BRANDT

The section of Deborah Brandt’s paper I thought was the most powerful was her section on “Sponsorship and Access”, because it kind of reminds me of my childhood.  My parents always were trying to move up or move to a better place in search of greater access to literacy.  I grew up and I went to a MPS elementary school, then Shorewood, then Cudahy, then West Allis, and finally full circle back to Milwaukee at the University.  I would go to these new schools and I would see new things all the time, saying “hey why didn’t I have this before.”  Then after I grew up a bit I started to look at schools outside of my own and a lot of other kids from my high school and I would look at our in-city rival and ask why we didn’t have the new weight room or the new computers.  We would always say it’s the superintendent’s fault because he graduated from that school and he gives all the money to that school.  They got all the advantages while our school turned into a dump, and now I realize that a lot more was going on even beyond the money.  When I revisited my high school recently I realized that most of what I considered the best teachers had left the school.  So the literacy in the school is falling because they don’t have the capital, but even more infuriating is when I heard where these teachers were going, the cross-town rival. 

I didn’t have much growing up, but I had enough for me to get to where I am, which is good I guess.  I never had any tutors, any laptops, or really anything that cost a lot of money, but I did have something better in my opinion.  I grew up with friends, playing outside whenever we could, and I stayed pretty athletically fit.  This moving around actually probably helped me because I have taken something with me from each place.  Even as I am typing this I start to see that I am always trying to find the silver lining it’s kind of weird.  When I understood I didn’t have the new laptop like Raymond Branch, I would just say hey at least I have all ten fingers still or something to that nature.  I guess not having the advantages inhibited me from doing certain things for sure, but it’s amazing because I couldn’t tell you what it inhibited me from doing.  Would I be smarter if I was around smarter people and better equipment, probably but who knows because it is all hearsay.  So I will leave you with a quote from a man I only met once, “You hang around cow-shit long enough, you start to smell like it.”

Anzaldua

"But more than we count the blows, we count the days the weeks the years the centuries the aeons until the white laws and commerce and customs will rot in the deserts they've created, lie beached."  pg. 44 anzaldua

It seems to me that Anzaldua is trying to fight fire with more fire, and instead of putting out the fire, she instead stubbornly keeps pouring on gasoline.  The way she stereotypes all Americans as Anglo, when we have 75 million people of color in the U.S. just really makes me mad.  Sure the U.S. has made its fair share of mistakes, but it just seemed like Anzaldua blamed the U.S. for her location growing up.  She states how she is not whole because all the various dialects she has acquired have made her fragmented.  In the U.S. though we would just say she is well-rounded.  This is like the opposite of what I would call good reading, it is not meant for the enjoyment of the reader, but its aim is instead to incite an illicit response. 

I picked this particular quote because I feel that it does a good job of illustrating my views on Anzalduas' writing.  Another thing I didn't like was the way she threw in all of her dialects into the paper.  I think it made it choppy and distracting.  Overall I just really did not like this paper, but maybe it was because I got barely any sleep and I’m just grumpy right now, I don't know.  Packer game was awesome btw.

GEE BLOG

I found Gee's concepts of literacy and discourse were very bold, but they also kind of make sense.  The manner in which Gee broke it up into so many different sub-discourses was confusing at first, and I found myself feeling a little over-whelmed.  It's kind of like when you’re cleaning a huge mess, at first you’re like man how am I going to do this, but you focus your efforts and break it down into sections so that you can see the progress.  I (with help from the class) broke up the essay similarly, and it really helps to outline Gee’s writing. 

In particular I thought Gee’s idea that people in a non-dominant starting position and they are trying to learn a dominant discourse, they really are not “learning”, but actually in a process of acquisition.  It really kind of makes sense because if something is greek to you as a student, and you have no knowledge or context of that particular discourse you probably can’t grasp it enough to “learn it.”  Gee’s argument seems to me to be like “you can take the boy out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the boy.”  You can’t change the fact that your primary discourse is a non-dominant discourse, you can leave the country so to speak, but you still have your primary discourse in you.  However you can add so much of the dominant discourse that it overtakes the non-dominant.  I just thought that that was a very cool way to look at it. By Gee.

Engaged Pedagogy

"This meant that whether academics were drug addicts, alcoholics, batterers, or sexual abusers, the only important aspect of our identity was whether our minds functioned, whether we were able to do our jobs in the classroom."
pg. 69 "Engaged Pedagogy", Gloria Watkins

The way educators go about teaching in schools they do not necessarily create well-rounded individuals inside and outside the classroom, it is mostly inside the classroom.  There is no connection of the public and private lives, and this creates a division of self.  In my own experience I can attest to this because I feel like throughout my life I have been almost like two different people.  First is my school-life which consists of me doing what I am told and remembering what I am told to remember, basically I am a drone disconnected with society as a whole "progressing" toward a goal which I selected years ago to give my life some kind of purpose.  I am living for the future and ignoring the present, I am always trying to advance my position, never content with where I am standing at any particular moment.  Then outside the classroom I turned 180 degrees, living completely in the present, and not really considering many long-term goals.  In one life I will never truly be satisfied and in another I am perfectly content.  During the school week I could be doing reading, homework, or studying, and then switch gears to a party-animal who would be unrecognizable to anyone who had seen me during the school week shows how large the gap between private and public lives really is.  The current educational system employed fuels this gap because of the vast contrast of the two settings.

            I choose this quotation because I felt that it explains what my education has felt like to me.  In my experience it has felt like there is no connection of public and private life.  The way schooling has been set up I have been leading two lives.  So I really feel like there needs to be connections made between both of these lives for a student to really succeed.  We have to teach the whole person and the education should be more personalized to aid this connection, and a way that we can personalize education is through a more equal partnership between the teachers and the students.  There needs to be an incorporation of the private life to aid in the education of the whole self.  Through this combination then students can start to become whole through self-actualization.

