Adding voices to the Echo Chamber

As I continuing toying with assignment ideas that reflect a new approach to critical pedagogy, I find myself enamored with a classic rhetorical assignment, arguing a different point of view. It's relevancy to my dissertation, though, depends on the validity of the echo chamber effect. The echo chamber effect is the concept that in the hyper nich-ified and targeted world of Internet news and blogs that people only read information that reinforces their own beliefs. However, recent studies indicate that Internet surfing and social media sites lead to a wider exposure to a variety of viewpoints.

One of the landmark studies focuses on Facebook. Scholars from the University of Michigan discovered that people shared more links from "friends" they have weak ties with than with "friends" they had strong ties with. While they shared with higher frequency links from strong ties, cumulatively more links were shared from weak ties. They define strong ties as the friends whose pictures you comment on, who you message privately, etc. However, they don't establish that weak Facebook ties automatically mean that these individuals hold different values or viewpoints. My weakest ties are professional "friends." I don't comment on pictures of their kids or message them about getting together for dinner, but I am much more interested in the links they post than those of many of my close friends. So until they finish their more nuanced study on the sharing of political stories, I remain skeptical.

In Future Perfect, Steven Johnson cites another study by two University of Chicago business professors, who discovered the echo chamber effect was only a shade more significant for web users than traditional consumers of newspapers and TV news. He quotes David Brooks, who states, "This study suggests that Internet users are a bunch of ideological Jack Kerouacs. They're not burrowing down into comforting nests. They're cruising far and wide, looking for adventure, information, combat and arousal" (103). While Johnson diminishes the significance of the echo chamber effect, he does still stress the importance of diverse viewpoints when it comes to problem-solving. Johnson uses the term diversity broadly: "we are smarter as a society--more innovative and flexible in our thinking--when diverse perspectives collaborate...the emphasis on diversity does not revolve exclusively around the multicultural diversity of race or gender; it's as much about professional, economic, and intellectual diversity as it is about identity politics" (99). So what remains as in the next week and a half of class planning is how exactly I will have students capitalize on "the network" to grow as writers and thinkers. I do like the idea of group projects, but they are usually a hard sell and can limit students from pursuing topics that they are more interested in. Will this semester be the one where I finally master the online group project? Stay tuned...

Step One: Diagnostic

I am entering my inaugural semester of the qualitative research. It begins with a diagnostic essay, diagnosing how and in what ways students feel empowered.

As we begin the semester, it is important for me to gauge where we are as writers and to identify our individual needs. That is the purpose of a "diagnostic essay." It won't be graded -- you will simply receive credit for fulfilling the assignment.

The Writing Prompt:
As students, we often think about education in terms of our future careers, especially in today's economy. However, education is also thought of as being integral to creating engaged and knowledgeable citizens who will shape our culture and foster democracy. Composition, a skills based class, allows me to engage students civically and culturally, while giving them the skills necessary to succeed in the classes of their discipline and become marketable in today's economy. My question to you is this: How can you as an individual shape our culture and affect our political landscape?

Writing the Essay:

When beginning this essay, you could explain how you live a conscientious life, how constraints of money and time affect your ability to be a positive force in the universe, or your general opinions about American culture and politics.

Your thesis could be about what you do to create a better world, what you would like to do and the obstacles you face, or what you would like to see changed.

The body of your paragraph should explain your abilities and constraints in regards to influencing cultural and the political landscape.

The conclusion should state or reiterate future goals or plans.

All and all this should be at least two pages.

Again, don't stress. This won't be graded.

Reworking Chapter One Introduction

Teaching is often referred to as a "calling," a spiritual pull, a desire to serve. And perhaps in no discipline is this more true than English, at least according to the narratives presented in pop culture. Whether it be Mr. Keating inspiring young prep school adolescents to break convention or Mrs. Grunewald giving hope to underprivileged minority teens outside of Los Angeles, the English teacher is revered as reaching students at a more personal level to help them realize their potential and take hold of their destiny. When I began a public relations job at a liberal arts college, these archetypes were affirmed by the reverent treatment of the tweed jacketed professors (literally, yes) strolling around campus with their coffee mugs in hand. I felt that while I was assigned to write ego-boosting profiles of college donors they were the ones changing students' lives in a more hands-on manner, presenting them with knowledge about life and encouraging their future directions. 

Education has always been seen as having transformative powers. Aristotle believed that through education and the power of reasoning students could become virtuous and happy citizens who would create politically idyllic societies, a belief echoed during the Age of Enlightenment. Dewey believed education could foster Democracy. The Frankfurt School believed the application of critical theory could expose oppressive powers and institutions.  Freire believed literacy would politically and economically empower Brazilian peasants.  For me, education gave me choices. It allowed me to choose how to make a living, what spiritual philosophy to guide me, and where to call home. It was not my initial degree that empowered me, but the ability to learn and create change for myself.

