More on Bartholomae

Since I have written my rough draft already I have decided to go with option #1 on the blog tonight. Why not? I can use the practice and I feel like having fun.

I just went back to read the opening quote by Foucault. The first time I read the article I had no idea what was meant by that quote. After re-reading a couple of thoughts pop out. First, the idea that education and higher education are available to anyone who chooses to pursue it. It is no accident that many of the best universities are located in democracies, where the right to make one's own choices is fundamental. Freedom of choice means freedom of thought and freedom of thought means freedom of ideas. Greater ideas lead to greater opportunities for education. The university is then a product of democracy, a democratic institution. But, as Foucault quickly points out and Bartholomae expands upon, it is not an institution of equality.

For Bartholomae's purposes this inequality is manifested in academic discourse. Academics can do it and have the inside track, students cannot do it and are left to fake it, knowing full well most of the time that they are not fooling anyone. The imbalance of power is enormous. The professor has extensive knowledge of the subject. The student does not, and maybe never will, perhaps the class in question is meant of fulfill GER. How can the poor student be expected to know anything? Not only doesn't the student know anything, he must now write an academic paper on this baffling subject for the know it all professor. Worse yet, this paper must be in a language he can barely read, let alone write! Failure is imminent. A career in fast food awaits. Democracy crumbles, and freedom dies. Would you like fries with that?

But look, out on the horizon! It is David Bartholomae, our savior who would have the poor struggling future McDonald's Shift Manager avoid this awful fate by taking a class that teaches him how to write this baffling language. "Muddier and more confusing" sentences will soon flow from him like soft serve ice cream into a cone. Failure is averted. Goodbye Ronald McDonald, hello Johns Hopkins.

More seriously, Bartholomae takes the position that academic writing is here to stay and to succeed on the university level, students had better acquire this level of literacy. His most significant point (to me anyway) is that universities should consider instruction in the style. Students shouldn't be expected to write in the jargon of academic discourse if they have no experience with it. But it can be taught, and with this knowledge, students can become part of the academic conversation.