Rhetorical Carpentry: An Experiment

Having recently finished Ian Bogost's Alien Phenomenology, or What It's Like to Be a Thing , and having recently been asked to give a workshop on new media production for a poetry course taught by a colleague, I have produced my first attempt at what Bogost calls carpentry. Jim Brown, adding in an explicitly rhetorical dimension (which the title of this post nods appreciatively toward), best describes the goals of this production when he writes

"Rhetorical carpentry would construct objects (and conversations among objects) in order to demonstrate approximations of the strange, alien conversations happening around us" ("The Decorum of Objects").

This attempt at rhetorical carpentry also works out of the methods I am currently developing for my Fall 2012 Problems in Rhetoric: Animal, Vegetable, Mineral course, which will explore nonhuman and nonsymbolic rhetorics. As I write on the course site, "we are not simply interested in what objects mean or represent; to this end, we must have ways of 'writing' objects that likewise resist this tendency. Such is the hope of this collection of methods."

The main goal of this experiment is to reveal nonhuman/nonhuman relationships as they take place alongside human/human and human/nonhuman relationships. Furthermore, I want to reveal that all such relations are always with aliens, so to speak. Each thing (what Bogost calls a unit and what others call an object) is more than the sum total of its relations. Objects remain withdrawn from all relations.

Here is my thinking behind the elements of this production (feel free to come back to this discussion after you have watched the video):

• Each image "captures" nonhuman relationships (there is more than just the vent in each picture)
• The Instagram filter (I took the pictures on my iPhone) blurs the edges allowing for focus on the vent and its relations
• Sound is of vents but it is disconnected/foregrounded as a sound effect separate from its normal status as background noise (think of Brown's "alien conversations")
• The text, one line from Devin Johnston's Creaturely and Other Essays is about a relationship with a house. Additionally, the relationship described is about more than control (i.e., reducing the house to its inhabitants) but is instead something reciprocal or on the same ontological level.
• Timing of the slides:
• compels viewer to attend to the whole scene.
• focuses on the words themselves, which certainly exist in relationship with other words but also remain disconnected and alienated from the sentence of which they are apart (this separation is made manifest, I hope, by the time delay between each word).
• allows for otherwise connected or related objects to become disconnected and thus become independent and alien objects

So, here you have it. Be gentle. I have spent my adult life being analytical, but I have recently discovered that this mode alone will not do. As Tim Morton argues in "Here Comes Everything: The Promise of Object-Oriented Ontology":

Longinian ekphrasis is not about the reaction of the (human) subject, but about rhetorical modes as affective-contemplative techniques for summoning the alien. (171)

"Alien Relationship" combines text from Devin Johnston's Creaturely and Other Essays, images taken using the Instagram App on my iPhone, and a sound effect ("white noise in the house" from klankbeeld at freesound.org).

Why English and Rhetoric Matter

I have returned to finish what I started this summer: reading through the dense, complex, and infinitely rewarding Cognition in the Wild by the cognitive scientist/ethnographer Ed Hutchins. The work is essentially a blend of cognitive science and ethnography focused exclusively on navigation. In his chapter on communication, Hutchins (channeling I.A. Richards) argues that meaning exists only in context.

Hutchins writes:

Meanings can only even be imagined to be in the message when the environment about which communication is performed is very stable and there are very strong constraints on the expectations. In many endeavors, creating and maintaining the illusion [a word Hutchins does not use pejoratively] that meanings reside in messages requires that a great deal of effort be put into controlling the environment in which communication takes place. Meanings seem to be in messages only when the structures with which the message must be brought into coordination are already reliably in place and taken for granted. The illusion of meaning in the message is a hard-won social and cultural accomplishment.

There is obviously a lot going on here, but I wish to make three things salient for my colleagues in English departments everywhere. First, Hutchins' assessment of meaning in the context of navigation at sea is why some kind of English course (focusing on literature, film, television, etc.) should be required of all university students. Here we have Hutchins treating the issue of navigation on board a ship in the US Navy, but what he is describing is also an issue routinely treated in literature courses around the country: namely, that meaning is a social and cultural accomplishment.

Second, Hutchins' assessment likewise indicates that a course on Rhetoric ought to be required: meaning is a social and cultural accomplishment and that accomplishment is hard-won via the effort of controlling environments (read contexts) and coordinating structures of communication. Rhetoric is and focuses upon the production of meaning through the coordination of communication and contexts. (I would add, regrettably here in passing, that its equally strong emphasis on the production of meaning is why creative writing ought to be home in English departments.)

