The following is a compilation of questions that I’ve been developing as I make my way through these four readings for the second time. As you can see, I’m left with more questions than answers. In my MA program, we worked with a standardized syllabus, and the kind of self-reflection that I’ve recently come to realize is necessary to the teaching of composition was pushed back (as a private transcript?) in favor of a robotic implementation of said standardized syllabus (public?). I’d be interested in knowing what Gilyard would say about this IZED.

That being said, it’s not that these readings have nothing to offer. I think it’s that they have too much to offer. I don’t know where to start, or exactly what connections to zero in on. I’d like to engage everyone in more than simply a Q and A session, but for now…

The Arts of Complicity: Pragmatism and the Culture of Schooling

• What is the responsibility of the teacher as “problem-poser” (Miller)?
• Does the idea of working with the “oppressed,” and not for them, actually amount to the same kind of “bank depositing”? If so, how do we consciously work around this barrier?
• How do we deal with Scott’s provocative concept of the public-transcript vs. the private-transcript in the classroom? Is it appropriate to “coax” out the private transcripts of our students? How do we go about this process? What kinds of assignments would lead them to give voice to this transcript? How do we prepare them at the same time for the realities of engaging in the public transcript? If we buy into the idea that the private transcript is actually the more “authentic” self—how does this further complicate our role in the classroom, and the position of the student? Can we ever actually engage with these authenticities? What is this distinction between these two in today’s classroom?
• If we are catering to our student’s private-transcripts (or even public)-who becomes the dominant and who the subordinate? Do we need to think of the classroom in different terms? Is it an egalitarian community? What exactly is our role as facilitator of information? What kind of power do we need to be conscious of? What kind of power should be at play in the classroom?
• If our students are molding/censoring their ideas to match the position of the teacher, how are we supposed to deal with the difference between “true-student” and “fabricated-student”?
• What kind of writing assignment(s) could we come up with as a group that would tap into this idea of public vs. private transcript and that would connect to the issues of exigence laid out by Bitzer and Vatz? What about engaging “these fantasies of alterative world orders”—does acknowledging them actually provide access to them? Miller states, “at some point, every teacher must enforce the boundary between the concerns of the hidden transcript, where students regularly rehearse their misgivings about the education they are receiving, and the public transcript, where the virtues of the educational system are taken for granted” (21). Is it simply a matter of exposing them to different identities and hoping that exposure sticks?

How can we use transcripts to analyze the power-dynamic of the classroom, and why should we? What is at stake when we make the private transcript available for the public? Does uncovering the private transcript actually mean anything?

How do we balance the public group dynamic of the entire classroom, and try to get at the individual private transcripts of each of our 20 students?

• If subordinates are less constrained “at the level of thought and ideology,” according to Scott, because “they can in secluded settings speak with comparative safety,” what does the classroom environment provide for them? Does it constrain or compel?
• “the students, however, never forget where they are, no matter how carefully we arrange the desks in the classroom, how casually we dress, how open we are to disagreement, how politely we respond to their journal entries, their papers, their portfolios. They don’t forget. We forget” (18). What does this say about the dynamic of the classroom? What issues of authenticity arise out of this dynamic? Who benefits from the classroom? What is gained?
• How can critical thinking and self-reflection lead to conveying meaning? Who has the power to convey meaning? How does the classroom provide productive/unproductive space for creating meaning? If teachers are “deeming” information significant/insignificant, what gets lost in the classroom? How do we regain whatever it is that is lost?
• Is the classroom a compromised space? What exactly does this mean? How do we work within a compromised space? Can we it become uncompromised?
• How can we negotiate or just simply consider the tension between what the classroom should do vs. what the classroom actually does vs. what we fear it is doing?
• What are the other roles for teachers “besides unquestioned master and final arbitrator of meaning” (Miller 25)?
• Does composition belong in the English Department? Is it actually a psychological field? A sociological one? Or does English provide the interdisciplinary acces necessary to the learning contract?
• “We are actually very well positioned to assist our students in acquiring the skills necessary for persisting in the ongoing project of navigating life in a bureaucracy” (Miller 27).

Literacy, Identity, Imagination, Flight

• we don’t teach in the absolute (265).
• How do we move our students beyond the concept of “predictable meaning”?
• “Individual students have to find identities as writers that they feel confident and comfortable with” (Clark). But should we also push them into uncomfortable identities? How do we do this carefully? How do we “invest” them in the process?
• How does the concept of a “primary identity” work with/against the public/private transcript?