Gaming as writing

            I really enjoyed the article for this week, “After the Last Generation: Rethinking Scholarship in the Days of Serious Play” by Stuart Moulthrop, and it also reminded me a lot of Sirc’s article from a few weeks ago. Both articles are about changing the way that we think about writing, and though most of what we have read is centered on this question, these two in particular seem to pick up on the same themes. Moulthrop simply takes the ideas first given by Sirc and expands them, which helps us see how Sirc’s ideas can be applied to real life.

            First of all, the idea of gaming the Moulthrop introduces in his article is a very interesting one. He explains that “Learning at all levels…[comes] to depend more heavily on simulation and discovery, on iterative, intensely personal encounters with information, rather than traditional methods based in authority and exposition” (208). Though we all are aware of the fact that the basis for writing is changing, Moulthrop tells us how the university system (and quite possibly all levels of learning) needs to conform to this changing environment, even going as far as citing the words of James Paul Gee who believes that as time wears on, tenured professors as we know them will disappear in place of a collection of individuals co-learning together (209). Whether or not someone agrees with this statement, it is pretty clear that, no matter what, teaching styles have to change as writing changes.

            There is a link to writing and technology that few in the humanities wish to acknowledge, even though we should be the ones most receptive to new ideas; as a think tank of ideas and modes or learning, the humanities should not deny new thought. Moulthrop explains the link between writing and technology:

            To begin with, digital information is not statically inscribed, but rather copied,

            distributed, indexed, and linked according to specific logical processes. The locus

            of reading and writing has changed from stable page to flickering screen, and as

            Manovich puts it, ‘the screen keeps alternating between the supposed transparency

            Of image and the opacity of means and diagrams (210).

I think that this is an interesting point because most of the time, video games are seen as a very low form of entertainment in the sense that gaming is seen as an escape from the academic world; few people I have encountered think that anything intellectual goes on in gaming. However, Moulthrop does a good job expelling this sense of negativity around games, saying that they help with the ability to learn and understand concepts. Of course, there are dissenters with any new form of learning, and this is no different:

People who write [anti-gaming as learning articles] have probably not spent much time handling a game controller, or have failed to understand the experience. In place of ‘creative involvement,’ they prefer critical insulation, substituting content-as-writing for the real essence of gaming, which is a dynamic encounter with a consistent simulation or virtual world—on other words, serious play (210).

All of this points back to how we need to be more open minded to new learning alternatives. Especially as technology becomes more and more part of life. For example, I read this article, sent to me by an online board, on the computer, made notes on the computer, and now I’m typing this response in an electronic word processor, and will ultimately upload it to a blog, also online. How can people with archaic views of learning expect to stay alive in a world where you could literally never leave the computer and complete your education?

            The specific areas where I felt Sirc was coming into play showed up in two places in particular. The first place I saw the connection occur was the quote by Cayley that Moulthrop includes:

Programming is writing, writing recognized as prior and provisional, the detailed announcement of a performance which may soon take place (on the screen, in the

mind) an indication of what to read and how. Programming will reconfigure the process

of writing and incorporate ‘programming’ in its technical sense, including the algorithms

of text generators, textual movies, all the ‘performance-design’ publication and production aspects of text-making (211).

This reminded me of when Sirc asserts that writers are designers; we are simply moving writing to include programming so that we can adapt to the new world of writing, and we actually literally become designers. The second place I saw Sirc in this article is right before the sixth section when Moulthrop writes “Writing as ‘work’ tends to fix itself in time, but cybernetic writing leans into the future. The code base of a successful game is at least momentarily stable, but while its popularity lasts it will remain in flux, subject to upgrades, service releases, versioning, sequelization—not to mention unscheduled expansion” (212). This sequence reminded me of how Sirc demonstrates how “the box is always open” in the sense that we can always return to an idea and use it again in a different way. In this sense, is gaming a more pure form of writing?

Box-Logic?

