determined

It figures that Chapter 7 caught my attention the most, since that was one of the chapters we didn't have to read for class. Didn't realize that til after I read it. But I'm glad I did, because the concept of agency is one that's not only important to me as an educator but as a person just trying to live her life. But first, a word from the anti-NCLB movement, ala Alvermann: "Accountability-based reading reforms which emphasize high standards, clear expectations and strict consequences fail to address this important aspect of the literacies in adolescent's lives. These reforms portray adolescents as little more than passive figures for educators to control rather than as active independent and richly detailed human beings for educators to advise and assist."

The case of persuasive writing as described in the Nespor study reminded me of the book I'm reading for sociolinguistics where three studies were cross-analyzed to examine the role of identity in appropriating, resisting, or transforming classroom expectations. Sounds riveting, I know. It was the transformer students I felt drawn too, as they are exceedingly rare in a world where individual drive and choice is only superficially encouraged. These students knew how to play the game the teacher wanted played and got the grade but used the literacy practices in their classrooms to meet their own needs and agenda as well.

I've been looking for a way to incorporate a recent trip to Iowa for a wedding into a blog somewhere, and this is perfect. It had been a while since I'd been to a midwestern church wedding. I had forgotten all the rules you have to follow--how to act. Stand in this line, say this polite thing, meeting this person, sit at this table, wait in line, do this, do that. All draped over by a web of niceties and falsity that made me stabby. Add to this the agency-lacking ridiculousness of multiple airports--take off your shoes, wait in line, go stand in this line, arms out, nothing more than 3 ounces, be here at this time. Growl. It was alleviated to some degree knowing that my close band of a dozen or so friends had, like me, been anarchists from our freshman days of college together and were suffering as much as me--always the ones to cuss in inappropriate contexts, skip class and chapel, argue in class, be openly gay (not me but my roommate--this was a big no-no on our tiny conservative Christian campus), drink on the dry campus, smoke within 15 feet of the door, talk about inappropriate shit, consume approximately 65% of the booze available at the reception, and not get seriously involved in relationships or have the desire to be engaged by graduation. We are travelers, wonderers, non-conformists. It was nostalgic, the dirty looks we received from the good folk who follow rules and have happily/ignorantly constructed their lot in life by age 22. That's not to say we're Billy Badass or something, it's just that it was such a ideologically-strangling place to try to experience college. This is the center of predestination Reformation theology. As soon as I understood this concept as a church-going child, I didn't buy it. That's not to say I don't believe in God, either. Complex.

Here's the crew two seconds after the I Do's were did, rushing out to smoke on the corner.


I've always blamed my dissenting on my birth order--if you consider what we've discussed in terms of the social nature of learning and development, it makes sense that early childhood interactions with siblings and parents have a huge impact. I'm the baby. I want my way. That's how I'm wired after growing up the youngest and having to fight for a voice. I also have smackings of only child in me, as both siblings were out of the house by the time I was eight. And I know what you're thinking, but I was not spoiled. NOT. Click here if you like stupid quizzes.

Advocacy for human freedom includes a few concepts Alvermann explains: dismissing freedom means eliminating moral responsibility for human behavior (as people do what they're compelled to do), it eliminates hope of a better life, and it negates the concept that people can and do make decisions that could have been alternate decisions constantly. I had never thought of the Reformation, the Enlightenment, structuralism, and post-strucutalism as predeterministic vehicles of agency denial.

Viktor Frankl's home as a prisoner of the Third Reich:

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way...there were always choices to make, every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, you inner freedom." Viktor Frankl

So what does this mean? Alvermann: "these quotations illustate - people are free to interpret the events of their lives. This freedom of interpretation keeps peoples' past and current situations from determining their future. It is the essence of human agency." (135)

You know when you meet people with no agency. You will know them by the trail of anger and unhappiness, failed relationships, addictions, sketchy job history, and in some cases, criminal records. The inability to make decisions that benefit them. It's sad. We've all been there.

In any case, when it comes to what the world wants you to do, what you need to do to get by, and what you need to do to be happy, be a transformer. And not a Decepticon.

say what one more time, I dare you

Holy shit I love this book. At least the first chapter anyway, we'll see how it goes. Even though I had my doubts when the author said one of the kids in the study was her son, the way she interviewed El and David about the influence of text and media in their lives and development into people in high school then 8 years later was brilliant. What an interesting time--we graduate having jumped through all the necessary hoops and then start living our lives and come to find out what was really important to have learned in the safety of those early years. Ironic that my Halloween costume is Uma Thurman's character from Pulp Fiction...

Incidentally, I met Quentin Tarrantino once--he's a big dude, and kinda scary.

I often bemoaned the fact that great thinking and learning could be done with popular media, and should be, as it's relevant and interesting to kids' lives. Why force them to read shit deemed "classic" if they don't care? Not to say that the classroom should be a movie theater or that we should leave classic texts out, but why be so scared to incorporate them? Especially when, as the interviews with El and David show, they are so formative to identity and social relationships?

I connected with these two kids/people on a number of points -- I consider myself to be a moral dissenter: I use plastic but I protest the hell out of Walmart. I take moral stances. I'm a critical thinker. I swear a lot. I read books and watch movies and talk and act them in my normal life, with friends. Like David, I enjoy living in a city rather than the tiny town I grew up in. I love to jam culture, and used to use adbusters in my classroom as much as I could get away with. David says, "I'm not part of Generation X, but I think these guys are sick of always having a plot line, or sick of things always having an inner meaning. I think every show has a point. But I don't think that it has to be a big one. I think life is like that. It doesn't always have a big point. Just lots of little ones." David and El seem to have a good grasp of what could make schools better and more real--teach differently, first of all. And use the media. Teach media literacy. El knows that for us, nowadays, "everything is presented in sound bytes, and black and white arguments, images, numbers--the death toll for the tsunami is rising, we see how horrific it is but we have no real sense or consequence of that, we're still here, whining..."

Am I a GenX kid? The lines are hazy. I was born in 79 but have two older siblings a decade ahead of me, and older parents (early 60's). I had not really considered the impact of what generation you are in terms of how you approach literacy and identity--boomers, GenX, hippies but obviously this makes a big difference--what the world is like when you begin and continue reading and viewing and discussing with others from the same (and different) eras. Wiki says "Generation X is generally marked by its lack of optimism for the future, nihilism, cynicism, skepticism, alienation and mistrust in traditional values and institutions." Huh. It adds that some relevant GenX movies include Singles, Reality Bites, Clerks, the show Friends, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Pump Up the Volume, all of which are rad except Friends.


David makes a good point about personality development--"you just change according to your surroundings, your age, your experiences, but that core personality that you start out with is still there..."

Another thought on travel, as both kids did some of that and reflected on it accordingly (and I'm trying to save up to go to Thailand, my first trip out of the country, and already live a good thousand miles from my hometown): "I can't live my life not knowing wht I would do on my own, completely, by myself. That's why I think travel is important...it allows us to invent ourselves outside of any context."