Re: Eric and Fred's ideas on grading -Reply

[User JWERCHAN <jwerchan@osulima2.lima.ohio-state.edu>]

Hi folks,

Jon Olson got me thinking on the real world.

snip:
>...I
> applaud your emphasis, and I join you in it.  But I can't help
> wondering to what extent my invitation for them to join my community
> is simply a defense mechanism because I know I'm on the outside of
> their community(s), and I know their nonacademic community(s) could
> be more real or valid (can't think of better words right now) than
> mine.  So I dedicate myself to making people think *my* community is
> worth joining, that *they* are the ones on the outside of a good
> thing.  I perpetuate the profession.  But is my academic community
> really worth joining (cf. Jeanne's quality question)?  Could I join
> the *other* community(s) if I wanted?  

Makes me wonder, too.  Sometimes our community really _IS_ as arrogant, 
pompous, and clueless as we are caricatured.  The colleague  i've 
mentioned in past moanings should not have clones of himself out in the 
world.  he teaches people how to use literature as a way to bludgeon 
others, to create advantages of power.  

a friend was in an MFA program in painting 15 years ago.  his professors 
wanted to groom him for the juried show/gallery circuit.  they leaned on 
him to write critical rationale for each painting, and each rationale had 
to insinuate itself into the kinds of conversations about art that were 
current in the show/gallery biz.  he could not AFFECT the jargon of the 
people he could not respect, and he could not respect them because they 
were elitists.  Never mind that Grandma Moses and other such painters are 
called "primitive"; he could not respect the corruption that excess money 
in the hands of snobs who could only FAKE the jargon was causing.

years later, i met cowboy poets.  their art is a joyous, unselfish 
expression of and for their community.  when the poet gatherings in Elko, 
Nevada started getting TV attention, and Waddie Mitchell and Baxter Black 
started getting on Johnny Carson and such, the art changed, much for the 
worse.  a few of the real, working cowboys started resisting the corruption 
they saw happening to cowboy poetry; they resisted by boycotting the big 
gatherings with corporate sponsorship and smarmy publishing types trying 
to sign them up.  one told me he'd never go to the big gatherings 
anymore; he knew real ranch folk would understand that the poetry needs 
to be recited in the work environment, and can't really live among folks 
who don't know the work.

he wanted to stay in his real world, and could not take his poetry 
outside that world.

now i wonder about literacy:  associating literacy with literature bothers 
me.  i wonder if the cumulative effect of years and generations of the 
academy's ministrations at teaching them together has somehow had the 
unfortunate effect of convincing folks that literacy can only be the 
literacy of the elite who read the "high" canon.  Might they think, "I 
can't write because I know I'll never be able to write like those folks 
who write the textbooks and the 'fancy' stuff"?   

sometimes, when someone is the first of his or her family to go to 
college, something happens that forever cuts them off from the family.  
Sometimes it's academic literacy that has made them different.  Of course 
such people are economically empowered to make better livings and such, 
but what do they lose?  

sometimes when i'm talking with non-academic folks, says building trades 
or farmers, i get embarassed at my education.  i sometimes try to hide 
the fact of my three degrees.  maybe I'm "passing" (the term, you'll 
recall, was used by light-skinned african-americans who tried to pass for 
white).  Now I wonder: am I a farm boy trying to pass for an academic or 
an academic trying to pass for a farm boy?  I've felt marginalized from 
both sides.

later,
james
osulima