Makin' Paper

A few classes ago, my students and I began talking about grades and how we thought we should change "the system." This, in and of itself, was not unusual conversation. If anything, this was another simple exercise in self-affirming Us vs. Them rhetoric where our community college classroom was somehow attempting to pretend (at least momentarily) that we could escape the overarching design and demands of higher academia. There wasn't much danger of any illusory utopia being established for long, because anytime one of us began railing against "The MAN" with much fervor, the jackhammer (that has to be what it was--I'm not sure what else is that loud) of the ongoing construction next door reminded us of the material realities of our condition. A blocky, beige, decidedly uninspiring room in a building under repair. Those standardized and ugly desks that keep students "focused" through the ergonomic miracle of encouraging the most uncomfortable position possible. Fluorescent lighting, inevitably flickering.

So, I asked, "What do you think we should change about English classes?" (a vague question if ever there were one...)

"I think students should get paid for making good grades," she said. 

"Like, if you earn an A, maybe reduce tuition, or give a voucher for books or something."

"Yeah," he said. "Books and school are expensive. 

I'd be able to work a lot harder if I were getting paid."

"How much would it take?" I asked. "How much is an A worth to you?"

"How much is our book? $48? That's fair. Maybe $100. I need the money, so I would work for it."

This conversation didn't exactly surprise me--we all know college and books are expensive. But... $100? That's it? For A-level work. This was the student suggestion for improving their own situation, their own educational experience--get paid for good work. Reduce the economic burden of their condition so they can continue effectively producing. That doesn't seem crazy to me. It seems...fair.

Students are frequently labeled as many things--unmotivated, misguided, "adrift." Institutionally, we ask ourselves why students fail to write the "right way" or "enough" or "situationally" or with "rhetorical awareness." But it is hard to find the time, tools, and, yes, motivation to write when material and economic concerns mean composing (and paying for the composition class) simply becomes more work, unpaid at that. Our students are aware (very aware) of their stresses and the need to overcome them, with or without our help. I do think we, as teachers, generally want to be--should be--a helpful part of our students' push toward economic empowerment while many of us struggle with our own material positionalities within the academic landscape as well. 

a bit on Positioning Theory...

If this talk of money and materialism smacks of a somewhat socialist approach to higher education and how students and teachers are commodified as producers and consumers of product, maybe it should--I think it would be fair to say I believe we need to redistribute the workloads and wealth, fiscally, manually, and intellectually in order to have a fairer education system. A major reason I would argue this is that any education system that sees people--students and teachers, especially--only in "terms of work" fails to see people in "terms of relationship." What I mean by this most specifically, most tragically as far as the composition classroom is concerned, is that when we only focus on the work our students produce and what it offers institutionally (does it offer us, as institutional representatives of institutional values anything, well, valuable?), and when we only present ourselves to our students as institutional workers, the only value the person-to-person (human) relationship in the classroom retains is one of a labor exchange. The humanities and composition's place inside the humanities, becomes little more than a sad intellectual marketplace, devoid of personal care, warmth, and ethical commitment to the human being who has just composed their thoughts with/for you. 

In Bruce Horner's Terms of Work for Composition: A Materialist Critique, Horner argues that this way of thinking (or perhaps a semblance of it) is part of what leads some teachers to see the work of students as reductivist--less than work (not productive)--"evidence embodying the identified essential characteristics of their students" with many beginner students being represented "in terms of cognitive lack" (pg. 33). Furthermore, the overall culture of commodification that demands that both teachers and students write/work to be valuable (or, should I say, be valuable beings) has led to a disconnect in which teachers and students are "mapped" as "operating outside the material social processes" of the composition classroom they share, thus leaving the ethics of this exploitative and this alienating dynamic frequently "unchallenged" (pg. 34). Horner argues that the way out, as it were, would be "representing students as above all else workers, working on themselves, Composition, the academy, and the social generally" (pg. 35). I would agree, and I think our students would, too.

I'm not entirely sure what I think about my students' suggestion--its implications and greater effects. But I do think people generally need to feel valued, and this includes receiving fair pay and treatment for hard and valuable work. To not feel that for too long is just disheartening. 

We're all in this together,

Rachael