- Dewey, John. "The Recitation and the Training of Thought." How we think, a restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process,. Boston: D.C. Heath and Co., 1933. . Print.
In my understanding this is what the recitation should do. Dewey says that the recitation should help it's students develop their intellectual thinking, and its the teacher's purpose to see where its students are in their thinking and help them to go further.
"The use of the word 'recitation' to designate the period of the most intimate intellectual contact of teacher with pupil and of pupil with pupil is a fateful fact. To re-cite is to cite again, to repeat, to tell over and over." (260).
Dewey defines what the word recitation actually means which is to repeat continuously. His use of the concept intimate intellectual contact is intriguing. Intimate, is generally defined as associated in close personal relations; or of, or pertaining to , or existing in the inmost depths of the mind. So intimate intellectual contact is indeed descriptively accurate although an argument can be made saying that a student's family and parents can also be in contact with the student intellectually.
"If we were to call this period 'reiteration,' the name would hardly bring out more clearly than does the word 'recitation' the frequent domination of instruction by rehearsal of second hand information, and of memorizing for the sake of producing correct replies at the proper time." (260).
"It does not need to be mentioned that this practice puts a premium on passivity of the mind. Everything which has been said in the discussion of thinking has emphasized that passivity is the opposite of thought; that is not only a sign of failure to call out judgment and personal understanding, but that it also dulls curiosity, generates mind-wandering, and causes learning to be a task instead of a delight.” (261).
"The ultimate impetus to study, to intellectual activity comes from within. Mentally as well as physically there must be an appetite. For there is intellectual as well as bodily thirst. Yet the food stuffs of the environment, either those directly at hand or those found by search, finally determine what is eaten. That is, they decide what direction the appetite actually takes. So stimulus from without, especially that which occurs in a social situation, decides the further movement of an intellectual impetus.” (262).
In this phrase, we can see where Freire mirrors Dewey. Freire, in essence says that learning should a occur with the goal of social change. In Brazil, he taught in a framework that said challenged the students to learn as much as they could in order to actualize their literary oppression and change it.. Here you see the source of Freire's ideology. Dewey says that instead of forcing knowledge into the minds of the students for "blotting paper" type of retention without the student's real passion to learn and know it, the eager and "appetite" for learning a particular subject of topic should come from the student's own passions and environmental stimuli. This way proves most useful for the student because they have aa vigor to learn a particular topic in order to effect said environment.
In this class, I think this is best exemplified in the research project/paper and growth-process essays. Most students, in both essays, have picked a topic that they felt most passionate about. For example Samrin Hasib chose to do her research paper on Gentrification in Alphabet City and its effect on the homeless population. The homeless population in NYC, is a topic that interests her, which is something that I found out when we did a peer editing of the beginnings of her Growth Process essay in the beginning of the course. Alex Gottesman, another classmate enrolled at Hunter College is pursuing nursing, he wrote his research paper on Nurses who smoke, with a look at why they do it and ways in which they can quit. This topic is very personal to him and it shows in his paper and his movie.
"Given this hunger, the mind will go on; while it may be stuffed to overflowing with information, if this one thing is omitted, little will be gained in the future." (263).
"Thinking is inquiry, investigation, turning over, probing or delving into, so as to find something new or to see what is already known in a different light. In short, it is questioning....The fact that is that the separation usually made between a preparatory 'study' period, when pupils con their lessons, and recitation period, when they exhibit the results of their previous study, is thoroughly harmful.Students need direction in their studying." (265).
"Hence some so-called 'recitation' periods should be times of supervised study, when the teacher learns the difficulties that students are meeting, ascertains what methods of learning they use, gives hints and suggestions, helps a student recognize some bad habit that is holding him back." (265).
In my english class this semester, a lot of the classes tend to be discussion based. We talk about the readings that we were required to do and how they fit in the current phase of the class, We talk about the big assignments that are coming up and we also talk about troubles that we are having with our writing or understanding of what we are learning. I have found that Professor Molloy is very intuitive and understanding when we are not fully understanding something, or maybe when we are going a little too fast and we need to slow down. He is more concerned about how we grow within our writing and thought processes than he is about molding us into perfect students who can repeat perfectly the knowledge that he wants us to learn. With his approach to teaching, as students we have better retention and practical use of the tools we have learned about within this class that we would if we took a traditional approach. In my own experience, I cannot go into a store, or watch tv without rhetorically analyzing what I am experiencing.
- Dweck, Carol. “The Mindsets.” Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Ballantine, 2006. 3-14. Print
Some quotes that resonate with me are listed as follows:
- “The view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life.” (6).
- Fixed mindset: urgency to prove yourself over and over.” (6)
- “Who cared about or enjoyed learning when our whole being was at stake every time she gave us a test or called on us in class?” (6)
- Risk and effort (10)
- Elbow, Peter “The Process of Writing and Growing.” Writing Without Teachers. (1973) 2d ed. New York: Oxford U P, 1998. [excerpt] 12-25. Print.
