When I saw “Inventing the University” by David Bartholomae on the Syllabus, I leaned back into my couch and groaned. I’ve had to read it three times so far in my life of academia, and every time I think he could have shortened it to ten pages and still gotten his point across. And even then, his point is hard to grasp. He seems to criticize the academic institution for expecting students to belong to the university “discourse community” (as Bartholomae calls it) without adequate training and knowledge while he himself writes an article completely immersed in the academic jargon. Thankfully, I read Judith Rodby and Tom Fox’s article, “Basic Work and Material Acts: The Ironies, Discrepancies, and Disjunctures of Basic Writing and Mainstreaming,” first to cleanse that structured, dense piece of academia out of my mouth before I had to try to tackle it again.

It appears that Bartholomae aims to bring attention to incoming students outside of the expected university standards and discourse not to those also on the outside, but fellow academics. As Bartholomae writes in the opening paragraph of his essay, “[a student] has to learn to speak our language, to speak as we do, to try on the peculiar ways of knowing, selecting, evaluating, reporting, concluding, and arguing that define the discourse of our community” (4). By using the word “our,” Bartholomae sets the scenery of an “us versus them” kind of mentality. We, the academics, read the essays of outsiders trying to belong to our community and pass judgment on them. This may be the point –  making us, the readers, a member of the discourse community so that we can see how different those outside of it are.

Rodby and Fox’s article also appears to speak to academics who already belong in the university discourse community, but presents a more accessible prose. Though they present their plan for beginning writing students to fellow academics, it feels like they are on the side of the students as well – a more “us with them dynamic,” if you will. As they write towards the beginning of their essay, “[o]ur decision to eliminate basic writing grew from our experience with our students, by a realization that ‘basic’ did not describe the students’ practices, but operated as a construct that supported a remedial economic structure that distributed ‘credit’ unequally” (85). They describe the entering students ignorant about the language of the university discourse community as victims of a “construct that supported a remedial economic structure” – the students see they do not belong in the discourse community and pull away from it, thus making them fail.

Bartholomae, with his sterile analysis of the “inexperienced writer” (Bartholomae 8), presents Rodby and Fox’s construct with his essay. He makes a differentiation between the remedial writer and the “expert writer,” showing with the juxtaposition of “expert” and “inexperienced” that he sees himself and his readers as above the analyzed student writers, looking down on them. As Bartholomae writes, the “inexperienced writer” can only mimic what he thinks an experienced writer is: “[the student] is trying on the discourse even though he doesn’t have a knowledge that makes the discourse more than a routine, a set of conventional rituals and gestures” (Bartholomae 6). By describing the university “discourse” as “a set of conventional rituals and gestures,” Bartholomae himself seems to be validating the idea that the discourse is more a totem, a construct, than a tangible thing.

On the other hand, when Rodby and Fox present students and their ideas, they present them in a classroom, grappling with academic readings, namely bell hooks. Instead of showing these students as below them and analyzing the errors in their thoughts, Rodby and Fox show the students as community members with their teachers, given the opportunity to gain the knowledge Bartholomae feels they lack. Rodby and Fox’s ideas give the students agency, while Bartholomae leaves them floundering, grasping for jargon and skills they do not understand and/or do not possess. Giving the students agency, in Rodby and Fox’s words, proves successful with “students enrolled in the workshop generally pass[ing] the first-year writing course the first time (86%)” (Rodby & Fox 93).

In this way, I appreciate being presented with more than just Bartholomae again to offer perspective to first-year writing students not yet accustomed to university discourse. Rodby and Fox’s essay shows the students as real people with names instead of phantoms writing papers outside the expected discourse community. Rodby and Fox take a proactive approach to the problem Bartholomae suggests – they attempt to solve the problem instead of taking a red pen to their mistakes. As Rodby and Fox write,

“[t]he workshop structure allows students to try on discursive practices of academic writing without fear of being graded, and thus make visible conflicts with texts, teachers, classrooms, assignments, and responses. This visibility allows the program and students to see a broader range of language use and provides us with more opportunities to teach.” (98)

That idea is what us, the readers, the hopeful teachers, should be left with instead of the idea that we are superior to our students as “expert writers.”    

Generally when it comes to “Get to Know You” type exercises in classes, I tend to a) act awkward; b) make an unfunny joke; and c) most likely mention my love for RuPaul’s Drag Race. All generally go over about as well as you’d expect. Since I have the opportunity to introduce myself in writing, I figure I’ll try not to do the three aforementioned things, but we’ll see how successful I am.

I grew up in Carson City, NV and took a few years off before attending Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. I lived on the West Shore, the best shore, of Lake Tahoe during those years, spending a lot of time slinging sandwiches at the local deli and taking a break from coursework. When I moved to San Luis Obispo for school, I found the transition back into schooling difficult at first – I lacked motivation and commitment. However, I finished in three years and decided, hey, why not get a masters in English now. That will get me a job, right?

Not so much. I moved to Chico after I graduated to be with my boyfriend and spend a year trying to find a job with not much success. So, I decided to go back to school to be a teacher. I’m currently taking prerequisite courses in order to (hopefully) get in to the Cal Poly single-subject credential program for next Fall. It seems though I grew up in Nevada, I can’t take the Chico heat. Plus, my parents moved near there several years ago, and I’d like to be near them again.

As for Etienne Wenger’s ideas in “A Social Theory of Learning,” I think of myself in a learning community as that awkward girl who does not know how to behave around others (unless they also like RuPaul’s Drag Race and want to talk about it.) The reading suggests the standard structure of learning focuses too strictly on individual success rather than looking at knowledge acquisition as a social concept. As stated on page eight of the reading:

Learning in this sense is not a separate activity. It is not something we do when we do nothing else or stop doing when we do something else. There are times in our lives when learning is intensified: when situations shake our sense of familiarity, when we are challenged beyond our ability to respond, when we wish to engage in new practices and seek to join new communities.

This quote builds on the concept that learning is social, while additionally making it an innate part of the human condition. Learning does not happen just in school; it also happens out in the real world. As I understood it, the reading suggests education should look at learning in this sense – when we face life lessons outside of school, we turn to our communities (whether they already exist or need to be created) in order to cope and to learn. If education looked at learning in this way, it would not be as fear or anxiety-inducing and oppressive.

I personally prefer to accomplish things on my own. I mostly hate group discussion. But I understand how building a community in the classroom and making teaching more social than individual would help with the atmosphere. Being more social is just something I will have to learn how to do better.

(I made my featured image Foxy Jack Kerouac because I have a weird fascination with him. So there’s that.)