Tim Crane

Dr. Lynch-Biniek
ENU 405
4.30.10

Everything is a Text, But This… is a Pedagogy

Reading Word/World:

For Freire, literacy was an “inherently political project” (Literacy 7). As the core subject

of his personal teaching, he saw it as the crux of any effective educational effort. Freire writes on

the dynamic interconnectedness of language and reality as a means of explaining the need for

literacy education. Mastery of language is a necessity for democratic life. Our ability to use

language reflects our circumstances as well as allows us to reflect on our circumstances, and in

turn, alter them in praxis. Just as he binds language and reality, Freire also refuses to

dichotomize reading and writing (33). Many teach writing as if students have to earn the

privilege of writing by reading what others have written. This approach assumes that to become

literate, students must first read what they are told to read and only then shall they be capable of

making a worthy contribution in the form of writing. It bears resemblance to Britton’s analogy of

“forcing starving people to master the use of a knife and fork before allowing them to eat”

(Hartwell 448). Freire resisted this notion, vehemently. Literacy as he sought to realize it was not

only a matter of reading words on a page, but also the world surrounding us. The acts of reading

novels, newspapers, and the like (instances of the word) have relevance, but these texts have

their basis in reality: conditions of the writer’s life, corporations printing the news, even

expectations the writer has of the readers. These aspects contribute to the world and demand just

as much literacy and criticism as what we find on the page.

Sharon Crowley attempts to link literacy and pedagogy from an unusual angle. Her A
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Teacher’s Introduction to Deconstruction was among the first attempts to bring

poststructuralism, formerly a matter of language and literary theory, into a classroom context.

She hoped to offer teachers opportunities to apply the principles of poststructuralism, particularly

deconstruction (which I’ll discuss at the end of this piece) to their own circumstances.

Complicating matters of language, she presents the Derridean possibility that “consciousness

does not precede, and give birth to language; rather, it is language that makes consciousness

possible” (4). We as human beings think in language and can hardly do otherwise. To be without

language is to lack consciousness. Hence, we see that our ability to use language directly affects

our thought patterns. The language we use to critique our institutions, our daily conditions, and

even ourselves reflect our thought processes and habits of mind. Without the language and skills

to levy these critiques, they’re rendered impossible, even unthinkable. As such, critical

consciousness comes only through the exercise of language – of literacy. Only when students

have the language and means to express themselves can they realize themselves as whole people

with skills, wants, needs, and authority within their own lives.

It may be easy to assume that, as the simpler activity, reading the word must come before

reading the world when in actuality, “[t]he act of reading the world…[is] something which

human beings do before reading the words” (Literacy xvii). Children already come to school

practiced in interpreting their daily realities: a parent’s facial expression, the location of a jar of

cookies, who among their peers can be trusted. When it comes to teaching them, reading the

word relies on the skills they’ve already developed in the world. I don’t mean to say that skills in

reading the word cannot be applied to the world. In fact, quite the opposite. “It is only after they

have a firm grasp on their world that they can being to acquire other knowledges” (128).

Delpit discusses Gee’s conception of discourse in terms of “primary discourses” (learned

at home) and “secondary discourses” (products of institutions or other groups; 492). She
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explicates Gee’s argument that not all discourses are equal in status and advocates teachers

acknowledging the “discourse-stacking” that devalues many students’ primary discourses (501).

Freire’s “other knowledges” both acknowledge and serve as entrances into secondary discourses

otherwise unavailable to those students. He makes a case for basing pedagogy on primary

discourses: after students have “become literate about their histories, experiences, and the culture

of their immediate environments,” they become more ready and able to enter the myriad of

discourses surrounding them (Literacy 47). Power no longer proves as elusive because the

students see its influence at work and have developed the knowledge to reckon with its

implications. Of course, those powers and knowledges differ by discourse and students and

teachers alike must come to terms with the endless possibilities our interpretations of both word

and world present. But it is only by learning to read as we write, letting one supplement the

other, can we truly grasp language in such a way as to be agents in constructing our own

realities.

