Rodriguez & Kosut

Rodriguez and Kosut were both personal accounts of acquiring discourse and the cultural struggles they each encountered, relating to both Bartholomae and Gee. Batholomae’s suggestion of acquiring discourse through mimicking was evident through Rodriguez’s admiration of his teachers and Kosut’s interaction with her peers. Both disproved Gee’s ideology that secondary discourse cannot be acquired if one is not a member of the dominant class, with Rodriguez being a minority and Kosut’s being of the working class.

I enjoyed reading both accounts and was able to relate to both. I was pleased with the success of both authors and found great delight in disproving Gee’s theory.

Delpit

Lisa Delpit’s The Politics of Teaching Literate Discourse is a great response to James Paul Gee’s “What is Literacy”. The opinions of others are hard to change, but as an educator, we can unconsciously unleash our opinions in the ways we address the academic concerns of certain students. I feel it’s important for teachers to recognize any bias or prejudice they may hold against a particular group of society and once they recognize and acknowledge that bias or prejudice nature they either seek to eliminate them or quit their profession entirely to prevent the mis-education of any student.    The ideology held by Gee, is sure to be shared by many in within the academic community and to a certain extent they hold a level of truth. It can be quite difficult for one to acquire a discourse “foreign” to them and the best way to attempt to master any discourse is through acquisition; similar to the mimicking technique offered by Bartholomae. Yet to completely dismiss the possibility that any African American will be able to master secondary discourse is absurd. There have been numerous African Americans, both of today and yesterday, who have exemplified on a national level their ability to engage in the dominant secondary discourse of America. The challenge is not in being an intellectual but being seen as an intellectual in the same regard as a white person! Even today those African Americans who are given national recognition are still faced with the challenges of being African American and being educated, “you must do twice as well as white people to be considered half as good” (a lesson I learned hard in the 5^th grade).  The extra work is in making them see beyond your race and allowing you to engage in their discourse once you’ve mastered their discourse. One example can be found in Chris Matthews’ controversial comment toward President Barack Obama in that he “forgot he was black tonight for an hour…” after his speech.  Although the comment cause much uproar throughout the internet community, Chris Matthews words resonates true to the way in which the dominate culture views not only our president but any intellectual African American.

This is not to say the primary discourses of African Americans are in some way wrong, ignorant or subordinate. The recognition of African American discourse as a prominent feature within our culture is vital to creating a positive self-image within the African American community. As Delpit noted, “Carter G. Woodson called for similar pedagogy almost seventy years ago. He extolled teachers in his 1933 Mid-Education of the Negro to teach “mainstream,” but to teach as well the life, history, language, philosophy, and literature of their own people. Only this kind of education, he argued, would prepare an educated class which would serve the needs of the African-American community,” (Delpit, 552).

African American discourse is relevant to the extent that it has been mimicked for years musically. Most notable cases have been that of Elvis Presley and even artist of today such as Justin Timberlake, Eminem, and Adele; they’ve mastered the slang, soul, and angst of African American music but not to the extent they’ve completely abandon the primary discourse of their own. And throughout the African American community they’ve been accepted yet the same acceptance cannot be acknowledged in the reverse. African American pop artist like Rihanna are always in the R&B category, not because she has not mastered the secondary discourse of pop music but because the dominate culture will not recognize her as a pop artist or they do not believe she is capable of engaging in pop discourse. Again I state the process of assimilation has been a tough, long road for African Americans and I’ve completely given up! I see no problem in the dominate culture seeing me as black as long as I accept that blackness is beautiful and good.  

O.M.Gee

Part 1:

Distinction between dominant and non-dominant discourses and why this matters

Gee distinguishes between dominant Discourses and non-dominant Discourses in relation to the social status each of them bring. Although both are secondary Discourses,”… various non-home-based social institutions,” (Gee, 1989), dominant Discourses brings with it the acquisition of social goods such as money, prestige and status whereas non-dominant Discourses results in “solidarity with a particular social network,” (Gee, 1989). He goes on to describe the importance of the acquiring dominant Discourse as it relates to social interactions. He states, “Very often dominant groups in a society apply rather constant “test” of the fluency of the dominant Discourse in which their power is symbolized,” (1989).

How can discourses interfere? How can they be transferred?

