Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Teaching English Composition and the Jessica Bryan Controversy

I've been giving a lot more thought to the Jessica Bryan controversy at North Idaho College. It's been on my mind because I have some reason to believe that D. F. Oliveria is going to rip Jessica in an upcoming column.


If I were writing an editorial about the situation, here is what would be on my mind, given my profession, what I know about the situation, and what I know about the work Jessica Bryan and I do.

Linda Cook, the student who was refunded her tuition, stated publicly that she thought Jessica Bryan was a good teacher. I think her words were "she has a gift". She also said that it was comments like the ones that have been attributed to Jessica Bryan that made her unhappy.

In this discussion, it seems to have been forgotten that before Linda Cook left Bryan's course, Bryan used one of Linda Cook's pieces of writing in class as a model of what good writing is. I don't know what Linda Cook wrote about in that piece of writing. I'd like to know. Whatever Linda Cook wrote about, Jessica Bryan was not suppressing it, but held it up as exemplary.

About teaching composition:
One of the most difficult challenges in teaching composition is that the course does not have a given subject matter to discuss or write about. The instructor generates subject matter. Some instructors have students read about current issues. The class discusses them and papers are generated by discussion. This can become political. As I've said before, as a teacher of composition for nearly thirty years now, I tend toward philosophical inquiry in my composition classes. I could imagine someone saying that I'm not teaching English, I'm teaching philosophy. I am teaching philosophy, but I think it generates the most thoughtful arguments and essays.

Next term, I will present my WR 123 course within the context of the American working class. We'll look at the history of unions, we'll read about work and its meaning in American society, I'll try to help students understand this subject matter from the perspective I gained as an employee at the Bunker Hill Company and the students will do research on work and economic/social class related questions.

I've taught research within this context for five or six years now. It's riveting. It's political. It's historical. It's sociological. It's psychological. It's literature. It's film studies. It's interdisciplinary. Compostition classes must be interdisciplinary.

In the class I just described and in my other classes, the floor is open for spouting off. But the work only begins with spouting off. Assumptions have to examined. Support for one's opinions, including mine and my team teacher in the research class must be examined.

If we discuss political liberalism, we have to examine and research what the world looks like from this point of view and what it means if someone subscribes to this point of view.

Likewise political conservatism.

An awful lot of us who teach critical thinking and composition do not present these political and social and philosophical questions as either/or matters. They are complicated and it's our job, when we are doing our job well, to complicate what our students say, what we read, and to encourage our students to complicate what we as teachers say.

I don't know from what's been written about Jessica Bryan whether she said, after spouting off that Republicans should be executed, something like, "Now does that assertion work?"

Did she ask the class something like, "What's wrong with what I just said?" Or did she ask, "What's your response to that?"

I'd like to know. The spouting off is not in context. We just know that Linda Cook didn't like things Bryan said. We do know that Bryan used Cook's writing in class as a good model of writing.

If Bryan's absurd assertions couldn't be challenged; if they went unexplored and unexamined; and if her absurd assertions in any way implicitly implied or explicity stated that someone researching and writing from a point of view contrary to these could not earn a high grade in the course, then I think a serious problem existed in this course.

If students were free to challenge these absurd assertions, free to develop and write researched essays that supported any perspective they wanted, and if this work was evaluated with Jessica Bryan's attention focused on the way the paper supported and structured its thesis and how well it met the standards of documentation in an introductory research writing class, then, for the life of me, I don't see why Jessica Bryan would be in trouble.

If students had to conform to Bryan's views, if they were not being taught how to integrate research into their own arguments, if they were not being taught the fundamentals of documentation, then the English department has a problem with Jessica Bryan.

I was the assistant director of composition at the University of Oregon for a year. I was chair of the English, Foreign Language, and Speech division at Lane Community College for a year. Had Linda Cook come to me, I would have asked her if she was learning how to read critically, think critically, compose arguments, research, substatiate and complicate her own arguments through her research and how to document her work.

I hope the answer would be yes.

Then I would have a talk with Jessica Bryan and advise her to lay off the funny stuff and keep the political discourse respectful, unless she was trying to help her students understand satire.


By the way, after a year of dealing with kind of stuff as interim department chair, I learned that I love teaching too much to ever be an adminstrator!

4 comments:

Go Figure said...

RP,RP,me laddie.
You missed the DFO point. You don't want to upset the Kootenai County Conservatives...egad, thought provoking argument, oh, no. Stick to the basics, reading, writing and republican.

green libertarian said...

Ahhh, of course, the 3Rs, Reading, wRiting, and republican. LMAO, Star.

Unknown said...

Kellog Bloggin’

I’ve heard from some pretty reliable sources that had instructor Jessica Bryan played as dirty as Linda Cook and run to the media with some of the things Linda Cook said in class, we’d have gotten an earful of shock and awe. Linda Cook is reported as having said the following things during class discussions:

“He (referring to an African American athlete) looks like a monkey.”

Referring to predominantly African American hurricane Katrina victims who didn’t, according to her, want to work to rebuild the city of New Orleans, “They don’t want to work; they’re all lazy down there.”

“Even black cab drivers in New York City don’t pick up blacks,” again revealing her racist sentiments.

Chadwick Klinker

Unknown said...

