Reminder: blog posts are due by 11:59 pm on Mondays. You need to respond to TWO questions. Please register for the blog in order to participate. I understand that sometimes technical errors occur so if there is a glitch, please email me your blogs before they are due. This shouldn't become a regular occurrence, but I know sometimes things happen.
This week's questions:
1. Why does Mike Rose want to be average? And what does he mean by "students will float to the mark you set?"
2. Imagine Gloria Anzaldua and Richard Rodriguez are at a language,
literacy, and education conference. They find themselves at the same
reception and have a few too many drinks. What kind of conversation do you
think they would have? What, exactly, would they say to each other?
3. Now imagine that Amy Tan cruises into the reception at the end of the
night, when the conversation's especially sloppy, and joins Anzaldua and
Rodriguez. What does Tan have to contribute to the discussion?
4. What themes, if any, emerge throughout the literacy autobiographies? How
are they alike? Different? How, if at all, do they inspire your own
narrative?
5. In Eva Lam's article, how does Willis demonstrate Pratt's ideas about the
contact zone? And how does that compare to your own contact zones?
The following are responses to questions 1 and 2:
ReplyDeleteQuestion 1: I'm not entirely convinced that Mike Rose is suggesting that he wanted to be average - at least in the sense that most people would think of the word. Although he may allude to the idea in some parts of his autobiography (more specifically, when his schoolmate at Mercy, Ken Harvey, said the memorable sentence (pg. 28)), Rose continually exceeds in some areas such as writing and literature while being average (or below) in others. For those areas that he does struggle in, he may be content with just being average. After noting about Harvey's comment, Rose suggests that he (Harvey) was “gasping for air”. Rose describes how school can be an exceptionally “disorienting place”, and describes his own struggles with arithmetic as examples for this claim. These academic struggles paired with a time period where “you’re trying to shape your identity; your body is changing, and your emotions are running wild” (28) make the expectations of school exceedingly hard to reach. For that reason, many struggling students, Rose argues, are content with just wanting to be average and not having to struggle. Unfortunately, this also means you may not excel.
Question 2: Thankfully for Richard Rodriguez (who’s autobiography, in my opinion, was borderline depressive), he would be most likely surrounded by other “scholarship boys and girls” that would share his same appreciation for accumulating knowledge at this conference. While Gloria Anzaldua’s piece didn’t come across quite as self loathing to me, it definitely carried some of the same.. (what’s a word that’s between pride and arrogance?) that Rodriguez’s article held. (On a side note for anyone reading this blog response, I know I’m being rather cynical/critical towards both of these writers, but since we’re assuming they are drunk I need to set the stage for the personalities that I think are going to come through). Rodriguez described a situation where he was amongst other scholar types before (page 69-70). He noted all the anti-social tendencies that most people would associate with a textbook nerd; eyes darting as soon as they meet another pair; people talking to themselves while reading a new text; people hoarding notes from the endless books they read. I feel like Rodriguez (if he’s drunk of course) would break from this tension and engage with Anzaldua about literacy - using his experiences of “learning” through books since a young age. With his self realization at this point I think he would say how literacy is not something that could be taught or learned through books, but instead must be gathered from your day to day experiences. Anzaldua would probably agree for the most part, and share her mixed heritage/border experience to depict how literacy is definitely subjective of the surrounding environment.
(Sorry that was kinda long)
On an extreme side note, I doubt they would go home together. Rodriguez doesn’t seem to like his own type much. Better luck next time though.
^^ Addition to question 1 (after realizing I didn't answer the second half of the question) real quick: when he says that ""students will float to the mark you set" (pg 26) he simply means that whatever standard is expected of people is what they generally will be trying to meet. In the case of vocational education, that mark is fairly low. Consequently, the students that Rose is surrounded by have little to no need nonetheless desire to be trying to move past the bar.
ReplyDeleteI mean let's be real here. The majority of people are perfectly content with doing just enough to get by. But if you raise the bar to get by, so to does the effort by the students rise to reach that new mark.
When
2.
ReplyDeleteAnzaldua is definitely an angrier, aggressive personality, whereas Rodriguez is more thoughtful, and much less obviously opinionated. Both, however, by the time they reach the point of reflection, have a problem with the way they were brought up in America, with the educational system here. In a conversation between the two, after “a few too many drinks,” I think that Anzaldua’s opinions would really resonate with Rodriguez. After hearing Rodriguez’s story, Anzaldua would criticize him for letting “the system,” so to speak, take away his culture, change him into a mindless student, another victim of the oppressive educational structure of America. Rodriguez on the other hand, is not so critical of the system, as he is of himself. Rodriguez, I suspect, is more of the opinion that while education is harder on non-Anglos, it requires some personal strength and willpower to remain close with his family and culture, as well educated in the traditional sense. Rodriguez might even criticize Anzaldua for not embracing more of the American culture (of course while remaining true to herself).
Anzaldua is more focused on language, while Rodriguez looks at the education system on a broader level. However, his experiences with language coincide with Anzaldua’s. He spoke two different languages: one at home, and one at school, which eventually turned him into a self-proclaimed “bad student.” His personality, his sense of self was too confused; without a clear sense of himself, he couldn’t think critically, think for himself. And I think this is what he and Anzaldua have in common: she struggles with her sense of identity because she has to switch modes so frequently.
