“from a focus on the invention of knowledge to the production of competencies and skills”

Here are the questions that rose to the surface for me after this week’s reading assignment. The first one should be fairly familiar by now.

What is writing instruction for?

When we talk about literacy, what goals do we have in mind for our students? What literate practices do we hope that they will engage in?

How do these questions play into the issues that Carmen Luke raises regarding knowledge capital and the globalization of post-secondary education?

In other words, is literacy instruction focused on an eventual “invention of knowledge” or, rather, is it another competency/skill we hope to pass along.

So what IS writing instruction for, anyway? And, again (because I’ve asked it before), I’m serious about this question. Certainly, of course, it is about students learning to write well (whatever that means). But more so, it seems to be about students learning to think well and then express that thinking clearly in a textual artifact.  Things get a bit convoluted when the debates begin as to what exactly students should be thinking clearly about, so let’s just leave it at this general summation, and complicate it slightly: Writing instructors want their students to be able to articulate textually an clearly rendered argument about a fairly complex matter or (perhaps even better) the collusion of related matters.

So, then, does thinking about (and teaching towards) literacy lead us toward that goal? As I ask above, what literate practices to we hope students will engage in that will lead them to success as writers in the above mentioned areas? Yi and Hirvela argue that a key to understanding school-based writing instruction might be to examine the self-based writing that they engage in (especially, in their case, for 1.5 Generation adolescents). Though, in their argument it appears that the only thing we really learn about school-based writing is inferior to self-based writing since literacy is a choice and not a requirement in self-directed writing practices (106).

1.5 Generation students “can be encouraged to look for ways in which to incorporate their self-sponsored writing into more academically-oriented writing tasks or apply more formal writing strategies and techniques to what they have previously composed outside school,” (106) but how, then, does that connect back up with the primary objectives of writing instructors? But do journal writing activities (as they suggest) help students become better critical thinkers?

Yo and Hirvela actually go on in their conclusion to show how journaling might move to more robust genres of academic writing in their conclusion (442). While reading their article, I couldn’t help but think of them any different kinds of self-based writing I have done over the years. I’ve been a fairly active private journal writer since I was around 13 years old. In 2002, I started writing in online spaces, and from their my online/offline self-based writing has blossomed. I currently tweet, write for at least 3 blogs, and engage in a variety of other writing, both public and private. These spaces move in and out of what might be considered “academic” genres. Undoubtedly these kinds of writing practices have aided in my “formal” writing development, in fact, many of them have been encouraged by zealous writing instructors over the years. It is no mistake, I think, that my interest in personal journaling roughly coincided with a 10^th grade assignment from my English teacher to journal each week.

I hoped to connect this back in with Luke’s article by pointing to her concluding portrait of the university in transition, so I’ll move there now and try to draw some conclusions.

The university is in transition: from its historical self-definition as a public national good to an entrepreneurial industry with tradeable goods, from a world of students to one of “customers”, from pedagogues to “facilitators”, from teaching to “delivery”, and from a focus on the invention of knowledge to the production of competencies and skills. (114, my emphasis)

Luke casts a skeptical eye at globalization and its effects on university education. I wondered where, specifically, the types of composition teaching practices—indeed, the focus on literacy itself—fell on the scale between “invention of knowledge” and the “production of competencies and skills.” And since teaching composition instruction in general seems more about the teaching of competencies and skills, are we complicit to the shift in university education that she is so concerned about?

Here’s where, in a personal admission, I acknowledge one possible result of this kind of pedagogy and what it means to have been raised on “competencies and skills,” a customer to college and university education for over 10 years: I have often felt like, despite my many years of schooling, I don’t know much of anything. I have tools galore for gaining that knowledge, indeed, I have limitless potential (that much has been part of the dogmatic, post-secondary, chant).  But, like a late-night infomercial, college has made promises that have not been fulfilled regarding their product, specifically that it will lead to gainful employment. And while the economy in general may be to blame for this phenomenon, the numbers of college graduates who head back home to their parents’ house is on the rise. They, like me, bought into college’s promise of helping them get to their future of success and happiness, but, with only shiny tools (competencies/skills, whatever you want to call them) and nowhere (and sometimes no knowledge on how) to use them, well… better head to grad school.*

*I’m perfectly happy to be in graduate school, of course, and find that I may actually have both the knowledge and the know-how to find gainful employment this go around, but wow, it’s been a long road and my pockets are nearly empty.

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