Postcolonial studies afforded us a means to empower our students in sharing academic discourse. We describe in this article an on-going process, part of a fifteen-year struggle to instill good habits of reading and writing and critical thinking, for ordinary folks, who just want to learn, to improve their reading and writing and thinking skills. (56)

Notes:

• Critical thinking exercises: Minow's examples on identity politics, pp. 11-12.

  Postcolonial studies raises issues that most of us can relate to. Being deprived of the fruits of our labor, by someone else pre-empting those fruits, or by privilege which operates to alter perceptions through expectations based on unstated assumptions, or by simple categorization, which leads to judgment of the fruits by criteria established by others who failed to take our differences into account. Gale, I'm a Phi Beta Kappa. But I got a C in Thermodynamics. I got the C because I refused to memorize formulas. I was arrogant enough to derive them! And on Ducky's final I ran out of time, and failed to finish one problem. Of course, I also put a stuffed Duck wearing a Phi Beta Kappa key (Ducky wore his key prominently on a watch chain.) on the table at the Physics Banquet. Guess I should presume that Professor Reiss was not amused, hmm ?, Mac?

• Respect for learning
  • Allan Knox, and Michelle and Shiranee, and the ease with which we interpret silence to suggest concensus, not intimidation.
  • assumptions that Spivak makes of ability of those who suffer only "racism," not "colonization," to take advantage of access of learning to use dominant discourse. Failure here to see effects Edward Said describes intimidation by the dominant discourse, and failure to recognize the "patina of consent" for what it is. That's Duncan Kennedy at Harvard law in Kairys' Politics of Law. We need an analysis of the traditional classroom composition assignments, like Said's analysis of Jane Austen, that clarify the extent to which dominant discourse is in fact exclusive and exclusionary.
• Use of the visual
  • Cheryl Wilson's comment on how the drawing of the scapegoat helped her relate to the Yanomami and the AAA conference.
  • Agency and structure Joanna Carillo and Jessica
    Latanya Britt and Valencia Ross and Shemica Britt and the many learning traits of difference that are coming across - silence isn't at all what I thought it was. Especially critical where the teacher accepts the privilege of her skills without understanding that she is privileged.
• Crawling before we walk.
  • Lessons from moot court: first we discuss it, then they read it - amazing what that does for their reading skills. first we talk about it, then we argue about it. then we identify the critical thinking of factual arguments, policy arguments, and listen in good faith. and we accept communication as oral as well as written. And we teach how to use feedback - that's been neglected in composition _ Cite Keisha Cheatham's piece, and analyze its significance. And analyze my misreading of her response which left miscategorization uncorrected.
  • Lenard's comments on it's being about them.
• Devyn: A's without trying.
  • Had never heard of Fanon. Challenge missing. Our fault not theirs.
  • Setting the internal gyroscope.
• Cultural studies offers a way of making it socially acceptable to discuss the Other.
  • Once it's socially acceptable, works for all students. They grasp the ideas of privilege and Other quickly. Also true for community people. Linda's question on why is it OK for them to have "black" groups but we can't have "white" groups. Arent' they both exclusionary? They get that word quickly, too.
  • broad scope of reading material helps here. A Readers' Digest of theory helps, and we have that on the site. Devyn and "my vote didn't count," and Mary and "I am a republican" and Marlene and "don't we all bleed the same?" and the vocabulary index.
• Broad scope of summaries and reviews
  • works to encourage reading without denying fast track scheduling
  • gives a grasp of how extensive the "Other" is
• The Amsterdam paper on normative ordering:
  • CLEO and how it doesn't want to let anyone know it exists. And h ow urban community school tolerates and condones that.
  • CLEO and the diplomat's daughter in Amsterdam who agreed that she had been all over the world before CLEO gave her a scholarship to go to law school
  • CLEO's director in San Diego: we don't have hardly any working class students any more. Surprisse!
  • Seton Hall and mystification on where working class students went - to work! because summer stipend wasn't enough to live on, so it went to rich white kids.
  • First criterion that innovation be non-labor-intensive. Changing patterns of work-ethic as much with faculty as with students. Dettweiler actually recommended internship in court over moot court because it was much easier! Dettweiler actually said that if you had 40 people in a class, you couldn't do anything but give scantron's - writing impossible! Want to do analysis as Said does on what the real underlying assumptions are here, including going back to paper I did in law school on the start of affirmative action in law school with GIs after second World War.
  • This section will connect with Spivak and her dominant discourse argument. When access is exclusive through structural violence of the rules (such as amount of stipend available being less that work salary) then the ones in authority can easily deny intent and responsibility because the opportunity is "there" if the excluded would just give up enough to get it. Damn, I hate "awareness."

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