This problematization of interpretation allows teachers “to lead students to recognize

various tension and enable them to deal effectively with them.” The omnipresent discourses,

power relations, and endless knowledges (or interpretations thereof) cannot be hidden from our

students. Simplifying reality does little more than contribute to their dehumanization. Instead, I

suggest a pedagogy that makes these complications palpable, which allows students to appreciate

the complexities of their world, but does not seek to make them entirely clear. That work is

impossible. Note that critical students are to “deal effectively” with tensions; they cannot seek to

resolve them. Freire takes great care to admit, “We cannot exist outside an interplay of tensions”

(49). Even if we acknowledge these tensions, aiming to resolve these tensions goes against the

point of democratic pedagogy. Democracy itself is never complete; we have never “arrived” at a

point of completion such that we may cease deliberation and let things merely be. Praxis too
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relies on a constant churning of reflection on circumstance and transformation of it. In a certain

light, praxis can be thought of as an allegory for literacy, where reflection equates to reading and

action equates to writing. Freire calls upon teachers to equip their students to “read” the tensions

that comprise their existence, but for them to leave it at that imparts despair. To stop the process

of literacy at “reading” the world only makes the student aware of his problem, failing to

acknowledge his ability to confront it. Writing the world, what Freire calls “the transformation of

objective reality,” affords the students a sense of hope. It allows the students to practice their

language and critique on their own contexts. In short, it provides action on which to reflect with

their learned reading skills.

At the expense of focusing too much on a literacy of the word, I include a quote from

Peter Elbow applicable the act of writing the world: “think of writing as an organic,

developmental process in which you start writing at the very beginning – before you know your

meaning at all – and encourage your words gradually to change and evolve (qtd. in Crowley

xiii)”. More often than not, students enter the writing classroom not wanting to do anything.

“Just give me my grade,” they often demand, “and let me move on with my life.” They’ve been

duped into thinking their words can’t matter, that their role in the class can only be secondary,

and teachers (whether they acknowledge so, wish to or not) often permit these ways of thinking

to continue unabated by proving the students right. The pedagogy I argue for interrupts these

habits, insisting that the classroom will only go as far as the students can carry it. This argument

applies to the words they write in essays, responses to questions, and any journaling the teacher

asks for, but it also carries weight in the classroom itself.

Mainstream education places a primary emphasis on knowing one’s outcome before one

begins and working towards that destination. Elbow resists this emphasis. He does not write

about writing towards a destination, but about a process of writing through which students come
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to their own destinations, even creating them as they go along. What is to stop classrooms from

practicing this type writing in their day-to-day actions? I mean not only free writing, which I’ve

seen many teachers use effectively, but also in their writing of the world. What would happen if

a teacher presented his/her syllabus to class as only covering the first week of the semester? How

could he/she encourage students to rise to the challenge of completing the syllabus throughout

the course of the semester? Such questions take us closer to a praxis that avoids the certainty –

the imposition – of taking students where we think they ought to go. The oppression of certainty

gives way to a pedagogy of curiosity, but only ever predicated on the reading and writing skills

the students have developed up to that point.

Feels Like We’re Mything Something:

We have begun to live in the land of Polyphemus. Poor Polyphemus! He was this ugly
and gigantic, one-eyed Cyclops who liked to smash human beings on rocks and then eat them. But
one day he happened to capture the wily and very restless Ulysses who, one night, gave
Polyphemus so much wine that the poor lunk fell into a drunken sleep. Taking advantage of his
adversary’s discomposure, Ulysses and a couple of his buddies seized a great stick and heated its
tip in the nearby, handily burning, fire. When the tip was glowing hot, Ulysses and his buddies
stuck that thing into the one eye of Polyphemus, twisting it deeply into that socket, and blinding
him.
Polyphemus howled a terrible loud howl. He was in much pain. “What is the name of the
man who has done this to me?” he cried. And the wily Ulysses answered him, “My name is No
One.”
Later, several other Cyclops raced up to Polyphemus, because they had heard him
howling.
“Who did this to you?” they asked.
Polyphemus screamed his accusation for the world to hear: “No One has done this to
me!”
Well, when the fellow Cyclops heard that they decided that if No One had done this to
Polyphemus, it must be the will of the gods. Hence nothing could or should be done about the
blinding of Polyphemus. And so nothing was done.
…
I tell you about Polyphemus because we seem determined to warp ourselves into iddy-biddy
imitations of his foolishness. To repeat: the other Cyclops decided that if no one had done
anything then nothing was to be done. What happened to him represented the will of the gods.
(Jordan 31-32, emphasis added)

I quote June Jordan at length to dive into the concept of myth. Homer’s Odyssey finds its

way into curricula across the globe as a standard of “good” storytelling, but rarely does its
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retelling include the sort of critique Jordan gives it. Her version of this excerpt illustrates the

foolishness of Polyphemus and his peers, but we’d be even more foolish to disregard this myth

as purely fictitious. For her purposes, Jordan uses the story to speak to the habits of minorities

disempowered in a “democratic” state. Like Homer’s cyclopses, many see the events that harm

them as being done by “No One.” If they can’t put a face to a crime, then it must not be a crime,

merely some sort of karma or the will of God. She uncovers the myth of agentless injustice – that

the circumstances behind economic oppression are without human cause and are therefore

beyond the realm of human intervention.

