Essays: March 2008 Archive Page

The New Yorker discusses the fate of print news:

Philip Meyer, in his book "The Vanishing Newspaper" (2004), predicts that the final copy of the final newspaper will appear on somebody's doorstep one day in 2043. It may be unkind to point out that all these parlous trends coincide with the opening, this spring, of the $450-million Newseum, in Washington, D.C., but, more and more, what Bill Keller calls "that lovable old-fashioned bundle of ink and cellulose" is starting to feel like an artifact ready for display under glass.

Taking its place, of course, is the Internet, which is about to pass newspapers as a source of political news for American readers. For young people, and for the most politically engaged, it has already done so. As early as May, 2004, newspapers had become the least preferred source for news among younger people. According to "Abandoning the News," published by the Carnegie Corporation, thirty-nine per cent of respondents under the age of thirty-five told researchers that they expected to use the Internet in the future for news purposes; just eight per cent said that they would rely on a newspaper. It is a point of ironic injustice, perhaps, that when a reader surfs the Web in search of political news he frequently ends up at a site that is merely aggregating journalistic work that originated in a newspaper, but that fact is not likely to save any newspaper jobs or increase papers' stock valuation.

The Times Online has a story about children's non-profits that are seeking to ban potential employers from checking social profile websites as part of the job application process. I would agree that what a child posts at age 14 is probably not relevant to a job he or she might want to get at age 22. Nevertheless, I regularly remind my students to be careful of what they publish (and, sadly, what your friends publish).

"When young people put up their personal profiles they are not thinking about job or university applications. Typically, they are simply talking to their mates. Employers or admissions tutors who delve into these places are being highly and inappropriately intrusive. It's a bit like looking at someone's diary," Mr Carr told The Times.

"A world where even a 14-year-old has to think twice before posting an adolescent poem suddenly looks very unappealing and increases the pressure on children and young people to conform to a set of tightly focused adult norms."

The children's charities are seeking clarification on whether discrimination legislation could be used to stop companies from using social networking sites for recruitment purposes.

So I'm sitting at Julie's place, right, having some rather delicious cherry M&Ms (which my momma could alphabetize in her belly!), when she pops up this blog by Dennis Jerz wherein I spy this quote, in response to Jeff Rice:

So students who can only remix don't get practice thinking critically about culture -- and it's certainly possible to recognize remix culture and design assignments that ask them to think critically about it, without rejecting it out of hand as plagiarism.

I hate to take up the position of the Jeopardy judge and simply say "bzzzzzz, wrong!" but... that's just wrong.

And I don't mean to hurl an insult at Dr. Jerz, but... this is a case of looking in at something from the outside (I would assume, based on the admission later in the post that Jerz knows little about music) attempting to critique something without ever getting the insider's perspective.

I would argue the exact opposite of the first portion of the quote (before the dash). But let's also be realistic; if Jerz has encountered, or thinks he will encounter, a student who can only remix, he's failed to keep track of public high schools in America.

Where to start with this one?  The "about" page says "Who am I? I'm just a guy. I've got a story like everyone."   The author claims to be "someone who spent four years teaching--and three prior to that as a TA/writing tutor--at an open admissions college" but that doesn't really help me figure out whether I am writing to a grad student who is struggling to figure out the professional landscape, a very bright undergraduate who could use some gentle instruction in tone and focus, or a professional college instructor who should know better.

Here is the comment I posted...

"that's just wrong."

Could you clarify what part of my statement you mean? Are you reacting against the part where I say "students who can only remix don't get practice thinking critically about culture," or the part where I say that it *is* possible to design remix assignments that ask them to think critically?

"And I don't mean to hurl an insult at Dr. Jerz, but..."

Let's have a conversation instead, shall we?

"he's failed to keep track of public high schools in America. Every student who makes it through that system with any success--meaning 95% of our trad students--will know how to write a five paragraph essay."