Kellog Bloggin'

Since my last post, I've learned even more. The article included below, although not available online, was in the CDA Press on March 28, 2007. The article sure shows a different, and I suspect more truthful, side of this whole story.

Hate Speech? Only by a stretch of the imagination

Maybe, it is time. Time for me to no longer stay silent and allow this ridicule to go on. So for a couple minutes put behind you your political views, and just think about what is happening? For out of your mouth, you are doing that which you say you are standing against. Let me tell you what editors are leaving out, the whole truth. I am tired of hearing them feed you some selective information to get you riled up and angry at the world. It disturbs me that an instructor who deserves respect has been scorned, and put in the stocks for the public to poke fun, mock, and jab at without any research or data other than the edited citation of one student who did a very good job at selective listening and telling.
Let me begin at day one: introduction to English 102, the meeting of your instructor, and outline of the course syllabus. We were told English 102 would cover the basis for argumentative essays and research papers. While in the class we would debate material, and through the debate we could learn many things beyond just topics to write about: there are more than one view in the world, people are different, and that we can believe differently than others. “An educated mind can entertain an idea, without endorsing it.” Indeed, Ms. Bryan is teaching us lessons for life not just in writing English papers, or passing a mere general education class just to go to another institution of education. Perhaps, you might have to work with someone in the future who thinks differently than you, heaven forbid, or maybe, just maybe, somewhere in the world there is someone with a different point of view than you. I guess Ms. Cook failed to realize these simple lessons. Still we went on, Ms. Cook and the rest of the class, including me, into the semester. Ms. Cook was fully engaged in the conversations and the voicing of her opinions.
Then something happened. Something not mentioned for some reason by anyone so far. A couple of weeks before Ms. Cook dropped the class she started arriving late to class, and it appeared as if she was struggling with the workload. Then she disappeared, and I thought she couldn’t hack it, English 102 was just too hard for her, and that she had failed to be able to carry the load of a 3 credit hour class. On the contrary, she had dropped far below failure into the realm of betrayal. Fifth graders have bigger problems with their teachers than Ms. Cook, and they seem to be able to resolve them fine. Ms. Cook, on the other hand, instead of trying to solve her problem, took it to the media to force some money out of the school and public support for her failure.
Ms. Bryan did, in a way say what Ms. Cook declared. Some words were added and a certain tone was added as well. It was stated in a joking, sarcastic manner, and a classroom of laughter followed. Ms. Cook in fact said, “Of Course, I did not take the instructor’s comments seriously as to my personal safety,” in her letter to the CDA Press and that in itself is ironic. How can you have hate speech, and no one feel threatened? Let me analyze it for you: first of all, the whole class understood that the instructor’s comments were not serious. Second, she did not say she was going to kill them; she stated that that is what she believed (sarcastically). Third, let me tell you of how good argumentation works. It must first target on an emotional level and then a logical. Ms. Bryan started by quoting George Orwell, then struck the personal emotion of politics, and finished with, ”Consider how a country that calls itself civilized can execute its own citizens.” She invokes you to rise to action, and then logically gives her rebuttal. That in fact, she does not believe in the death penalty, including the sarcastic line regarding politics, because otherwise she would be uncivilized. Thus, we see that this simple argumentation is very effective, attacking first on an emotional level to get involvement, followed by a simple logical phrase that states her true stance. Finally, all you that are drawing conclusions with no evidence, that includes you Ms Cook, if the statement were indeed a threat, which it wasn’t, you would be a victim for not thinking way before your political views were brought up. Recall, “For non-thinking people first and then Republicans (Emphasis added). For some reason, I see a problem with someone saying she was subject to nothing but hate speech and political vitriol, only to turn around and make a huge political mountain out of a molehill, and lead the way for hundreds of hate mail letters, multiple phone threats, and people agreeing with your distortion of the truth.
All you who stand and point fingers stop and think if you ever told or listened to a political, racial, or stereotypical joke and didn’t do anything. Hundreds of political jokes are told about democrats, especially the Clintons, on campus regularly. People publicly make statements against the war, papers are written against administration’s policy, protests are held, and biased articles and citations are read in class to stimulate the formation of our view of the world around us through critical thinking, yet this one crosses the line, Why? Because is about Republicans? I think you all are having more of a negative impact with your biased, non-researched, uneducated uprising, than anything said on campus so far. If you wish to pick apart the world one person at a time who you believe has mistakes or false believes in their lives, start with yourself, not a hard working instructor who is making the world a better place. Ms. Bryan knows more about the problems that face the world we live in, than anyone I know, and she always has statistics and studies to back her view. Do not try to say you know what kind of teacher you think she is from one stray, off-the-wall student out of 25 years of teaching in excellence, which, in itself, deserves respect. I believe she is one of the best English teachers I have had, if not, The Best. This year I think I have made my greatest improvements in my writing, and I owe it all to her. So you can talk behind her back, formulate big rumors and inconsiderately criticize one of the great instructors here at NIC, but you will be doing the same to me, and the rest of her past and present students who stand now and support her. So lock me in the stocks, and start throwing your tomatoes because while you all band together to stand against her I will stand with her, proud to have the honor of being taught by her.


Andrew Child
ENGL 102 Student

Chadwick Klinker