Author: jbock

I knew that I wasn’t going to like Stanley Fish’s article the second he praised Catholic schools. It told me that his arguments were going to be just like most of these schools in style; outdated and full of arrogance. As I read, I felt that my early analysis was pretty accurate.

One of the quotes that really stuck out to me was when he said “You’re not going to be able to change the world if you are not equipped with the tools that speak to its present condition. You don’t strike a blow against a power structure by making yourself vulnerable to its prejudices.” One of the first things that came to my mind when I read that was Sojourner Truth’s speech entitles “Ain’t I a Woman”:

“That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?”

I really just love this speech and find it to be one of the most powerful speeches against the intersection of sexism and racism. Yet Sojourner doesn’t use “correct” English. She says “ain’t” repeatedly. However this speech was so popular that people today still know it, because it speaks the truth. Does a grammatical error take away from a logical argument? If you are Fish, it just might.

Can you think of any other examples of ways that people have used “incorrect” English to a political end?

In the article “Living and Learning with New Media” there is a part where it talks about how teenagers often have to find ways around the restrictions placed upon the ways they can socialize. Some of the main ways that they do this is by socializing in places that generally aren’t sanctioned to socialize in and using technology to socialize. The article says “because these work-arounds and back channels take place in schools, homes, vehicles, and other contexts of young people’s everyday lives, teens become adept at maintaining a continuous presence, or co-presence, in multiple contexts.” What I found most interesting in this quote was the phrase “co-presence”. In terms of technology I couldn’t help but think that this phrase meant that you might have one presence in the real world and another presence online. If that was what that meant then teenagers and young people today have tons of presences. For example, I might be present in class but also texting in my group chat of best friends from home and snapchatting a person in another state and posting a picture onto facebook that all thousand something of my facebook friends can see. As technology has developed so that all my social media needs are in one place (my phone), having a continuous co-presence is the easiest thing in the world. As a college student there are much less restrictions on hanging out with friends but there are still some that exist; not having the same schedules, not going to the same schools and things like that, so these work-arounds and back channels become the only way to keep in touch with people that are impossible to see for reasons other than our parents telling us we can’t go out.

When I was reading the article about the Amish family for this week’s readings, I was very interested in the length the mother went to in order to find appropriate reading material for her children. She would only buy books from certain trusted stores and if she saw books anywhere else she would research them before bringing them into her house. And since reading is primarily a communal thing in their family, it is easy for the parents to control what their children read.

In my house, reading was primarily a private thing. Reading was what you did when you didn’t want to see or talk to other people. Reading was for alone time. I have an older brother so we had books in my house that were for kids a little older than me. If had run out of things to read I would go and look at our book shelf which had my books, my brother’s books and my dad’s books all mixed together. Only one time did my mother tell me that I wasn’t allowed to read a book, but it was too easy to sneak it so I read it anyway. I hadn’t been allowed to read it because it was about a high school freshman boy and his girlfriend and basically their budding sexuality. I was in about third or fourth grade and just thought the whole thing was weird. My mom found the book hidden under my bed but laughed instead of punishing me.

My experience with parental guidance from reading was the total opposite of this Amish family’s. There were all sorts of books in my house and once I started reading by myself pretty much anything was fair game whether my parents knew it or not. Because of this I was definitely exposed to things earlier than a lot of my friends who didn’t read as much as I did, some of which was good and some of which was bad. Do any of you guys have memories about being told not to read something or having your parents discouraging you from reading things that were meant for older kids? I’m thinking about at what point reading at the highest reading level is good and at what point parents really do need to be careful about what their kids read.