Primary interfere with the acquisition of secondary discourse because the use of the secondary discourse is not widely mimicked in one’s environment; in this view to interfere is problematic in that is prevents the person from acquiring the fluency of secondary discourse, which as described above, can have adverse effects on the way in which a member of a subordinate group interacts with a member of the dominate group. Yet to transfer discourse, in which secondary discourse is used more fluently and naturally amongst members within the community, is the best way to acquire secondary discourse.  To support his theory he offers the following example:

“…the primary Discourse of many middle class homes has been influenced by secondary Discourses of those used in schools and business. This is much less true of the primary Discourse in many lower socio-economic black homes, though this primary Discourse has influenced the secondary Discourse used in black churches,”  (Gee, 1989).

Part 2:

In response to the discussion between Todd and Ashley on March 3, 2011; Todd expressed his contempt with certain aspects of Gee’s writing and his reference to low income and black families; Ashley’s response appeared to be a dismissal of those feelings and was bluntly titled, “Take a step back and calm down.”

There seems to be an underlying message propelling Gee’s ideologies concerning race, class and education. There is an apparent reoccurring reference to Black low income families and their failure to acquire even “primary discourse” in comparison to white middle class families, who supposedly set the standard on the “right” way to engage and acquire discourse. As an African American I am highly offended, although I do take into consideration that this essay was written in 1989, before Gee and the rest of the world were exposed to President Obama and Oprah before she was a multi-millionaire power house she has become. Nevertheless, Gee’s writing is an example of how one group can impose its values and beliefs onto another and thus set the standard as to what is considered proper and right. He expressed many times within the text the failure of African Americans to acquire Discourse and even goes as far as to state, “there is, thus, no workable “affirmative action” for Discourse, you can’t be let into the game after missing the apprenticeship and be expected to have a fair shot at playing it,” (Gee, 1989).

Let me make something very clear to those of you, who might think I’m being hypersensitive, Gee’s ideology on African American people and their discourse as being inferior to that of middle class white Americans or Europeans is wrong and the blame is improperly placed. It is this type of public display of one’s ideology that perpetuates prejudice and racism. Just because a person is black or live in a low socio-economic community does not mean that they cannot engage in discourse with their family and also acquire the secondary discourse of society.  The culture and language of African Americans is not what leads to low test scores and graduation rates; it’s the system surrounding their education that has failed them. Funding for inner city schools were poor before No Child Left Behind and it was the poor funding that lead even poorer resources and thus low test scores. It’s the poor quality of education coupled with poverty and crime that affects the way African American children acquire knowledge not the way they speak. Since the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education supreme court decision to designate public schools, African Americans have been trying to assimilate with the white dominate society and 50 years later they’ve found themselves alone with other minorities in public schools caught in a repeated cycle of reform and failure while the middle class white families rejoice in private or “suburban education”. Sadly it is the ideology of people such as Gee that keeps this cycle moving.  In the end Gee prose a few vague and impersonal solutions to the proposed problem of ‘non-mainstream’ individuals (i.e. those excluded from the superior class of the middle class population) .The process of African American’s assimilating into the world of the “middle class mainstream” has endured years of failure.  I propose that we need to cease this destructive cycle and assert ourselves as a culture within America with our own school, supported by our own funding, engaged in both our discourse and that of middle class mainstream America.

Final thoughts on Bartholomae

After re-reading Inventing the University by David Bartholomae my opinion of Bartholomae has shifted slightly into a more positive direction. I understand that Bartholomae's tone may appear a bit pretentious, arrogant and condescending, but his passion for academic writing is hard to ignore. I don't think Bartholomae's issue has to do with the incompetence of students but rather the lack of preparation they receive from teachers and professors. How can we blame students for not knowing something they were never taught? Bartholomae was simply expressing his expectations, the same expectations that are shared throughout the academic community. As freshmen, we are aware of these expectations, as Bartholomae noted in the examples of student essays he shared.

When I compare the Creativity Essay I was asked to write with the essays Bartholomae noted and with his expectations, I wouldn't know where to rate myself. When it comes to structure, organization and grammar I feel that I excel but all to often my writing can come across as a narrative memoir, rather than academic.  For this assignment I chose my experience as an expecting mother to play on the idea of being creative and creating life. I didn't really consider a particular audience outside of the professor for the class, neither did I feel the need to add any commonplaces. When I thought of creativity, I thought of a unique and intimate experience one feels within, again playing on the concept of pregnancy. My creative process for describing creativity was to write from the heart, without considering the academic discourse of my elders.