July 18, 2007
of music and computer labs
I'm listening to R.E.M. - Out of Time - and it is taking me to a place long ago. Nights I used to sit in the computer lab at the University of Washington, before I knew how to operate a Mac (though I did first experiment with them there, and found them surprisingly intuitive once I figured out the function of the apple icon in the corner), before there was ITunes, before I knew how to stream music - nights when I brought my own CD's and headphones to play while I worked, nights I often found myself crying to songs I didn't even know because my life was in such turmoil and for all the Victorians brought me identity, their conflict was so much my own it wasn't an escape.
No, it was the music that gave me a way to bridge the life I was losing and the life I was gaining. The bridge between the two worlds, the one dead and the one not yet born. Somedays that bridge was strong and safe, nicely solid under my feet and wide enough I couldn't see the cavern below. Somedays that bridge was as thin as a gondola cable suspended 10,000 feet in the air between two Alpine peaks. It was a helluva ride, those nights were.
I didn't have this particular music then. I only recently acquired it. But I loved in from the first quarter of my first ever college composition course. Prufrock + R.E.M. + + Crash Test Dummies + a gifted teacher = I became an English major with a composition teaching focus.
I reflect on this now only because lately I am feeling the same turmoil. Drafting a dissertation prospectus, and job-seeking materials, has brought the last 9 years of effort home in a way that is at once exhilirating for its promise and terrifying in its significance. What if, after all this, I can't do it? What if I can't find the job, the career as an academic I have so single-mindedly pursued these years? What if it doesn't give me the benefits I thought it would? What if I screw this up, as seems so very easy to do, given who I am and the things I believe. It makes my stomach hurt, much as it used to in those nights all those years ago.
Those nights it was Shawn Mullins who brought me to tears, and had me leaning my head against the computer tower to soak up the pain and promise together. For the last several years, I haven't listened to music much, preferring silence in which to mull over all that I've taken on, to try to think through, to try to find me in. Once again, confronted with putting me in writing, with putting into practice the lesson I try so hard to drill into my students (your writing represents you when you are not there to explain, defend, or support it), I'm anxious - so anxious. I haven't looked for a job in over 14 years. And that was only the second time in my life I'd ever had to. It's scary and strange to realize that this job search will be the most difficult I have ever faced, despite it being for the job I am certain I was born to have.
of music and computer labs... of then and now... of the pursuit and the reality. til human voices wake us and we drown.
Posted by cageyer at 06:32 PM | Comments (2)
March 15, 2007
More on Skills
Via 43 Folders, where Merlin really liked item 5, comes this gem that should be cut out and pasted to every administrater's door in every district in every state.
See especially Item 2.
Yeah. What he said.
Posted by cageyer at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)
March 04, 2007
Deliberative skills for citizenship, or why I wanted to teach composition
On the list of things many people don't know about me is that I was invited into Phi Beta Kappa when I graduated from the University of Washington. I don't often reflect on that membership, in part because I've been so busy reading for classes and exams and what have you that there hasn't been time. But last spring, several bits in the society's newletter gave me a strong moment of "yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about." This draft has been sitting for months, but as I am wrestling with exam questions, it offers the answer to the primary question of why learn the canon of rhetoric, and why I wanted to teach composition.
"Accepting membership into Phi Beta Kappa, Professor Gnomes reminded us, is an acceptance of the obligation to carry learning into citizenship in a participatory democracy"
The first principle, that learning has a purpose beyond mere knowledge, is as old as rhetoric, as the Sophists teaching the art of speaking to men who needed to represent themselves in a really participatory democracy, a much more direct model than we have in the United States. But it isn't just about speaking well or even winning the moment, because the phrase finishes with a reference to democracy. What is that, in the here and now, and what learning is needed to participate in it?
"we are apt to suppose the whole story of democracy is about majority rule. But a moment's reflection reminds us that democracy is also about the reasons why majority rule is important and about its limits. A bit more reflection discloses that democracy must also be about deliberation into the question 'what is the right thing to do?'"
The will of the majority is heavily influenced by a small minority. Political party platforms, religious beliefs as propounded by various Christian denominations, other religious systems, leaders social movements, and more than many would like to believe, the image makers of advertising, movies, and television programming. It wasn't that long ago, compared to the long history of rhetoric, that major legislative decisions were made in the government of the United States as the result of a group of men seated (or standing) in a room, debating, sometimes contentiously, the right thing to do. The men we refer to as the Founding Fathers debated at length and heatedly over the documents that became the (written) backbone of our country. John Quincy Adams was not only a distinguished lawyer, he was a great orator and held the first Boylston chair in... yes, rhetoric, in the United States. The United States Senate history features great speeches and debates from great orators. The United States Congress has its share of great oratory in its history as well, romanticized most notably in Jimmy Stewart's portrayal of a young idealist sent to the great hall in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But these days, anyone who watches C-SPAN can tell you that often the men and women featured on that screen are reading text to a camera and a fairly empty room. It's not the same thing at all.