I do not want to sound like I am old fashioned or a kill-joy, but I guess I would be considered a traditional composition kid. I am sure that begs all types of questions of what is the traditional way to teach writing, but I guess what I mean by traditional is I am all for traditional essays. I understand the need to bring in multi-modal forms; most students will deal more with other types of writing than academic writing in their career life, but at the end of the day, I favor the essay model above any other.

Because of how I feel about composition, I did not like the “Box-Logic” article by Geoffrey Sirc. This article, along with a lot of other multi-modal pedagogy, seems to reject the idea that students should be taught to write essays. I do understand there are students like Sirc’s student, Greg White that was obviously not an English major but who could still articulate thought about a topic, but what is wrong with teaching him to write a paper? One of the things that I’ve always had drilled into my head, and that I have passed on to my none English major friends, is that no matter what your major, you will have to write papers; that being said, every student, even Greg White, needs to understand how to write a proper essay in an academic setting. While I see the benefit in the activities Sirc lists and what they teach, I think that they should either be an option in a course or an advanced course, not an introduction to composition course.

I do not want to write off multi-modal teaching because I am getting mad that multi-modal seems to write off traditional writing. I do think that Sirc’s article shuts out the idea that some students might prefer to write an essay. Speaking from personal experience I would much rather write than do anything else. If I am ever given an assignment where I have the option between a paper and a presentation or anything else, I am going to choose to do a paper. I am aware that this is not a typical student, but I think the traditional essay does need to be taught.

I did have a difficult time dealing with the concept of the box-logic. The descriptions of Cornell’s boxes seem to only be a beautiful thing in a world where the television show “Hoarders” does not exist. I do believe that as writers, students need to have a plethora of things at their disposal as possible topics to write about, and in this sense, various forms of media to use and I like how Sirc mentions that Cornell never really sealed his boxes as a way for him to return to his ideas later as a metaphor for the way students need to return to their writing over and over again (120). I suppose I just wish I could be more invested in this way of teaching; perhaps it is not an issue with the pedagogy, but with me being able to connect with it.

One of the things I did like about Sirc’s article was when he spoke about “students-designers, now, not essayists” because it opens up the idea that students are creating, and I think that this can go for essays and projects (121). I think that there is some kind of stigma that’s been put on writing papers that needs to be lifted by composition teachers. I think that supporting the multi-modal pedagogy does not mean that we have to neglect the traditional essay model of learning. 

Shipka and English composition

The idea of the subject of communication going head-to-head against the subject of composition was a major moment of contention in Shipka’s book, and it reminded me in a lot of ways of the battle between composition professors and literature professors. In this case, however, composition teachers are the ones being too judgmental and trying to control the communication department. This divide between how Freshman English is taught and how it should be taught is something that I suppose every college department is going through, especially with the changing writing climate. Shipka explains that the main issue with Freshman English is that “traditional English course’s lack of…unified course content…[is] one of its fundamental weaknesses” (24). The fact that no one can seem to agree, even within an English department, on what English Composition should look like shows how unwilling some professors are to step outside of what they were taught as students and adapt to the changing world of writing.

            Shipka quotes Briggs about the major difference between communication teachers and compositions teachers:

                        A key difference between teachers of communication courses and traditional                                 freshman English courses is that the former tends to exhibit an “experiemental

                        attitude”…meeting routinely to exchange information and solicit feedback on

                        the way their courses were designed…Clyde Dow notes... “there is a tendency [in                         many of the newer communication courses] to disregard tradition and to

                        substitute an attitude of ‘I don’t know, let’s see.’ (25).

It makes me wonder what the road block is for composition professors. I would think that an English professor would want to make writing as accessible to others as possible because it is such an important skill for everyone to have a strong grasp on, from English majors to scientists. The fact that communication professors are more concerned with this is surprising to me. I understand that, obviously, communication includes writing, but by the time a student gets to a communication course, I would think that they should already understand how to be convincing with their writing, which is the job of the freshman English department.

