Essay clarity test.
Dec. 5th, 2007 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icarusAnyone want to help? Bueller-? Talking about tutoring and hegemony?
Who Is At The Center?
In a recent discussion of hegemony, a question arose. How does a tutor avoid putting hegemonic pressure on the student, and thus invalidating their worldview? (ENGL 474 class 12/2/07) The answer from Bewarshi and Pelkowski is that one should "teach students how to retrace the formal and textual effects of academic discourses" (Bewarshi, 54). In other words, examine why the academic approaches are what they are, their assumptions, where those assumptions apply, and where they do not apply. This response ignores the complexity and various gradations and flavors of hegemony that a student will have already experienced, and still privileges the academic discourse, explaining it to the student. This may be appropriate for the one-time tutoring session where a single paper is the student's main concern and there is little opportunity to understand the student at any depth. But in a long-term tutor relationship it is best to direct assistance and assignments towards the student goals, so they can reflect and draw upon their own experiences in order to make the most use of their education for themselves.
Bewarshi assumes that a student is meeting a powerful stream of a dominant culture for the first time, and that the individual's independent voice can be co-opted and silenced – even destroyed. Within the student's perspective, however, education is just one small trickle bisecting a far larger complex mass of Other knowledge, memories, and experiences that all act as a basis for their sense of self. That basis should not be shamed or invalidated, true, or else the student will at best "submarine" and attempt to give the "right" answer. But rather than practice simple neutrality and damage prevention, if one recognizes that the "dominant culture" is only a small thread of experience, and recognizes that the student has objectives in interacting with a different culture (dominance is still in question), then it is far more useful to use assignments, lessons, and tutoring sessions to further those objectives, and direct the thread of education towards their experiences and aims. It makes little sense to fearfully shoehorn the student into our familiar culture, and even less sense to know that one is doing so and continue, only more politely while admitting it.
First and foremost, the long-term tutor needs to ask what the student intends, not just for the assignment but for the class and their schooling. Then the student needs to hear that their aims will be respected and supported. There is a big difference between an elderly student taking classes to consider and enrich their past experiences and a new immigrant seeking an advanced degree. Understanding their goals, even the most rigid assignment can be directed towards the student's needs. Secondly, the long-term tutor needs to understand something of the student's background (Tutoring ESL, 12).
I draw upon the examples of Kyidpe and Nawang, two Tibetan refugees with radically different aims and experiences with hegemony. I worked with them from 1994 to 1996.
Kyidpe had been a Tibetan nomad in Amdo-Golok during communist China's cultural revolution. For the first six years of his life, he was raised within a particular culture that had its own hegemony and norms. Then he experienced an extreme degree of hegemonic pressure during the cultural revolution where, as a seven-year-old, he was subjected to four different steps of deliberate hegemonic disruption. The People's Republic of China intended to change him from a Tibetan citizen that spoke Tibetan, and who identified with family and with Buddhism, into a Chinese citizen that spoke Chinese, and who identified with the state and with communism.
The first step of hegemonic pressure was that he was removed from his family and his own cultural context to learn Chinese. In the second stage of pressure, he was sent to a boarding school in China and immersed in the dominant culture. There he was given a new Chinese name and not permitted to interact with the four other Tibetan children at that school. With the third stage of pressure, he was indoctrinated into communism as the only acceptable belief system for the remainder of his school years. In the fourth level of pressure, he was directed to renounce his parents and prior culture and shamed for being Tibetan. The PRC aimed to achieve a psychic break from his past.
The PRC's indoctrination achieved a temporary surface effect while Kyidpe was in school. In the long run, it served only to traumatically sharpen the distinction between Chinese and Tibetan, and to further define Kyidpe as a Tibetan. Once Kyidpe left school, he began a search for his family (who were nowhere to be found) and became a Buddhist monk. His response is not unusual among the Tibetans. This calls into question whether a "dominant culture" is truly dominant from the perspective of the individual. The PRC's attempt was quite thorough, began at an early age, and completely unsuccessful. He never wanted to become Chinese.
As a refugee in the United States, Kyidpe did not wish to learn to read English beyond a phrasebook level and focused solely on learning to read Tibetan. He vehemently rejected any American acculturation, sitting on the floor where it would be appropriate for a Tibetan to do so for example, but sought assistance in learning to communicate his experiences to English speakers, both for political purposes and to help resolve his own trauma. A hegemonic response would be to interfere with his wishes by attempting to integrate him into American society. Even explaining the foundations of academic discourse would be viewed as hegemonic from his perspective. A student can only become marginalized if they are taught that what they seek (a degree, the opportunity to communicate one's story) can only be accomplished through allowing themselves to be marginalized.
