The New York Sophist

Interesting book that takes some sacred terms in composition theory (audience, objectivity, voice, etc) and critiques them from the lens of whether or not teaching is in line with composition theory and pedagogical approaches to writing. After admitting several times in the course of the text a well accepted idea that pedagogy lags behind theory about 20 to 30 years, the author critiques contemporary teaching for being too dependent on objectivity, authorial intent, liberal construction of audiences, and thin conceptions of proof.

Although the critique is well made, I think it would be great to see more of the book written like Chapter 6 which really had me going. It might be my own biases in terms of what I’m interested in, but this chapter on audience was great. I think that what set it apart was specific ideas for very radical assignments and classroom activities. I would have liked to see more of that throughout the book.

I like the idea of upsetting these God-terms, either tumping them over or literally making people who think they are good teachers upset. But the critique really doesn’t go as far as it needs to and also avoids some necessary complexity. For example, the chapter on objectivity is very good and very right about its criticism of fact-reliance in pedagogy, which honestly impacts the entire education system. But there’s little discussion of the importance of facts for issues such as holocaust denial, conspiracy theory (moon landing and 9/11 sort of stuff) as well as other strange ideas that often appear in American student writing. Making the critique of fact addiction more fuzzy with an analysis of the false-flag conspiracy regarding Sandy Hook, for example, might have really opened up the conversation between text and reader about what is possible in the teaching of writing today (as well as what is needed).

In the end the book was enjoyable to read, it just didn’t rock me the way I hoped it would. The critique is obvious and agreeable, the Audience chapter is amazing, and the rest of it seems, well, right – but not radically upsetting.

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Interesting book that takes some sacred terms in composition theory (audience, objectivity, voice, etc) and critiques them from the lens of whether or not teaching is in line with composition theory and pedagogical approaches to writing. After admitting several times in the course of the text a well accepted idea that pedagogy lags behind theory about 20 to 30 years, the author critiques contemporary teaching for being too dependent on objectivity, authorial intent, liberal construction of audiences, and thin conceptions of proof.

Although the critique is well made, I think it would be great to see more of the book written like Chapter 6 which really had me going. It might be my own biases in terms of what I’m interested in, but this chapter on audience was great. I think that what set it apart was specific ideas for very radical assignments and classroom activities. I would have liked to see more of that throughout the book.

I like the idea of upsetting these God-terms, either tumping them over or literally making people who think they are good teachers upset. But the critique really doesn’t go as far as it needs to and also avoids some necessary complexity. For example, the chapter on objectivity is very good and very right about its criticism of fact-reliance in pedagogy, which honestly impacts the entire education system. But there’s little discussion of the importance of facts for issues such as holocaust denial, conspiracy theory (moon landing and 9/11 sort of stuff) as well as other strange ideas that often appear in American student writing. Making the critique of fact addiction more fuzzy with an analysis of the false-flag conspiracy regarding Sandy Hook, for example, might have really opened up the conversation between text and reader about what is possible in the teaching of writing today (as well as what is needed).

In the end the book was enjoyable to read, it just didn’t rock me the way I hoped it would. The critique is obvious and agreeable, the Audience chapter is amazing, and the rest of it seems, well, right – but not radically upsetting.

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The University of Southern California is a very, very pretty place. 

Aside from the inevitable technical issues on the video call – why can’t any university just make it easy to do this? Everywhere I go there is a camera that isn’t connected, microphones and speakers that are not connected, logins and other security measures that only keep out and frustrate legitimate users of the systems, and on and on and on. Not to mention that faculty and others at the university think it’s amusing that computer illiteracy is rampant and epidemic across the academy. Anyway, we’ll try again today and see if it works. It’s so frustrating that there aren’t just simple computer setups at universities dedicated to video conferencing. 