Elbow in this excerpt talks about the many frustrations and misconceptions towards writing that many people have. He discusses transitional writing, which he summarizes as type of writing that many people do. It consists of thinking out what you want to say almost in its entirety and then writing it on a page. He talks about his experiences regarding writing and how he thought that he was not a good writer and the steps he took to become better. He gives us a simple and straightforward approach to writing, where we can think about writing differently. He proposes that the next time we have a timed test where we are given 4 hours to write an essay, we should freewrite the entire writing assignment for a first draft during the 1st hour. In the second hour and draft, we should write the essay again, and during the next draft and hour we should write the draft again. in the last and final draft we should edit the third draft. he says this third draft will have most of our complete and influential ideas contained within it. In this Growth-Process model of writing, he says our words and ideas move from a standard outward and non-reflective way will not become almost organic. He says this because, you will be able to see that from the first draft to the third, our ideas and thoughts have grown and evolve. Elbow says that through this multiple drafts our ways of thinking and ideas have evolved and grown.
It is my experience that when I write something that is good or which satisñes me, almost invariably it is a product of just such a process. And when I struggle hard and fail to produce something good or pleasing, it seems almost' invariably because I couldn’t get this kind of process to occur. (23).
This is the situation with writing. We suffer from ,such a basic misconception about the process of writing that we are as bad as the people in the parable. (14).
This idea of writing is backwards. That’s why it causes so much trouble. Instead of a two-step transaction of meaninginto-language, think of writing as an organic, developmental process which you start writing at the very beginning-before you knowv your meaning at all-and encourage your words gradually to change and evolve. at the end will you know what you want to say or the words you want to say it with. You should expect yourself to end up somewhere different from where you started. Meaning is not what you start out with but what you end up with. (14)
This piece blatantly addresses the reason why most of us don’t consider writing as a pleasurable task. It highlights and put in the forefront the issue that most people have towards writing. It explains in a very clear way why writing is so hard for most people as well.
Mr. Elbow has a storyteller approach in this excerpt, which makes writing a more achievable goal for others to become better writers. From personal experience, I feel like if you are not born a natural writer, you will always find writing difficult. But reading Mr Elbow's account of his difficulties, I was able to connect with him and analyze his truths with my own realities.
Although there a many types of writing and writing processes, when most people say that they cannot write they usually refer to writing papers or essays. And most people approach it similarly as well as encounter the same roadblocks. Elbow proposes the idea that we go with the flow of life. "To most people it means pushing as hard as you can against as weight that is heavier than you can budge..."(20). This quote is very inspirational to me because it's such a simple concept but a lot of people do it, including myself. So this hard earned out of the box perspective, makes more sense. Taking the breaks and strict structure off of our minds and allowing ourselves to be creative to take our time develop a point or a side of an argument is a more feasible option towards writing. Editing after that seems like it would be much easier.
- Freire, Paulo. The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. (1968) New York: Continuum, 2005. [Excerpts 43-47, 71-75.] Print.
In church, we talk about being fully human. It is a concept that is really hard for people to accept. In church, I understand being fully human to be a being capable to making mistakes, and ultimately fully answerable to God (supervisor/boss). God is the creator of all things living and nonliving, created individually with purpose. In our reality people want to do God's work. They create hierarchy, and rulers because people don't like being equal as God has created all of us. This idea of being God to people makes people deem their thoughts, rules, and ways as being the truth and nothing and this causes concepts of dehumanization, oppression, slavery, genocide, ppl blocking universal health care to exist.
“This struggle is possible only because dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed.” (44).
Freire also talks about the mindsets of the oppressors and the oppressed… “The very structure of their thought has been conditioned by the contradictions of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped. Their ideal is to be men; but for them, to be men is to be oppressors. This is their model of humanity. This phenomenon derives from the fact that the oppressed, at a certain moment of their existential experience, adopt an attitude of "adhesion" to the oppressor. Under these circumstances they cannot "consider" him sufficiently clearly to objectivize him—to discover him "outside" themselves. This does not necessarily mean that the oppressed are unaware that they are downtrodden. But their perception of themselves as oppressed is impaired by their submersion in the reality of oppression. At this level, their perception of themselves as opposites of the oppressor does not yet signify engagement in a struggle to overcome the contradiction;2 the one pole aspires not to liberation, but to identification with its opposite pole.” (45-46).
He says that the oppressed may not realize they are oppressed because they are trying to model their existence as the oppressors because this is what they idealized. Once the oppressors realize they are oppressed they must be careful about the way in which they seek liberation. He makes an interesting argument that the oppressed wouldn’t truly be walking in the positive direction if they themselves become oppressors lead by the “fear of freedom.” (46).