Nawang was a Tibetan from a border region between Nepal and Tibet unimpacted by the cultural revolution. She came from an originally well-off Tibetan family who had lost their lands to the Chinese, and emigrated to the United States to support her family. She grew up in a Nepalese Buddhist nunnery where women were the administrators and educators and clearly had strong examples of female leadership. She was confident, spoke two languages already, and her aims in learning English were pragmatic, solely to enable her to start her own business in the U.S. She aggressively directed her own tutoring sessions but encountered regular culture shock in her daily experience with American society. Sessions defaulted to topics under the loose heading, "Why are Americans crazy?"
Nawang had little interest in becoming Americanized, but sought to negotiate American culture with skill. A hegemonic response would be to attempt to juxtapose American culture as superior to her own. (Note: she was unlikely to be convinced.) Another hegemonic response would be to teach her that only by changing herself would she achieve her aims.
Even in Bawarshi's article, Darek resists the requirement to take a position (Bawarshi, 49). Meanwhile, Dora's marginalized narrative, her experience of a friend who has committed murder, surfaces despite the discursive practices of the academy (Bawarshi, 48).
As we can see, the dominant culture for the student is their own. Even under extreme duress that culture reasserts itself. Teaching them to simply "reposition themselves in relation to several continuous and conflicting discourses" (Harris, quoted in Bawarshi, 53) does not take recognize the overwhelming importance individual experience has for the individual. It misses the boat. It fails to seize the dynamic spark of motivation that comes from placing the student at the center of the discourse. Instead, the student is minimized to just a generalized subject position in reference to a supposed dominant culture.
Bawarshi, Anis and Pelkowski, Stephanie. "Postcolonialism and the Idea of a Writing Center." The Writing Center Journal, Volume 19, Number 2, Spring/Summer 1999, (41-58).
Tutoring ESL. Washington State Division of Refugee Assistance, third edition (c) 2001.
Who Is At The Center?
In a recent discussion of hegemony, a question arose. How does a tutor avoid putting hegemonic pressure on the student, and thus invalidating their worldview? (ENGL 474 class 12/2/07) The answer from Bewarshi and Pelkowski is that one should "teach students how to retrace the formal and textual effects of academic discourses" (Bewarshi, 54). In other words, examine why the academic approaches are what they are, their assumptions, where those assumptions apply, and where they do not apply. This response ignores the complexity and various gradations and flavors of hegemony that a student will have already experienced, and still privileges the academic discourse, explaining it to the student. This may be appropriate for the one-time tutoring session where a single paper is the student's main concern and there is little opportunity to understand the student at any depth. But in a long-term tutor relationship it is best to direct assistance and assignments towards the student goals, so they can reflect and draw upon their own experiences in order to make the most use of their education for themselves.
Bewarshi assumes that a student is meeting a powerful stream of a dominant culture for the first time, and that the individual's independent voice can be co-opted and silenced – even destroyed. Within the student's perspective, however, education is just one small trickle bisecting a far larger complex mass of Other knowledge, memories, and experiences that all act as a basis for their sense of self. That basis should not be shamed or invalidated, true, or else the student will at best "submarine" and attempt to give the "right" answer. But rather than practice simple neutrality and damage prevention, if one recognizes that the "dominant culture" is only a small thread of experience, and recognizes that the student has objectives in interacting with a different culture (dominance is still in question), then it is far more useful to use assignments, lessons, and tutoring sessions to further those objectives, and direct the thread of education towards their experiences and aims. It makes little sense to fearfully shoehorn the student into our familiar culture, and even less sense to know that one is doing so and continue, only more politely while admitting it.
First and foremost, the long-term tutor needs to ask what the student intends, not just for the assignment but for the class and their schooling. Then the student needs to hear that their aims will be respected and supported. There is a big difference between an elderly student taking classes to consider and enrich their past experiences and a new immigrant seeking an advanced degree. Understanding their goals, even the most rigid assignment can be directed towards the student's needs. Secondly, the long-term tutor needs to understand something of the student's background (Tutoring ESL, 12).
I draw upon the examples of Kyidpe and Nawang, two Tibetan refugees with radically different aims and experiences with hegemony. I worked with them from 1994 to 1996.
Kyidpe had been a Tibetan nomad in Amdo-Golok during communist China's cultural revolution. For the first six years of his life, he was raised within a particular culture that had its own hegemony and norms. Then he experienced an extreme degree of hegemonic pressure during the cultural revolution where, as a seven-year-old, he was subjected to four different steps of deliberate hegemonic disruption. The People's Republic of China intended to change him from a Tibetan citizen that spoke Tibetan, and who identified with family and with Buddhism, into a Chinese citizen that spoke Chinese, and who identified with the state and with communism.