The conversation yesterday was pretty good. I presented a talk (I am just now realizing I forgot to record it) that I should post on Academia.edu. I argued two lines of thought about civic debate: First, that we should start anew in considering what civic debate is when we engineer it for student debaters. To do so, we should start with the Roman commonplace questions: Is it? What is it? And finally, What kind is it? These are questions for the generation of argument: Existence, definition, and quality. If you skip one, you open yourself up to trouble later on.  

The second thing was a discussion of Robert Newman’s passing, which really marks a moment in American debate history. Newman was (and is) a titanic figure in American debate education. He was called a subversive by his own university in the 1950s for hosting debates on the question of the United States government formally recognizing China. Serious stuff.  Anyway, I reflect on his brand of subversion and what it can teach us about what civic debate ought to look like. 

 You can read my draft of the comments here. 

We talked about a number of civic events with different partners that might be possible based on our connections. I’m more of an attendee rather than a planner at these events simply because my Univeristy, as you probably know by now, has zero interest in anything outside of itself. It’s a total “walls up” institution where rooms cannot be reserved for any purpose during final exams, and the idea of taking undergraduates places for their benefit is seen as a problem. It’s impossible to reserve rooms for events or host things on campus – you are treated by the staff as a huge waste of time, annoying, and a problem. The University claims to be interested in students and student transformation, but in the end they are really only interested in getting paid on time, and making sure that students go to class. Some transformation.  

I’m happy to take students to events though which is why I attend this. And I’m even happier to discuss pedagogy of debating. I just have to deal with feelings of jealousy when i hear about all the great stuff that other people are doing simply because their university functions normally. As professors, they can reserve rooms when needed for academic purposes. They can develop partnerships. When I bring a complete overseas program to my university’s study abroad office they say, “good luck developing that, here are the forms to fill out.” Nobody wants to do any work. They want to collect a check and share pictures of their children on the university email. They want their summers off; they consider tenure a retirement plan. Pathetic.

I’m actually interested in teaching although I’m terrible at it right now. The conference is really thought-provoking, and makes me think about the classroom a lot. The classroom’s status as a transformative space is undervalued. People, even thoughtful high-ranking university folks, have written the classroom off as a static space that has an absolute set of practices. Where’s the imagination? 

Today’s discussion will focus a lot more on best practices and ways of talking about and justifying civic debate as more than a firm “not that” directed at other types of debating. Then this afternoon I have nothing but time to kill as I wait for my midnight flight back to New York. 

A lot happened yesterday that involved good food and wine and a boat. I didn’t have the time last night (because I went immediately to sleep) to download and have a look at the videos I took of the boat but maybe I’ll do it tonight after the conference. 

Had an amazing dinner yesterday at a place called Sol in Newport Beach. Amazing food. There was a good conversation we had (it was happening on and off on the boat as well) about assessment.  

A big question to think about in assessment is how to be fair about evaluating student efforts. One of the difficult things to evaluate in rhetoric courses anyway, is how well students do with uncertainty or ambiguity. If we directly craft moments of ambiguity to help them deal with ambiguity, is that good? If we provide an ambiguous criteria for evaluation, is that helpful? There is an argument that one is often evaluated and judged on ambiguous criteria.  

I believe the rhetorical response here is to teach students how to cut through ambiguity and make a descriptive argument as to what should be judged and how. But by a descriptive argument, I mean they do not advocate for a change in an open and clear way. Instead, they place their advocacy as something that exists and is unrecognized. They point out that there’s a way to judge and evaluate right in front of us that is the normal and natural way to do it.  

Most students would have trouble with this since their school experience is 98% discipline and 2% creativity and ingenium. When we ask them to obey a rubric, even an ambiguous one, the impulse is to try to follow it to the best of their ability then prepare appeal-style arguments when the grade is bad. Trying one’s best is often a reason to increase a grade in the contemporary college environment.  

If one wanted to teach responses and handling of ambiguity, one would want to do it in cooperation with the students, not holding it over them or being someone in charge or something. We often forget that one of the roles of a teacher is to cooperate and help students. Thinking of the classroom as a site of encounter for everyone there – including the professor – helps us focus on this idea of cooperation and help as a central element in teaching practice. Too often professors believe their role is guard of some vault full of points (imagine Scrooge McDuck’s money bin) and they have to make sure that nobody steals any points or gets points they are not worthy of having. 