            Even though I am an English major, I am in support of the communication approach. According to Shipka, there are multiple advantages to this communications approach to teaching freshman composition:

 A communications approach to freshman English…[is] grounded in social

l scientific theories of discourse [which] would underscore for students the            connection between the social and personal dimensions of communicative

practice…A communications approach…would examine how writing relates to

the other modes and media of communication…[and would ask] students to

examine the communicative process as a dynamic, embodied, multimodal

whole- one that both shapes and is shaped by the environment [meaning]

students might come to see writing, reading, speaking, and ways of

thinking and evaluating as “a function of place, time, sex, age and many

other elements of life” (26).

To me, this is exactly what writing should be today. We can no longer expect to interest students with worn out teaching techniques, such as mapping sentences, when there is so much more to writing. Making students interested in writing has to extend into their personal lives; if someone cannot relate to something, they cannot learn to understand or like it. I think that the communicative approach makes it easier for students to say “I like to write” or at least “writing is not scary to me, because I do it every single day.”

            This integration of writing into everyday life is indicative of the textbook my group analyzed for the presentation, Everyone is An Author. Both want to introduce the idea that writing is not this elitist camp that only the sacred few can enter into. I think there is nothing more important to teach students than that writing is an accessible task. How can English professors expect their students to want to go into the English major, or to even succeed in college, if they put a cloud around writing that makes it foreboding. Keeping up with the times is something that has to happen in college since the students walking through the doors are right in the middle of the changing media climate; students have smart phones and Tumblr accounts, and to not be aware of how everything they know impacts writing is a form of ignorance that needs to be remedied if English professors expect their students to push themselves into writing with enthusiasm. 

Literature vs. Composition

            Reading Elbow’s essay, “The Cultures of Literature and Composition,” brought up a lot of conflicting feelings in me. He starts off by saying that there is a conflicted relationship between literature and composition, one that I have, apparently, been unaware of for the past 17+ years I’ve been in the educational system. I’m not saying that his claims are untrue. I don’t work within an English department, so I can’t make any claims on how people act toward literature and composition. I suppose in my undergrad, especially as I got into my higher division courses, I never made a distinction in my head between literature and composition; it was inevitable that I would be writing in a literature class, and the times I took creative writing courses, we still read (though whether it would be considered “classic literature” could be debatable). I suppose that’s why I became and English major; I love to read, I love to write, and this is the place where those two things come together. I knew that no matter what class I took in English, I would be reading and writing. Even though at the end of part one, he does list out what he wants each section of English to learn from the other, I did feel that he was one setting me up to believe that composition teachers are better than literature teachers because the composition teachers aren’t as snooty. He was the one introducing the bias to me, someone who was unaware the battle existed between the two.

            One of the problems I had with Elbow is that he did not clearly explain what he meant by “composition.” It sounds silly to say that I needed this explained, but up until the third page, I believed he was referring to composition as any student writing, including essays and academic prose. However, I reached a point where it became evident that, when he says composition, he is only talking about creative, imaginary works.  Even with the distinction made that composition means creative work, I still don’t see how Elbow can make the statement that “the literary tradition neglect the teaching of the imaginative writing , it also neglects teaching us to read in such a way as to help bring powerful imaginative texts most palpably into our lives” (470). He talks about literature as if every person in the entire world teaches it in the same way. I disagree completely. I’ve personally had teachers that go out of their way to make sure students see connections between what we’re reading and our lives. I’ve had teachers ask us for our reading of a text and then ask us to go back again and read it “against the grain” so that we can understand a different argument or a different point of view. Just because you’re reading literature does not mean there is no creativity going on. Critical ideas can be creative and imaginative, I feel like he is overlooking that.