3.
If Tan were to join in Anzaldua and Rodriguez’s conversation, she would be able to contribute as a sort of success story. While her multiple languages should have hindered in her academics, in the end I think her struggles only made her want to succeed more, which you don’t necessarily see with the other two.
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ReplyDeleteQuestion #2:
ReplyDeleteAlthough Rodriguez concludes his essay on a reflective note, resenting the distance he places between him and his culture, and ultimately agreeing with Anzaldua’s assertion of the importance of maintaining one’s native tongue and tradition; I feel that with the addition of a “few drinks”, tensions would run very high between these two. Anzaldua would feel resentful and angered by Rodriquez’s lack of commitment to his culture and question Rodriquez’s path of realization. Rodriguez would attempt to speak about his early education, and growing up as a “scholarship boy”, but Anzaldua would interrupt him, inserting a personal anecdote from her early schooling. Rodriguez would listen respectfully, and tell her that she was brave for espousing her Raza and Chicana pride and attempt to find something that they can have a non-interrogative intellectual conversation about.
Rodriguez would begin speaking of his grade school troubles and how his life at school marred his life at home. He loved his family, but he could not be a “successful” student and remain fully integrated in both of his worlds (home and school), “I began by imitating their [the teachers] accents, using their diction, trusting their every direction”(49). Rodriquez’s anecdote about his primary language change, and his self conscious attitude towards his parents speech would soften Anzaldua and transition into a pleasant dialogue regarding the Spanish language and its place in formal education for first generation Chicano students. The conversation would conclude on an excellent note, and Anzaldua and Rodriquez would make plan to do a joint research study on the benefits Chicano studies classes could have on early education.
Question #3:
If Tan were to stumble into this conversation, she would be able to contribute the knowledge that this issue of formal education in relation to native languages is applicable to all immigrant languages, not just Spanish. She would contribute her personal story of her relationship with her mother, and her ultimate success of publishing a book in “her language”. She would then share her likewise uncustomary path that defied the “track” that she was placed on. Further, she would agree with Anzaldua and Rodriguez, on the importance of changing the education system to be more inclusive and understanding of different languages and the affects that one’s native tongue has on learning a second language.
She would acknowledge Anzaldua and Rodriguez’s “new idea” (formed in the last question), to try to implement Chicano studies into schools, but she would argue that this should be expanded to “Alternative Lingual Studies”, which would study how English can be combined with other languages to form new languages- not solely variations of “broken” English.
1. I assert that Mike Rose wanted to excel and exceed both his working-class family’s living conditions in Los Angeles and his remedial academic level to meet the average standards of society. Rose explains that working-class kids have limited options for dealing with the tough transitions that come with school. Specifically he states, “you’re defined by your school as ‘slow’; you’re placed in a curriculum that isn’t designated to liberate you but to occupy you, or, if you’re lucky, train you, though the training is for work the society does not esteem.” (29). In other words, he wanted to be a “normal” student as opposed to a “slow” student, and he wanted to be able to pursue any career that he dreamed of. Very few people in his family had graduated high school and no one had graduated college, so Rose knew that dreaming of any career and college “seemed a sweet thing to say.” (34). In that sense, Rose wanted to be “average” enough to have a family that had been educated and could prevent him form being put in remedial education classes.
ReplyDeleteBy “students will float to the mark you set,” I believe Rose was arguing that students will strive to meet the goals and expectations placed on them, just as Macfarland pushed Rose to gain a college education.
4. While reading the autobiographies, I noticed the dichotomy between a native language and culture versus English and the American culture. For example, Jenna Nakagawa utilizes her literary discourse to come to terms with her conflicting Japanese and American. The literacy autobiographies deal with this sense of conflicting identity, which is depicted through their literacy. They also similarly exhibit not fitting in to a certain social environment, such as Fei Ji, who was so adamant about being white that she let go of her native language.
These literacy autobiographies have inspired me to write about my struggles with my Persian literacy and altering it to better adhere and cope with my American literacy. In addition, Taryn Jang has encouraged me to write about my musical literacy with the violin.
Lorna Porter
ReplyDelete2. Rodriguez and Anzaldua would be sitting together at the bar, nursing their Long Island Ice Teas, when they turn and look at each other, realizing that in the education conference, they share a common bond, they are two of the only non-caucasian people at the conference. Rodriguez would chuckle softly, commenting about how it reminded him of his days back in elementary and high school, and that even at a conference about literacy and language, those who are most impacted by the limited interpretation of literacy and the lack of cultural awareness around language are not represented.
Anzaldua would agree, but ask him why he even cared, because sometimes, it seemed, he had left his culture behind. Sarcastically, she would ask him if he even could see her from up in his “ivory tower”. He, instead of being offended, would smile. Having dealt with this sort of question many a time, he would defend himself. He would discuss how he realizes that his education separated him from his cultural roots, and that the schooling process in America left him disconnected from the Chicano culture Anzaldua was so passionate about.