The Banking Concept of Education

"Yet only through communication can human life hold meaning.  The teacher's thinking is authenticated only by the authenticity of the students' thinking."
pg.78, "The Banking Concept of Education", Paolo Freire

This quotation best exemplifies Paolo Freire's point that problem-posing education is better than that of the banking concept of education because if a teacher is authenticated only by the authenticity of the students' thinking, then the student must have an equal part in the educational process.  Though at least in my case I have had little to no say in my education, sure I may have saved up a nice little nest egg in my education bank, but that knowledge is useless without context to use it.  Schools are too often not a communication of learning, but a test of how well a person can memorize the useless knowledge deposited by a teacher.  We are taught to memorize facts as an end to pass a test, and since if you don't use those facts every day we lose them. At least in my case my brain has gotten so good at this turnover that I can memorize something that I need for a test and as soon as the test ends so does my knowledge of the subject.  I think that banking education is like someone giving a kid a book (and a test on it later) to read on how to ride a bike.  The kid does a great job on his test showing that he possessed the knowledge to ride a bike, but after a year he decides to try and ride a bike and fails miserably.  The kid never really knew how to ride the bike he just had facts from other people's experiences riding a bike.  So the way I figure it Freire was trying to say that we can't just this is how you do this go do it, but instead apply the material in a way in which the students can gain real experience in the process.  Thus the students will have achieved the authentic ability to think reflecting positively back on the teacher.

In schools it is almost like we are only trying to breed good workers and the students are turned into oppressed mind-less drones controlled by the lucky elite oppressors in society.  If you look at what a government thinks makes a good citizen we see a middle-class hardworking person who pays his taxes.  They are drones created by the oppressed to do the oppressor’s bidding.  I chose this quotation because I believe that in a society which prides itself on equality and freedom we cannot employ a system in which people are oppressed.  It doesn't matter if they are children or not they are still humans who should have the ability to operate as equals in their discussion of knowledge.  The students are there and without the students no teachers would exist, so it is important to acknowledge the fact that both are equal parts to the process of education.

The Acheivement of Desire

"...The end of education"
The Achievement of Desire
Richard Rodriguez
        The "end" of education is a very hard thing to grasp but if I had to try to explain it I would say that it is to create well-rounded individuals inside and outside the classroom.  We go to school and it creates a work-ethic that should follow us throughout our life.  School is like a test for the real world, and if you do well in school it means you are more likely to be successful.  The change that comes with education is meant to be positive, but in more well off house-holds as opposed to poorer house-holds it doesn't create a gap between lives.  Where as in a lower-class family the divide is much more noticeable, and by becoming educated you have to give up on being lower-class.  You have to give that part of you up, at least while being educated.  Most often lower-class can't give this up, they can't switch back and forth effective enough.  Imagine trying to run 100 yards in the time I run 40, I'd bet you couldn't but there will always be people that are able to beat me such as the worlds fastest man Usain Bolt.  The poor that become rich are the exceptions (just as the people who can run that distance faster than me) and when I think about it there is not really a way that we can change that distance. 
          I chose this quote because of its difficulty to describe, and the diverse number of way to describe it.  Also it gets me to think about the fact that the "end" of education is the same for everyone, but in the ways it manifests itself it is never the same for everyone.  You are striving to be successful, but the way that you have to move to get to where you are going is different for everyone.  The fact that it is a shorter path for some and longer for others is very intriguing to me.  Though I tried to define the "end" of education I think that it can't be described except on an individual basis, and the best way to realize this "end" is to look in the mirror ask yourself because I really do not have the material answer YOU need.

blog 2 on bartholomae

"The university, however, is the place where"common" wisdom is only of negative value; it is something to work against." pg. 521 "Inventing the University" David Bartholomae

This quote is a very bold statement and I'd say that it is wrong in some ways and right in others.  I believe that if you use only the "common" wisdom in your writing, then it will be of negative value.  Although in my opinion the best papers can blend these "common" wisdoms along with the the more complex ideas.  I think that this actually defines the topic twofold and can reach a much larger audience.  It is kind of like drawing a picture and explaining through words at the same time.  The people who learn visually as well as the people who learn through directions then are incorporated into the audience.  The fact that when your are writing academic discourse you have to speak in their specific code makes it very difficult.  You have to talk as "one of them" when your clearly not in most cases.  It's like being in the minor leages trying to become a big leager one day, you have to work really hard to understand the topic through research and experience.  You could be surpassed by others because they are more talented or knew more, but eventually your around the game long enough that you know how to play on that level and you move up.  Not everybody will be great because if everybody was great then no one would be great. You have to pick up on how academic discourse is written so you can impersonate their language so you can talk to them.  Such as a peasant could talk fluently to another peasant and a king would have trouble talking to a peasant and vice-versa.  You can't talk to a spanish speaker in english and have said person understand you.

I also don't agree with Bartholomae's understanding of audience in a school setting.  We can say our audience is not the teacher and actually the peers but why shouldn't i write to the teacher as my audience?  What do i have to gain by writing to the person siting next to me in class?  So we have to write to an invisible audience when the teacher is there and is the only one that really matters in the audience.  The teacher is the only one we can see.

 In a school setting i am not going to be intrested in topics normally because they are mandatory.  I'm writing this blog and saying to myself "lets just get this over" instead of who is my audience.  Now if i was writing for a newspaper article on something i love just because i love to do it, then i believe that creativity is shown.  You have to have a want or desire to acheive something for creativity to be shown in my opinion.