Our culture runs on a series of myths just like this, myths dedicated to maintaining the

status quo. Some of these myths are readily apparent, others not so much. For instance, the myth

that capitalism is necessary to maintain a “free” society withstands even the most explicit of

criticisms (as does the myth that Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen of this country), but

the myth of the inferiority of Blacks has seen a decrease in popularity over time (as has the myth

that Dane Cook is actually funny). Freire uncovered some of the myths of his time that continue

to affect 21st-century America: the myth that street vendors are as much entrepreneurs as CEO’s

of multi-billion dollar companies, the myth of education as a universal right (or worse, “the great

equalizer”), the myth of a generous and charitable aristocracy, the myth of rebellion as a sin, the

myth of industry in the wealthy and sloth in the poor (Pedagogy 139-140). Our myths take many

shapes, but they are all designed to keep the benefactors of oppression in their positions of

privilege. As such, it is not enough for merely the privileged to believe them (although some of

them genuinely do, their belief in the myths is irrelevant). The oppressed must also ascribe to

modern mythology for it to have any effect. These myths depend on their targets to keep them

alive. If any among the oppressed is convinced of his/her inherent inferiority or the institution’s

invincibility, then he/she stops trying to realize his/her agency and the myth has succeeded.
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While myths affect our culture at large, there are myths in education that can be easily

unmasked. There is a “myth of techniques” at work that obfuscates the function of certain

teaching methodologies and give rise to new myths (Education 114). One myth reflective of the

“techniques” myth is that of “wasting time” (Literacy 59). This is a common critique levied at

teachers who seek to take previously teacher-only activities (such as rule-writing and

assignment-making) to the sphere of the actual classroom where they may receive student input.

Ira Shor writes of his experimentation with such activities. When Students Have Power

documents and reflects upon a literature class in which Shor attempted to create a classroom in

which teacher and students “shared authority, cogoverned, and codeveloped” the classroom in

every aspect from the contents of the syllabus to the arrangement of chairs to criteria for grading

(28).

As teachers, we are perfectly capable of writing down the policies we expect our students

to follow. “So,” myth-perpetuators ask, “why not just do that? You could easily spend that time

on of plenty of other things: studying for tests, reading aloud, free writing, conferencing,

diagramming sentences. For you to spend class time doing with the students anything they can

do themselves wastes that class time.” Time-“wasters” who garner these critiques (Shor being

but one example) have their own reasons for their actions. If we look at the classroom and

curriculum as expressions of identity, we see a clashing of priorities between those who “waste

time” and those who (hypothetically) don’t. In classrooms that don’t “waste time,” the teacher

makes all the decisions: he/she writes all the assignments, determines all the criteria of success

and failure, and runs the class as he/she sees fit. He/she comes to own the classroom through

his/her creation (and thus propriety) of items such as the syllabus, rules, and language of the

classroom (Hillocks’ three classroom knowledges). Targets of the myth however often cite a

need for a more engaging, student-oriented course in their alternate uses of class time.
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Shor’s class worked with at Elsasser and Irvine call “Generative Content” in which

students as well as teachers build the curriculum to include topics of their selection, composing

what Hillocks calls “declarative knowledge” as they went (30, 27). When it came to addressing

classroom behavior, Shor and his students agreed on “self-regulating mutual consent” which

called upon students to facilitate their own classroom discussions – often at the exclusion of the

teacher. Members of the entire classroom community shared responsibility for creating and

exercising “procedural knowledge” (Hillocks 27). Perhaps more important than Shor’s inclusion

of these practices is his defense of them, “Because students authorized as constituents can push

into the process and change it, they have less reason to push away from it and sabotage” (149).

Him, his students, and others like them see time spent creating rules not as time wasted, but as

invested in the atmosphere of the classroom as an open, engaging, and worthwhile place to

commit their time and efforts. As far as some of us are concerned, myth busted.

The time-wasting myth points to a larger body of knowledge in education commonly

known as lore. Lore is comprised of all the stories, beliefs, and “facts” that exist within a

particular tradition. In teaching, it’s come to include lesson plans, values of certain grammars,

myths like “time-wasting,” and innumerable other beliefs that have survived over the years.

Crowley quotes North who writes, “literally anything can become a part of lore. The only

requirement for entry is that the idea, notion, practice, or whatever be nominated: some member

of the community must claim that it worked or seemed to work, or might work” (28, emphasis

added). Sounds pretty broad, right? That’s because it is. The technique or belief under question

does not have to have any basis in research, observation, or practicality; it is used merely out of

curiosity, habit, or compulsion. Crowley explicates, “nothing that has gained admission is ever

dropped from lore.” That is, lore as a body is invincible. It can only grow larger.