“That’s exactly why I’m here.” He would say, gesturing about at the conference. “I’m here to make sure that what happened to me is not perpetuated upon those just like me. I want to make education billigual, bicultural, I want it not to be seen as a “way out”, or the way to a superior lifestyle, but a way for people to become literate about thinking, speaking, and caring about the way we live and represent our culture. I got so many positive things out of my education, I became literate not just in the traditional sense, but in a way that opened up the world to me.”
Anzaldua would reply, agreeing with him, and they would continue to discuss how to make the education system open to those of different cultures, allowing expression of culture, not repression.
4. We’ve discussed at length in this class the different ways that literacy can be interpreted. In the literacy autobiographies, the most common theme that I found was how personal each definition of literacy was. In fact, in the way that they were alike was what made each essay so different. Each person viewed literacy through a different lens, a view tinted by the glasses of their life experience. In each case, becoming literate was not about learning to read in a classroom through a textbook. Becoming literate meant experiencing life, being exposed to new things, and becoming able, as we have learned, to read the world. Literacy didn’t just allow each student the opportunity to read a sentence, it allowed them to become active, questioning beings in this world. I still am struggling as to how I will write my narrative, but reading these inspired me to think beyond learning to read. Reading has been a very important part of my life, but the examples expanded my view of how others chose to view literacy in their life paths. I now am leaning towards sharing a more personal story, one I don’t often share, because I feel it is truly a crucial part in my development as a part of this world.
Reply to Question #1:
ReplyDeleteMike Rose underscores an understanding of what average is rather than expressing a want to be so. Average is a feeling of forlorn when the educational globe overbears your trapezius and brings you to your knees. Average is purgatory—complacence to Hell, complaisance to Heaven. There’s an explicit pedagogic chasm at work through the lens of Mike Rose: student expectations and reality; the latter is telescoped on by denouncing the vocational quicksand so many students succumb to. While one’s peers seemingly excel in “curriculum of the elite: French, physics, trigonometry … while you’re trying to shape an identity,” (28) one can’t help by feel stalled on the shoulder while the educational institutional whirs by at breakneck speed.
“I just wanna be average” resonated with Mike Rose all these years because he experienced, first hand, how damaging that mindset can be. For Ken Harvey—the source of such an innocuous statement—it was okay to go through school mechanically “by taking on with a vengeance the identity implied by the vocational track.” (29) But this notion of apathy does not bode well for the edification of knowledge when students feel obliged to “reject intellectual stimuli or diffuse them with sarcasm, have to cultivate stupidity, have to convert boredom from a malady into a way of confronting the world.” (29) Schools essentially inflict a feeling of worthlessness onto students who need help the most.
“Students will float to the mark you set.” (26) This refers to the lack of inspiration and mechanical rhythm of monotony that infects our educational system. Students who have exceptional teachers will produce exceptional work. Rose describes the vocational track as “a dumping ground for the disaffected” (26)—undusted cogs in the educational machine. An inspiring instructor can break the spell of mediocrity and surmount prior reverberations of cynicism.
Reply to Question #4:
Literacy is an equivocal ideal that traverses the course of life through the characters and personalities unique to each of us. The autobiographies presented in the reader accentuate the serendipitous triumphs over adversity—an overarching focal of these memoirs. Underlying themes of enculturation as it pertains to race, culture, and creed are scattered throughout these stories and each author arrived at their respective “literacy revelations” through practical life experience. The fact that each person has a unique inference as to what literacy entails is, in it of itself, inspiring. My life’s road has been a windy one with its fair share of potholes and I am now armed with the encouragement to render that veritable road into my own first-hand telling of literacy.
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ReplyDelete#1.
ReplyDeleteAt first thought, Rose was confused as to why Ken Harvey said “I just wanna be average,” but after spending his school time in the vocational track he finally realized what Harvey inferred by this statement.
Harvey, like Rose and many students in the vocational track, believes himself to be below average, and once someone is told enough times they are dumb or just don't expect much from them, they start to believe and do work at that level. Students who deal with confusion and frustration of being defined as “slow” can reject these feelings by simply championing the “average.” Instead of striving to be an excellent student, they place “average” in that top ranking. Being average is a defense mechanism in “neutralizing the insult and the frustration of being a vocational kid.” In the text, Rose says that in perfecting this defense, is important to “reject the confusion and frustration by openly defining yourself as the Common Joe”—by shutting down. This simply shows the toll it takes on a student when they are constantly reminded of being slow.
Rose believes that students will float to the mark that is set for them and that if they are challenged, they will succeed. This concept is seen throughout Roses’ education at Our Lady of Mercy. Yes, it is true that the students in the vocational track are unmotivated and amenable to discipline, but what led them to this? Most of the blame can go to their teachers. Teachers begin to label the students starting from their first bad grade or their mild understanding of the lesson. At this point, It is the job of the teacher to provide extra help but in this case, the teachers further add on to the students frustration by becoming disillusioned and not caring. At Our Lady of Mercy, if “your defined by your school as slow—your placed in a curriculum that isn’t designed to liberate you but to occupy you, or if your lucky, train you.” Had these teachers shown more concern for their students and set the level higher than average, then there would have been more positive results coming from these students. Rose’s biology teacher, Jack Macfarland, is the one who set the mark for Rose to succeed—not the other teachers.
