Photo and artwork: Theodore Diran Lyons III
A US college art teacher makes an art installation of his students' abandoned essays - which he marked but they never bothered to pick up - to illustrate his thesis that too many people are admitted to higher education without adequate literacy skills. For the purposes of the display he anonymises and red-pens the uncollected essays to highlight the errors.
Commenters are outraged that he has appropriated students' work, that he is not showing proper respect to his students, that he is not teaching writing in an effective way, that he is misdefining "mistakes" as illiteracy, and that in concentrating on the medium rather than the message he is focusing on an irrelevant skill. He engages his critics with surprising stamina.
The USA is not alone in having a problem with poor language skills. According to The National Literacy Trust, "one in six people in the UK struggle to read and write." Hmm. They don't give a source for that figure. "Dismal", says the chair of the Public Accounts Committee. Here in the UK Lyons would be similarly criticised for using students' work like this. But it doesn't make the problem go away.
Via.
3 comments:
Thank you for the articulate commentary and feedback!...
I found it likely that the project would draw indignation, but I wouldn't have guessed how widespread and how quickly. English faculty from esteemed universities across the continental US and abroad visited my site in what I ascertained was a collective effort to undermine the project. These championed the language games of Sharon Crowley, Linda Brodkey, et al., contending that the installation deceptively failed to trace the influences of class, race, and gender in the acquisition of literacy; deceitfully minimized the problems and complexities of teaching composition and rhetoric; and engaged in manipulative myth propagation (i.e., that the installation attempted to exploit a nostalgic sentiment that pines for a moment in US history far more literate than our own). The work, however, at minimum puts such Nietzschean 'creative lies' to use in order to emphasize, in Lyotard’s terms, the ability of art to wage war on such hegemonic language games and enliven a rigorous discussion of new methods for compositional pedagogy in the wake of NCLB, educational budget cuts, etc. At bottom, though, you are right: Bemoaning the broken trust between student and teacher will not make the problem of egregious writing and depreciating compositional skills go away. The question that arises from all this is how these sorts of challenges produce action.
Thanks again.
DL
"he is not showing proper respect to his students"
The same respect they showed to their own work when they didn't bother to collect it?
"...that in concentrating on the medium rather than the message he is focusing on an irrelevant skill."
All together now: OH NO HE ISN'T! Because as someone once wisely said, if you get the technical stuff wrong, people notice what you got wrong; if you get it right, they notice what you are actually trying to say.
He is in fact doing them a favour, if they would listen. I have never forgotten seeing a lettter printed in the South Wales Echo, from some students. I forget what point they were making; all I recall is that the editor had thought fit to leave in their numerous spellnig errors and print underneath, "This letter is printed as received", thus giving his readers permission to ignore any point they might have been making in favour of having a good laugh at the Students Who Couldn't Spell. And whether or not he should have done so isn't really the point; it was his paper, he could, and that's how the world works. What they needed to do was know how not to give him the chance.
On a student feedback form, one of ours once complained that a colleague was undermining their confidence - specifically, "he kept telling us we should of read more". I fear he may of had a point...
Belatedly, thanks Theodore and Sheenagh for your comments here. I agree, I find it hard to summon much sympathy for the students' moral rights as authors when they abandoned their marked essays. They were showing scant regard not only for their own work but for their teacher's. As for other criticisms, it's not a question of being fair to ESL students etc - as it would be in high school when you have to deal with all comers - but of having students educationally equipped to do this particular course. It's reasonable to expect that students on a higher education course would have a useful degree of literacy.
It would be interesting to know whether any student has complained now this case has become notorious, and what the nature of their complaint was. So far all the complaints seem to have come from people posturing on their behalf.
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