The Counterpublic Writing Experience of Houston Latino University Students
Bruce J. Martin
The Houston Situation Because most students at the University of Houston come from Harris County, Texas, and the Houston Independent School District is the largest (by far) district in the county, an understanding of the demographics of our community and our university will help us begin our discussion. Illustration 1 shows that Hispanics or Latinos1 constitute the majority of residents in the county, with Caucasians as the second group. Compare this with Illustration 2, Illustration 2: Houston ISD Student Demographics. Source: however, showing the demographics of Houston Houston ISD ISD, where nearly two thirds of Houston's students are Latino, another quarter are African- This is the largest source of students coming American, and fewer than ten percent are white. into the University of Houston. However, Illustration 3 is more specific to the UH experience; it shows first time in college (FTIC). We see that, though UH was founded to be the city’s university and to serve a working class student population, the university does not represent, ethnically, at least, the demographics of the city. In fact, only a quarter of UH students are Latino, compared to that 62% of Houston public school students. Note that this chart shows FTIC and not total enrollment. When the enrollment of transfer students is added to the FTIC number, the percentage of Latino students Illustration 1: Harris County Census by Ethnicity. Source: US Census Bureau drops to 23%. This last percentage does not qualify UH to be a Hispanic Serving Institution The Counterpublic Writing Experience of Houston Latino University Students 114
(HSI), which requires Hispanic student opt to repeat a course for completion or a better populations of at least 25%. While neither The grade. Regardless, that a quarter Latino students University of Texas, A&M, Texas Tech, nor Rice retake the course while only one percent of white University are designated HSI, Texas State in students do necessitates an inquiry into the San Marcos is also recognized, as are all experience of the course at all levels (See Table community colleges in the southeast Texas 1). First, Latino students may retake the course region (Hispanic Association of Colleges and for one or concurrent reasons, including: Universities). 1. UH Latino students are more concerned than whites about their GPA and are more willing to repeat; 2. UH Latino students fail to complete ENGL 1303 for other reasons in their first year, such as social or academic preparedness; 3. These urban Latino students come into the university compositional experience without the secondary preparation that white students at UH have; or Illustration 3: First Time in College (FTIC) at the University of Houston. Source: Institutional Research 4. The instructors, curriculum, and texts do not reflect, represent, or validate the Still, Latino students make up nearly a quarter of rhetorical and writing background and our first year students, most of whom will enroll needs of these UH Latino students. in First Year Writing (ENGL 1303, 1304) with It is this final possibility that this paper several having to take the basic writing course, addresses, as it is the one dynamic that teachers ENGL 1300, before they can enroll in the core of writing can have the most efficacy in changing required courses of 1303-04. in the classroom. Notably, though each of these statistics is 1300 1303 1303 important, much work has been done on African Retakes Americans in the FYW course and the African-American 12.9% 24.1% 25.0% complicated subject of ESL, but here I will Asian American 28.6% 20.8% 27.6% address the importance of recognizing, Hispanic 19.3% 25.4% 22.40% International 21.4% 22.9% 21.1% validating, and building on multilingual cultures Native American 0.7% 0.3% 1.3% as well as the heritage culture we call, variously, White/Other 16.4% 5.7% 1.3% Hispanic, Latino, and Chicano. I will note how Table 1: Student Demographics of ENGL 1300 and our textbooks and our curriculum often do not 1303, showing 1303 Retakes, 2010-2011. Source: reflect the rich cultures of Latinos and in fact Institutional Research. may function as an academic colonization of The reasons that any student, not just minority Houston’s Latino community. This is a local students and not solely Latino students, repeat concern with national implications. ENGL 1303 are complicated, and students may
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The question of Latinos in the FYW course This is where it becomes complicated for me, affects institutional concerns such as retention, because I have no Latino heritage by any but also larger institutional concerns such as definition. I can step out of the M.D. Anderson ethnic diversity in graduate school, faculty, and library and see a sea of black-haired students and administration. As an institution, we want all not one blond or brown or red like mine. To students to graduate and return to the community discuss any problem of another ethnicity, gender, to strengthen it. But as a compositionist, I am nationality, or mind-set seems more than most immediately concerned with the perception presumptive, naïve, and supercilious; it also begs and validation of writing courses such as FYW that both the counterpublic under discussion and by Latinos; and ultimately, to validate such a the dominate