Service Learning

Paula Mathieu's Tactics of Hope: The Public Turn in English Composition introduces a "public turn" in composition where more and more instructors are looking at ways that writing outside of the university could be done within a university course. Mathieu's introductory chapters of Tactics of Hope relate to last week's reading: Paul Heilker's "Rhetoric Made Real: Civic Discourse and Writing Beyond the Curriculum." Heilker states that "Composition students have suffered for too long in courses and classrooms that are palpably unreal rhetorical situations." He claims these made up situations support the idea that writing has nothing to do with the real world, and therefore students are missing the essential and important connection between the classroom and the community. Service learning is proposed as a solution to this lack of real word scenarios for students to write for, allowing for students to get writing experience that's relevant while connecting them to the community outside of the university.

Although service learning sounds good in theory, there are a few things that concern me. In the descriptions provided by both Mathieu and Heilker, service learning sounds like a lot of extra work for students. Although they would be getting practical experience and helping their community, it appears there would be a lot of work outside of class to accomplish the goals of service learning. I participated in a course during my undergrad where we partnered with The Facing Project and Muncie's A Better Way to interview and write the stories of victims of domestic abuse. The course was an incredibly valuable experience both professionally/academically and personally, but it did require a lot of work that other courses of the same level did not. We had to travel off of campus during weekdays, which was difficult with everyone's schedules. We were also dealing with some pretty traumatic material, so there were some mental health days we had to work into our schedule as well. After my own experience, I would be worried about trusting a group of freshmen to handle the same workload and emotional intensity.

I haven't seen much service learning other than my own experience, so I would love to know other people's opinions on the concept and how other's have incorporated service learning into the classroom.

Passion in the Classroom?

I wasn’t sure what to title this post, mainly because I am still working through the contents of Chapter 13. There were many components that didn’t sit well with me, such as hooks’ discussion of her “erotic” attraction to a male student and the quasi-romantic letters her students would write at the end of a course. Reading those sections angered me: even though she pushes for a view of passion that goes beyond eroticism, it still includes eroticism, and that is something I will never get behind.

I agree that education should encourage students to make change in their everyday life, and in order to do so, we need to view the classroom as it is: a non-neutral space. Naturally, when we read students’ writing, we are entering a vulnerable space. Students enter the classroom and write with their own experiences, values, bias, and privileges, something that hooks explains in her chapter on class. If we want students to apply what they learned in the classroom to their everyday life, we have to address these topics, all which center around race, class, gender, (dis)ability, sexuality, etc. in some way.

These are topics that will ignite passion, whether it be confusion, anger, guilt, depression, or determination (or something else). This passion I fully support, and I agree that the classroom needs to 1) welcome these moments passion, 2) encourage acts of disruption and interruption, and 3) value students’ efforts to push back against the oppressive system of education. This type of passion extends beyond the classroom and creates a bridge for students between the “academy” and what they experience every day. The two are not separate, but, as hooks explains, students are forced to choose between adopting the white, middle-class values that dominant the academy or defending their own. Students should not have to choose, and valuing a passionate disruption of this oppressive system is one step forward.        

I am all for this; however, we can do this without opening passion up to erotic feelings. Just like we can’t pretend that everyone is equal in the classroom, we cannot pretend that power structures between students and instructors do not exist. I am all for subverting power structures, and I am keeping in mind that hooks is a woman of color in a position that is dominated by white people. But at the end of the day, the instructor is still in a position of power, and when that power is abused, intentionally or not, education comes to a halt.  

I pose the following questions: How did you navigate hooks' discussion of passion? What role should passion play in the classroom?      

Hooks

As Hooks argues for multicultural change in chapter 2, I think there are a few important things to look at as we navigate our classrooms. Hooks mentions that a culture of domination "necessarily promotes" (28) and addiction to lying and denial. One of these forms of lying takes the shape of this notion that "racism does not exist anymore, and that conditions of social equality are solidly in place that would enable any black person who works hard to achieve economic self-sufficiency" (29). This reminds me of some of the media messages that you hear from time to time that preach unity through sameness. However, those who adopt this seemingly positive mantra fail to realize that, without developing that critical consciousness Hooks argues for, that this message unfortunately carries with it the potential to subsume the other into a dominant white discourse. As a white male instructor, I definitely need to re-tool my goals, readings, and syllabi to better reflect this revolution of values Hooks talks about. So, one question I have is, how do you all currently see (or do not see) yourself practicing Hooks' hopes for a multicultural education?

Additionally, I think an interesting thing to discuss is how we approach the task of educating colleagues about this sort of work, especially with the added goal of informing about how their practices ought to shift. This is a tough realm to navigate, especially given our current positionalities in the field.