#5.
In Pratt’s autobiography, she defines the idea of a “contact zone” as being an area which allows the intermingling of two or more cultures. She uses this term “to refer to the social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other.” Willis, a young Chinese immigrant, demonstrates Pratt’s idea of the contact zone through engaging in Japanese comic books. To better understand the comics, Willis had enrolled in a Japanese course at his school. Moreover, he was able to learn more about Japanese culture since the “Japanese comics encoded many of the beliefs, values, behaviors and material conditions of Japanese life.” In this case, Willis is learning about another culture by means of engaging in an activity that interests him—his comics. Eva Lam mentions how the national varieties of comics “ generated a high degree of cross-cultural exchange which facilitated a process of sociocultural critique through the comparison and contrast of different national varieties(Lam).” As far as Willis’ demonstration of the contact zone, I would have to say that mine are a bit different as far as what is being used as a connection between the different cultures. For example, I am currently taking a medical ethnobotany course which pertains to the origins of medicinal plants and plant-derived pharmaceuticals. In this class I am learning about medicine yet I am viewing it from a ethnocultural perspective; I am learning about the use of medicine in various countries and tribes. Medicine, in my case is analogous to Willis’ comic books—both introduce us to different cultures by means of a universal topic of our interest.
1) Mike Rose wants to be average because when you are average you can live a life free of disappointment and regret. If you’re not placed on the “elite” track at your school then you might feel less important. You will be “thrown in with all kinds of kids from all kinds of backgrounds and that can be unsettling…you’ll see a handful of students far excel you in courses that sound exotic and that are only in the curriculum of the elite: French, physics, trigonometry” (28). If you just accept yourself as average, then you save yourself the “confusion and frustration” that comes along with competing because you simply don’t have the tools to do so. “Students will float to the mark you set”. They will only do as well as you expect them to. If you give them easy or “crappy” classes they will do fine but they wont aspire to do more. If you set their mark high by challenging or inspiring them, they can achieve much more.
ReplyDelete5) Pratt has a very detailed description of the contact zones. To her, they are “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power…” Willis demonstrates Pratt’s ideas about the contact zone with his comic book reading. The comics, translated and distributed internationally, have “generated a high degree of cross-cultural exchange and fusion, and… facilitated a process of socio-cultural critique through the comparison and contrast of different national varieties” (91). You can use simple things such as comics to learn so much about different cultures and cross that divide. Willis emigrated from Hong Kong to California and felt very separated in his social and school lives. He used comics to get in contact with different societies and create a multicultural world that he felt comfortable in. I am Caucasian and grew up with a Chinese step-mom so for me, learning her traditions and cultural practices was difficult at first, but became second nature after several months and I grew to love being immersed in two cultures.
1. Mike Rose
ReplyDeleteIn Mike Rose’s Lives on the Boundary, he discusses the way in which he just “wants to be average,” which I explain in this discussion. Rose points out that “school can be a tremendously disorientating place” (28), a statement that demonstrates how low achieving students like Ken Harvey did not perform to the standards provided, were not given the academic support or environment to improve, and subsequently desire to be average and get to the mere standard. Rose states that “students will float to the mark you set” (24), which points out that those low achieving students are unable to improve academically because the “mark” set for them is much below standard. Students will only push to the line marked for them and it is an institutional flaw that their line is marked quite low.
5. Eva Lam
In Lam’s article “Border Discourses,” she discusses Pratt’s idea of a contact zone; in this discussion, I will illustrate how Willis shows this zone through a case study. Pratt uses contact zone to express the phenomena involved in “colonial cultural encounters” (83). This contact zone tries to encapsulate the intricacy involved in the cultural mixing and transforming that occurs when, say, a Chinese immigrant comes to America.
Willis demonstrates this contact zone through his experience as a high school student who came to California from Hong Kong. He maintains much of his cultural heritage yet adapts to some of the cultural circumstances he faced. Through reading English and Japanese comics, Lam could get a sense for Lam’s cultural identity, one influenced both by his Asian background and his American location. He felt separate from the American Born Chinese in his high school, which shows how the multicultural aspect only allowed Willis to assimilate so much, only giving a limited contact zone. He found a middle ground between completely assimilating and not doing so at all.
My contact zone, as an American born Chinese, was somewhat bigger, which allowed me to become much more “American” than say Willis. My contact zone was much more comprehensive, for better or for worse.