public under criticism to personal and intimate thing as writing, the course immediately, deftly see through each claim, and field must validate the students’ own values uncovering bias and pseudo-academic jargon that and goals. Specifically, I will show how the First disguises the insecurities of speaking from the Year course actually excludes the rhetorical outside. We have, then, a question of public and interests of Houston Latino students and counterpublic. This is the kind of society that maintains their counterpublic place in the public Jürgen Habermas discusses in The Structural university. Transformation of the Public Sphere, where he argues that a kind of publicity originated in Problems that may affect both research into eighteenth century Europe that represented a new Latinos in the FYW course, as well as praxis, relationship between the regime and the private include the identification and identifying of individuals – “publicity” (2) here meaning the Latino students. It's not just an issue of national interests of the state or regime in all its forms, heritage, or various dialects, or even how many but newly discussed, argued over, and influenced generations a family has been in Texas. It's also by the conversations, writings, and meetings of the identifying choice of what the Census Bureau private individuals outside the family dwelling. would call Hispanic or Latino, but which the What we call “public” today is the norm and student may reject – not because of heritage, often even assumed (at least, assumed by those language, or skin color, but of cultural of us who are normally considered part of the assimilation. In other words, some students dominant public – middle class, white, educated), whom I may identify as Latino because of especially at the university; but in early modern heritage or family origin will reject that label Europe, this was an important nascent because they see themselves as white – they participatory act, though participation was speak English as their first language, perhaps largely limited to the bourgeoisie – white, went to a largely white high school, and identify moneyed, males. I argue here that, de facto, the with mainstream white students in dress, music, same problems of public and counterpublics are and mass culture. Still, their home culture may largely reflected in even the public University of maintain both dominant and recessive traits of Houston in its courses and texts in the First Year Latino culture, as rich and complicated as they Course: There is the unexamined assumption that are. Others will reject the label of “minority” the rhetoric, writing samples, and discussion because in their home neighborhood and school, topics are applicable to all adults, while the especially in Houston, Latinos are the majority, multiple counterpublics such as the city's large and to switch from one arithmetic to another Latino population, are – like in Habermas's ideal seems unnecessary to them. – bracketed and even ignored.
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It's telling that Habermas's argument centers dark-haired students walking in front of the itself around the public sphere created when library are not interested in or do not feel familiar merchant interests, exploration ventures, and with whatever values and interests the dominant civil liberalism converging to nurture the white, middle-class culture espouses at the time. political phenomena of coffee house discussions Pop and mass culture have ensured enormous and literary-then-political salon meetings (16, overlap and cross-breeding of materialistic and 20). These venues and their conversations began artistic interests. But neither can we ignore that with less political and more literary interests, Latinos (and so many other groups), sometimes however, and Habermas concedes that the legal have “alternative styles” of behavior and speech. permissions were already assumed “in the public Rocco, for example, argues that American sphere of the world of letters, [as they] confirmed Latinos have been constructed by the dominant each other's subjectivity as it emerged from their public as perpetual ‘‘foreigners’’ and that only a spheres of intimacy” (54). In other words, form of citizenship that transcends this type of because of the long tradition of sharing literary political world-view can foster a more works with the writer's coterie, it was a natural democratic system that addresses the unique extension to exchange and discuss works with a position of Latinos in the United States (9). larger public once printing on large-scale became Various “modes of exclusion” have been feasible and marketable. Likewise, the FYW established in the American political, course functions something like a coffee house educational, bureaucratic, and business arenas so for our first year students, though not a voluntary that the majority of Latino groups have been one – we expect them to come in and actually categorized within a preexisting racialized engage with the instructor, with their peers, and cultural imaginary that is “produced, limited, and with secondary texts on topics that should be of modified by the dominant cultural institutional importance to them or to society at large apparatus” (10), even in mixed metropolises such including topics of global, national, and local as Houston. The dominant public of our interests. But, unlike Habermas's ideal, the