Feb. 21

This week’s readings focus on written work. There were three articles, one about a narrow-minded teacher, Barbara, who through her relationships with Carol and David, began to open the door to cultural understanding and move away from essentialist thinking and more into a critical analysis regarding her and her student’s stereotypical assumptions. She learned a lot over the course of the short article and she brings up an interesting point toward the end of the article. This point is: “…not all cultural or ethnic essentialisms are negative. Sometimes, essentialism is used strategically by the oppressed in order to contest oppression and empower themselves.” I find this interesting since I have not thought about essentialism in this way. Also, Barbara talks about becoming aware of how much of our cultural difference is politically implicated in order to overcome negative essentialism. I think that is something many people could benefit from. Watching the news and reading the newspaper from a critical standpoint could benefit everyone. I know too many people that take whatever they read or see on television at face value. This can be very dangerous especially when you consider cultural differences.

The second article I read focused on Japanese Culture constructed by Discourses. The article brings up a thought of extending knowledge and preserving knowledge as part of colonial construction of the other. The literature review from the article implies that Western culture is extending knowledge meaning that western cultures keep creating new knowledge and developing ideas through critical thinking whereas Asian cultures conserve knowledge from the past and are always behind the West. Thinking about this idea and after reading the rest of the article I know that you can point to many examples that are contrary to this colonial discourse.

One example is that of the American classrooms and my own experience is similar to what is discussed on page 18 of the article. Basically the point is that since the 80s American undergraduate students are not interested in thinking and just write down what their instructor tells them. I realize this is one extreme and that the “extending knowledge” idea is another extreme. I believe that Western culture is somewhere in the middle. I think that American educators wish to achieve this idea of extending knowledge and critical thinking but it is a process, not something that students automatically achieve. My principal is always checking and listening for student higher order thinking skills being exercised by teacher questioning. This is something we have to teach our students to do and practice every day. It isn’t automatic.

Going along with this, I have heard from people in education for many years that American students are behind Asian students. If we want our students to be able to compete for industry and jobs on a global scale our students needed to be pushed to achieve and think critically. On page 23 of the Kubota article it is stated that Japanese classrooms “promote self-expression in various subject areas through music, body movement, language, senses, and so on..” This description is a far cry from the colonial discourse of extending knowledge and preserving knowledge. From the description it sounds as though research has found that Japanese classrooms are set up for student success through exploration and creativity. Just what students need to become successful in today’s global job market. I think that this is what most US teachers strive to achieve too because it is just good teaching and benefits many students.

One of the important ideas from the third article by Connor I want to take away with me is to not be “discouraged by recent criticisms of contrastive rhetoric but to treat them with a balanced perspective.”

My question for this week is:

1. How do teachers use contrastive rhetoric in their classrooms when planning writing lessons? Do I use it as a basis for my planning unknowingly?