Third, and this is important disciplinarily and departmentally, Hutchins implicitly makes a strong case for why literature/cultural studies and rhetoric ought to be housed in the same department. (This is not argue that either rhetoric or literature should not also be housed other places as well--they should). The twin abilities of studying and producing meaning through societal and cultural structures and environments is a package few other departments can offer, but which every university that claims to prepare students to navigate the complexities of life ought to provide.

In(tro)ducing Symbolic Action

I have always found it more than a little difficult to introduce students to the concept of symbolic action in rhetoric. Specifically, marking the distinction between sign and symbol (a sign as "representation" of sorts and a symbol as a "projection"). The etymology of "symbol" suggests putting together or throwing, whereas "sign" is seen as a token or a representation. The difference here has always struck me as crucial with respect to rhetoric and language. Language from rhetoric's perspective is about doing something out in the world rather than merely representing something in the world. Or, put another way, language is not about communicating or packaging an idea but is part and parcel of how we generate ideas at all. Language's primary purpose is asignification, which is why Will continues to fascinate me. Muckelbauer describes the "'asignifying' dimension of language" as focused "forces, actions, and effects" and less on something like meaning, which I would align (for my present purposes at least) with the sign.

As part of my summer reading (for both pleasure and profession), I have been working through Ed Hutchins' Cognition in the Wild (as I work my way back from Andy Clark, my go to scholar for all things cognitive), which advances the argument that human cognition is often distributed across groups and artifacts. I had been reading it to mark the difference between the "distributed cognition" model Hutchins proposes and the "extended mind" model advanced by Clark (I want to post on this soon as it is, in part, the crux of an article I am finishing). To flesh out his model, Hutchins focuses exclusively on ship navigation or pilotage. And navigation, with its various discourses, and methods of "representation" turn out to be a great way to chart the particularities of symbolic action as distinct from the process of signification.

The charts of navigation are often assumed to be simple representations of territory, which are valuable only in their accuracy. Maps, then, are taken as signs. But Hutchins points out that, particularly in the case of navigating at sea, that a chart is likewise "an analogue computer" (61). A chart is certainly in part representational, but it is also computational. I don't mean to suggest that computation be made synonymous with asignification, but the notion of maps as computational moves us further in the direction of the projecting, throwing, and putting together that marks symbolic activity. It is also to argue (in a bit) that Hutchins can help to complicate the distinction between sign and symbol and signification and asignification.

Moving us even further in this direction is Hutchins' discussion of star charts and constellations. Star charts could certainly be seen as a sign system. We attach labels to stars or collections of stars in order to ascribe meaning consistently. They are signifying and interested in meaning.

In this superimposition of internal ["the ability to identify the linear constellations"] and external ["the arrangement of stars in the heavens"], elements of the external structure are given culturally meaningful relationships to one another.

Constellations are also very much about meaning. However, they are also very much about actions and effects. As Hutchins argues, it makes very little sense to judge a navigational representation based solely on their accuracy or ability to convey meaning. Hutchins makes this point by comparing Western navigation traditions with those of Micronesian ones (and they differ quite a bit in several key aspects). In addition to demonstrating the operational bias of previous ethnographic work on navigation and its misrepresenations (yes) of Micronesian navigation, this comparison draws out the asignifying thrust of navigational signs. Accuracy takes a back seat to what Lewis (quoted in Hutchins) calls "the stern test of landfall." Micronesian navigators, for instance, invent phantom islands is order to aid navigation. That is, they create signs that represent nothing. They are asignifying signs created solely to achieve a particular effect. Meaning makes sense not only in terms its ability to accurately translate geographical features into geometric lines. The meaning makes sense in terms of its ability to activate successful navigation.

And this seems to form a part of the problem, though. I am moving back and forth between describing the same thing as either a sign or a symbol. I am tempted into arguing that symbols are distinct from signs; but I am simultaneously aware that the same thing can be seen as either a sign or a symbol. And this, then, is the difficulty of introducing symbolic action: to make the familiar strange. To move from seeing what I am doing when I label something as a far less passive action than I might suppose. Hutchins argues that looking up at the night sky

in terms of linear constellations is a simple representational artifice that converts the moving field of stars into a fixed frame of reference.

And while Hutchins uses "representation" here, I would argue he has in mind something much more like symbolic action. Constellations are not simply or only labels, they are a conceptually framework that does something out in the world to enable a certain kind of action.

This seeing is not a passive perceptual process.

But constellations are also signs that ascribe meaning. They are, as Hutchins writes, representations.