classrooms – using corporate textbooks, taught students at UH are rarely merchants or explorers by Graduate Teaching Assistants who often come – they are sometimes literally coming from the from less diversified schools and who are barrios of Houston and hardly understand the predominantly white in our own program – this vocabulary of the merchant, much less have dominant public tends to see all people whose experience in how markets function. And yet our ancestors come from Central and South America textbooks assume that students have some as some homogeneous race with identical experience with capital markets and clean energy language, cultural tastes, and acceptance of their and globalism. subaltern status. It's one thing to expect film and television to see Latinos as the object of quick Our students are, in fact, citizens of humor or a tattooed gang-banger, but even in counterpublics. Like critical theorist Nancy politics, the corporate media identify certain Fraser's identification of peasants, women, and politicians as a “Latino mayor” of Los Angeles working class counterpublics, UH's minority as if one's ethnicity restricts an elected leader's students are “competing publics” as they voice as audible only to those of that same “[contest] the exclusionary norms … elaborating heritage. alternative styles of political behavior and alternative norms of public speech” (61). This does not necessarily mean that those hundreds of
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Consider the University's mission statement as community's. And, importantly, the “education of it portrays itself as an instrument of the dominant a diverse population” is nothing like the public: “learning from” those diverse populations. The mission of the University of Houston As Warner argues, is to discover and disseminate knowledge Dominant publics are by definition those that through the education of a diverse can take their discourse pragmatics and their population of traditional and lifeworlds for granted, misrecognizing the nontraditional students, and through indefinite scope of their expansive address as research, artistic and scholarly endeavors, universality or normalcy. Counterpublics are as it becomes the nation’s premier public spaces of circulation in which it is hoped that university in an urban setting. In this role, the poesis of scene making will be the University of Houston applies its transformative, not replicative merely. (122) expertise to the challenges facing the local, state, national and international So, though a university might be considered a communities, and it establishes and counterpublic within the larger non-academic nurtures relationships with community world, instead, it overlooks the alternative organizations, government agencies, public rhetorics, experiences, missions, and discourses schools and the private sector to enhance of counterpublics even from within the shadows the educational, economic and cultural of the university campus. The university's vitality of the city of Houston and the state educational mission is unilateral and anti- of Texas. (University of Houston, “Mission Frierean. Minority communities such as Houston Statement;” emphasis added) Latinos, then, are expected to come and participate in the university experience, but on This statement simultaneously claims the the university's terms. This is reflected in their heritage of the institution's founding while first writing experiences. seeking some internationally competitive rationale, balancing the local with the global. But This is evident, considering the State General what is of interest here is something that I doubt Education Core Requirements, where each few instructors – those in the trenches with the undergraduate student must take 42 hours of students, more than the authors of this mission courses that reflect “basic intellectual statement would ever be – would be aware of the competencies – reading, writing, speaking, text's actual implications or be aware how to listening, critical thinking, and computer literacy effectively implement curriculum or pedagogies – that are essential to the learning process in any that would somehow bridge the chasm from the discipline” (University of Houston, “About the local to global and reflect the diversity of the Core Curriculum”) of which writing is one, student body to the needs of the city. Note, too, defended as “competency in writing [being] the that the mission statement is all about the ability to produce clear, correct, and coherent university, and mentions nothing of the prose adapted to purpose, occasion, and individual; though it mentions local audience” (University of Houston, “Core communities, community organizations, and Curriculum Foundations”). Within the larger cultural vitality, these are dually the means to an argument for the need of a core curriculum – that end and the end itself – the city's enhancement is everyone should be inoculated not only to basic the mission, but not the enhancement of the local math, but also the public standard model of