Thomas Cycyota
ReplyDelete1)If “average” is the goal that Mike Rose is shooting for (which he never explicitly sets forth as a destination for himself), it is not in the manner that is most commonly associated with the term. By “average,” the character Ken Harvey does not mean “in the 50 percentile” or “somewhere between the worst and the best,” he means that he wants to be in the middle of the two lives in which he, and other vocational students like Mike Rose, must deal with everyday. These two lives, namely home and school, are so fundamentally different for these students that it is “tremendously disorienting” to move from one to the other. To be average, one must be able to function adequately in both settings, being aware of cultural and family expectations at home and academic and obedience standards at school. To move from one setting to the other on a daily basis is certainly not an easy task, and what Mike and these other students really want is to be able to see the point and be fluent in both. Going to school after being shaped by dominant home culture for the early years of life, whatever that home culture may be, is a transition in which the student “encounters notions that don’t fit with the assumptions and beliefs that you grew up with.” When the two lives clash for students that must perform a different type of cultural literacy at home than at school, perceived failure often results because there is no transition time allowed for a student to acculturate and learn the expectations of this new environment. Average does not mean being a non-vocational student, average to these students means understanding the point of school, of learning, of bettering themselves for themselves. Understanding that these methods with which learning is taught, such as tests, books, essays, etc., are beneficial in a way completely different from what home life has taught them takes students time and positive reinforcement. In short, these students want to become the average of their two lives, representing and understanding each equally.
To address the second part of the question with the few words I have left, students that are not challenged will only accomplish what they must to scrape by. If there is no internal drive to learn and challenge oneself because there is some artificial marker, like a standardized test or a minimum grade to pass, there is no person incentive to learn. In this way, students will only accomplish what they are expected to accomplish, but not much more.
4) A common theme seems to run through these biographies, namely that the authors never analyzed from where their personal sense of literacy came. But the authors, through these pieces, are able to come to the conclusion that their upbringing and lifestyles contribute tremendously to the people they are now. It was interesting to read these different perspectives on this commonly overlooked bit of identity and understand that cultural perspective plays a huge part in each individual’s literacy. On a personal note, reading these multiple accounts of self-reflection, I came up with a few ideas about my own literacy. First, my sense of literacy stems much farther than reading and writing, which is something I would not have said even two months ago. But I know that my cultural literacy plays a huge part in my personality and understanding of people and body language.
1. Though Mike Rose titled his work “I Just Wanna Be Average,” I don’t think he actually had at particular aspiration. Rose describes the quote of his classmate, Ken Harvey, as being a mindset of students who are told that they are inadequate. He describes it as a defense mechanism: a way for students to deflect the labels that other people place on them. Rose says, “If you’re a working class kid on the vocational track, the options you’ll have to deal with will be constrained in certain ways: You’re defined by your school as “slow”: you’re placed in a curriculum that isn’t designed to liberate you, but to occupy you…” (p. 28). Rose himself went through this, as he was put on the vocational track through a mistake. He experienced what it was like to have these labels placed on him, and how others related to him because of these labels. He says, “It neutralizes the insult and the frustration of being a vocational kid…” So while I don’t think Rose actually wanted to be average, he does understand how someone in his position would use this as a way of shutting down, of ignoring, of dealing with being a vocational education student.
ReplyDeleteThis ties in with another of Rose’s perspective, that “student will float to the mark you set.” (p. 26). Rose means that students tend to rise to the occasion. If you set the bar high, students usually perform better than if you had set the bar low. If a student aspires for a C, he will rarely, if ever, receive an A on an assignment or exam. For students on the vocational track, this is exactly what is being done to them. The school is forcing these students to be no more than average. The school is setting the mark low, as Rose says, “...bobbing in pretty shallow water.” (p.26)
2. I think Gloria Anzaldua and Richard Rodriguez would have a great deal to say to each other, because I think they both experienced similar pressures in their education. Though their writing styles and reflections are very different, at their cores, both authors experienced pressure from school and parents to adopt the dominant discourse taught in American schools, and use English as their primary language. Anzaldua mentions that her mother was “mortified that I spoke English like a Mexican.” (p. 54). She also mentions that she is rarely comfortable speaking Chicano Spanish with anyone who isn’t also Chicana, but that even with others who speak her native tongue, there is a tension between assuming a more “educated” tongue versus their own. Richard Rodriguez speaks a lot about his educational development as a “scholarship boy,” a student who essentially just absorbs information but has no original thought. I think Rodriguez and Anzaldua would have a lot to discuss about how education in America forces students to adopt the traditional “western values,” and doesn’t allow for much variation. They might agree that this western education has deprived them of any pride in their more native culture.
1).
ReplyDeleteKen Harvey, Rose’s fellow classmate in one of his vocational classes, asserted that “I just wanna be average”, and while Rose first dismissed the assertion as being stupid, it later reverberated in him as he finally understood the deeper meaning behind these words. Striving to become just average by “[keeping] your vocabulary simple, act stoned when you’re not…[and] flaunt ignorance” is seen as a defense because it “neutralizes the insult and the frustration of being a vocational kid” (29). To the students, being average seems like a reasonable position to assume especially when they are dealing with the stigma of being “slow” and other constraints that are usually placed on a working-class kid. I don’t think that Mike Rose wanted to be average, but the unstimulating environment of the vocational classroom caused him to drift in that direction.
Rose states that “students will float to the mark you set”, meaning that students tend to gravitate towards the standard level that the teacher expects of them. In his case, the vocational classes at his school were a “dumping ground for the disaffected” (26) led by unprepared teachers teaching an underwhelming curriculum. It was also the whole school that gave them the label of being “slow”. As a result, the student drifts towards the bottom and towards mediocrity. Thus, when a teacher begins with low expectations it is difficult for a student to rise above the mark. On the other hand, a teacher that sets the mark high will see her students rise up to meet her expectations. Rose’s senior English teacher, Jack MacFarland, kept high expectations in his classroom, where even the “troublemaker would look foolish rather than daring” (33). He helped Rose recognize his talent for writing and steered him towards college.
