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Subject of comment in green.
jeanne's commentaries in bright blue.

From Soc 334: Women in Society

On Sunday, October 20, 2002 Regina Price wrote:

Subject: class lecture

Hi Jeanne:

I want to talk about Thursday's lecture 10-17-02 about the professors and how they teach the classes. I feel certain professors do not care, I'm in a humanities class, in which the teacher treats the class like it's an English class. every thing you do is based on your grammar, not on the content of the paper or the work. What can we do about this professor at this school? Another thing I agree on is the book store and those ridiculous books. I want to be a part of what you are doing with the class to stop the robbing of students buying high priced books.

Regina Price

On Sunday, October 20, jeanne responded:

Regina, I 'm glad that you wrote on this topic. It seems to have caught your imagination. And in seeking alternative creative solutions to our social problems that's what we need. We will be planning some social action because learning to take action is essential, and, of course, all the information will be up on the site.

I notice from your message that the difficulties in breaking the traditional silence of the classroom seems to affect you most. That's a good place to start. And perhaps the best way to begin to take action with that is to use our planned Illocutionary Discussion this week to share those stories with others and listen carefully to their stories on similar issues. It helps just recognizing that you are not alone. That is partly echoed in your relief that there is someone to agree with and to talk about these problems.

For our purposes in overcoming the silencing we have all suffered you have asked the wrong question, though, about "what can we do about this professor at this school?" To overcome silencing we need to understand first how extensive the silencing is, in what ways it harms, in what ways alternative non-harmful transactions could take place. Our planned Illocutionary Discussions will help gather that data. But in the interest of peacemaking, which is one of my cherished goals, we don't want to move from there to "doing something about someone." We want to move to understanding our own pain more effectively, to joining with others who share that pain, and to finding ways to approach the institution so that denial of our pain will be more costly and less likely. In the best of all possible worlds your teacher will recognize the harm she is causing, and together we can find ways to do less harm to one another, since I'll bet that any institution that denies the pain caused by bureaucratization is harming its employees as well as its students.

We also need to move from the point of illocutionary discussion to the point of public sphere governance discussion in which we are all permitted valid input to the bureaucratic procedures that affect our lives. You have done a good job of pointing out one of those procedures: that writing proficiency, which was not equally accessible for learning to all of our students in lower level schools, is now taken as the sole measure of learning. We learn in many ways, and we need to end our silence with respect to the few procedures acceptable to the bureaucracy to show that learning. (References here include Paulo Freire, Peter McLaren.) But not all of the academy accepts the position that learning is more effectively measured in ways other than testing. That means that here we have a real governance issue. Should assessment depend above all on grammar, in spite of the student's background experience with writing? I, and many others I shall link to say an adamant no. But others say an adamant yes. What learning not to be silenced will do for us is galvanize people like me to help people like you speak out against what we view as an egregious social injustice.

The same procedure will help us end the silencing of acceptance of other unfair practices such as the poor return on used books, and unconscionabley high prices on books. We'll walk through the taking of action steps with these, just as we will with the issue on grammar and writing. And trust me, everytime, we'll find a whole range of opinions out there. Our job is to investigate them, try to hear them in good faith, and then move on to reasoned arguments and the unity of public sphere governance potential.

I'd like to be sure that you meet with me so that we have a chance to talk over the whole procedure, or bring it up in class.

Hope this helps, and glad to have you with us. jeanne

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On Date, Student wrote:

E-mail copied to here. If no e-mail, jeanne has to type. jeanne is not your personal secretary. So please e-mail.

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On Date, Student wrote:

E-mail copied to here. If no e-mail, jeanne has to type. jeanne is not your personal secretary. So please e-mail.