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American history and (largely white, middle These are also often the issues that writing class) cultural history – is the more precise instruction should consider as its topoi in a free argument that writing is essential to learning society, but especially in a public university. For across the university and that effective writing example, in April 2006, millions of Latinos and will employ all the traditional rhetorical tropes, fellow sympathizers marched nationally to ultimately so that students will be at least demand immigration reform; five years later, enfranchised in their own learning. Nothing is regardless of which party is in power, little said, however, anywhere in the curriculum reform has been made. Later that same year, over documents about being enfranchised in the 5,000 Houston members of the newly unionized community outside the classroom. Fraser argues Service Employees International Union blocked that it is a “common good” that should be the streets in the Post Oak area and downtown of goal of public discourse, not just private interests Houston rejecting a proposed salary increase up (71). In increasingly corporate-friendly to $8.50 an hour, up from the average of $5.25 an universities, even the liberal arts are often hour (Greenhouse). In Houston, the SEIU is defended in terms of how to best serve the largely Latino, and the “si se puede” from the corporate think tank. The core curriculum year's earlier national march was the rallying cry implies that writing is useful on campus, but in that November. The rhetoric of choice was that's about the extent of it. Specifically, the blocking traffic in both cases, though it was their argument states, “[students] often need further actions that were the subject of debate in the instruction and practice to meet college standards major press – not their cause -- not their voices, and, later, to succeed in both their major field of not their rhetoric, not their experiences. academic study and their chosen career or These concerns of the subaltern are both profession” (University of Houston, “Core national to local. When the State of Alabama Curriculum Foundations”). Again, nothing is passed new legislation to penalize illegal mentioned about being an engaged member of a immigration in that state, under the guise of liberal society or even refers to that Mission “creating jobs,” we can see that Latinos' voices in Statement's lofty rhetoric of local, community, that debate were not only stifled, but threatened and city. Ideally, however, enfranchisement (Preston). Our own state legislature attempted in within a public sphere is precisely what a the 2011 session to write Arizona-like university should be cultivating. immigration laws and will now look to Alabama Warner states that, “Without a faith, justified for their exemplar on how to treat people who or not, in self-organized publics, organically don't look like us or speak like us or come from linked to our activity in their very existence, the same places2. It seems, then, that part of the capable of being addressed, and capable of actual topoi of our era include issues such as action, we would be nothing but the peasants of wages, migration, education, language, and capital – which, of course, we might be, and racism. At least these are the issues on the street some of us more than others” (69). And so, and in the halls of the legislature, but rarely are enrollment and retention statistics aside, we are these issues part of the educational discourse of forced to admit that Latinos in Texas, along with our city's university students. They may be other ethnicities in Houston, are both discussed in the student chapter of LULAC and marginalized and disenfranchised. These are the very occasionally with enormous posters in issues that counterpublics instinctively are drawn Butler Plaza on campus, and they are issues to by the very nature of their subaltern status. discussed in our on-campus Latino-interest
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newspaper The Venture, but are they valued and this: Is the rhetoric and writing of the FYW in systematically part of the formal curriculum of our public universities suitably engaging for all the city's university? Literally, do our courses students to be critically involved, interested, and apply our “expertise to the challenges facing the invested in their own learning so that the local, state, national and international required course is not just another core to “get communities”? The strength of the counterpublic through,” so that the student is inducted into is that its very act of expression gives it a some “academic discourse” community, but that strength against any oppression or forgetting by the course in fact does prepare students to be the dominant public. Thus Warner argues proactive in a liberal society? It's important to remember, too, that this will not happen in many Whether faith is justified or partly other courses. The opportunity for rational ideological, a public can only produce a critical discourse with topoi of values and sense of belonging and activity if it is self- concerns relevant to Latinos or students of any organized through discourse rather than background and heritage will not happen in a through an external framework. This is why History course of 500 students, or a Biology any distortion or blockage in access to a course of 600 students or in a Hotel Management public can be so grave, leading people to feel course or even in Business Ethics seminar. powerless and frustrated. Externally organized frameworks of activity, such as voting, are and are perceived to be poor The Student Experience in First Year Writing substitutes. (70) at UH If Latinos, of