by Francie Blake
If we believe that one of the fundamental purposes of higher education is to help students come to a maturity of mind and citizenship that will enhance our democracy, then our educational obligations are truly without measure, and we must find ways to meet them in every aspect of college and university life....We need a vision of academic excellence, rooted in an incorporation of diverse perspectives and a more inclusive and deliberative ethos which will prepare each student to negotiate a complex and pluralistic world.--Association of American Colleges and Universities
Jamal stopped by my office the other day to pick up a letter of recommendation I wrote for him. Although he was not my student anymore, he asked if I would read what he had written for English 102 to see if he was on the right track. As I started reading the first paragraph, he explained that his 102 teacher didn't want to hear his opinion; opinions, according to the 102 teacher, were more for English 101. Instead, the teacher wanted him to present research and documentation to support an argument. It was at this point that Jamal said something that caught my attention. He intimated that in my class the previous semester (i.e. English 101) he had had an identity and his own voice in his writing, but that in his other classes, including this 102 class, he had no identity. He further clarified, "See, when you have an identity, and someone tells you to change something in your writing, you think, 'Oh, yeah, I can move this paragraph here or put this one over there,' but when you don't have an identity, you just think you're wrong and that you don't know how to do it right. In other words," he explained, "you don't see choices."
Whether in our college offerings or in developmental education, in our goal to prepare students for academic endeavors, we may focus so much attention on what should "go into" the student that we ignore what should be "taken out." Sydney Harris (1989) in his article "What True Education Should Do" illustrates the effect of over-stuffing students with information. A student once said to Harris, "I spend so much time studying that I don't have a chance to learn anything" (emphasis mine). Harris asks teachers to seriously consider what students will actually remember the morning after the exam. As Harris indicates, students spend so much of their time cramming "miscellaneous facts" into their brains that they have little time, not to mention energy, left to analyze, synthesize or evaluate what they are "learning." What this "banking system" of education teaches, thus, is cramming skills, while it ignores how students feel about themselves as learners and the process of learning itself. Consequently, students memorize dates, facts and formulae, becoming, what Harris calls, "well-informed dunces."
Jamal has "no identity" in his classes, I contend, because our present educational system excludes his voice (ie, his identity) and his community in his intellectual development. In fact, the U.S. educational system is geared to middle-class Americans, and middle-class America is a product of our national identity. The way our national identity has been defined, according to Toni Morrison (1992:47), "American" equals "white." However, Takaki (1993) informs us that white Americans will soon be a minority group; in fact, by the year 2056, according to a Time cover story (1990), "America's Changing Colors," the ancestry of most Americans will be traced to "Africa, Asia, the Hispanic world, the Pacific Islands, Arabia--almost anywhere but white Europe" (p. 28). As America becomes more and more non-white, our sense of ourselves as Americans will also change. In the meantime, Takaki argues (1993:4), educators need to respond to the diversity in American society and create a national curriculum that includes all the peoples of America, not just white, middle-class Americans.
Why is the AAC&U all of a sudden so concerned about national identity and the content of the curriculum? Takaki (1993) refers to "America's intensifying racial crisis" as a crucial reason for our immediate attention to multiculturalism. On a global level, Takaki asks us to consider if ethnic conflicts world-wide give us any indication of our future if we don't attempt some sort of ethnic pluralism. We need a better understanding of each other! The problem, according to Takaki, is that there is no historical context. Thatis, traditional education defines American too narrowly. My students tell me all the time how they are not represented in the history books. To begin, we need to study the American past from many perspectives: African-American, Asian-American, Latino-American, Irish-American, Jewish-American, Native American, and so forth.
Dr. Martin Luther King (1964) understood this unavoidable truth as he wrote from his Birmingham jail cell: "We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny." (pp. 92-3)
Sandra Cisneros, in the introduction to her book The House on Mango Street (1994:xiv-xv), articulates the need for a multicultural curriculum from the viewpoint of the student: "When I went home that evening and realized my education had been a lie--had made presumptions about what was 'normal,' what was American, what was valuable--I wanted to quit school right then and there, but I didn't. Instead, I got angry, and anger when it is used to act, when it is used nonviolently, has power. I asked myself what I could write about that my classmates could not. I didn't know what I wanted exactly, but I did have enough sense to know what I didn't want. I didn't want to sound like my classmates; I didn't want to keep imitating the writers I had been reading. Their voices were right for them but not for me."
