Freedom Writers — Toast for ChangeH&V have several definitions about silence in regards to the composition classroom, but some that I want to point are include: “silence is associated with ‘denial, concealment, and evasion”; “if those who are denied speech cannot make their experience known and thus cannot influence the course of their lives or history”; and “the existence of silence has in turn be increasingly seen as the subjugation of these identities.” These were the definitions of silence that shake me to be an advocate. Kopleson mentioned in “Rhetoric on the Edge of Cunning; Or, The Performance of Neutrality (Re)Considering As Composition Pedagogy for Student Resistance” that as teachers we should hide our marginalized identities to have a more traditional manner of approaching composition, but at some times that hiding/silence denies speech and making a difference to those marginalized groups.
Creepy and foreboding silence picture.One of my favorite quotes, one that my high school teacher shared with me was “Educating the mind with out educating the heart is like no education at all” – Aristotle. I really agree with this. We can teach students all day long how to write, but if we don’t teach empathy and understanding while we teach composition, or literature, or even tech writing we are doing our students a disservice. This can lead to students using English as a skill (which I don’t think is the best) and using English in a potentially dangerous way (Katz, “The Ethic of Expediency: Classical Rhetoric, Technology, and the Holocaust”). If we remove students from seeing writing just as a skill (Rose, “The Language of Exclusion: Writing Instruction at the University”), it will nudge students to a more inclusive and empathetic perspective not only just for this class but also in their lives outside of composition.
My life. Right here.Gold mentions that we have to take a stand in our classroom, but also with our colleagues, and sometimes with our friends/student’s parents when they believe that writing is simply about composition (Gold, “Will the Circle Be Broken: The Rhetoric of Complaint against Student Writing”). Gold does this very bluntly when he calls out some of his colleagues, like Mark Edmundson. One of my favorite parts of Gold’s piece was talking about how “students are commonly asked to write original, research-based arguments that synthesize and respond to multiple points of view, incorporate a variety of textual evidence, and seek to persuade a specific audience in a specific rhetorical context, in addition to following the conventions of edited English” (88). I thought this section is paramount because students do a great deal in composition, and even some of these concepts are tricky for PhD students (we all know how difficult it can be to find a unique gap in research and expand on it). I think that students are challenged and stretched a great deal and it can’t be quantified by grammatical errors.
At the end of the day, we know what you meant.Another really powerful line that Rose mentioned was “does any other profession so openly mock the population that it serves? Blaming the victim is not just misguided, it’s unethical” (90). These are the moments that we can break the silence and teach heart in (and outside) the composition classroom. We can use this time to not only teach writing as an art form that develops and progresses but also as a time to teach empathy and understanding of differences. But, hey who knows, this may all just be the idealistic English teacher inside of me (I blame my great English teachers).
Katie Rieger, Portfolio 