Now…I want to be careful about discrediting lore’s potential. Many teachers use it as a
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space for sharing tips and ideas. Lore can be an extremely useful pool of information for young

and/or struggling teachers. What Crowley brings to its study though is a cautionary perspective, a

warning that one cannot wantonly drink from the pool as if all the water is clean. Over time, with

too much acceptance of lore, those under its influence can come to resemble a sort of sectarian,

teachers who insist on teaching, but refuse to learn. Their ascriptions do not lead them to

reflection, only more action. Despite all our critiques, reasoning, and impassioned plea, lore (like

myth) is here to stay. We cannot seek to avoid every piece of lore that comes our way, only to

confront those pieces with our own alternatives. Identifying a piece of lore demystifies it as

subject to critique by both teacher and student. Why do some of us arrange our chairs and sit in a

talking circle? Does it make us better teachers/learners? Or is just something we did/saw that we

thought would be neat to try? Lore may inform many young teachers as they seek to gain their

footing in the classroom, but it makes a poor substitute for reasoned, reflective, actionable

theory. As teachers, part of our responsibility to our students involves sifting through the ever-

growing mountains of lore to discern what has a place in our classrooms (and in turn, their lives)

from a myth only denigrating their abilities and contributing to their often perfectly legitimate

disdain for school.

Y Shouldn’t I Believe X?:

There are obviously a variety of ways to assess myths to determine their validity or test

the waters with a piece of lore. Elbow gives us two: the Doubting Game and the Believing

Game. Given the fixation educational policy and its makers have for science and math, most of

us are well versed in the Doubting Game. Elbow tells us this game “seeks truth…by seeking

error. Doubting an assertion is the best way to find the error in it. You must assume it is untrue if

you want to find its weakness. The truer it seems, the harder you have to doubt it” (Elbow 148).
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In the language of mathematics, “Assume the statement is untrue.” Elbow proposes we pit the

idea against itself:

You can also doubt better by getting the assertions to battle each other and thus do some of the
work: They are in a relationship of conflict, and by getting them to wrestle each other, you can
utilize some of their energy and cleverness for ferreting weakness. (underlines added)

Note Elbow’s rhetoric. Doubting in this way requires an aggressive, impersonal logic, something

we see reflected in academic discourse. In making the case for that particular discourse,

Bartholomae asserts that writing is generally “an act of aggression” (8). In critiquing one

student’s work, he observes academic discourse’s ability to come “through the writer and not

from the writer,” portraying an academy devoid of diverse styles (6). When we’re playing the

Doubting Game, we must refuse the idea under investigation its potential merit. We’ve already,

at least to an extent, made up our minds that it is untrue.

Take for example Krause’s experiment with blogging. Back in 2004, blogs (“web logs”)

had just broken out as the technological fad. Although there wasn’t much scholarship or research

on blogs, plenty of scholars were trying it in their study and teaching. Because blogging had

become so widespread so quickly (“age of the Internet” and all that), it quickly became part of

the lore for many in composition studies. Blackmon used blogs as “part of the class discussion;”

Ferdig and Trammel claimed blogs allowed students to “share diverse perspectives with readers

in and outside of the classroom;” Walker even went so far as to suggest the blog as a means to

“network literacy” (326). All these visions of this technology’s potential called on Krause to join

the trend and launch blogs his own classes off into the blogosphere. If he would’ve played Doubt

with these claims and attempts, he could’ve easily dismissed them as patently untrue or harmful.

There are several arguments that permit this dismissal. One is that the Internet and other

technologies devalue the act of writing. This logic seems to run on an economic view of writing:

students can write more easily with keyboards than with pencils, easier writing creates more text
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(or the same amount of text much more quickly), creating more texts makes typed words more

common, the value of these words depreciates. Another line of attack argues that blogs, as from

the Internet, are too riddled with complications to be of any pedagogical value. Computers crash,

filters go berserk, teachers have to take time out of their busy lives to learn how to avert (or

manage) the inevitable crises that come from adopting this technology into their classes. Some

students may not have computer access. Some parents may have privacy concerns. Some

students may use the public forum as an invitation to behave (blog) inappropriately and could

actually damage the flow/integrity/relationships of the class if they post something too

controversial/disagreeable/vulgar. I’m sure readers have started adding items of their own to the

list of concerns. Point being, blogs are just too much trouble. It’s much safer to just keep putting

pen to paper. After playing this game, we see it’s much better for a teacher to keep a cool head

and stay grounded than to venture into the blogosphere.

