Fall 2018 General Meeting
Thursday was our General Meeting for Writing Program instructors. Although I hated these things as a grad student, I'm a big fan now that I'm a lecturer brimming with free time (relatively speaking!). Anyway, this particular get-together was particularly interesting thanks to our invited speaker, a radical rhet/comp theoretician by the name of Dr. Asao B. Inoue.
First things first -- he was a highly energetic, engaging speaker. Second things second -- he didn't pull any punches. Basically, his first statement to us was, "Grading is racist." (Put into slightly more theoretical language, which he did later: standard institutional forms of assessment reflect white hegemony and privelege.) Basically, one must act and think "white" in order to function well in such a system.
As a result, Dr. Inoue argues for "contract grading." While not a new concept, he makes it even more radically by assigning a grade -- because one has to as an university-affiliated professor -- based on work produced and behavior, not on the "quality" of work produced. In other words, if you simply turn in the relevant assignments, you'll get a B. If you turn in a few extra assignments, you'll get an A. In the process, Inoue also emphasizes a lot of community-orientated activities such as peer review, presentations, audience awareness, and so forth, but yeah -- that's the basis of his social justice Freireian pedagogy. Success should be about learning -- not grades, which imperfectly measure learning and even inhibit learning due to their "punitive" nature. (I believe there is some research supporting that.) Competition between students, such as suggested when teachers are forced to grade according to a standard bell curve, is the enemy. Even worse, it discourages co-operation. Classes should be stress-free and focused on well-being; Inoue's classes even begin with a 5-minute meditation and mindfulness session.
Needless to say, I'm not a convert. While I have a certain broad sympathy with Dr. Inoue's general leanings and the great faith in places in students, I'm pretty much constitutionally unsympathetic to anything that devalues the quality of writing produced. At the end of the day, I just don't see anything problematic with distinguishing between, say, a good annotated bibliography and a bad annotated bibliography. Likewise, while I recognize the limitations of assessing student work via grades, I'm still pretty okay with handing them out.***
Still, it was a fun talk to which to listen -- and being exposed to new ideas in the field of the subject I'm teaching (First Year Writing) is never a waste of time. So, all-around productive day.
Now, time to finish my dratted syllabus for Monday . . . .
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***Incidentally, grades were much more important to me as a student than they are as a teacher, and I think student interest in grades can be extraordinarily healthy.
First things first -- he was a highly energetic, engaging speaker. Second things second -- he didn't pull any punches. Basically, his first statement to us was, "Grading is racist." (Put into slightly more theoretical language, which he did later: standard institutional forms of assessment reflect white hegemony and privelege.) Basically, one must act and think "white" in order to function well in such a system.
As a result, Dr. Inoue argues for "contract grading." While not a new concept, he makes it even more radically by assigning a grade -- because one has to as an university-affiliated professor -- based on work produced and behavior, not on the "quality" of work produced. In other words, if you simply turn in the relevant assignments, you'll get a B. If you turn in a few extra assignments, you'll get an A. In the process, Inoue also emphasizes a lot of community-orientated activities such as peer review, presentations, audience awareness, and so forth, but yeah -- that's the basis of his social justice Freireian pedagogy. Success should be about learning -- not grades, which imperfectly measure learning and even inhibit learning due to their "punitive" nature. (I believe there is some research supporting that.) Competition between students, such as suggested when teachers are forced to grade according to a standard bell curve, is the enemy. Even worse, it discourages co-operation. Classes should be stress-free and focused on well-being; Inoue's classes even begin with a 5-minute meditation and mindfulness session.
Needless to say, I'm not a convert. While I have a certain broad sympathy with Dr. Inoue's general leanings and the great faith in places in students, I'm pretty much constitutionally unsympathetic to anything that devalues the quality of writing produced. At the end of the day, I just don't see anything problematic with distinguishing between, say, a good annotated bibliography and a bad annotated bibliography. Likewise, while I recognize the limitations of assessing student work via grades, I'm still pretty okay with handing them out.***
Still, it was a fun talk to which to listen -- and being exposed to new ideas in the field of the subject I'm teaching (First Year Writing) is never a waste of time. So, all-around productive day.
Now, time to finish my dratted syllabus for Monday . . . .
---
***Incidentally, grades were much more important to me as a student than they are as a teacher, and I think student interest in grades can be extraordinarily healthy.
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