            It’s no surprise that his statement of a dissenting voice in his own head at the start of part two is exactly what I was thinking of him by this point in the article: “‘But your only use for literature is in fact to use it- for personal therapy. You want everything to be utilitarian and pragmatic . You’re just a cornball” (472). He goes on to say that his problem with the sophistication of literature is that it breeds snobbery, but if I’m to read him as a composition teacher, I find him incredibly snobby as well. Elbow does say that he feels that “training in literary study is not just learning knowledge and skills but learning to stop being ‘ordinary’ or ‘regular’ and instead be more sophisticated and even oblique” (473). I think a lot of people would jump on his band-wagon, and I will say that I’ve met people in this area of study who do believe that, but as far as I’m concerned, every field of study lends to this perception, whether in English or not. Every form of higher education is a stepping stone to becoming somehow “more” than you were, and possibly “more” than the other applicant you’re up against in the job market. Is that not why such a significant number of people attend college?

            Ultimately, I disagree with Elbow’s article, not because it is badly written or inaccessible. In fact, it is the opposite; he writes well, and I never found myself struggling to get through overly theoretical language. I disagree with him because I see literature and composition, whatever form you wish to view composition, as one in the same. The field of English is a cycle: we read creative work of others, we discuss it, we learn how to develop creative ideas (though they may be creative-critical ideas), we write them down, and now we have creative ideas for others to read. This will continue as long as people are excited about text and literature, and I don’t think there should be a line drawn in the sand and someone saying “Composition people over here, literature people over here.” 

Faigley's "Judging Writing, Judging Selves"

Lester Faigley’s article brings up the ever debated question: what is good writing? I’m sure all of us have different examples of our personal writing that we could hold up as good, perhaps because it received an A or because it was praised by someone we respect. For me, Faigley raises some interesting points about the subjectivity of grading. Of course, I can’t say that this is any kind of ground-breaking information; the biggest joke I make with my friends from undergrad is that all I have to do in a paper is make something up and then find a smart way to say it. However, even with the off-hand way I tend to approach papers now that I’ve gotten so used to writing them, there is some truth to my joke. There is an elitism around academic writing, which Faigley shows in the section of his article where he talks about the Commission on English who wrote Examining the Examination in English.

First of all, the whole idea of standardized tests makes me roll my eyes. Basing everything that a student knows off of high stress, timed test that is also centered on how the test taker is feeling that day is a pretty horrible way of measuring aptitude. To Faigley’s credit, he also seems to abhor the system that is standardized tests, or at least the particular test that was used to examine English in the 1920’s. He uses two sample essays to illustrate his point on the subjectivity of grading. The graders of the exam used a scale based on the following:

[a] writer of an examination book marked 50 (“failure”)…[a] Candidate who calls just short of showing the minimum ability, together with a faulty technique indicating that he would be a ‘bad risk’…The writer of a book marked 85 (“very good”) is described as showing “good all round ability that falls just short of excellence (90 group) (5).

When I read the samples Faigley provided, I have to say I agree that the grade of the first paper should be lower than the grade of the second paper, however to award a failing grade to the first sample simply because “the great works have not had the right effect; if they had, the writer wouldn’t waste his time on popular literature” (8). The official reason given for failing this paper is that the texts the writer quoted did nothing to support an argument that the writer learned or felt anything from what he read, and that reason is one I can understand and agree with, but when you look at the fact that the second essay cites Hamlet and Macbeth, texts considered much more “high brow” than things quoted by the first writer, it becomes a lot clearer why the first essay failed with the second one received an 85.

            I was bothered that the first essay was flat out failed, but what bothered me more was the fact that Faigley says that because of the grade the student received “he was not admitted to a prestigious college” (9). I think it’s pretty horrible that because a group of people were less than impressed with the selection of literature that the first boy chose to use. Also, the fact that you either fail or pass the exam is ridiculous in and of itself.