In Doubt, we may poke holes in the idea, mock it, even belittle it, but we absolutely

cannot believe it. That’s a different game altogether.

We call that other game Believing. This one requires its players to refrain from doubt and

“[b]elieve all the assertions” (148). In mathematical language, “Assume the statement is true.”

Elbow asks us to practice “a kind of belief—serious, powerful, and a genuine giving of the self—

that…is possible to give even to hateful or absurd assertions” (149). He does not call us to act on

those assertions, only to entertain them. We’re humoring even the most humorous of follies.

We’re not aided by the logic of aggression, but by metaphor and comparison, by creating rather

than destroying. We’re to “climb inside and walk around” the logics of the assertion, as if we

might actually stay a while (149). This sort of thinking allows us the experience of the

proposition. Let’s take the same example of Krause’s attempt at blogging.

By attempting a blog in his teaching, Krause shows at that he did indeed believe that they
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had some pedagogical value. He used it in a graduate seminar called “Rhetoric on the Culture of

Cyberspace” as a means of inspiring “collaborative writing.” The blog itself was a small portion

of the class and Krause even alerted students to its “experimental” status at the beginning of the

course (327). The class, according to Krause’s standards, underutilized their opportunity to write

and communicate through this particular medium. Disappointed by their (lack of) efforts, he

even goes so far as to call his trial a “failure” (328). He reflects on discussions with students who

said they wouldn’t “just want to write” given merely the opportunity, but that some sort of

motivation would have to serve as precondition to their participation. General student

unwillingness to post served as a contradiction in his admittedly idealistic thinking that he could

easily set up a class environment “where students can ‘learn’ instead of being ‘taught.’” (329).

(This sort of thinking makes up a large part of critical and feminist pedagogy’s attempts at

student empowerment and constructivist thought at large.)

It wasn’t until a student of Krause’s utilized the class’s listserv, a facet many might doubt

out of serious consideration as “outdated,” that Krause was able to really experience the power of

the Believing game. The discussion ensuing from the listserv proved far more collaborative than

the blog had ever been (332). As it turned out, the e-mail (originally seen as a private, simple

matter) and blog (public and rife with possibility) switched places. Blogs since deemed spaces

for individual work and e-mails means of collaboration, Krause arrives at a new system, “If you

have a piece of writing that you want to ‘deliver’…put it on a blog. If you have something to

say…put it on a mailing list” (333). He devises some alternative uses for blogging but ironically,

these uses align it more with the printed books and journals than with the technology email. Had

he not played the Believing game, he may still be ascribing to the myths of blogs as inherently

collaborative, listservs as obsolete, and students as innately motivated participants in his

assignments. But he did play. And in the process, he became more critical of his options, but his
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critique allowed him to consider new possibilities for his practice.

In the words of Foucault, “The only valid tribute to [some thought] is precisely to use it,

to deform, to make it groan and protest” (54). Perhaps while we’re “on the inside” of an idea,

we’ll find its flaws and shortcomings. Many times it is not until we assume an idea’s truth that

we can discover these flaws. In which case, an experimental assumption of its truth enables us to

dispose of that myth even more effectively.

Of course, there are some fears surrounding the Believing game, myths that certain

factions like to perpetuate to keep people from playing along. One critique, solipsism, comes

primarily from traditionalists. Arguers from this perspective see players inhabiting every form of

logic that comes their way (“trying it on for size”) and fear the very idea of truth slipping away.

Not able to discern any consistent center, they assume the game only functions to allow us to

believe our own truths, destroying the idea of reasoning and external logics and so they refuse to

play. To those who share this concern, Elbow defends the Believing game as a tool for “breaking

out of solipsism” (181). When we force ourselves to endure the reasoning of others, we can add

their beliefs to a list of experiences we’ve undergone. Practicing a variety of logics marks a stark

contrast from what he asserts to be the solipsism of Doubt, whose prejudice isolates its thinkers

to only what they can think of themselves. These abusers of Doubt refuse to entertain an idea

unless they’ve already mounted a rebuttal for it, confining themselves to their own devices.

Another fear, groupthink, comes more from the Left. The concern here is that Believers,

logically defenseless, will find themselves so convinced by the ideas they entertain that they’ll

slip into an unquestioning belief. Quite the contrary, remarks Elbow. He flips the argument to

suggest that Doubt, with its resistance to change, contributes more to groupthink than Belief ever

could (182). Finally Elbow handles a critique I make at times, credulity – a problem of

“insufficient ‘critical thinking.’” Concerns of credulity come about when we see a person who
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“has [already] heard of both X and Y and believes X when he shouldn’t” (183). Again, he

displaces the blame, but this time puts it with the player. In this case, the player has refused to

play the Believing game with both propositions. Credulity comes from a lack of play, not an

overindulgence of it.