It was as if, under the present system, she had to give up her identity, her voice, to become "educated," to earn a degree, to have a successful career. She refused to submit, and her writing is a powerful demonstration of her protestations. She was determined to write "the kind of book not even my professors could write" (xv). At the bottom of all her anger and frustration, she found something very powerful: her own voice in society. Now, she is famous because of her discovery. When others read her writing, they glean courage from her work because she represents their voices, too.
This viewpoint renders the students powerless because it is assumed that they lack "power and wisdom." Bartholomae asserts that students have to assume the stance of privileged people rather than their own viewpoint, thus squelching students' voices. No wonder Jamal didn't feel he had an identity! How can he assume the stance of "privileged people" that have never included him as a member? Instead, Jamal needs to begin his academic endeavors from his own stance and in his own voice because this is what he knows best. Once he establishes a sense of himself in an academic setting, he will be in a stronger position to translate his message into the dominant discourse. That is, in the process of writing, Jamal will determine his audience and purpose, and after a discussion of the issues he presents in his writing, he will be in a position to choose the form that best suits his stated intentions. The form of discourse has now become a choice for Jamal to consider. He learns the dominant discourse as he chooses to use it to accomplish his purposes.
Therefore, students who become proficient in expressing a personal viewpoint will be better prepared to place themselves into the academic community and state where they stand on issues presented to them. Personal interaction, then, is necessary to gain an integrated understanding of the content of new material. And since personal perspectives are often an integral part of the cultural assumptions behind "facts" presented, educators need to integrate personal and academic writing into the same context, rather than including one by excluding the other.
Now, let's say I wanted to challenge present educational practice, as Cisneros does, to incorporate the diversity of voices present in this country. In order to do so, traditional research methods require that I "do research on students" with reliable accuracy to substantiate these changes. In other words, the measure of what is "good" teaching and learning is based on an established system of research that values institutionalized test scores derived from traditional research measures. How does one measure identity development and authenticity with a test score? The standardized testing instruments used to substantiate educational practices reinforce more memorization and less originality!
A good example of this kind of circular reasoning can be found in California where, for the last ten years, educators have experimented with the Whole Language approach. What happened, however, was that the students did not score better on the standardized tests because they were reading and writing language that was real to them rather than merely studying to take a test. No one changed the tests to correspond with the new approach! The tests were quantitative measures, but the Whole Language approach is qualitative. Because of lower tests scores, many elementary school principals, afraid for their jobs, reverted to the tried and true methods of tradition.
Traditional research methods need to be redefined. Funded by the UPS foundation, a group of 20 teachers (from the Adult Basic Education program (ABE) and from the College Achievement Partnership (CAP) and English as a Second Language (ESL) programs of the Community College of Philadelphia English Department) has been conducting inquiries into their practices over the past academic year. Facilitated by Susan Lytle from the University of Pennsyvania and the Philadelphia Writing Project and Elizabeth Cantafio from the CAP program, we have formed a group called Practitioner Inquiry Project (PIP). For the last two semesters, we have been using qualitative processes to collect data in our classrooms as well as descriptive processes to analyze these data. As teacher-researchers, we see our research as a systematic reflection of our teaching. We write "thick" descriptions of our class activities in an attempt to become more effective in our teaching. Our students are also invited to participate in ongoing research with us, or at the very least they can read and respond to what we write about them so that the result accurately represents them.
Systematically, I have been collecting samples of student writing to analyze. So far, students have been generous and participatory. They seem to trust my motives, and they understand that I won't misuse the data. In my classes, I have collected samples of poetry, descriptive stories, academic essays and research papers. I have chosen the following poem as an illustration of the connection between a student's identity and her community.
I live in the ghetto / So they say I've given up / But the real truth is / They don't give a fuck I'll never amount to nothing / That's what they say / So instead of educating me / They give guns to play
Give me a check and foodstamps / Not a job / But I can't afford the rent / They leave me no choice! / So I began to rob
My child wants name brand sneakers and designer clothes! / I can't afford that / So what do I do / I began to sell crack
The holidays are coming / So I guess the utilities won't get paid / I promised I'd buy the kids / Some clothes and a couple of games
Who cares if you owe / You're always in the rears / Just making it through the day! / Is my biggest fear
Who's going to help me / If I want to change / Damn sure not the government / That's not part of their game
Niggers / Spics / Gook / White Trash / Do I need to say more! /You know who we are / They call us the poor
In this poem, the writer articulates the struggles of the poor, and she identifies with her community within the context of her intellectual development. By establishing her identity in the composition classroom, her writing becomes authentic and meaningful. The writing is powerful, I will argue, because it expresses the writer's concerns and communicates clearly her intentions. I maintain that the power of this poem resides in her identification with her community and that these now form an integral part of her intellectual development as a writer. The voice of the poem shows how the writer has claimed her own authority as a representative of the ghetto culture. This poem also teaches about the feelings of those who have experienced the ghetto. In fact, it is this kind of writing, as Cisneros (1994) says, "not even my professors could write" (xv) unless, of course, they also come from the ghetto.