4)
Each student brings in his/her own experience in regards with their journey with literacy. All the students come from diverse backgrounds and unique cultures, which in turn played a significant role in their personal and intellectual development. Each person’s definition of literacy is different and it builds off of his or her experiences inside and outside of the classroom. For example, Katie Bang as well as most of the other students express the idea that literacy transcends the pen and paper and formal education. Several autobiographies, such as Jenna Nakagawa’s and Fei Ji’s, deal with coming to terms with their cultural identity (ex: being a Chinese American in an American school system). Reading these autobiographies forces me to think about my own upbringing (especially the cultural aspect) and how that has brought me to where I am today.
1. Why does Mike Rose want to be average? And what does he mean by "students will float to the mark you set?"
ReplyDeleteRose wants to be average so that he can fit into the school system imposed upon him. Via insults, frustrations, and oppression, school puts a tremendous amount of pressure on him to do things he is not interested in. Rose asks himself, “why work hard in a class that didn’t grab [his] fancy?” But at the same time, he realizes that by defining himself as the “Common Joe,” he can escape this frustration. When the positive pressure to think for himself is outweighed by the educational system’s pressure to conform, Rose finds himself identifying with Ken Harvey’s comment. As for why Rose strives merely to be average, and not excellent: being “average” requires less effort, and achieves the same degree of pressure evasion (if not greater, as it shrugs off expectations for greatness).
If pressure evasion is the primary motivator for students, then it follows that they will “float to the mark you set.” Indeed, if the mark is set low, as it was by Rose’s childhood teachers, they will simply do the bare minimum; Rose tells us, “I did what I had to do to get by, and I did it with half a mind.” However, when MacFarland sets the mark high—“within no time, he had [his students] so startled with work…three or four essays a month…quiz every other day…”—Rose found that even Jim Fitzsimmons, an alcoholic, was learning and being a far better student than previously. In sum, students follow the teacher’s example.
3. Now imagine that Amy Tan cruises into the reception at the end of the night, when the conversation's especially sloppy, and joins Anzaldua and Rodriguez. What does Tan have to contribute to the discussion?
Tan would contribute the idea of “different Englishes,” and give the example that the “forms of standard English that [she] had learned in school and through books” was very different from the forms of English she used with her mother, and that the latter form of English has the greatest impact on her learning. Anzaldua would almost certainly echo this statement, as she holds language as the primary component of her identity: she says, “Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself.”
Tan, Anzaldua, and Rodriguez are similar in that they are ashamed of their parents’ languages, because they perceive their parents’ broken English as crippled in function and as a result repugnant in their societies’ eyes. However, where Tan differs from the other two is that she grows to appreciate her mother’s “simple” English for what it is. She strives to capture “her [mother’s] intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts,” and eventually does so as evidenced by the final line, “so easy to read.” Through her testimony, Tan would offer a positive spin on the ideas of Anzaldua and Rodriguez.
Question 4
ReplyDeleteA key theme that is prevalent in the readings is that languages other than English are valued less in America. Spanish is an example of this.
Anzaldua’s experience is different from Rodriguez, because she has always accepted her language and has fought to have her culture accepted and known by others. On the other hand, Rodriguez has chosen to reject his language and focus on perfecting his understanding of the English language; however, in doing so has become culturally separated from his parents. At the end of his narrative, Rodriguez chooses to embrace and seek his past, which includes his culture and language.
In the United States, speaking Spanish can be seen as something negative. There are instances where I have seen people be rude to others because of having an accent while trying to speak English at the supermarket. In reading, Tan’s work, I can empathize with how her mother was not always treated well because her English is not perfect.
This inspires my narrative, because I am bi-lingual. I speak English and Spanish. I have always embraced both languages and have learned how to use both in order to preserve my past and culture.
Question 2
I think it would be a funny conversation, since they have had a few too many drinks. They would talk about their experiences with language and their work, as well as how much their culture has affected their scholarly work. Anzaldua would talk about how much she embraces her culture and Rodriguez would admit that he is barely learning to embrace his. Culture, would be a key component to their conversation, because language is a part of their culture. Towards the end of the conversation, I can imagine Anzaldua telling Rodriguez, “Do you consider yourself quieto yet wild?” Rodriguez, who from the reading seems like he is timid and keeps to himself, would nervously discuss Hoggart’s “scholarship boy” and how he has become culturally separated from his parents as a result of his scholarly work. Rodriguez wouldn’t answer her question, but would instead talk about his work. Anzaldua would end the conversation with the simple statement: “I am my language and being Mexican is a state of soul.”