            Moving away from the examination grading, Faigley goes into how some professors seem to think that personal narrative writing automatically makes for good writing. I agree with Faigley when he says he has “read narratives written for large-scale writing assessments that deal with intense personal events…yet the writer had no knowledge of who would read the paper or what would become of it” (12). I took a non-fiction writing workshop in undergrad and at the end of the class, everyone had to write a personal story and the entire class read it and critiqued it, so I can speak from experience that just because writing is personal does not make the writing good.

            I suppose the main purpose of the article is focused on the self in writing and how to teach what the self is and what exactly the self is in writing. The article speaks to the theory that “the idea of the individual self is uniquely Western…[because] In European languages the fact that ‘I’…refers indexically to the speaker of the utterance suggests that the speaker possesses an autonomous consciousness and at the same time is aware of that consciousness” (396-397). However, I don’t feel that Faigley ever answered what self in writing is, though he does raise the question “how exactly [do] teachers give students power. Is it in self-expression or is it in earning power” (410). I don’t think that he ever really answered this question, though he says that “teachers of college writing are still very concerned with self” (401). This is all well and good, but I wish I understood more of what Faigley was trying to get at with the self in writing. He never answered all his questions, so I was wondering exactly how to teach students to put themselves in their writing. 

Berlin's "Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories"

I enjoyed the Berlin reading for this week and found myself attempting to classify which school of thought I fall into in regards to teaching rhetoric as I read through Berlin’s explanation of each area. What I found out is that it’s very hard for me to place myself since I’ve never actually taught before. Of course, I can pick the area that I feel is the most logical, looking at it from a student view point, but, having no experience teaching, I have really no idea which type of approach would be the best. I think the most impactful moment in Berlin’s argument is when he states that college English teachers “are teaching a way of experiencing the world, a way of ordering and making sense of it” (776). Likewise, at the beginning of the article, he says “To teach writing is to argue for a version of reality and the best way of knowing and communicating it” (766). Both of these quotes exemplify the importance of teaching writing and show the magnitude to taking the time to figure out the best way to go about helping students learn; it means more when you understand that these are not just skills they will take to their writing but to all aspects of their lives.

There are aspects of all the theories that I have problems with, but the one I think I have the most issues with is the Current-Traditionalists view, which I’m assuming is in conjunction with the Common Sense Realism, though Berlin was not completely clear on that terminology. Berlin explains that the Current-Traditionalists believe:

“Common Sense Realism denies the value of the deductive method- syllogistic reasoning- in arriving at knowledge. Truth is instead discovered through induction alone. It is the individual sense impression that provides the basis on which all knowledge can be built…The world is still rational, but its system is to be discovered through the experimental method, not through logical categories grounded in a mental faculty” (769).

Why is that a legitimate problem? That was the question I kept asking myself when I first started reading this section. However, Berlin does a great job of clearing up any uncertainties with his readers. At the end of the article, Berlin says that “Current-Traditional Rhetoric views the rhetorical situation as an area where the truth is incontrovertibly established by a speaker or writer more enlightened than her audience” (777). This whole idea that there is one truth known by someone who is of a higher intelligence than the rest of the world is actually very Platonist, which is interesting to me why it is not at issue in the Neo-Platonists theory, and by using this argument to try and teach writing to students, the outcome would be a lot of elitist young writers going out into the world believing they understand more than anyone who will ever read what they have to say. In this way, the Current-Traditionalists close down any kind of debate or conversation about the argument being presented by the speaker or writer, which brings me to ask how can this method be taught? If the instructor of the course is teaching that there is no truth other than the one being presented in writing, the instructor most likely already has a constructed truth of what they believe. I think this type of teaching and writing could be destructive to students who do not have a strong background in writing because if they do poorly on a paper, they will begin to question if they understand the truth instead of questioning the way they went about attempting to convince their audience.