any national background or with By the time our students arrive at UH, any legal status, are to have more of a voice in they have already endured twelve years of Texas their own status and activity in the national public education, being told to speak English, dialog, then the purposes of the First Year write English, and respond to Texas Assessment Writing course should be considered as even of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS)3 writing exam more relevant to this marginalized, often prompts of “Write an essay about a time when disenfranchised community, even more than we you helped another person” (the TAKS high might consider the course to be relevant to any school exit exam writing prompt for 2009) after ambiguous community of adolescent scholars. being trained in test-taking template writing I'm not arguing that the FYW course should be or strategies. They sometimes come from failing become an induction into political activism for schools4, with increasingly smaller education its own sake; the purpose of the FYW course budgets cut by a Legislature with members, such should be to teach writing and not political as my own Legislator, who fear Hispanic “anchor correctness or political strategies. Still, as babies” (read: Latino babies) are the most serious writing, the course should also consider the threat to our national security (Sanchez). Though history of rhetoric which it so often claims as its the UH is touted as the second-most diverse legendary heritage – men (white men) campus in the United States, the faculty is not – a peripatetically reasoning those things most full 70% of the faces these students will see are important for them and their demos – the topoi of white and only six percent are Latino (Office of the day, engaged by men (white men) who chose Institutional Research, “Faculty Headcount by to engage in the rhetoric because it was, in fact, Rank, Diversity and Gender”). If the student topical for them. The problem, then, comes to wants to know about the ultimate governing body
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of their city's university, he will discover that the expect in a public. This is exactly the kind of UH Board of Regents is composed of seven bracketing that Nancy Fraser discussed two whites, one Latino, one Indian, one African- decades ago: American and one appointed African-American A discourse of publicity touting accessibility, student, not elected by her student peers. The rationality, and the suspension of status student Alumni Association is somewhat more hierarchies is itself deployed as a strategy of diverse with more African-Americans but with distinction. Of course, in and of itself, this irony no Latinos. So, what would this public sphere does not fatally compromise the discourse of look like if a Latino, for instance, were to look publicity […]. Nevertheless, it does suggest that around herself and expect to engage in the public the relationship between publicity and status is discourse around her? more complex than Habermas intimates, that In their first year at college, our students are declaring a deliberative arena to be a space required, like most American students, to take where extant status distinctions are bracketed and two semesters of writing, though they had no neutralized is not sufficient to make it so. (60) input in this legislative decision. At UH, most Fraser's deconstruction of Habermas's ideal will take their writing courses from Teaching public sphere in his ideal bourgeois world almost Assistants and Fellows (the vast majority of sounds immaterial when discussing historical whom are white) from the graduate program who movements two centuries ago, but becomes more have minimal training in teaching first year uncomfortable when shining the same light on an writing, using a textbook that they had no input institution of higher education. The university as in choosing, except for the rare TA with enough a whole, and the FYW course, specifically, initiative to propose an alternate text, subject to a should tout these public ideals: faculty committee approval. Most course instructors, anecdotally, do not poll their students (a) accessibility – students should be able to for their input on the syllabus or the writing access ideas, texts, narratives, and exchanges assignments. The students have limited access to that are relevant to their learning goals or their out-of-class writing support in the form of a community's values and objectives. In an Writing Center, and often need to balance their urban university such as UH, this would hectic commuter schedule with those of their include non-English texts, local print news, busy graduate student instructors to arrange for and alternative repositories such as folklore, face-to-face time to consult on writing questions. neighborhood, and texts generated by minority So far, there is little rational-critical discourse in community organizations; the course establishment or management for these public university students. All this (b) rationality – students should be able to background frames the question of how the FYW learn from their peers and their instructors the is or is not a public for these freshmen. discourses of reason and compare that with Unfortunately, it is my argument, that just when their own community's valued reasoning. This these adolescents are expecting and anticipating includes validating and focusing on the to be more engaged in deciding their own life students' background and values set and choices and legitimately participating in the contrasting them on their own terms with the larger public, the one course that actually offers dominant corporate model; and the chance of becoming a real public sphere (c) the suspension of status hierarchies – often limits the rational, critical discourse that we students should engage their peers and
