Cinnabar and Alabaster

passages
13. "part of my project as an educator is to de-emphasize competition in my classroom, and one way i can challenge the only game in town is to actively encourage collaboration as a (feminist) pedagogy," to "ask students to write collaboratively, as shared-document coauthorship is a process which can actively illustrate to students (and ourselves) the value of noncompetitive, collective work." "the philosophy of competition seems a vital component of the interlocking systems of patriarchy, capitalism, and individualism....capitalism, which values competition in a free market, places individuals in economic (and hierarchical) competition with one another--a kind of economic darwinism. patriarchy serves to make sure that competetive hierarchies are maintained and that they look natural so the lower rungs will not think to question the order"
14-5. problems w/the competition model: "many people use violence as a method for winning the competition"; "this culture believes that winners win because they are good people, 'capable and virtuous,' and their victories are deserved. losers lose also because they deserve their fate and therefore merit only contempt (kohn 141). secondly, as competition serves to justify power and material differentials in society, it also is conveniently coded as a 'natural' human reaction, effectively precluding any critiques or moves toward cooperation"; + "'grade inflation,' a term which plays into the commodity metaphor"; + how "the game is already fixed against certain groups" such that "competition does little good in classrooms"; "women, in particular, lose even if they win because of gender-coded assumptions" marking them as "unfeminine: 'too aggressive'" if they win & "if they don't excel, they confirm their femininity, which is often synonymous with a perceived 'inability' to work in a man's world"
16. "teamwork" is still a problematically sports-oriented metaphor: "teams working to beat other teams...is just as damaging as one-to-one competition"; "those who band together to win a game against others often end up competing amongst themselves"; additionally problematic is this: "how can i teach writing collaboratively when most people believe that writing is, if not competetive, an individual process?" "perhaps the reason writing classes frighten students, particularly those who do not like to write, is the image of solidarity confinement--chained to a word processor. this image may be particularly off-putting to women, especially if they consider themselves a part of carol gilligan's web of interconnectedness (49)"
18. social constructivism may offer an answer: "public writing can rarely be produced in a vacuum, as the popular vision of the lone writer suggests. yet, however contradictory it might seem, unless writers are engaged in face-to-face coauthorship, they spend some time writing alone. this is the only image many students see, perhaps because they have not interacted with others as part of their writing process or because they do not code such interactions as important parts of writing. perhaps students do not consider themselves as important knowledge-makers; instead, within a banking model of education, students perceive themselves as knowledge-demonstrators"
19. "students, like other members of our society, have been steeped in the tradition of patriarchy, capitalism, and individualism"; "as a subset of collaborative learning, collaborative writing presents additional opportunity to illustrate social constructionism and present an alternative to individualism and competition, one which i hope students will take out to other facets of society" (emphasis added); & "attempting to implement counterhegemonic tactics seems almost impossible because of the educational institutions' inability to adapt"
20. goal: "reconceptualizing collaborative writing as a way to correct the philosophy of competition and to show the falsity of individualism in writing. collaboraitve writing in composition classrooms can make visible the process of social construction as well as actively demonstrating (and promoting) cooperation as an alternative to competition. in other words, students do not just learn about wriitng or knowledge-making; they also learn a different concept of learning and a new way of operating in the world"
21. also good as an ego-cushioning device: "some students identify so heavily with their texts that they will not engage in peer review either out of anger or fear. dialogic collaborative writing at once provides a support network and promotes some distance and detachment from the text, thereby allowing for more in-depth work"
22. "conflict arises in most group situations...but it is not always harmful"; "what becomes destructive is adding competition to conflict, striving to win during a disagreement, instead of problem-solving or working together"; "in working collaboratively, students can consciously confront those perceived as 'the other'....the 'us/them' dichotomy can begin to break down in small groups, if students are encouraged to work through their own stereotypes"--but they need taught how to do it; it doesn't just happen.