When I obtained my first "real" job after college, I remember the pride I had moving into my first place on my own and telling my parents I would be making $36,000 a year (2001). If I hadn't begun taking graduate level writing and literature classes out of sheer boredom , I might have been satisfied with this, as I was unable to imagine more for myself. Entering college again, I became swept up with the grand narrative of education that began in Ancient Greece and, for me, ended with Paulo Freire. Having left my salary and benefits to become an impoverished graduate student, I came into the field with a higher purpose in mind and gravitated immediately towards social epistemic rhetoric (Berlin) and critical pedagogy. Both made complete sense to me as I reflected on my own struggles as a first generation college student, leaving a working class agricultural life to sit in classrooms where I clearly didn't fit in. My professors lectured to me, sometimes in small rooms, other times in large theaters. I did not find my own voice or place in a classroom until I began taking creative writing classes. All my experiences confirmed what James Berlin and Ira Shor argued about the formation and role of ideologies and the power of language.

As I reflect on how I came here, I realize the journey was as much emotional as it was intellectual. And perhaps that is the problem. We all bring our own baggage to the classroom, students and instructors alike. Within this reality, I soon realized the limitations of theory and my own pedagogy, as every classroom is a collection of individual journeys which affect the reception and success of the carefully constructed activities. Still, I believe in the goals of critical pedagogy, the value of teaching to empower students and foster civic engagement. At the heart of this project is discovering critical practices that work best with my specific interests and skill set in new media and with the current issues affecting the students at the community college where I teach.

A quick glance at the number of references to "critical pedagogy" in recent composition and pedagogical publications might suggest that the field remains as strong as during its "heyday" in the early nineties. For instance, searching for the term critical pedagogy in relevant literature published between 2006-2009[n1]  and during critical pedagogy's peak years of 1991-1994—a time that the saw the publication of key texts in the field such as Ira Shor's Empowering Education: Critical Teaching for Social Change (1992), bell hooks' Teaching to Transgress (1994), and Henry Giroux's Living Dangerously (1993), and when popular anthologies in Composition studies carried such titles as Composition and Resistance (1991)—the number of publications in key discipline journals has remained steady [1]. However, if you examine the context of such mentions, a different picture emerges. Beginning in the late-nineties and intensifying over the next decade, discussion of critical pedagogy has become increasingly negative. Somewhat ironically, critical pedagogy, which was driven by the critical scrutiny of dominant educational practices and classroom politics, has now itself become a target of critique, being variously indicted as intellectually naive, impractical, or a symptom of the same negative institutional forces it was designed to combat.

Though efficacy of critical and cultural studies has been called into question over the past decade, composition's intersections with the same remain highly valued for moving the field past the stigma of being a "service" discipline. As the title of Gary Olsen's 2002 anthology Rhetoric and Composition as Intellectual Work indicates, there remains a genuine need, if not anxiety, to define the rigor and scholarly validity of Composition Studies. Egos aside, most professors are unwilling to give up their goals of instilling critical literacy and fostering civic engagement in the classroom. If anything, the objectives of critical pedagogy are more relevant now than ever. However, what may no longer be relevant is how these objectives are situated within reactionary rhetoric against the Fordist factory, mainstream mass media, and other increasingly moribund institutional forces. The heart of the diagnostic portion of my dissertation will focus on how critical pedagogy's conception of three key vectors - labor, politics, and literacy -- have undergone large transformations in the relatively short amount of time from critical pedagogy's 1980's emergence to the present moment. Rethinking these categories, I will argue, is necessary for any attempt to reimagine a critical pedagogical praxis that does justice to the forms of power,  politics, and education today.

            Before delving into the many cultural, economical, and philosophical shifts that have taken place over the last two decades due to the collapse of the factory and the rise of the information society, I would like to focus on what is at stake with the waning interest in critical pedagogy. Critical pedagogy offers a unique marriage between economical considerations and affective aspirations, such as hope. It is both theoretically complex and student centered. It's dualist nature ensures that it is a living pedagogy, always being contested and remade.

            When it comes to the future of critical pedagogy, in the words of Machiavelli, "Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past." In this first chapter, I will explore the genealogy of critical pedagogy and how it became a dominant force in composition classrooms in the 80s and 90s. While there are divergent paths within critical pedagogy, as Jennifer Gore points on in The Struggle for Pedagogies -- one being a theoretical and political vision designed to enable teachers as intellectuals (Giroux, McLaren) and the other being context specific classroom practices (Freire, Shor), all the core theorists of critical pedagogy have one common interest -- to expose inequalities and to empower marginalized and oppressed populations to change their circumstances.

While many other justifiable starting points exists, I will begin my genealogy with John Dewey. Not only does his work explore both critique and empowerment, both economics and affective experiences, his work is arguably one of the most enduring, getting new life in the hands-on new media era.

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