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instructors on a rhetorically equal field, rational, critical discourse expected of first year especially considering these students often students should focus on energy, globalism, have more experience in their communities consumerism, and fashion fads. Sample texts are than the (often) white, middle class graduate provided so that our students can model their students have in many of these same issues own writing. Naturally, the instructor has her and, honestly, most graduate students are leeway to supplement readings and research really only a few years older than these topics, but the public that this corporate text freshman. attempts to engage is one where the student- citizen thinks that these global issues are ones of And so, even though we claim that the most importance. These issues are important, of university is a free and public space, and the course. But our university students, who FYW course often perceives itself to be one commute to campus, often work and share their without text, so that any text is open for income with their families, who often come from discussion, the reality is likely not the case. families where college is not a shared Often, by design or fiat, the FYW is declares experience, where English is often not the itself to “space where extant status distinctions language of the home, where their own are bracketed and neutralized,” but for Latinos at secondary schools struggled even to prepare for least often is not. high-risk standardized testing instead of critical Consider the official textbooks – The Allyn & reasoning, perhaps tattoos and the Alaskan Bacon Guide to Writing and Writing Arguments: Natural Wildlife Reserve are not the topoi that A Rhetoric with Readings – both published by our students should be using as their introduction Pearson Publishing. Pearson Education Holdings to a critical discourse community. Still the of New Jersey, with annual sales of $840 million assumption that these texts' topics are ones that and with 14,045 employees, is itself a subsidiary interest our local students or that they should be of Hochtief Public-Private Partnership Solutions writing about that demonstrates an imposition of Chile, an investment firm specializing in airport the dominant public on students that, in fact, in construction (“Pearson Education Holdings no way reflect national or global norms. As Inc.”). Appendix I lists sample published and Warner notes, student texts used by the 1303 text to It might be only through its imaginary demonstrate writing process and products. The coupling with the state that a public acts. This is 1304 text, Writing Arguments, does have a one of the things that happens when alternative section of six readings in the anthology called publics are said to be social movements: they “Immigration in the Twenty-First Century: acquire agency in relation to the state. They enter Accommodation and Change,” but this is only the temporality of politics and adapt themselves one of ten sections, others of which concern to the performatives of rational-critical discourse. video games, Walmart, energy, war, media, etc. For many counter-publics, to do so it so cede the That section also addresses the issue of original hope of transforming not just policy but immigration from a national perspective, but the space of public life itself. (Warner 124) these concerns are more real and more varied at the local scale, where concerns of students from The text, however, may prohibit this space- the East End of Houston are different from those transforming effort by not only its omissions but students from the suburbs of Spring, for example. also by its very nature. By introducing a textbook According to these two official, public texts, the – with all the socio-emotional power that it holds
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to any first-year student, but especially to any counterpublic is or is not expressing itself in the students who were not raised to have actual texts rational-critical discourse of the city's university. in their homes – to a marginalized public with the cultural assumption that “this is what is important to write about,” the FYW course A Brief Survey of Latino Rhetorics brackets the students behind some wall of engagement and validation. When we calmly So, what is Latino rhetoric, or at least, accept mass culture – even mass curriculum what can we broadly paint as general trends and culture – as the universality of our students' characteristics of North American Latino existence, we ignore and devalue their own discourse as reflected by culture and heritage? worlds, perhaps even facilitating the First, as Cristina Kirklighter, professor of endangerment of local and community culture composition at Texas A&M Corpus Christi, and civic involvement. When we overlook or argues, Latino students often hear a home refuse to even acknowledge individual cultures rhetoric of