All this is not to say that we should stop Doubting and commit ourselves solely to Belief.

These games cannot be dichotomized into entirely competing processes. The trouble comes

when we spend too much on either game. “Both games must be played well” in order to uncover

myths and find the truth we so desperately seek (163). Alone, they are “only halves” that need to

be combined to create a “full cycle of thinking” (190). I intend to challenge my students with

both, insisting that they find faults within a theory while encouraging them to tour its logical

structure. I embrace and attempt to mature my inner skeptic, but I’ve also learned that it’s

equally necessary to (if not permanently, then at least for a time) accept a claim on its own terms.

Teacher as Deconstruction Worker:

Framing critique in terms Doubting and Believing games may prove extremely helpful

for some. However I won’t delude myself into thinking the games will work for everyone. We

each need to experiment with our own methods of critique to find what allows us to work most

effectively at our own personal praxes. Deconstruction, possibly an extension of the Doubting

and Believing games, actually possesses great potential in the formation of such a praxis. It

started as a form of literary criticism in which readers could “find the cracks” in the text, turning

what seemed like a simple interpretation on its ear (Rabinowitz 235). Whereas New Criticism

(still the technique of choice for many teachers) sought to prove one True interpretation of any

given text (with attention to punctuation, allusions, and so forth), deconstruction sought to turn

the text against itself. When a story provides binary oppositions such as light/dark, good/evil,
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writing/speaking, many critics point out the author’s privileging of one over the other. These

sorts of criticism assign value to one half of the binary (“good” over “evil”). Deconstruction, in

its rebellion against such neatly wrapped interpretations, reverses the privileged positions such

that “evil” could be preferred over “good.” In this reversal, we demonstrate what Derrida called

“differance.”

This word is a pun in French, combining the means of “differing” (as any set of items lined up in
space differ from one another) and “deferring” (as in putting off, delaying). What if (Derrida
wonders), what if we assume that the basis of human knowledge does not arise from self-identity,
presence, sameness, but rather from difference, from absence? It is the otherness of listeners and
readers that gets us talking and writing, after all. (Crowley 9)

This theory does not assign value. If anything, it allows us to appreciate the value of each

part of the whole. Through differance, we understand that meaning is derived from attention to

context. No part of a text (word, character, plot detail, etc.) can be understood if severed from the

whole, yet because we can never understand “the whole” (or those understandings change), we

can never come to an exhaustive interpretation. Instead of assigning value to the parts,

poststructuralism “destabilizes assumptions of interpretive validity and shifts emphasis to the

contexts in which meanings are produced” (Lather 125). That is, it strips the text of its authority

and places that authority on readers, the ultimate arbiters of a text’s meanings. Tobin proffers the

maxim “there are no limited texts, just limited readings” (129). As readers, we have the ability

not only to find the text’s blind spots, but to place ourselves inside the text, to inhabit it. From

this vantage point, our abilities as readers define the text, creating and re-creating it through our

own abilities.

Derrida originally wrote of deconstruction as a method of critiquing literature, but Lather

prefers to look at it as “a way of thinking…about the danger of what is powerful and useful”

(Spivak qtd. in Lather 120). Combining Freire’s poststructuralist notions of text (reading and

writing the world) and methods of literary criticism, we come to the point where “Pedagogy must
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itself be a text” (Ulmer qtd. in Lather 120). While applicable to literature, I have an alternative

purpose for deconstruction in mind – using it on (against?) pedagogy. If we’re to properly reflect

upon practice, we have to apply the same rigorous critique to ourselves that we apply to the texts

and practices of others: our colleagues’, our administrators’, our students’ parents’, and our

relationships to each of these people. J. Hillis Miller puts it more eloquently: “criticism is a

human activity which depends for its validity on never being at ease within a fixed ‘method.’ It

must constantly put its own grounds in question” (Crowley 22). Criteria for grading, “classroom

management” techniques, and relationships with the course material all function as places for

literary theory to find new texts. These theories can be ways of reading the classroom and

“[making] sense of pedagogical theory” (Tobin 132).