The first step of hegemonic pressure was that he was removed from his family and his own cultural context to learn Chinese. In the second stage of pressure, he was sent to a boarding school in China and immersed in the dominant culture. There he was given a new Chinese name and not permitted to interact with the four other Tibetan children at that school. With the third stage of pressure, he was indoctrinated into communism as the only acceptable belief system for the remainder of his school years. In the fourth level of pressure, he was directed to renounce his parents and prior culture and shamed for being Tibetan. The PRC aimed to achieve a psychic break from his past.
The PRC's indoctrination achieved a temporary surface effect while Kyidpe was in school. In the long run, it served only to traumatically sharpen the distinction between Chinese and Tibetan, and to further define Kyidpe as a Tibetan. Once Kyidpe left school, he began a search for his family (who were nowhere to be found) and became a Buddhist monk. His response is not unusual among the Tibetans. This calls into question whether a "dominant culture" is truly dominant from the perspective of the individual. The PRC's attempt was quite thorough, began at an early age, and completely unsuccessful. He never wanted to become Chinese.
As a refugee in the United States, Kyidpe did not wish to learn to read English beyond a phrasebook level and focused solely on learning to read Tibetan. He vehemently rejected any American acculturation, sitting on the floor where it would be appropriate for a Tibetan to do so for example, but sought assistance in learning to communicate his experiences to English speakers, both for political purposes and to help resolve his own trauma. A hegemonic response would be to interfere with his wishes by attempting to integrate him into American society. Even explaining the foundations of academic discourse would be viewed as hegemonic from his perspective. A student can only become marginalized if they are taught that what they seek (a degree, the opportunity to communicate one's story) can only be accomplished through allowing themselves to be marginalized.
Nawang was a Tibetan from a border region between Nepal and Tibet unimpacted by the cultural revolution. She came from an originally well-off Tibetan family who had lost their lands to the Chinese, and emigrated to the United States to support her family. She grew up in a Nepalese Buddhist nunnery where women were the administrators and educators and clearly had strong examples of female leadership. She was confident, spoke two languages already, and her aims in learning English were pragmatic, solely to enable her to start her own business in the U.S. She aggressively directed her own tutoring sessions but encountered regular culture shock in her daily experience with American society. Sessions defaulted to topics under the loose heading, "Why are Americans crazy?"
Nawang had little interest in becoming Americanized, but sought to negotiate American culture with skill. A hegemonic response would be to attempt to juxtapose American culture as superior to her own. (Note: she was unlikely to be convinced.) Another hegemonic response would be to teach her that only by changing herself would she achieve her aims.
Even in Bawarshi's article, Darek resists the requirement to take a position (Bawarshi, 49). Meanwhile, Dora's marginalized narrative, her experience of a friend who has committed murder, surfaces despite the discursive practices of the academy (Bawarshi, 48).
As we can see, the dominant culture for the student is their own. Even under extreme duress that culture reasserts itself. Teaching them to simply "reposition themselves in relation to several continuous and conflicting discourses" (Harris, quoted in Bawarshi, 53) does not take recognize the overwhelming importance individual experience has for the individual. It misses the boat. It fails to seize the dynamic spark of motivation that comes from placing the student at the center of the discourse. Instead, the student is minimized to just a generalized subject position in reference to a supposed dominant culture.
Bawarshi, Anis and Pelkowski, Stephanie. "Postcolonialism and the Idea of a Writing Center." The Writing Center Journal, Volume 19, Number 2, Spring/Summer 1999, (41-58).
Tutoring ESL. Washington State Division of Refugee Assistance, third edition (c) 2001.
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no subject
Date: 2007-12-05 10:41 pm (UTC)One thought that probably won't be relevant to the essay- having been both a tutor (in Spanish) and a tutee (in physics and organic chem), I can say that most college students don't have any aim deeper than passing the class. We were instructed to press our students for "reasons why they wanted additional help" and most of them looked at us like we'd grown an extra appendage if we suggested that there must be something else. Obviously in the examples you've given that's not the case, but it's good to remember that there isn't always a deeper cause to analyze.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-06 04:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-05 10:56 pm (UTC)I don't know if it's appropriate, but the only way I could think of to make it any clearer would be to add a sentence at the end of each student example explaining what would be a more appropriate response. If this is a purely critical essay, though, that might not be important.
Overall, very clear and easy to understand, even for someone who had no idea what the source material was. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-12-06 04:43 am (UTC)It's a mostly a critical essay so I think I can get away with less direction on what should be done. I hope. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-12-05 11:13 pm (UTC)One question: in the sentence "Within the student's perspective, however, education is just one small trickle bisecting a far larger complex mass of Other knowledge, memories, and experiences" did you mean to capitalize Other? I can't tell if it was something I would know if I had read the source material or a typo.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-06 04:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-06 12:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-06 04:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-06 08:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-06 04:24 pm (UTC)Icarus