The call for papers for this release of The Writing Instructor asked teachers, scholars, and students working in middle and secondary education to explore theories and methods of teaching media literacy and popular culture to adolescents. The essays, editorials, hypertexts, and on-line conversations we have included address issues of current interest and debate in the field of media literacy education, particularly in connection to composition studies and writing pedagogy. So what is media literacy?

Abstract

In this article, we provide a theoretical framework for understanding how written peer critique can be used successfully to develop authority in students’ writing in the disciplines. We suggest that having students respond to their peers in writing rather than orally and positioning students to write their critiques from a strong knowledge base are key elements in making peer critique valuable to the responder. We describe the use of written peer critique in a second-year communications studies course and discuss examples from students’ critiques of summaries written by their peers. A strong authorial presence is revealed in three main areas: students’ evaluative comments related to disciplinary content; students’ evaluative comments on their peers’ handling of the summary genre; and students’ personal authority derived from their experience as readers.

The poet Charles Boebel once explained his view of personal writing: “There are many masks buried deep inside each of us and when we write, these masks, sometimes one, sometimes more than one, surface and are expressed in our written works” (ICEA 2002). Masks provide interchangeable alternate identities, not to be hidden behind, but exposed, processed and developed through writing. Boebel’s concept draws upon connections from the mask theory of W.B. Yeats to the expressivism of Peter Elbow and Ken Macrorie, to the psychoanalytic theory of Christine Brooke-Rose. As we write, we select a mask, don it, and express its representational persona. Through review and revision of our writing, we attempt to examine aspects of that mask, and to define our worlds, our thoughts, and our selves. In this process we learn.

If you listen to teachers talk with one another outside of their classrooms you get to hear them swap classroom techniques, funny anecdotes, and common frustrations about their students. Though the latter come in many forms, some of the more common complaints about teaching writing would be recognizable in most schools:

They call everything they read, and everything they write, a ‘story’ even when it’s a persuasive essay.

If I hear one more of them say that they didn’t like a ‘story’ because they couldn’t ‘relate’ to it I will scream right there in class.

They started complaining about the length of the reading before they had even started it.

Their attention spans are only a minute long; I just wish they could stay focused in their writing long enough to construct a sustained critique or argument.

Provenance: 

Citation Format: Williams, Bronwyn T. "Reflections on a Shimmering Screen: Television’s Relationship to Writing Pedagogies" The Writing Instructor. 2001. http://www.writinginstructor.com/williams.html (Date Accessed).

Review Process: Bronwyn T. Williams's essay was accepted for publication following blind, peer review.

Someone saying negative things about the Harry Potter series practically elicits the same reaction as cursing motherhood, apple pie, and baseball--how dare anyone question something, anything, that motivates children to read? Reading is a wholesome activity. Reading is good. Reading is fundamental. Reading is the foundation for a literate, democratic society. Reading is the cornerstone of learning.

Popular culture is a natural subject for composition because it greatly shapes the way the cultural memory is formed, how public and private identities are constructed, and how lifestyle decisions are promoted.

—Diane Penrod, Miss Grundy Doesn't Teach Here Anymore 12

In the book, The Rise and Fall of English, Robert Scholes recommends a major overhaul in the teaching of English by replacing the canon of literary texts with a canon of concepts, precepts and practices for investigating the meaning-making process. He suggests that restoring the medieval trivium of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric as the center posts in English education will help students "situate themselves in their own culture [. . .] and make the basic processes of language itself intelligible and fully available for use" (119).

I would say, “Let me show you what it means to be human.” And then I would take them to the theater, the symphony hall, the opera house, the movies, the museums. I would…read poems, tell stories…take them to see the paintings of da Vinci, Georgia O’Keefe, and Picasso, to a Greek tragedy or a comedy by Shakespeare, to hear Louis Armstrong, Mozart, and Oklahoma! I would show them the grace of dancers, the elegance of a bow passed across a violin’s strings, and the profundity of a child drawing a picture of her mother…. And then I would ask them, “What is art where you live?” (Leonard Nimoy, Actor and Director)

“Go back! You can get killed here!” (Edward G. Rendell, Mayor, Philadelphia)

At last! An impartial jury for the O. J. Simpson trial. (Joseph Duffy, Director, U.S. Information Agency)

Provenance: 

Citation Format: Fox, Roy F."“What Would You Say to an Alien?” The American Culture Portfolio." The Writing Instructor. 2001. http://www.writinginstructor.com/areas/englished/fox_alien.html (Date Accessed).

Review Process: Roy F. Fox's essay was accepted for publication following blind, peer review.

The interesting writer, the informative speaker, the accurate thinker, and the sane individual operate on all levels of the abstraction ladder, moving quickly and gracefully and in orderly fashion from higher to lower, from lower to higher, with minds as lithe and deft and beautiful as monkeys in a tree.

—S.I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action (1991)

Introduction

After nearly 30 years of experimentation in teaching writing, reading, thinking, and media, as well as researching and speculating in these areas (read “mucking around”), certain notions persist in the bones, several of which I would like to note in this article.

“I am trying to change them. I’m trying to help us all see whole new possibilities, like the tilting circle of the world spreading below you when you stand braced in the wind on top of Eagle Cap. But I’m not off to a very good start.”

—Bette Lynch Husted