Is the key (difficulty) recognizing the sign's asignification? To treat words or labels or charts as signs (which is accurate - hey) is to miss the action?

My Dream Student

So, over at Both Wearing Black Masks there has been a post or two about "My Ideal Student." Here is mine:

Writing in the Disciplines, Disciplinarity, and Threshold Concepts

Here is a bit a text I am working on as part of my participation in Thresholds of Writing, "a multi-year initiative to study and transform the way we teach writing as an integral part of a liberal education in the 21st century." We are holding a colloquium with faculty across the college, and we will soon be discussing "reflections" as a pedagogical tool. This bit of text is designed to place the practice of reflections within the broader concept of writing in the disciplines, disciplinarity itself, and threshold concepts. For the uninitiated, threshold concepts, drawn from theorists Jan Meyer and Ray Land can be defined as,

an approach to disciplinary thinking that proposes there are certain foundational ideas that serve as gateways to subjects that students must understand in order to progress in that field. These thresholds are more than just core concepts but often serve an integrative function within fields.

One of the primary goals for the project is to promote writing as a way for students to move through such threshold concepts on their way into their discipline.

Here is what I have so far:

As we talk together of writing, we necessarily confront our disciplinary differences and similarities: what about writing can we agree upon and what about writing in our own disciplines creates unique challenges and opportunities. Likewise, the interdisciplinartity effort of fostering writing in the disciplines necessarily involves a discussion of threshold concepts: what are the defining portals (or ways) into our disciplines that constitute them as unique. As portals they must be somewhere along the walls around our fields of study.

In light of this double move, we would like to suggest that thresholds of writing serves as a catalyst for writing in the disciplines, which brings into sharp relief the boundaries of those disciplines and then discovers those boundaries as threshold concepts. Thus, we as a colloquium enact this coming-to-thresholds-through-writing in much the same way we hope our students might. In having to articulate what exactly we do, what makes us different, and what difference those differences make we come to articulate our threshold concepts. As we have discussed, and as Randy Bass has explored in his work on visible knowledge, we must be able to articulate the threshold concepts of our disciplines if we are to have any hope of bringing students through those very portals.

This moves us then to reflection. We see reflection enacted in a variety of ways, places, and times depending upon the discipline and the task at hand. Students can be asked to reflect upon the significance and implications of a philosophical text, they can be ask to describe and justify rhetorical moves made in a set of technical instructions, or they can be asked to articulate their methods and discuss the results of an experiment in a lab report. Reflection need not be soft, holistic, and after the fact; it can be down and dirty and in media res. In can be a highly detailed post mortem or brief cover memo attached to an assignment.

Reflections can also reveal a student’s struggle with threshold concepts. A student who is unable to articulate a choice he has made with respect to word choice or document design is a student not yet through one of the key thresholds of rhetorical activity. A student who can describe the procedure of an experiment while being unable to explain how the process works or the experimental design itself, maybe struggling with troublesome knowledge and a threshold concept. Reflection need not be extra work for either students or teachers when made part and parcel of the task. Reflections so integrated do not necessarily add work; they might, in fact, make less work for teacher and student by demystifying the aspects of the course, materials, or discipline students struggle with.

As a colloquium, our emphasis on writing stresses its inventional qualities. That is, writing is not simply (or only) the communication, transmission, or delivery of information. Writing is itself a coming-to-know and the chief method we have for generating ideas. Reflections should be no different. Ostensibly about describing work in progress or products completed, reflections are likewise places to generate new ideas, new processes, and new ways forward. More specifically, for students and teachers reflections can become a way to grapple with troublesome knowledge and invent ways to move productively through thresholds to become scholars deeply integrated in the values and methods of a discipline.

Swapping Disciplinary Genes*

So this recent story about the possibility of early hominid species interbreeding has got me thinking again about a conversation I had with my graduate students last week about interdisciplinary work (and its obstacles). First off, I am quite fond of interdisciplinary work. My research moves in and out of several disciplines, and I am currently collaborating with a psychologist who works on, among several things, how humans self-cultivate within a complex matrix of biology and culture. That said, the above story, and the nature of species themselves, both invites and challenges interdisciplinarity.

At the most basic level, species are distinct when can no longer share genetic material or produce viable offspring. "A common definition is that of a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring of both genders, and separated from other such groups with which interbreeding does not (normally) happen" ("Species"). We are distinct when we can no longer exchange genetic material and produce something together. This suggests that once disciplines become particularly specialized they will no longer be able to share with other disciplines and produce viable offspring (e.g., successful students and viable, publishable scholarship). In this case, intellectual work that moves in between disciplines maintains a vital flow of information that would not be possible otherwise. Interdisciplinary work keeps us related enough so that we might do things together that will make sense and work.