Question 2:
ReplyDeleteBecause Gloria Anzaldua already has an uncontrollable tongue as it is, her drunkenness only makes her say what she thinks faster and more blunt. Anzaldua and Rodriguez would probably start talking about their childhood and what kind of students they were. Rodriguez would tell Anzaldua that he was always a little embarrassed of his parents because they couldn’t speak proper English. He always felt the need to correct their grammatical mistakes but felt bad doing so. Now, while being drunk, he says something about regretting that his education drove him so far away from his family simply because he was anxious about his education, the only way out. Anzaldua, waiting for Rodriguez to sadly finish his childhood memories, chuckles and begins remembering her stories as a student in middle school. She wasn’t afraid to speak in Spanglish, but does remember changing up her style of speaking English and Spanish depending on who she was speaking to. She tells him that he should have learned to embrace where he was coming from and to not try to hide his parents from his teachers who spoke so clearly. Since she is a little buzzed, Anzaldua would jokingly call Rodriguez a pocho because of his ambition to separate his home and classroom life. Rodriguez would not be that offended because he too is feeling a little loose, he would just laugh it off and jokingly ask her what she prefers to be called, Mexican or Hispanic. Of course, Anzaldua answers with Mexican.
Question 3:
Tan walks into the conversation right when Rodriguez asks Anzaldua whether she is Mexican or Hispanic. Tan laughs and suggests that it depends on who she is with and who she is trying to impress. Anzaldua says she would never say Hispanic because that is “copping out”. Rodriguez gives Tan a little summary of what they were talking about, losing his train of thought since he has had a little too many drinks. Tan tells him that his English is a little simple but that’s okay because it’s capturing what he truly is trying to say. She can relate to both Anzaldua and Rodriguez because she, like Anzaldua, didn’t try to lose her style of speaking English even if she became an English major in college. At the same time, she relates to Rodriguez because she was able to separate home life from school life. Yet, she likes her “broken and simple English because it captures passion and imagery.”
1.
ReplyDeleteWhen Rose states that “students will float to the mark you set” he means that students will rise to the standards you set for them. As a child, Rose was self motivated and curious, but because he was placed in the vocational track in high school, he was only motivated to reach the below par standards that his teachers set for him. Even though Rose was obviously an intelligent child and came from a a supporting family, he was still deprived of an adequate education throughout the first half of his high school career because of the low expectations his instructors had for him.
“I just wanna be average” refers to a comment made by of of Rose’s peers in the vocational track, Ken Harvey. According to Rose, when students are consistently treated as if they are mediocre, then they will act like mediocre students. Rather than using their efforts to excel, these students who have been repeatedly told that they don’t have anything to offer will use their energy to actively pursue mediocrity.
5.
According to Pratt, a contact zone is a social space, “where cultures meet, clalsh, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power”. Willis demonstrates Pratt’s ideas when he reads comic books. In school he learns academic English in a setting where instructors and students who are fluent in English have power. When he reads comic books he subverts this power by using English and his native Cantonese to read about underdog protagonists who he is able to associate himself with.
I find myself in a reverse situation in one of my contact zones. One of my guilty pleasures is a Japanese cartoon that I watch online. While I able to write at a college level in English, most two year-olds have a higher proficiency in Japanese than I do. When I watch this Japanese cartoon, I am unable to focus fully on the dramatic action, because I am reduced to reading subtitles.
Hae Young Song
ReplyDelete1. Mike Rose quotes what Ken Harvey talks about the parable of talents in the Bible: “I Just Wanna Be Average” (28). Mike was surprised to hear that, but he finally comes to understand it. Mike and his students receive too much stress from their vocational track of education. Not to be suffocated by the vocational track, they want to be content with being average. They are compared to fishes or something floating in shallow water: “students will float to the mark you set.” This comparison depicts their helpless attitude toward their lives. Mike is mistakenly grouped into the vocational track and passes through the same stress as other students in the vocation track do. Teachers tend to ignore their students’ creative imagination, and the students themselves don’t have any dream or goal which engages their creativity. Being average may deliver Mike and other students from their stress under the vocational education, but it kills their creativity and aptitude.
5. Eva’s article uses the autobiographical story of Willis to explain about the concept of the contact zone proposed by Pratt. According to Pratt, the contact zone is not the zone of separating conflicts but that of (colonial) creative cultural encounters. Natives and settlers living in the contact zone take various trans-cultural perspectives on themselves and others. To create his own cultural perspectives, Willis relies on reading different national and transnational varieties of comics: Chinese, American (English), and Japanese. Because of language barrier and discrimination, new immigrants like Willis cannot mix well with natives in America. At the same time, he cannot accept the sociopolitical situation in China thanks to his encounter with American democratic culture. In this conflict, he takes transnational discourse of Japanese comics for his contact zone. For me, I go to a Korean church, which is my contact zone between Korean and American cultures. I take the perspectives of immigrants’ children who were born in America and have critical views on both cultures. Though my contact with them, I get the transnational perspectives on both cultures.
Question 1
ReplyDeleteRose “just wants to be average” because being average is something he will never have. He was a young Italian growing up in LA in the fifties. He would never be normal. Humans usually desire to be part of something bigger then themselves. I believe that Rose felt alone to some extent and being average would allow him to fit in. Rose was innately unique though. He grew up in a low income family. Rose’s father was sick ever since Rose was young. His natural curiosity for the world and life around him simply isn’t normal. Yet Rose describes himself as a physically average individual saying he was “a skinny, bespectacled kid.” Its ironic that his appearance seems so average when his situation and personality was far from it. Rose’s physical appearance almost manifests itself as Rose’s only average trait.