The New Critic’s assumption of one, all-encompassing, valid meaning of a text

undoubtedly informs his pedagogy just as any other theory with any other practice. What it leads

to is not (what the grader assumes to be) an authoritative reading of the text, but an authoritarian

one, authoritarian in that these readings impose meaning and objectivity where there is none to

be found. Thus the teacher forces student writing’s inherent incompletion to appear whole when,

in deconstruction, such a state is impossible – even for the teacher’s writing! Often when I write,

I add to the work’s incompletion by slashing and postponing ideas that I’d love to write about

but haven’t the time, means, or room to cover. I’ve had this feeling before and I know I’m not

the only one. The New Critical pedagogy does not suit those of us who have experienced the

gnawing frustration and regrettable relief of cutting a paper short to stay coherent to our

audience, maintain our focus on the issue at hand, or to meet a deadline.

Deconstructive pedagogy asserts, “knowledge is both dynamic and contextual,” opening

infinite possibilities for the struggle to become more fully human. For instance, “classroom

management” often functions on the principle of rewarding adherence to the teacher’s pre-
 Crane 17

determined rules and punishing resistance against those rules. From a traditional, New Critical

perspective, it is easy to chalk these instances of resistance up to the student’s failure to meet

some sort of ideal of a “good” student. However, Giroux encourages us to look at resistance as

“an opportunity to investigate the political and cultural conditions that warrant such resistance”

(Literacy 13). I don’t mean to say that we fail to address the student’s “misbehavior.” In fact, just

the opposite (sensing a theme here?): we interrogate the behavior and attempt to place it in a

context that demystifies it. To what was the student’s behavior a response? What behaviors of

the teacher may have contributed to that resistance? Do student’s actions speak to something

outside the discourse of the classroom? Outside the discourse of school? How does a teacher

respond to the student’s actions without coming across as tyrannical or meeting others’

expectations of oppressive schooling?

When engaging in praxis, it is vital to keep our pedagogy open to criticism. Hillocks

observes some teachers who embody this openness. He notes these teachers’ “continuing

evaluation of his or her moves in terms of their results, their conformity with earlier goals and

moves, and new problems that arise.” He adds, “each ensuing move by the teacher is made in a

new context brought by the interaction of the accumulation of teacher moves in combination

with student responses” (128). Especially in deconstruction, this sort of evaluation means a

curiosity and willingness to disturb what feels comfortable. Gore offers the Foucauldian maxim

that “nothing is innocent” (qtd. in Lather 129). This includes our actions and words as teachers,

but also our students’ voices. Despite any ascriptions to the myth of human objectivity (or that of

student candor), we must induce within ourselves a playful spirit that seeks to interrogate the

voices we hear, no matter how convincing they sound.

This spirit of skepticism brings our attention to a rather fascinating concept, what Neel

calls “anti-writing.” In this practice, students

 Crane 18

generate infinite numbers of texts that proclaim themselves as correct syntax, patterns of
arrangement, and categories such as “exposition”…they can avoid writing altogether by providing
shells with no interior: spelling, punctuation, sentences, paragraphs, structure, and coherence that
are nothing but spelling, punctuation, sentences, paragraphs, structure and coherence. (qtd. in
Crowley 45)

This is the medium chosen by those who can speak in the voice of academic discourse, but have

nothing to say. And while it’s not truly writing, it is evidence of “reading” the teacher (if not the

material he assigns). To clarify, I would put anti-writing in the same realm as Shor’s “faux

learning” as a performed activity that allows students to pay just enough attention to manipulate

the teacher for a better grade (51). I’ve anti-written plenty of times and can say that, like any

discourse, it is a skill unto itself. The results are horrific, especially when done correctly, but it

accomplishes a task that many students see as more desirable (or just more possible) than

engaging in rigorous critique.

“Learning to teach,” writes Tobin “is a matter of learning to read the classroom and write

the self” (130). Reading anti-writing in this fashion (as in the world, not the actual words

students write to “get by”) renders it a rather explainable phenomenon. For one, many students

learn to equate anti-writing with actual writing when they’re practicing for standardized tests

such as the SAT’s or PSSA’s. Many teachers maintain a hyper-focus on these tests and, as a

result, their classrooms ignore other forms of writing that deviate from the five-paragraph essay.

If this is the form of writing the teacher takes most seriously, it follows that students

unaccustomed to writing will treat this as the “genre” their writing must take.1 In other

classrooms, we might explain anti-writing with “the traditional notion that composition prepares

students for writing in the ‘real world’ [which] pretends that classroom writing is ‘practice’ or

some future ‘real writing’” (Crowley 47). Students treat their writing like it doesn’t matter

because their teachers often assume it doesn’t. A teacher’s appreciation of lack of meaning in

1
I use quotation marks around “genre” not to ignore the value of the five-paragraph essay, but to question the myth
of “genre” and what it actually means for asking students to write.
 Crane 19

texts of formal study does not prohibit them from approaching student work with a flair for New

Criticism. In Tobin’s words, “Everything Is a Text, But This is a Student Essay” (10). As a result

of teacherly intolerance for ambiguity, students have no motivation because the purpose of their

writing is tied to the future, an abstraction. Separation of school from the “real world” mystifies

the act of writing as something that will eventually have relevance, not as something that can

carry concrete weight in the students’ lives now. This mystification of the power of writing

cultivates the myth of literacy (and thus democratic agency) as something for adults, not for

children - not for them.

