Comments on: Poor Relations http://www.vitia.org/wordpress/2004/06/29/poor-relations/ faults | sins | abuses Mon, 08 Sep 2008 01:15:05 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.1 By: Steven D. Krause http://www.vitia.org/wordpress/2004/06/29/poor-relations/#comment-718 Steven D. Krause Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000 http://www.vitia.org/wordpress/archives/2004/06/29/poor-relations/#comment-718 Sounds like an interesting article, Mike. I haven't read it yet, so maybe it addresses what I'm about to say here, but there seems to me one other weird and complicating factor with this notion of "class." On the one hand, it is easy enough to see comp/rhet folks as either laborers or middle-class because of the nature of our work. Teaching writing means "getting your hands dirty" with student writing, particularly first year student writing, in a way that isn't as common in literature. And besides that, there are still plenty of literature folk around who don't think what we do really counts as scholarship or much of anything else. So in that sense, we're "second-class citizens." On the other hand, in terms of the literal economics of the way the academic job market works nowadays-- not intellectual capital but capital capital-- composition and rhetoric folks are on the top of the heap in English departments. This is of course particularly true for people who do things with technology and writing, and I think it's true (basically) because of the laws of supply and demand: there are a lot more jobs in composition and rhetoric and a lot fewer people coming out of those PhD programs. I guess what I'm getting at (and maybe this isn't as much of a part of this article as I've seen in other writings along these lines) is this: the argument that comp/rhet doesn't have any intellectual capital/status in English departments, while somewhat accurate, has a lot less validity to me in an era in which comp/rhet folk have a lot more capital capital and literal job opportunities. Because capital capital and more comp/rhet specialists in English departments helps to establish intellectual capital. Sounds like an interesting article, Mike. I haven’t read it yet, so maybe it addresses what I’m about to say here, but there seems to me one other weird and complicating factor with this notion of “class.” On the one hand, it is easy enough to see comp/rhet folks as either laborers or middle-class because of the nature of our work. Teaching writing means “getting your hands dirty” with student writing, particularly first year student writing, in a way that isn’t as common in literature. And besides that, there are still plenty of literature folk around who don’t think what we do really counts as scholarship or much of anything else. So in that sense, we’re “second-class citizens.”

On the other hand, in terms of the literal economics of the way the academic job market works nowadays– not intellectual capital but capital capital– composition and rhetoric folks are on the top of the heap in English departments. This is of course particularly true for people who do things with technology and writing, and I think it’s true (basically) because of the laws of supply and demand: there are a lot more jobs in composition and rhetoric and a lot fewer people coming out of those PhD programs.

I guess what I’m getting at (and maybe this isn’t as much of a part of this article as I’ve seen in other writings along these lines) is this: the argument that comp/rhet doesn’t have any intellectual capital/status in English departments, while somewhat accurate, has a lot less validity to me in an era in which comp/rhet folk have a lot more capital capital and literal job opportunities. Because capital capital and more comp/rhet specialists in English departments helps to establish intellectual capital.

]]> By: Mike http://www.vitia.org/wordpress/2004/06/29/poor-relations/#comment-719 Mike Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000 http://www.vitia.org/wordpress/archives/2004/06/29/poor-relations/#comment-719 Steve, your point about "second-class citizens" is one that's been made a few times in the WCS-L discussion. Inasmuch as I believe class to be a largely relational phenomenon, I'll provisionally agree that <em>within the context of the university</em>, compositionists may be perceived as doing the dirty work of the disciplines -- but in the broader economic context, such teachers (with their degrees and comfortable working conditions) are solidly members of the professional class, and to suggest otherwise is to obscure some of the cruelest economic inequalities at work in our society. As far as the differences between resource capital and intellectual capital go -- yes, absolutely, to a degree. Consider how that capital resolves itself, though: many colleges and universities rely on some form of contingent labor to teach all those sections of first-year composition. So while FYC may have a big budget line for all those salaries, the salaries themselves are often quite small compared to those of the full-time professorial labor teaching the more highly valued literature courses. Furthermore, as Charles Moran has pointed out, a common administrative practice is to blindly throw tech money at departments, in the belief that the technology will somehow make everything better. Too often, what happens is that all the tech money goes to the computers themselves, none of the tech money goes towards funding actual teacher training with that technology (since those teachers are mostly contingent anyway, and -- in my experience -- you aren't going to find many of the full-time faculty much interested in tech training), so you get teachers trying to map conventional teaching practices onto computer classrooms, underutilizing the technology, and the computers wind up in the closet and then Pew comes out with a study every few years blaming teachers for being technopeasants. So I guess I'm not as optimistic as you: where you see opportunity, I see squandered resources and continued exploitation. I'm hopeful for the opportunities you describe, but I think there's gotta be a whole lot of institutional and administrative changes in the ways people think about the purposes and uses of composition and about the purposes and uses of technology before things start to improve. Steve, your point about “second-class citizens” is one that’s been made a few times in the WCS-L discussion. Inasmuch as I believe class to be a largely relational phenomenon, I’ll provisionally agree that within the context of the university, compositionists may be perceived as doing the dirty work of the disciplines — but in the broader economic context, such teachers (with their degrees and comfortable working conditions) are solidly members of the professional class, and to suggest otherwise is to obscure some of the cruelest economic inequalities at work in our society.

As far as the differences between resource capital and intellectual capital go — yes, absolutely, to a degree. Consider how that capital resolves itself, though: many colleges and universities rely on some form of contingent labor to teach all those sections of first-year composition. So while FYC may have a big budget line for all those salaries, the salaries themselves are often quite small compared to those of the full-time professorial labor teaching the more highly valued literature courses.

Furthermore, as Charles Moran has pointed out, a common administrative practice is to blindly throw tech money at departments, in the belief that the technology will somehow make everything better. Too often, what happens is that all the tech money goes to the computers themselves, none of the tech money goes towards funding actual teacher training with that technology (since those teachers are mostly contingent anyway, and — in my experience — you aren’t going to find many of the full-time faculty much interested in tech training), so you get teachers trying to map conventional teaching practices onto computer classrooms, underutilizing the technology, and the computers wind up in the closet and then Pew comes out with a study every few years blaming teachers for being technopeasants.

So I guess I’m not as optimistic as you: where you see opportunity, I see squandered resources and continued exploitation. I’m hopeful for the opportunities you describe, but I think there’s gotta be a whole lot of institutional and administrative changes in the ways people think about the purposes and uses of composition and about the purposes and uses of technology before things start to improve.

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