However, the species analogy (tenuous as it has already become) suggests the need for such disciplinary divisions. A diverse set of species seems to be the key to healthy ecosystems. Even within species, the deeper the gene pool the more robust the population. This, for me, has always been the strongest argument for diversity in a variety of contexts. Part of the value in different, specialized disciplines is that they do speak different languages, privilege other methods, and promote competing values.

Thus, the tension for interdisciplinary work lies in the value of diversity and the challenges of specialization. I would argue that the boundaries of disciplines must be maintained to allow for the diversity that specialization (a term in evolution, I believe) affords. However, interdisciplinary work is intellectually vital if we hope to connect to other fields and to learn from them, which is to say the work of interdisciplinary is valuable precisely because it ought to be difficult.

As difficult, I imagine, as a Homo neanderthalensis hitting on a Homo sapien.

*This the second version of this (I like the first one better, but my own offspring pushed the right sequence of buttons and deleted it).

A Technique of Assent

So, my first graduate seminar concluded yesterday with the sharing of papers and the passing of pitchers. Before we moved from the classroom to the barroom, I shared these final thoughts:

I want to conclude the semester by suggesting another way of reading and engaging texts—one I feel is an alternative to common, critical engagements with texts that operate in the negative register (e.g., what does this text leave out, overlook, or otherwise exclude, simplify, or gloss?). This is not to say that such readings are unproductive or unnecessary (as such readings are often both productive and necessary).

It is to suggest other ways of reading that mine each and every text for something that can be “taken away,” “augmented,” “adopted,” or “utilized.” It is a way of reading that leaves one open to persuasion—to approach a text perfectly willing to be “converted to the enemy's camp.” And it is a way of reading that generates new questions, new ideas, and new ways of thinking.

Here are some sample texts from this semester that suggest and enact such approaches:

1. Muckelbauer’s “reading productively” or “affirmatively”


2. Gorgias' rescuing of Helen


3. Jarratt’s re-reading of the sophists


4. Rickert’s use of Plato’s chôra


5. Burke’s notion of “discounting”


6. Corder’s invocation of “love”

This technique of assent is also a reminder that readings in the negative register (where a text is “problematized”) are likewise always already acts of assent: every no bellies a previous yes. From where do we say “no,” and by what "yes" are we enabled to do so? Opening or starting with the "yes" may very well highlight the assumptions upon which our critical responses are based (or cultivated).

I likewise find this technique of assent—as a pattern of response or habit—very helpful for my work as a teacher (and all scholars are, I hope, teachers). And not just because teachers should be generous or “nice” (which they should be), but because one of the joys of teaching is learning. How does the thinking of students and their work productively change my own thinking or teaching practices? What can I, in other words, take away from each and every class and student?

Finally, another excellent reason for affirmative readings or this technique of assent is this: you will come to publish scholarly works many of you. And these works will enter into a community of scholars. Articles written in the safety of solitude will go out into the world and be read by others. What are your obligations to other scholars and their work? How do you want to position yourself within a community of scholars? How do you want to respond to and assent to the work of others?

Gut Over Glut

Introduction
In 1990 Carolyn Miller took decision science ("a theory of choice with an accompanying battery of 'decision aids' for 'modeling problems of choice' in management and public policy"(163)*) to task for both what Wayne Booth calls motivism and for what Chaim Perelman refers to as reducing "problems of action" to "problems of knowledge." Miller dings decision science for a few other things; I am interested only in these two for my present purposes (as I am likewise thinking about my Computers and Writing presentation in May): the dangers of motivism and the action/knowledge problem in public life and how rhetoric should respond pedagogically.

Troubling Decision Science
Miller defines decision science as a kind of rhetoric in that it is a "theory of choice" (163). Nevertheless, Miller argues it is a problematic rhetoric because it abdicates or avoids reasoning about values, what Booth terms motivism. My more cynical response is that those folks in economics and management who typically employ decision science are avoiding addressing values purposefully to prevent them from being challenge (but this is, perhaps, another problematic kind of motivism that Burke admonishes against).

The second issue Miller addresses is how decision science boils problems of action (what should we do? should we do something at all?) down to problems of knowledge (how much will is cost? what are the risks and rewards?). The problem is that in reducing action to knowledge decision science erases conflict and avoids the question of values.