I regularly teach freshman who are fresh out of high school, and I know for a fact they can't all write a five-paragraph essay -- because if they could, they would not be in my "Basic Composition" class, they would all be in "Seminar in Thinking and Writing" (I think about a third of our students skip Basic Comp, not 95%). Perhaps the public schools where you are are much better than those where I am, or perhaps we simply disagree over what level of writing counts as acceptable. Regardless, I applaud any effort to break students out of the high-school five-paragraph-essay box, and I won't dismiss your conclusions as "wrong" simply because the experiences that inform them differ from mine.  I will, instead, ask you to clarify.

For the record, here is the thesis of my blog entry:

"It's true that one's own ideas only come after one has filtered through many other ideas. I think the problem I see in the classroom is that students find it difficult to trace details back to the source."

And here is the conclusion:

"I certainly don't feel that students should never, ever remix -- but if we graduate students who can ONLY remix, and have never been forced to trace an idea back to its source and critique its validity, but instead settle for riffing on it and referencing "www.somehomepage.com" as one of a handful of "Works Consulted," then we are doing them -- and our culture at large -- a great disservice."

Your defense of remix culture is a very good example of the thinking that makes me shake my head. I am not writing against remix; I am writing about a willingness to settle for the creative expressions of personal reactions to a text, without demonstrating the ability and willingness to explore those ideas more fully.

Before I go any farther, let me first state that I recognize that a blog entry is not the same thing as an academic paper. The rhetoric of blogs is rougher, and sometimes the invitation to rumble is what motivates us to post our ideas online.

And I also note that in the remix culture, creating and publishing that initial response can take on the role of the discovery draft, sparking conversations that help the student develop a more accurate, more thorough, more nuanced understanding of an issue.

I'm responding because "What's with the Remix Disrespect" does not merely engage with my ideas; it makes several global statements about my competence, both directly and implicitly, which I find personally distressing. This entry presumes to judge my whole career based on what I wrote in this single blog entry from 2004. It assumes a superior rhetorical stance -- first dismissing the idea of being a game-show judge, then promptly performing exactly that role; then rejecting the idea of hurling an insult, and promptly doing just that.

I find it interesting that in one passage where, instead of taking on the persona of an expert, I prefaced a statement about music by citing my source (since I can't rely on personal knowledge of what classical composers do when they quote each other), that detail surfaces in your blog as evidence of the claim that I am a cultural outsider who can't understand remix culture (which, as you know, involves far more than music).

So... my critique of the remix culture lies specifically in the convention that assumes the author's personal expression of reactions can substitute for investigating the issue.

If you would like to get a greater understanding of my attitude towards the remix culture, I invite you to search my blog for terms such as "remix," "open source," or "modding." I invite you to sample my own remix of Teletubbies and gothic poetry) or some of my found poetry exercises (poems comprised of lines taken from student blogs), or this blogger's account of a 2007 CCCC panel I co-organized, "When Student Experts Remix the Discipline: New Media in the Composition Classroom," or some of my recent articles on the blogosphere, video game history. You might also look at the websites for the courses I teach in Video Game Culture and Theory, or "The History and Future of the Book" or the 400-level studio course I teach in "New Media Projects," or the student work that you'll find via links on those sites.

While your entry refers to "a terrible fear of plagiarism," please note that my blog entry only mentions plagiarism once, in a sentence stating that remix is *not* the same thing as plagiarism -- thus, my only reference to plagiarism *agrees* with your position.

Were I writing this entry today, after four more years of watching the impact of the remix culture, I would not have written "students who can only remix don't get practice thinking critically about culture." I would have said something about how a student who remixes *well* has to understand the raw material, so a good course built around remix will have to include analysis and fact-checking.

They're definitely stressed. They're sleep-deprived. They may be furious (at me!).  But they're still riding the intellectual buzz that comes from finishing a research paper.

I love what happens in the classroom on the day a major assignment's due.  Students come to class after having wrestled a mess of free-write drafts and marginalia and Post-It-Notalia into some semblance of order.  In pursuit of evidence to support their thesis, they've turned to sources that aren't on the reading list, so their comments during class discussions are opportunities for them to introduce new knowledge, rather than a performance for my benefit. 