But it is also the case that these examples are the top layer of a participation process that begins in the homes and classrooms our villages, towns, and cities across the country. The conversation over dinner shapes what the child believes is true. The message conveyed on the television and other media are screened and filtered through that system, even as they shape it. Later, when that child goes to school, he or she is influenced by the teachers, by the interactions with other students, and by the material offered for learning. By the time a young person is old enough to vote (and old enough to go to college) they bring a value system to that opportunity. The informal spaces are just as important as the formal ones, and the persuasion that takes places in those spaces is often unnoticed.
My interest comes from the moments those beliefs and values come into competition with one another. How do we know how to present and discuss our ideas? In my exam reading, I learned that the "active listening" skills I had endured in high school emerge from a theory of argument developed by Carl Rogers, a model designed to recognize the difficulty is arguing over what is the right thing when competing values are in play. That process is really hard for most people, but the key point of it is that one has to slow down from the emotional outburst and reaction to consider and carefully state one's position (and the other's, as well). This consideration and care of communication is my interest. I used to be a "corporate facilitator." What that means, at its core, is that I facilitated processes whereby individuals in a particular community reflected on their own values, the values they represented as they worked, and the ways they communicated with one another and those outside their community. This subject and this interest is not new to me, it's just really hard to translate into the exam question model. What passes for communication is too often the spewing of emotion and unreasoned, unsupported, opinion. And it's tempting to say that such conversation is okay in the informal realm, but it really isn't, because it's what happens in those spaces that shape what comes to be accepted, to be the "will of the majority" in the public and political realm. To really participate in democracy one has to be able to recognize what is at stake in the sound bytes and slogans that too often pass for truth.
"So Phi Beta Kappa's purpose entails public advocacy of the skills of deliberation that are important to citizenship. What are those skills? Essentially, there are three ingredients:
1. capacities of critical thought that provide an understanding of how to make and evaluate arguments
2. possession of knowledge of the facts whose relevance to things that matter makes them reasons that can be presented in arguments, and
3. discernment about what matters--that is, what is worth deliberating about.
If citizens in a democracy are to deliberate, these are their tools. They need to be able to think; they need facts to think with; and they need a grasp of what is worth thinking about.
So if we want a democracy that is about more than counting votes, a democracy in which citizens are equipped to withstand the skills of manipulators and in which the connection between truth and freedom is clear, we will support the ideals of Phi Beta Kappa."
(all quotes so far from John Churchill, (PBK) Secretary
in The Key Reporter, Spring 2006)
Now, I don't want anyone to think for a moment that I believe everyone should be a member of PBK, because I don't. But I do think its principles are important, and I firmly believe that rhetoric is the key discipline in furthering those principles. All the theories, all the variations, all the methods and terminologies and systems that have emerged over the years are important to know precisely because they are a range of tools for analyzing communication and for crafting communication in an increasingly atomized yet "globalized", individually separate yet increasingly multi-cultural, mutli-value-holding, yet still participatory democracy.
That is only as good as the participation in it.
Only as good as the men and women speaking and writing that shape its ideals, beliefs, legislation and relations. The United States does not sit in isolation. Reasoning out the right thing to do involves many knowledges, the ability to hear and discuss beliefs that are new and sometimes contradictory to our own. It requires rhetorical agility.
Professor Peter J. Gomes's, to whom Mr. Churchill referred in the comment at the beginning of this post, said:
"At the very point where the clarity of ideas, the clarity of the written and the spoken word, the principles of intellectual passion and integrity have never been in greater need or shorter supply - it is at this moment, it seems, that our Society should stand poised to contribute its greatest effort to the well-being of our republic".
Exactly what I think about the art of rhetoric, as both discipline and practice. The art of speaking and writing well needs to be at the center of learning, tools for analysis, practice, and persuasion.
In working through questions for exams, I think in some ways it all comes down to this: how can 2500+ years of theory and practice of an art concerned solely with speech (and writing) be rolled up, adapted, and used to teach and exemplify deliberative skills for citizenship in this participatory democracy at this time?
Posted by cageyer at 09:26 AM | Comments (0)
September 09, 2005
Writing
I've been catching up on my blogroll the past few weeks. There's something about that counting thing that Bloglines does that sooner or later just screams for at least a passing visit to the sites. Some I read, some I just skimmed through. This one caught my attention. Follow the link "this little trick" to a delightful site for writing prompts.
I took a creative writing course in my undergraduate days where the instructor told us we had to write something everyday, even if we didn't think we had anything to say. Her suggestion? "Begin with the weather."