Powerful student voices in writing need not only occur in poetry. The following excerpt is the introductory paragraph from a research paper on identity. The writer's voice is inquisitive yet firm. In this excerpt, he demonstrates his knowledge of the academic requirements of an introduction: he states his claim and addresses audience and purpose by introducing the topic and providing the readers with a background explanation of his topic:
"My research attempts to show you, my reader, the importance of having an identity in the society in which we live. Not having an identity results in mistreatment and creates additional hardships for any individual or group. Who am I? What is my identity? What is my destiny? These questions seem to haunt me on a day to day basis. I not only question my identity as an individual, I question the identity of all people of color. When I question identity, I am examining how we see ourselves as well as how others (mainstream America) view us. It is my position that the people of color have an identity dilemma in society; we are invisible. I feel that we are invisible because society refuses to see us. We are constantly disregarded in every aspect and arena. I feel that we are invisible because society insists on being exclusive rather than inclusive of our needs, our culture, our thoughts, our behavior, our wants, our lives. We are constantly judged by standards other than our own. This research is important to me as I strive to create and establish an identity in a society which is insoluble to me as a man, a Black man." --Michael Wright
Mike's introduction combines identity, community and intellectual development. In fact, when Mike describes his writing process, he says, "I came as me." He, therefore, carries his identity as well as his community with him into the classroom. To become educated, he does not have give up who he is in order to write empty prose with all the periods and commas in the right places; instead, he places his identity at the heart of his writing. His writing is stronger, I argue, precisely because he maintains his identity as he writes.
At this point, I'd like to address my biggest fear. What do I do with writing that demonstrates racial, homophobic or misogynistic claims? Shirlene and Mike's writing pushes against the system in a way that is necessary for people of different backgrounds to understand each other, but what happens if students push the other way? Where do I draw the line of acceptability? What if students in my classes want to claim their authority by establishing their identity as white supremacists? I do not have an answer to these questions. So far I have not had to face this fear because my white students who have struggled with the diversity curriculum have not argued for white supremacy; however, they have argued that racism doesn't really exist except in the minds of those complaining about it. Since they have been victims of discrimination themselves as white people, they do not readily surrender their beliefs and assumptions about other ethnic groups. Because of their own personal struggles, they fail to note that they benefit from white privilege in a racist society.
With the help of a grant from AAC&U, The Community College of Philadelphia has already acknowledged the need for multicultural courses such as the one Mildred Savard and I are presently writing entitled the History of American Diversity. Developmental education courses could benefit directly from the changes in curriculum outlined in this new course. The fundamental concern of the course is the question of democracy, its definition and the mechanisms by which American society has struggled to achieve fairness among its peoples. The underlying goal of the course is for students to learn how to expand their ability to see more than one way of looking at things. Students should leave the course with the awareness that if they belonged to another group, they would experience America differently. In general, the course explores how historic and contemporary diversity in the U.S. has continued and will continue to shape our thinking, our campuses, and our nation's civic covenants.
In order to achieve the goals of pluralism, students need to listen, educate and respect each other's views. They, as a community of writers, can then decide what strikes them as powerful writing. In fact, even when students disagree with each other, they nevertheless can identify the strengths of a different argument, style and voice in others' writing. By learning to deal with each other in the classroom, students become better prepared to live in this multicultural world. Also, in this atmosphere, since students have an opportunity to feel the power of their own voices, they can begin to place confidence in themselves. Further, I contend that as a result of this process, the students' writing becomes more powerful because students are able to assert themselves as authorities on the issues they present.
The underlying purpose of our teaching in this multicultural environment should be for students to claim their own education. Multicultural education, therefore, becomes a process of learning (ie, intellectual development) about ourselves (i.e. identity) and others (i.e. community), not just about middle-class, white America. Another important underlying purpose of a multicultural education is to teach that there exist multiple interpretations of any text. Students, therefore, reach their own conclusions, which may be different from the teacher's. Teachers demonstrate that there is no single correct answer to any issue presented. During the discussions, students negotiate meaning; they create their own "making of meaning"as a micro-multicultural community.