A similar thing happens in lit surveys on the day of a scheduled quiz. Because the students have spent some time re-reading and reflecting, they've noticed connections they didn't see when they were just trying to mow through the required number of pages.  The part of the class time that's not devoted to the quiz always seems a little livelier.  Yet I find reading quizzes to be confrontational and artificial. Of course, journalism students students do need practice writing under pressure, and there are courses in which the content is so voluminous and complex that regular quizzes can be an important tool for filtering and categorizing. 

So maybe quizzes are a necessary evil, in order to generate that quiz-day discussion buzz... but a quiz doesn't really teach... it doesn't really let me assess much besides quiz-taking ability... a quiz takes time away from discussion (which is what really matters in a seminar). An a quiz adds an artificial time constraint that's antithetical to everything we tell our students about how to read and write critically.  Oh... and I really hate grading quizzes... the students haven't had the time to put much soul into their work, and because they've learned the value of drafting and revising, they know they'd have been able to make their point more convincingly if they'd only had more time.  When I take the time to write prompts that will generate short answers that I'd actually be interested in reading, the short quizzes turn into "quizzams" (a word I use in order to signal to my students that they'll have to think, rather than regurgitate). 

There are other ways to check to make sure students are doing the readings... you can dictate a very general question and have them supply specific examples in a free-write for a few minutes. (The ones who didn't do the reading will spend most of the time flipping through the book -- if they brought it with them.) 

Of course, there are also the students who stay up all night to finish their paper, but are too tired to come to class.  I value the "post-paper buzz" so much that I have in the past added an explicit penalty to a major assignment grade, for students who skipped class on the day the assignment is due.  (That turned out to be more trouble than it was worth... now I just factor the student's decision into their overall class participation grade.)

By the time they've submitted their final draft, I've already seen at least the thesis paragraph and a few pages of quotes, so I can call on students who've already thought in depth about whatever sub-topic gets raised in the discussion.  More hands go up while I'm talking, and more heads nod when a peer makes a good connection. Students expecting to be quizzed come in braced for the unknown. That energy can be put to good use in a pre-quiz review session, but I don't get the idea that the effect is lasting.  On the other hand, students who come to class having just finished a research paper have a sense of accomplishment.

Lindsay Waters, Inside Higher Ed:

[T]he first step to re-establishing the essay as the standard in humanistic writing is to reinvigorate the sentences we write, so that, when one reads an essay, one feels it. One feels it the way one tastes -- and here I'm going global -- a good curry. It really sets you back. Or maybe forward. Style, maniera, modo is what we readers demand. The humanists of the Renaissance knew the Romans had the ability to put sentences that had concinnitas, but that their ancestors in what we call the Middle Ages had lost that ability. When the Ancients constructed the Arch of Constantine, it stayed together for centuries, even though neglected. Concinnity -- what a splendid word!

It seems to me that when bad styling of sentences became accepted, we got used to it. We compensated for the lack of quality and impact of the sentences that people wrote as evidence of their scholarly abilities by asking them for more of them in the hopes we could get the same buzz going that we used to get from fewer sentences. Last year I ran a panel at the Modern Language Association on "Slow Reading," and today I'm advocating slow writing. Editors are in the position to make this change take place.

Great satire from The Onion.

[W]hat kind of pathetic loser would actually enjoy something that's so incredibly not among my personal preferences? Not me, that's for sure.

Maybe my standards are too high, but if you like any of the hundreds upon hundreds of things that are too multifaceted for my attention span, you should have your head examined, weirdo.

And don't even get me started on complex and sophisticated notions I can't possibly wrap my head around. That stuff makes me want to puke. Just knowing there are people out there who like--actually like--interacting with concepts that overwhelm my feeble consciousness makes me embarrassed to be an American. I don't like it in our homes, I don't like it in our schools, I don't like it outside of my comfort zone--well, I just plain don't like it. And if that makes me closed-minded, well, then I guess I'll have to dismiss that accusation outright in order to avoid being introspective even for a moment.