{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Inventing the University--David Bartholomae","description":"[intro] Welcome to MR the podcast for beginngs and insiders aboutt he ideas, people and movements who have shaped rhetorical history. I\u2019m Mary Hedengren. This last week I graded my students\u2019 rhetorical analyses. For many of them, this was the first time they had been asked to write a rhetorical analysis and this assignment always makes me nervous. I give them sample papers. We practice writing a rhetorical analysis together. We discuss in depth examples and abuses of ethos, logos, and pathos, but many of them struggle tremendously. I know I could write a 3-page rhetorical analysis in 20 minutes; why do my students take hours and still fail the project?   David Bartholomae wondered, as I do, how students approach projects they\u2019ve never been asked to weigh in on before. In my students\u2019 case, they just barely learned what \u201cethos\u201d is--how are they supposed to assert how it impacts a particular audience? Writing in the early 80s, Bartholomea, like a score of composition scholars like Mina Shanessey and Linda Flower, were interested in the needs of a population sometimes called Basic Writers. Basic writers are those who, in Bartholomae\u2019s words \u201cshut out from one of the privileged languages of public life\u201d in academic writing, although they are \u201caware of, but cannot control\u201d that language (64). Not having been exposed to reading or writing much of it, they must fall back on what they think academic writing is supposed to sound like. They have to invent what \u201cuniversity writing\u201d is. This is where you have all those errors that make your students sound like robots on the fritz: \u201cutilization,\u201d \u201cthe reason for this is because that,\u201d and endless \u201ctherefore\u201ds. It impacts big-picture ideas, too. B mentions that commonplaces that many students fall back on: \u201cmistakes are because of a lack of pride,\u201d \u201ccreativity is self-expression,\u201d \u201cthe text you assignment to read was life-changing and insightful, o teacher mine!\u201d This is where we roll our eyes and feel slightly manipulated, but the students aren\u2019t being malicious when they try to give us what we want--they\u2019re simply not confident at being able to give us what they want, too.   And every time the task changes, students can find themselves flummoxed. \u201cA student who can write a reasonably correct narrative may fall to pieces when faced with a more unfamiliar assignment,\u201d Bartholomae points out. A student can write smooth, error-free prose in a form that makes sense to them, but asked to assume new authority, and they panic in the new register. And who can blame them? They\u2019ve never encountered it before. Imagine being asked to give a public speech in Japanese without knowing the language. Bartholomae\u2019s students were exposed to many of the same forms ours are \u201ctest-taking, report or summary--work ...where they are expected to admire and report on what we do\u201d (68). Certainly I saw that in the rhetorical analyses I read. The background research on the author was good, relevant and cited appropriately. The articles were summarized fairly, with occasional quotes from the text. But when I ask them to apply their knowledge of rhetorical terms to argue how the articles were working and they fall to pieces, just as Bartholomae says. Many of them have never been asked to defend their own scholarly opinion or assert another\u2019s through conjuncture. They can\u2019t possibly make a scholarly argument, so instead they are made by it. They put on a mask of \u201cscholar\u201d--\u201dThey begin with a moment of appropriation, Bartholomae says, \u201ca moment when they can offer up a sentence that is not their as though it were their own\u201d (69).   But students who are outside of the academic discourses they write also recognize that it is not fair that they have to be outsiders. Even when they are given supposedly non-academic discourse to write-- \u201cexplain kairos to a classmate\u201d--students are thrown into assumed authority: how on earth would they explain kairos--they just learned about kairos! They don\u2019t know anything more about kairos than anyone else in the class! It is, in Bartholome\u2019s words \u201can act of aggression  disguised as an act of charity\u201d (65). Being put into a position of insider to which they beleive they have no claim, some students doggedly imitate while others also subtly criticize. \u201cThe write continually audits and pushes against and language that would render him [or her] \u2018like everyone else\u2019 and mimics the language and interpretative systems of the privileged community\u201d (79).   What is the solution then? Bartholomae suggests that we meet students on the grounds of their own authority--instead of encouraging them to give tidy, pat answers that imitate what they think the professor is looking for, \u201cwell within safe, familiar territory\u201d (80). This can seem quixotic, especially when a grade is on the line. While Bartholomea doesn\u2019t give a comprehensive solution, but he does mention the work of Particia Bizzell and Linda Flower as useful starting points--determining, for example, what the conventions of the discourse community to teach them explicitly. This can mean anything from pointing out the expectations of MLA citation to providing templates of academic discourse. Another strategy is to look broadly at where students are all falling short together--is everyone falling back on summary instead of moving into analysis? Is everyone asserting the opinion of the audience without reasoned conjecture? Seeing where students depart, like a big-picture Error and Expectation, can give insight into where students feel uncomfortable acting as insiders.   Because, no matter how frustrated we get when we grade student work, they aren\u2019t dum-dum heads who didn\u2019t understand anything that we taught them. They\u2019re paying attention--they\u2019re writing the way that they think we want them to write and the way that they think we write. Batholomae, however, wants to to consider they way they write and what they want to write about. ","author_name":"Mere Rhetoric","author_url":"http:\/\/mererhetoric.libsyn.com","html":"