“The "fear of freedom" which afflicts the oppressed,3 a fear which may equally well lead them to desire the role of oppressor or bind them to the role of oppressed, should be examined. One of the basic elements of the relationship between oppressor and oppressed is prescription. Every prescription represents the imposition of one individual's choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the person prescribed to into one that conforms with the preservers consciousness. Thus, the behavior of the oppressed is a prescribed behavior, following as it does the guidelines of the oppressor.” (46-47).
Here Freire talks about the fear of freedom in regards to the dynamics between oppressed and the oppressors, they should not let fear rule them to overcome the oppressors and then become oppressors. They should examine and realize that their behavior is a result of how the oppressors have wanted them to think and feel about their oppression.
This chapter is very interesting because it highlights how a society can be viewed and how they can view themselves and how that may be a result of the a group of people’s “prescription” over another group of people to establish dominance. In our society this can be examined in American society because the “American Dream” is to have a good job, that pays well, and can support at least two kids and a pet. We may have to re-evaluate our thinking as it pertains to those things we look to that we attribute to success and status. Maybe if we analyze those things and prioritize their true importance in our lives we may start to reorganize the role of oppression in our society.
This piece can also be looked at in terms of our educational systems. An argument can be made in regards to the content that is being forced into the brains of children and the topics that are predetermined as important in order for one to attain certifications and degrees.
In Chapter 2 - He goes on to discuss the educational institution of oppression. In chapter two of the pedagogy, he introduces how the educators of the oppressed gift knowledge with no connection to reality. “This relationship involves a narrating Subject (the teacher) and patient, listening objects (the students). The contents, whether values or dimensions of reality, tend in the process of being narrated to become lifeless and petrified.” (Freire, 71). Freire goes on to say that this type of teaching leads causes a strain on the student-teacher relationship where the teacher is basically filling the students up (like an receptacle) with non-relational information that they are required to remember when called for. This type of teaching is what he called the “banking” concept (model) of education.
“In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing. Projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression, negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry. The teacher presents himself to his students as their necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance absolute, he- justifies his own existence. The students, alienated like the slave in the Hegelian dialectic, accept their ignorance as justifying the teachers existence—but, unlike the slave, they never discover that they educate the teacher.” (Freire, 72)
Freire doesn’t give a complete prescription on how to reverse or cure the banking model of educational oppression, but he does say on page 73, that the solution cannot be found in the banking model. I understood this to mean that the the contrary of the banking model must be a more effective way of educational freedom. Therefore I’ll use the contrary of the following as a gauge of the anti-banking model of educational model to base my english class off of.
(a) the teacher teaches and the students are taught;
(b) the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing;
(c) the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;
(d) the teacher talks and the students listen—meekly;
(e) the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined;
(f) the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply;
(g) the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher;
(h) the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it;
(i) the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students;
(j) the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects. (Freire, 73)
Boiling it down, anti-banking model teaching consists of an idea that education is a symbiotic relationship, where both teacher and pupil will learn from and teach each other. The teacher understands that each student has knowledge and experience to bring to the table and that which is taught should supplement that knowledge. The student can also refute certain aspects of the lessons delved by the teacher based on their personal experiences which will inform and guide that which is taught. Students should be consulted on the educational plan to help keep the student-teacher relationship healthy and communicative.
In my paper, I'll have to analyze each phase of the class in order to access whether that portion or certain aspects of the phase supports Freire's Banking Model of teaching or the anti-banking model which I have just described and as modeled in Wardle and Down’s “Writing about Writing” Case study (Wardle).
One last point about Freire, Freire believed in praxis, which is defined as the practice as distinguished from theory; application or use as of knowledge or skills. He taught and practiced that the source of drive for education should stem from the goals of the individual. If the individual was oppressed then he used that as a source to help them to understand that they were oppressed and also use that eager for liberation in to shape what they wanted to learned in order to become more literate. “They will not gain this liberation by chance but through the praxis of their quest for it, through their recognition of the necessity to fight for it. And this fight, because of the purpose given it by the oppressed, will actually constitute an act of love opposing the lovelessness which lies at the heart of the oppressors violence, lovelessness even when clothed in false generosity.” (Freire, 45) Because the education was centered around their eagerness for liberation, they were able to put into praxis everything that they were learning and help overturn their oppressive reality.
- Godwin, Gail. “A Novelist Breaches the Boader to Non-Fiction”. New York Times.. 15 January 2001. Web 22 January 2013.