Problems of action involve conflict between people; even solitary deliberators negotiate conflicts between possible versions of themselves. Problems of action are "essentially contestable"; problems of knowledge are not. (175)

Decision Science Troubles the World
For example of how both aspects of decision science problematically operate out in the world (one of Miller's chief concerns), I would draw our attention to the NOVA documentary "The Spy Factory". The oddly titled documentary explores the role of the National Security Agency (NSA), in combination with the FBI and the CIA, in the "intelligence failures" preceding and following the 9/11 terror attacks. In particular, the issues of motivism and problems of action/knowledge show-up in the Bush administration's response to those attacks. (Obviously, this blog post is limited and much of the work now being done within the intelligence services is to be commended. This post and the documentary it draws on have a necessarily limited perspective. That being said, I am responding to stated desires and policies.)

In brief, the Bush administration's response was to remove barriers to searches and spying so as to increase the amount or volume of information available to our intelligence agencies. Many critiques of this policy -- beyond the legal and moral ones -- persuasively point out that information or the lack thereof was not the issue -- was not the root of the problem. There was enough intelligence in terms of raw data. Indeed, the ease with which government investigators were able to piece together the events leading up to the attacks suggests as much. The problem was a problem of action, of value-laden decision-making (not "do we have enough information?" but "should we be sharing it with other agencies and how and when?"). What was required, to borrow from Miller, was an ability to reason about values, about the culture of the intelligence community, and about how information was allowed or not allowed to circulate. Most importantly, however, reducing this problem of action to a problem of knowledge has potentially threatened core legal principles and not made us all that much safer. A primary contributor to the documentary, and a long time historian of the NSA, concludes the NOVA documentary this way:

Is this flood of information making us any safer? [...] We should have been safe the way it was [...] How much information is enough -- and won't too much information end up making the world more dangerous?

At first this seems counter-intuitive: how can too much information be a bad thing? If you are a decision scientist and assume that "if our information were more complete or our calculations more accurate, we could know with complete certainty whether it will rain today" (Miller 175), then it very much is against your intuition. However, if the problem is one of action (one of human relations and values and contingencies and probabilities), which I think it is, then it is rather reasonable to question the absolute value of information. And I would suggest, as I move to conclude this discussion in rhetoric's pedagogy, that it is precisely in the direction of intuition/instinct that we should head.

Conclusion: Rhetoric's Pedagogy for Deciding
To return to Miller's assertions for a rhetorical understanding of decision science (and for an accounting of how decision science has influenced pedagogy and so impacted decision making), I would ask what all this means for rhetoric's pedagogy. How might those of us in rhetoric teach decision-making in and against the context of decision science?

If traditionally education has been about information (P. Friere's influence notwithstanding), what do we make of such persuasive arguments against decision science, which is largely predicated upon this Enlightenment ideal? I would propose (although I am far from the only one) that rhetoric draw on recent research on instincts and gut feelings. For instance, the work on Gerd Gigerenzer and his book Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious is quite informative (yikes!) in this direction. I argue that an education that would avoid motivism and the reduction of action to knowledge should focus less on "information" and more on "instinct."

I like a focus on instinct because instincts become an excellent way to address how we reason about values. In essence, instincts are about response-ability. They are about patterns or habits of engagement. Instincts filter what information counts as valuable and they motivate particular actions over others. Instincts are, in other words, were the rubber of values meets the road of action. Values, however, and as Gigerenzer argues, are not beyond human (pedagogical) agency and they are not automatic. Instincts, he argues, are cultivated. Instincts are neither value free nor beyond rhetorical deliberation and persuasion. Indeed, instincts must necessarily be cultivated precisely because they are not pre-specified (we could take numerous examples of this from athletics where it is the honing of instincts that is so much a part of practice and improvement. The work of Debra Hawhee is valuable in this regard).

In addition to being a call to discuss values (or patterns of response), instincts are a way around one of the oft-described problems of teaching rhetoric, which presumes to address the contingent and situational (thus making the teaching of formulas problematic). Rhetoric strikes me as instinctual (which are always geared towards problems of action) rather than formulaic (which strikes me as largely focused on problems of information). I would argue that what we (should) teach are instincts. In so arguing, I necessarily invite a discussion about what kinds of instincts. And it is a discussion of what instincts and what values we should teach that potentially protects us from the troubles of decision science and from the charge of motivism, which is as damaging to teachers as it is economists.

