see the reality of how these new infrastructure has made a certain kind of education more accessible. I worry, though, that as we are busily trying to get through this recession we are normalizing some deep cuts in our expectations.

Posted in: Economics, Language, Professional, War, Writing

Twitter, Educaton, and Planned Obsolescence

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Going forward, the impetus for organizing political change will emerge from regular citizens using the new communication tools to accomplish specific goals. Charismatic leaders will cease to perform the function that they have in the past. With such leaders removed from the equation, countless waves of change will compete and create unique actions, forming brief ad hoc social networking alliances and achieving very specific goals. The usual activist interventions, like feet-in-the street events planned by established coalitions, will continue to decline in influence.

It’s time the old Left began using Obama’s youth tools. In terms of process, the old Left has become conservative. The Obama Democrats, by using powerful democratizing youth tools, have in effect become the Left.

In a way similar to how Gorbachev was the transition to the break-up of the Soviet Union, Obama will be the transitional leader making possible the arrival of the new wave: highly integrated citizen involvement, organized anarchy, a global community of peers.

The Two Lefts, and a Tidal Wave of Change, Andrew Lehman

As someone who has been involved with the internet since it’s modern inception in the early 1990s this sort of Utopian sentiment sets off alarms for at least two reasons. First, despite it’s historical references it’s a remarkably a-historical analysis rooted a very common and very ill-advised technological determinism. One clue is the reference to the end of the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev is the perfect Jeopardy-question of faux history, a Soviet leader widely enough known to be a legitimate part of a game show. It’s truthiness in historical analysis. This is the third or fourth wave of Utopian wish-fulfillment associated with the internet. Every time I hear it I remember that the Wright brothers were convinced that the airplane would make war impossible.

The second reason, is that, for good or ill, the very same political economy that brought us the pet rock has brought us Twitter and Face Book and all of the rest. This sort of analysis, in other words, cannot see the forest for the trees; it has little or no sense of historical perspective, and it doesn’t offer even rudimentary distinctions. It’s history without an inside.

Whatever position you take on Wikipedia, it comes from a very different impulse than, say, My Space, which is largely commercial. Apple Computer is a large corporation; Mozilla is not. These tensions are quietly tearing the wired world apart. In fact, I think the social momentum right now, despite Obama’s achievement (Dean’s innovations refined and focused) is more centrifugal than centripetal.

There is a kind of magical thinking that wants to find a way to instantly reverse the impact of thirty years of conservative destruction of the social commons. The funding and philosophy of the school system, to name only one example, has been fundamentally damaged. It’s not an exaggeration to say it’s crumbling as we speak. Social networking will not replace this sort of community.

Our first historical task as progressive educators, I think, is to begin to separate out the technological chaff from the wheat; the effective tools from the latest fads, and start drawing firm lines, even as we acknowledge that they will need to be re-negotiated on a regular basis. Not everything that happens is good; not ever new tool is useful in the classroom.

Teaching critical thinking, in this context, should mean teaching students that commercial culture is by definition a push towards profit over people; that education seeks to expand humanized culture, the reign of people over things. It’s possible to use the master’s tools against the master, but it does not happen automatically or easily.

Posted in: Economics, Language, Professional, Writing

What a Class Barrier Looks Like

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Students who start California community colleges as first-time students hoping to get a certificate, a degree, or transfer to the four-year college sector have only small chances of success: approximately one in four degree seekers beginning community college in 1999-2000 completed their program in six years (Moore and Shulock, 2007, p. 7). And the prospects are worse for those who start in pre-collegiate courses. These students may not even get to the transfer-level courses in those fields, much less actually graduate or transfer. According to the Center for Student Success, “Only one-quarter of students initially enrolling in a reading fundamentals course in community college ever enroll in a transfer-level English class, and only 10 percent of students beginning in a basic math course ever enroll in a transferable math course” (2005, cited in Moore and Shulock, 2007, p. 12).

Indeed, most of our SPECC colleges cite a figure of around 10 percent who move successfully from the lowest level precollegiate course to a transfer level course. Beyond dimming students’ outlook for completion, the inability to successfully complete the most basic level courses also has tremendous implications for literacy and numeracy more generally. Although the SPECC campuses focused on pre-collegiate programs for this project, it is clear that all programs, including technical and vocational programs, benefit when their students are able to read well, communicate clearly in writing, and handle basic calculations.

Listening to Students About Learning, Andrea Conklin Bueschel

As the cliche goes, we don’t talk about class in the U.S. because we believe that everyone is equal. Or, at least, everyone is given an equal chance to succeed or fail on their own merits. It has never worked that way, of course, because all sorts of things can give you an advantage, big or small.

Our main conduit of opportunity, and so in many senses the source of the great fog obscuring our social and economic system, has long been post-secondary education. There’s nothing false in the idea; people with college degrees make much more money than people who don’t. It’s that simple.

What’s less obvious is the way that our post-secondary education system, with it’s complicated hierarchies and multiple points of entry, is also a barrier. The number cited in this California study are remarkable. As many as 90% of the students who enter community colleges never take transferable classes.

That’s only a measure of success insofar as we define success in terms of a four year degree. That may not be true in every case, of course. But it is still a good indication of the strength of a class barrier. What’s the solution, according to the authors? Listen to the teachers and students.

Posted in: Composition, Economics, Language, Professional, Writing