Instead of this metaphor the cooperation metaphor might increase performance in the course as the professor leads the class through different ways of approaching ambiguity and wrangling it. There is no correct answer but merely good approaches. There’s not much of a question of grading process or product here – what product would you grade? The process is the only thing on offer. This also addresses an old question of whether you grade performances or understanding in a course. What about those students who are brilliant public speakers yet understand none of the principles of the course? What about those who are terrible at speaking but understand the principles very clearly? This final question is the ultimate ambiguity that professors must wrangle as they attempt to create a fair and meaningful grading system for their course. 

In debate, we side with performance 100% of the time. There’s nothing else. But how would debate alter if we decided to judge debates on process rather than performance? This might be a question or idea that the civic debate conference I’m attending for the next two days could perhaps one day entertain. 

the race is on! Who will get to LAX first?

Flew in pretty early and arrived around noon. The last 30 minutes of the flight we were involved in a drag race with what looked like an American Airlines flight?

I have a few of these photos but I think one really is enough to show you how weird it was. 

Anyway, the flight was uneventful. Got a bunch of reading done, which is the sign of a good flight.

Took no time to get from LAX to my hotel which is in what some have called an ok area, some have said kind of “not great” area (I leave interpretation of that up to you, o readers). So far so good. Pretty quiet and the rooms are clean and inexpensive. Glad I found the spot. Although a police helicopter did circle the hotel for like 90 minutes this afternoon. 

I only brought my still camera and this action camera on this trip as I’m trying to pack light. Also rocking the iPad Pro again – still getting used to it and don’t really get it yet. There’s a lot of stuff I’m much more familar with doing on a laptop and doing it here on this IPad just doesn’t work the same way. But I’m learning. 

it was amazing.

After checking into the hotel here I examined my Facebook feed where my loyal and intelligent LA friends made a list of suggested spots to eat and check out. FIrst on the list was some Mexican food. I went to Al & Bea’s Mexican food. Amazing. 

This is a bean and cheese burrito with red sauce and it was really good. The thing about it that I thought was weird though was the tiny bits of cheese that are somehow evenly distributed throughout the beans. I’ve never had a burrito like this before, it was great. Very different than Texas and a vast improvement over the horror-show of Mexican food that exists in New York City.

I was finishing eating and messing on my phone when the strangest thing to ever happen to me (most likely) happened.

A woman was getting burritos and she started staring at me. She approached me and asked me if I was from New York. I said yes. She then identified herself as the mom of one of my students who is graduating on Sunday. We were supposed to meet on Sunday but I guess fate, the spirit of Los Angeles, or some other force deemed that we should meet today. Of course we took a selfie and tagged her daughter in it and put it on Facebook. Los Angeles, what a small town.

This seriously has to be one of the strangest things I’ve experienced. It was pretty great though, and we get to meet again on Sunday!

I told her I was planning to head to a place called The Last Bookstore downtown and she offered me a ride, so off we went. After saying goodbye (“See you Sunday!”) I went to check out the Last Bookstore. I’ts seriously one of the best bookstores I’ve been in!

I only bought 4 books so that’s doing pretty well considering they had some great stuff and most every book was $5. Got some weird ones too but also a couple that are actually pretty good. This footage is from my Snapchat specs, version 1. 

I found a lot of great old pals in this bookstore. Love that Watson translation (he did several good ones across religious texts). Of course Sophist and Vico. This was a great bookstore.

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Had some coffee after that in a great spot suggested by someone who knows where to get good coffee. Waited there to get hungry and explore some dinner options downtown, but I never got hungry so I returned to the hotel and did some writing (including this post).

So that’s the day so far. Now time to go have a drink or two where Bukowski drank (supposedly!). Very excited to see some more spots.