narrative, repetition, and digression. in a course where writing can best be used to To emphasize a point, repetition should be used; explore culture, the student-citizen, indeed, to digress in an argument may give a clarification becomes even more disenfranchised, and perhaps or elucidation. These tendencies, however, are becomes subtly intellectually disengaged at the often stamped out by FYW instructors, as the same time. This is the dominant public standard classical model of rhetorical argument is overcoming and rhetorically erasing the focused on focus – direct exposition and analysis counterpublic's rhetoric and tradition. More in the Greek form. The FYW classroom often importantly, since most TAs at the university are discourages narrative as a form of evidence and in fact part of the dominant public, the Latino insists on logos, ethos, and grudgingly, pathos. student may not understand that he has the Kirklighter explains that in many Central and opportunity to discuss his subaltern status Southern American rhetorics, the thesis – the because of the unintentional neglect of that status central argument – comes at the end of discourse, in the classroom. The corporate textbook, the where our textbooks stress that the thesis should white middle class TA, all dis-empower the come in the introductory paragraph for “closed” Latino student before he even knows he can form writing. The writing process, too – pre-writing, a counterpublic in the classroom. composition, revision, editing, and publishing – is described in the texts with little or no mention In the matter of the course pedagogy, we of collaboration. However, Kirklighter stresses permit our classrooms to be tools of the that the ethos of La Familia is a collaborative oppressing public, or as Nancy Welch has one, and that all students can benefit in the FYW argued, “When we remove that tension between course from collaboration at many steps of the exposition and assertion, inquiry and argument, process. Then, by extending a recognition of the unsettling and concluding, we fall short of culture of La Familia and encouraging not only teaching all that’s needed both to analyze and go inter-student collaboration, but also family- up against systems of oppression, to assess a student collaboration with topoi which are valued situation and, when needed, take a side” (Welch by the student’s home culture, the family itself 70, emphasis in the original). To understand can become part of the collaboration process, oppression, of course, requires a greater reversing the power flow from a banking model understanding of the people being oppressed; of teacher depositing knowledge to the student, then we may begin to understanding how the
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to one where a collaborative experiential unit of rarely understand what their adolescent children student and family share the classroom. are studying. Similarly, many Latino families depend on their older children to supplement the family income or care for younger children (101). The promise of a college degree is foreign to many in the working class. On the other hand, some studies point to self-surveys where university Latino students consider their parental support and encouragement, their family's optimistic outlook, the drive to succeed, ethnicity as a source of strength, and academic and mentors as being invaluable to their consistency in college (104). These values are respectable and useful and none should be foreign to any ethnic group. But as a value set, as a world-view, Illustration 4 they are ignored in the FYW texts as subjects of discussion and examination. Validating the family and community can Further as a pedagogical model, because offset the competitive and “consumeristic forces” of their close-knit and extended families, many adversely affecting the well-being and stability of Latinos are often agreeable to small group these students and families, as forces disrupting discussion and collaborative writing. Mejia Latino culture (Kirklighter 51). describes such organically-based pedagogies and Brown shows that Latinos value curricula that show how ethnic identities are collaboration and cooperation as part of their shaped in/by schools and universities. The education. Importantly, values themselves are collaborative behavioral nature that Mexican- included in the Spanish word educación, more American students are often raised with in their than its English counterpart might confer. extended families is disrupted by the Educación entails both academic and character competitiveness that colleges inevitably inculcate development, referring “to competence in the (51). Consider how disruptive this might be, social world, wherein one respects the dignity then, when a young Latino is asked to produce a and individuality of others” (Brown 100) but lengthy essay on his own and present it before nowhere in the 1303/1304 sample texts is there a the class in some peer review as an individual discussion of social values other than respect for artifact (and this is not asked of him in 500- the environment and an assumed preference of student courses such as History), where his employment over unemployment. Further, there family experience is one of sharing for are family values, typical of many Latino validation, not critique and competition. Yet the communities, where parents find it difficult for strategies of small group work and collaborative their children to leave home, both literally, in the writing seldom emphasized in the texts and are case of living on-campus, and socially, in the barely mentioned in TA orientation. Fraser case of separating one's self from a family with describes subaltern counterpublics as “parallel no university experience and enrolling full-time, discursive arenas where members of away from the household and family subordinated social groups invent and circulate employment, in a large university where parents counterdiscourses to formulate oppositional