That sounds pretty mundane, but I was amazed at what happened when I did it. Some days I literally wrote "begin with the weather" before attempting to describe the conditions. Once my pen was engaged, it was easy to connect to other thoughts, however silly or trivial. Sometimes that's all that happened. Sometimes it was an opening into some really good stuff.
Since I've been in graduate school, I've nearly lost my ability to write. This little find, in this site full of little finds, is already helping. Give it a peek.
Posted by cageyer at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)
July 26, 2005
Irresistable tip
Found this over at 43 Folders in a list of tips:
Keep Meetings Short and On Topic: Write up an agenda. Make everyone in the meeting drink 16 oz of water as the meeting begins. Conduct the meeting with everyone standing up. Everyone will stay on topic, and when about 30-45 minutes is up, everyone will have to pee.
Loved it.
When I was younger, my family camped for our vacations. We had a rule that no one could go to the bathroom until the tent was up. Result? Tent set-up became v-e-r-y efficient.
One of the best television representations of efficient meeting ever broadcast was in LA Law. The partners sat down (barely), quickly statused every case, got short, succinct input from others, and left. Efficient, and seldom duplicated in real life where meetings become the way to attempt to impress superiors, or to wander through many incarnations of "what if" or other productivity inhibiting activities.
I used to have a letter size poster that said "Bored? Lonely? Don't want to work? Call a meeting!" I rather like the idea of the above as a companion poster.
Posted by cageyer at 10:12 AM | Comments (2)
April 18, 2005
One and Twenty
I have have this little book I originally bought for $4.95 at a book store in a small beach town in Washington about 25 years ago. It has a lovely burgundy sueded cover and is called A Treasury of the World's Best Loved Poems. The last time I looked at it was at least seven years and four major moves ago when I decided that everything in it was too sad to read. If I have learned nothing else in my college career, I have learned that sad poems aren't about sorrrow, necessarily.
Anyway, I took it down tonight because a line from a poem I was sure was in it was in my head, and I wanted to read the whole thing. Guess what? That poem isn't in this volume. I know I have it. I'm just not at all sure where it is now. But in reviewing this book, I realized again how much valuable literature I have had on my shelves all these years, and only in the last six have I learned why it's valuable or "how" to read any of it. This little volume is suddenly worth much more to me than it ever was.
As for the poem I thought I would find there, it is actually available here.
Posted by cageyer at 10:15 PM | Comments (0)
April 13, 2005
Conversations
Conversing with the textual form of Porter Perrin this morning, I find this gem that reminds me why I wanted to get into comp/rhet to begin with:
Much of our work deals really with style, with judging the appropriateness and effectiveness of the language used in a particular circumstance. Style considers not the conventional patterns of the language (agreement of subject and verb, and so on), but the selection among the various possibilities in words and constructions that our vast and various language offers.
yeah. wish I'd said that.
Posted by cageyer at 12:20 PM | Comments (1)
February 17, 2005
Stuf I used to know: Mind Maps
It occurred to me last night, while reading Marcia's blog, that I used to know some stuff that I often forget. So I've created a new category mostly for myself to remind myself of stuff I used to know, so that I can use it in the life I'm creating going forward.
In this case, the category is "invention," and the subject is composition, or even (*gasp*) writing. Marcia wrote about her invention exercise of making a list of topics to be covered, and that made me think about a mind map. Do you know about mind maps? I used to. I even used to use them - delightful, fun tool that can involve colors and pictures, circles, lines, arrows, diagrams, or other visual forms that both arrange thoughts and stimulate thoughts. Since I got to graduate school, I've never once used one. But now I'd like to. I'd even like to use the scratch outline. The sometimes simple, sometimes seemingly basic, tools we offer our students are tools we, the teachers/graduate students, can be using too. I even wrote that to myself once, in my teaching journal, that I listened to myself teaching my students and realized I could learn a lot about doing my own work by following my own hints.
So back to mind mapping. If you haven't done this before, I will be hard pressed to explain what it is in pure type, but if you ever had to diagram a sentence, the beginning mind map looks very similar, except on each diagonal there is another tangential idea, instead of a speech part identifier. In my mapping, there is a word in the center, with a circle around it, and then several spokes out to other circles with other words, each with other spokes. If I had a list, I might have circles around some words with arrows pointing to other words, or cross-arrows, or squares and circles and triangles to group ideas.
The sort of ground breaker text on mind mapping is by Tony Buzan, called Using Both Sides of Your Brain.. It's an older text--first edition 1974--and a small text, but the ideas in it are great. Buzan has gone on to write other books about mind mapping and maximizing the creative power of the brain, and other folks have written about mind mapping since then. I used to teach it in my corporate life, as a method of problem solving or innovating. Somehow I hadn't made the connection to using it in paper drafting, but now that I have had this reminder from Marcia, maybe I can remember to use that tool in the future.
Posted by cageyer at 03:49 PM | Comments (1)