Godwin also talks about sharing your writing with others (Lamont). Interesting enough though, her trusted friends use the Love, More, and Add theory that we were using in class. “They would comment when something in my plan excited them, or wonder how I would overcome a technical problem, but they respectfully hung back from suggesting content” (1) This is very interesting. Her group of trusted friends seem to not want to water down her thoughts and creativity. But instead, allow her to continue on in her process to see what she comes up with. That is boss! :)
↑ Uh Oh - this is only with her fictional writing ↑
“Be sure to put in Chinese Medicine. It’s full of wonderful heart concepts” (2) Here we go with holistic, osteopathic ideology again. (IT’S EVERYWHERE! :D)
“...nonfiction book turned out to require less research than my novels.” (2)
“I realized that in writing fiction I overcompensate on research because I am making up a whole world and have to convince myself I know where everything is and how characters got to be the way they are, even if I don’t end up putting them in the novel.” (2) The only reason why this really interests me, is because I’m reading “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” by Tolkien, and I’m like OMG :O these characters have a whole family tree. That is a lot of work. Like Tolkien, seriously created a real world mythology, that I’m most certain is actually true, and archaeologists, just haven’t accepted yet. (Oliphaunts)...and please don’t get me started on Ms. J.K. Rowling.
“...by which I mean the mechanics of putting one word after the other, of straining after the insight that flits by with gnatlike evasiveness…” (2) that was a beautifully constructed written image of a tedious experience. Ah just GENIUS! The remainder of this sentence/sentiment, is interesting (I love how she can get away with a run on sentence though). She says the actual construction part, no matter whether it’s fiction or nonfiction is the same. It take some work, some “effort” and risk” (Dweck).
I love how she can flesh out her inner critiques. I’m sure this makes it much easier to put them into little jars when she needs to(Lamont).
I thought that this was just a notes page but it really is my response. At the end of the excerpt, I again find myself asking, why are we reading this? Having read it, I realized that I enjoy reading writer’s writing about writing; their writing; and their writing construction processes. Godwin is very honest about her writing. It makes it seem attainable to become a professional writer. I think that share Godwin’s angst about nonfiction writing. I find that, when I write, I want to include personal stories, or commentary, so that that the reader can relate to what I’m writing. But in an academic setting, we need to write in the third person, use jargon, and stick to the facts. I think that is why I’m always anxious when I have to write something. Godwin, in “A Novelist Breaches The Border To Nonfiction,” uses jargon in a way that is professional, and she manages not to evaporate (1).
- Wardle, Elizabeth, and Doug Downs. "Reflecting Back and Looking Forward: Revisiting “Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions” Five Years On." . Composition Forum, 1 Jan. 2013. Web. 10 May 2014. <http://compositionforum.com/issue/27/reflecting-back.php>.
‘“We argued that “[o]ur field’s current labor practices reinforce cultural misconceptions that anyone can teach writing because there is nothing special to know about it’ (575) and suggested that ‘[b]y employing nonspecialists to teach a specialized body of knowledge, we undermine our own claims as to that specialization and make our detractors’ argument in favor of general writing skills for them”’ (4) This is a claim on the importance of the subject of writing about writing. By having non-trained teachers teach traditional writing courses, the same kinds of writers are produced. But when the research behind writing is presented, students will have a better experience and can become better writers.
“We don’t want to completely disavow our earlier view about the telling nature of the need to build instructor expertise in order to make writing about writing work. We said that teaching about the content of the field produces ‘a truth-telling course; it forefronts the field's current labor practices and requires that we ask how FYC [students] are currently being served by writing instructors who couldn't teach a writing studies pedagogy” (5) Here we can see the student-teacher relationship. Building a good student-teacher relationship is essential. I say this because the language used here is “how FYC [students] are currently being served by writing instructors], the Wardle and Downs understand that students bring their own experiences, knowledge, and social motivations with them and cannot be forced into cookie cutter writing courses which can damage their creativity and flow.
“What we are not finding is one of the direst predictions of critics of the about-writing writing course; bored students. many people responded to our article, and continue to respond when the occasion arises, by staying they could not imagine a writing-focused class in which student wouldn’t be utterly bored. We were initially surprised by this criticism because, while there are some difficulties with teaching this way, we have never found student boredom to be one of them - at least not in any greater degree than any other pedagogy we’d used before” (6)
This class study is an interesting look about a concept of writing courses that my English 120 section 24 class this spring semester at Hunter College has been shaped through. Wardle and Downs discuss the importance of having the students involved in choosing what topic or avenues of writing was presented to them. The student’s passions and wanton of education are evaluated and encouraged which makes the experience more relevant to them. Most importantly, in terms of writing, the research behind the concepts being taught regarding writing are introduced to the students which make the students more engaged in their process. I liken this to building a foundation before the construct of the house. The research acts as the foundation for which the student can build up their knowledge of writing and changing the way they see writing. The two authors also talk about what types of people can teach this type of class. They says that the idea of just anyone “ teaching this type of course is detrimental because people tend to think that not much goes into a writing course. what is actually needed is a person who is open minded, and can be subjective, encouraging and open-minded. This is crucial.