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interpretations of their identities, interests, and Unfortunately, when we accept mass culture needs” (123) yet the Latino students, though a as the universality of our students' existence, we counterpublic, are rarely given the chance to ignore and devalue their own worlds, perhaps voice/write themselves as a counterpublic in the even facilitating the endangerment of local and course because of instructions on their writing community culture. When we overlook assignments. The texts do not offer space for individual cultures in a course where writing can counter-discourse, and within a department of best be used to explore culture, the student- mostly white, middle-class professors and a TA citizen, indeed, becomes even more cohort of the same (with all the burden of disenfranchise, and subtly disengaged at the overworked, underpaid, full-time graduate same time. This is the dominant public students), it is unlikely that the values and overcoming and rhetorically erasing the concerns of local Latinos are upheld as potential counterpublic's rhetoric and tradition. In the topics of discussion with local writing texts to matter of the course pedagogy, we permit our serve as validated models. classrooms to be tools mirrors of the dominant public, or as writing professor Nancy Welch has And we must remember where our students argued, come from – a public school system that has as its goal the “processing” of as many students as When we remove that tension between possible to meet state-mandated, legislative, exposition and assertion, inquiry and argument, political goals as part of the neoliberal idea that unsettling and concluding, we fall short of schools are factories and can be managed as teaching all that’s needed both to analyze and go factories to increase output. Most instructors in up against systems of oppression, to assess a our public schools are white, not Latino, nor situation and, when needed, take a side. African-American. Most principals are white. It's important to remember that a localized Most of the literature that students are exposed approach to education; using a student's own to, even in Houston ISD, are written by white background knowledge, such as that in authors about white characters. López explains ethnographic community writing, personal how Houston schools devalue Mexican- histories, etc., are some of the most effective American culture through a subtractive process means of bridging the gap from secondary school (225). This subtractive process can be reversed, to the larger world-views of the academy. The however, through dialogue of students to concerns and principles I address here are teachers, curriculum change, critical pedagogical appropriate for all groups of first year students. praxis, and community involvement, sensitivity to the Spanish language, culture, and the topoi of things Latino (226). Several writing pedagogies in the FYW course can address this subtractive process – ethnography, personal narrative, and community research each address these directly. She concludes that “silencing the cultural background of Latino students is a form of academic violence which may lead students to feel their culture is deficit” (229).
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Notes Works Cited Brown, Alan V. “Effectively Educating Latino/a Students: 1. The term “Hispanic” is troublesome and generally A Comparative Study of Participation Patterns of considered a relic of colonial and linguistic domination. Hispanic American and Anglo-American University Most conversations will use the less troublesome though Students.” Journal of Hispanic Higher Education 7.2 equally nationally and even ethnically ambiguous term (April 2008): 97-118. PDF. “Latino.” This paper will use “Latino” though many secondary resources (including the University of Houston Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A and the US Census Bureau) still tenuously use the Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing term“Hispanic,” a term first codified by the Nixon Democracy.” Social Text 25/26 (1990): 56-80. PDF. administration in its classification of major ethnic groups Greenhouse, Steven. “Janitors’ Union, Recently Organized, in the US. Contrast this, however, with a recent survey by Strikes in Houston.” New York Times 3 November the Pew Research Center which indicates that Latinos 2006. Web. 11 November 2011. would prefer to be identified by their nation of origin or
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Pew Hispanic Center. “When Labels Don’t Fit: Hispanics University of Houston. “About the Core Curriculum.” and Their Views of Identity.” Pew Research Center. 4 University of Houston. 2011. Web: 11 November 2011. April 2012. Web. 15 May 2012.
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