Berlin wraps up his article by saying “The test of one’s competence as a composition instructor, it seems to me, resides in being able to recognize and justify the version of the process being taught, complete with all of its significance for the student” (777). As an instructor, not only is it beneficial to be able to understand what you are teaching, but also to understand how the students will understand what you are teaching. In this way I think it is a great idea that graduate students, students themselves, are teaching the freshman composition course since we are still in a position of being pupils and we can understand why a method may or may not work. This is also important when explaining to students why they have to sit through a composition class, as we discussed in class last week. If we can understand what we are teaching and how it will help them interpret the world and speak the truth, they will be more likely to pay attention and take something away from the class. 

Richard Lanham's "The 'Q' Question"

            Because the reading for today was confusing to me at points, and I had a hard time following all the ideas, I decided to latch onto an idea that I liked and began developing in a previous rhetoric class and then try and explore how this information can be helpful when teaching or creating curriculum.

            Before the article begins, Lanham prefaces it by explaining what the Q Question is, which is a question that “emerges every time technology changes in some basic way” (154). I suppose the Q Question is constantly being brought up in today’s classroom because it seems as if technology is constantly changing and every time it does we have to step back and orientate ourselves with a new system. All of this means that there is always a changing form of rhetoric and ways that rhetoric can reach others. There are new mediums for conveying ideas and arguments. Along with any argument, however, there is a version of truth that needs to be arrived at. With Lanham’s article, I wanted to see if I could fit the ideas of Classical truth and more modern truth in with the thoughts brought up in the article.

In my first semester of grad school, I became very interested in the truth, or Truth, what truth really means, how to deal with it in language and/or writing, and now, how it applies when dealing with rhetoric, more specifically, teaching rhetoric. In Richard Lanham’s “The ‘Q’ Question,” instead of designating truth and Truth, he designates the Weak Defense and the Strong Defense. These Defenses are immediate reactions to rhetoric and often shape how we perceive the arguments of others, and the Defenses sounds very similar to differing views of truth which I attempted to understand last semester.

The Weak Defense is what would be considered a more Classical view of truth: “The Weak Defense argues that there are two kinds of rhetoric good and bad. The good kind is used in good causes, the bad kind in bad causes. Our kind is the good kind; the bad kind is used by our opponents” (155). Lanham points out that this is a Platonist view, and it also a very Platonist way to approach truth; there is truth and lies, what philosophers believe is truth, and what rhetoricians believe are lies. This is problematic with the truth question as well as with the Weak Defense of rhetoric. Where is the line drawn here? If you take this example of “I am right, others are wrong” and apply it to life, no one is ever wholly good or bad because they are always both; you believe you’re right, someone else believes they are right, so you are also both wrong. How can rhetorical discussion or argument take place in this situation? It cannot, which is why Lanham correctly identifies this as a Weak Defense.

            On the opposite side, we have the Strong Defense which “assumes that truth is determined by social dramas, some more formal than others but all man-made….In its world, there is as much truth as we need, maybe more, but argument is open-ended” (156). This Defense fits in with a more modern view of truth where there are multiple ideas of truth, and that truth changes depending on the circumstance. Truth, or rhetoric, moves away from being good or bad, black and white, and moves into a gray area.

            Lanham moves out from these Defenses and gives examples of situations where the Q Question was asked and what kind of Defense was given in each situation. I have to admit that I think he used too many examples and because of that it was easier for me to get lost while I was reading. However, what I took away from Lanham’s article was when constructing curriculum for the humanities, much like when arriving at a more contemporary version of truth, one which isn’t black and white, we must approach rhetoric as something positive as well as something that is multifaceted. As much as I love the idea of looking for what truth is and what it means, perhaps there is no truth here when we break it down. There is not ultimate truth when teaching rhetoric because it is created by each individual. Each writer or speaker is giving a Strong or Weak Defense and it is left up to the audience, or teacher, to decide what kind of Defense is given. I think that at the end of the article, Lanham was basically calling for a more varied structure when it comes to what is being taught in the humanities departments. There is a lot of caution against hesitation to going toward this varied system, and Lanham seems to believe it is essential to the educational system to adopt these methods.