When Rose says that “students will float to the mark you set” he is discussing human’s tendency to fulfill what is expected of them. When students are expected to fail, failure will occur. Rose talks about the “shallow water” that he and his vocational classmates bobbed in as if these shallow waters were the only waters they could survive in. Everyone who attended these vocational classes had already resigned to “failure” as a result of being placed there. From whom little is expected, little will be given.
Question 2
When you are drunk, you tend to argue. But I feel like Anzaldua and Rodriguez would have a very understanding, emotional, vaguely intellectual drunk conversation. Anzaldua would love to discuss language and its deep implications with the self. Rodriguez would have a similar opinion and a lifetime of experience to support and contradict Anzaldua’s belief that language and its intricacies define ones self. Rodriguez would drunkenly stumble through his choice of educational literacy over home literacy and its impact on his life. He would attempt to explain to Anzaldua that without his education, he would never be able to appreciate his parent’s way of life in the way that he does. Rodriguez developed an appreciation for his language at home by learning another language, that of education. A drunken Anzaldua would be intrigued, but hold to his belief that his language of education is still language that defines Rodriguez and his perspective. In the end, the two rational drunks would agree to disagree and hopefully go about their night enjoying the blissful state of mind that alcohol so beautifully brings to us.
Rachel Fryke's Reading Response: I'm so sorry that this is late... I've been sick and I missed a fair amount of school last week, so I've been trying to catch up.
ReplyDelete#1. Mike Rose’s classmate Ken Harvey wanted to be average as a defense mechanism against the “suffocating madness” of being diminished and cast aside by the school system. (29) By “taking on with a vengeance the identity implied by the vocational track,” students can numb their feelings of frustration, rejection, and humiliation. (29) This supports Rose’s statement that “students will float to the mark you set.” (26) Harvey, constantly told during his academic career of his inferiority, and the other students in Rose’s vocational classroom viewed themselves as average because they were treated as average. Rose himself only achieved success when placed in a biology classroom taught but the same person and featuring similar curriculum. His high grades revealed the mistake that placed him on the vocational track in the first place, a testament to the repressive nature of his prior academic setting and not to any inherent deficiency within him or his classmates.
#3. Gloria Anzaldua, Richard Rodriguez, and Amy Tan all discuss the dichotomy between the educational system and a student’s non-normative culture and language. The pressure to conform to the English language and other educational conventions can either alienate students from the system altogether or encourage “scholarship boy” behavior, wherein students distance themselves from their families and culture and model themselves instead on educational authority figures and practices. (Rodriguez 48) Amy Tan suggests an alternative understanding of the relationship between literacy and culture. While she used to feel embarrassed by her mother’s “limited” or “broken” English, as if it represented a reflection on her worth as a whole. (Tan 28) However, she now incorporates multiple versions of language into her books to authentically describe the Asian American experience. Similarly, Anzaldua details her use of multiple versions of Spanish and English to adequately and uniquely express herself and her community. “Chicano Spanish sprang out of the Chicanos’ need to identify ourselves as a distinct people... because we are a complex, heterogeneous people, we speak many languages.”(Anzaldua 55) In order to create an inclusive learning environment for multicultural students, the educational system must adapt and bridge the gap between normative practices and cultural difference.
1: Mike Rose says that he wishes to be average because people who are below average are looked down upon and seen as "slow." People like him consider themselves to be below average and they are perceived as slow. In order to get out of this self-pitying position, Mike works to become the average. They believe that they can't reach the point of above average where the class subjects like trigonometry seem so foreign; therefore, they push themselves to just be the average. The average becomes the peak of their academic ability and it frees them from their disappointments. However, he goes on to say that this is only the case because that is the mark that is set. He argues that "students float to the mark you set," which means that students will work to reach the goal that you set for them and that they will try harder if they are challenged. This just means that the teachers are really to blame for the students who are not working hard because they are not setting the mark high enough for the students to attain. I think that students are still likely to do just enough to get by, but if that bar is set higher, then they will work harder to reach it.
ReplyDelete5: Eva argues that contact zones are the "social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other" and are often found in areas of power dynamics. This just goes to mean that contact zones are places where people of different cultures collide and bring about opportunities for understanding. In her article, she interviews a 16 year old named Willis. He is an immigrant from Hong Kong and is learning at an American school. He faces the problem of trying to integrate himself into this new setting while holding onto his personal identity. It is through his Japanese class, his contact zone, that he begins to find a place to adapt to America. He connects to his peers through comics. He exposes his friends to manga and his friends introduce him to American comics, and it is through this exchange that he adapts to America. In my own personal case, I had to learn to adapt to this new campus and find a group to include myself in. That's when I found Koinonia, a fellowship on campus, and really got a chance to express myself freely with people who shared the same beliefs. It was a contact zone in the sense that I had to learn a lot of things about this new church while bringing some of my personal beliefs to the table. This was a real eye-opening experience and it is really carrying me through college.