Adults engage in discourses that extend beyond their immediate communities. They read

their daily papers as they sip their coffee, write their bill collectors as the lights threaten to fall

into a state permanent flicker, and converse with people who can “get things done.” Students

write in their classrooms and the writing…stays there. The “dissemination of classroom writing

into the discourse of the school or larger community” holds great potential as a motivating factor

for students, but doesn’t seem to be nearly as common as one would expect (Crowley 38). Or,

when it does happen, it’s still treated as something that is but preparation for “real” attempts at

communication across discourses, never as a serious source of engagement.

I recall my ninth-grade Civics class, in which my classmates and I had to write individual

letters to our congressman. While I appreciate my teacher’s effort at trying to take our writing

outside the boundaries of his classroom, I can’t help but wonder what a charade the whole

process was. I was 14, still an election cycle away from being able to vote. My congressman

wasn’t accountable to me, only to my parents (and my step-dad doesn’t even vote). What

motivation did he have to read my letter? It’s not like he cared that I disagreed with his policy on

gun control. What could I have hoped to accomplish as one letter in a stack of 30 other listless

attempts at class participation? Surely this man didn’t plan to shift his entire platform at the
 Crane 20

whim of a series of letters from Red Land High School. Couldn’t our efforts have been better put

to use writing our school board or student council? They’re the people who decided what

happened to us. Where was the relevance?

In a writing class governed by deconstructive attitudes…teachers would sensitize their students to

the institutional realities in which they write, and they would treat the institutional situation as a
“real-world” one where students are expected to learn a special brand of writing—academic
discourse. And, since knowledge itself is always in flux, and since preferred knowledge is always
inscribed by institutional ideology that governs their work: why “academic discourse” is preferred
in school to whatever discourse(s) the students bring to school with them; why students might
want to learn it (or not); why teachers are invested with institutional authority; why they are
expected to give grades; how this constraint both interferes with, and encourages, the writing
process. (Crowley 47)

This sort of work – questioning the institutions, emphasizing students’ immediate

concerns, carrying those concerns outside classroom boundaries – speaks to the original goals of

Freire’s critical pedagogy while simultaneously encapsulating the ambitions of deconstructive

pedagogy.

…[A] critical pedagogy must take seriously the articulation of a morality that posits a language of
public life, emancipatory community, and individual and social commitment. Students need to be
introduced to a language of empowerment and radical ethics that permits them to think about how
community life should be constructed around a project of possibility. (Literacy 21)

A deconstructive pedagogy would engage students with issues that concern them directly, socially,
and politically, and would direct the resulting discourses into the communities where such things
matter: city or tribal council meetings, neighborhood groups, sorority meetings, school board
meetings, landlords’ associations, planning authorities, parents’ groups, and the like. (Crowley 38)

At this point, I find it necessary to reflect. What exactly am I asking for here? If the teacher is no

longer the center of the pedagogy (a notion at the heart of radical pedagogies) and the students’

multiplicity prevents them from creating a stable center, then where do we focus our efforts?

Where’s the center? What arises out of all this is a need to place not teacher “expertise,” nor

student “empowerment,” but conflict at the center of pedagogy: conflict between the teacher’s

expertise of the material and the student’s construction of it, conflict across student

constructions, conflict within a teacher as to how to (or even whether to) grade a particular

assignment, conflict among student pieces regarding a common topic, conflict behind a student’s
 Crane 21

tone when writing for particular audiences. All these discrepancies do not “hold the class back.”

They are not ailments to be remedied. Such diagnoses come from those who insist that student-

written syllabi are a “waste of time.” These conflicts are causes for celebration. They provide

endless material for study and bring the students into the learning process in a revolutionary way,

not as passive objects of study, but as co-authors of the pedagogy. Confronting conflict without

an obligation to resolve or reduce acknowledges the complexities already at work in our lives. To

reiterate Freire’s sentiment, “We cannot exist outside an interplay of tensions.” That interplay

seems to me as permanent a center as we’re ever going to find.

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 Crane 22

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Freire, Paulo. Education for Critical Consciousness. London: Continuum, 2008. Print.

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