*Miller, Carolyn R. "The Rhetoric of Decision Science, or Herbert A. Simon Says." The Rhetorical Turn: Invention and Persuasion in the Conduct of Inquiry. Ed. Herbert A. Simon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

Day 13: If Students Were Olympians

Listening to Olympic athletes describe their failures compels me to confront my goals and expectations for my students. Many of the athletes I have heard in post-game interviews are quite frank about their failures. However, it is not their frankness itself which impresses me. What impresses me is their ability to breakdown their process: to the steps they took or didn't take, the moves they made or didn't made, and how the combined effect of those steps and missteps, moves and mistakes resulted in their "failure." For these athletes, failure is not absence (or presence) of one thing or another, but is, more often than not, a failure to execute specific actions. Rarely have I heard "I don't have the talent." You hear, instead, "I didn't do what I needed to do."

As I have already opined, there are many aspects of athletics I would import to the classroom. However, in many regards I am talking about what the space of athletics affords that the classroom may not.

I think students often suffer under the assumption that intelligence is a possession rather than an activity (although we do suffer under the notion of talent in athletics as well). And while there are certain baseline cognitive requirements for intelligence, cognition is highly plastic and largely cultivated through practice (I here draw on the work of Andy Clark). As many educators would attest to (I hope), student failure is often not because they lack something. Failure results from not executing specific actions in time. A failure to study in advance of the exam. A failure to develop study habits to effectively utilize study time. A failure to prepare a proper area in which to study. These are all activities that "result" in what we objectify as "intelligence." And as much as teachers focus on activity and the steps students much take, our societal assumptions about "intelligence" often make this an uphill battle.

"Paper Day" Redux

A brief pedagogical note by way of justifying (inviting feedback) a "new" classroom practice. I have asked my graduate students if they would want to podcast or otherwise share their "Paper Day" presentations (both the document and their performance of it). In the spirit of dissoi logoi, I see such a practice as both raising and lowering the stakes of graduate student work.

In making their performances additionally public (to what extent, who knows), I am making the performance riskier for them - raising the stakes in terms of both judgment and reputation. If their performances were to be posted to the course blog other faculty and students across the university might hear/read them. Anyone Googleling "Alternative Rhetorics" might come across them as well. More judges means more ways to gain or lose reputation.

However, it also feels like the move lowers the stakes. In stressing sharing, this practice removes from panicking pupils the pressure to privately perfect ideas. Sharing works in progress makes the practice, the activity of cultivating ideas valuable in and of itself. Why not watch the sausage get made? Intellectual life is about living, doing, and becoming, and not just about the end product. To make this point we need to do a better job of celebrating and rewarding the activity of scholarship and not solely the scholarship itself.

Something like the above sentiments is one way I think the conversation about such a practice for graduate education should proceed. What are the stakes of such sharing and what values does such an activity challenge or reinforce for academics under construction?

Teacher as Coach

My friend over a Insignificant Wranglings writes this in defense of a classroom workshop that involved him publically assessing the first sentences of his students' writing:

But I am calling Lanham to my defense--don't I, as a writing instructor--have to blame as well as praise? Doesn't my honest assessment lend more value to my feedback? Because I can say that, after the workshop, the amended first sentences I saw displayed far more sophistication. (Here again I nod to my own personal pedagogical narrative, my ties to Dr. David Zern's emphasis on disequilibrium culled from Freudian psychoanalysis-- although this time I am clearly back in the mode of making my students uncomfortable).

He concluded with:

On another note, more and more watching Project Runway influences my teaching persona.

Here was my response: With respect to your concluding remark on Project Runway. I feel the same influence, and, quite related, I often feel jealous of coaches for the liberties they can take in "teaching" athletes. They are able, it seems to me, to be more aggressive and count under their purview issues of effort. I could never circle my class up and tell them to "pull their heads out of their asses" as I once told as a high school athlete.

I think this has to do with how "we" view both intellect and athletic ability. Athletic ability is easier to tie to issues of effort, commitment and habit. We see sport as activity and practice, so it is more like to be a failure in activity and practice that leads to a failure on the field. Intellect ("smarts") are seen as a possession rather than an activity. I refer here to an earlier blog of yours. Most teachers would, of course, that some students work harder than others, but to make a part of their pedagogy would be a bridge too far.

It is no doubt the classroom setting as well that prevents us from treating students as athletes, but there seems to be sometime else at work. Maybe, also that sports are more social (at least team sports) and academics are seen as more personal. To tell a running back that their blocking sucks maybe not be as personal as telling a student their first sentence is terrible.