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Freire, Dialogue, and Spirituality in the Composition Classroom

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Freire, Dialogue, and Spirituality in the Composition Classroom Wayne State University Wayne State University Dissertations 1-1-2010 Teaching With Spirit: Freire, Dialogue, And Spirituality In The ompC osition Classroom Justin Vidovic Wayne State University Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations Part of the Other Education Commons Recommended Citation Vidovic, Justin, "Teaching With Spirit: Freire, Dialogue, And Spirituality In The ompositC ion Classroom" (2010). Wayne State University Dissertations. Paper 121. This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@WayneState. It has been accepted for inclusion in Wayne State University Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@WayneState. TEACHING WITH SPIRIT: FREIRE, DIALOGUE, AND SPIRITUALITY IN THE COMPOSITION CLASSROOM by JUSTIN VIDOVIC DISSERTATION Submitted to the Graduate School of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 2010 MAJOR: ENGLISH Approved by: __________________________ Advisor Date __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ DEDICATION Thank you to the friends from the spiritual, artistic, and teaching communities I joined, from whom I have learned new values and ways of being. I owe a debt I can never really repay for everything I have been given. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to David Magidson, Claire Shinkman, Jeffery Steiger, everyone at Wild Swan Theater, Karen Pogue, and Stacey Peckens for artistic mentoring in things other than academic writing. Amongst other things, they all said, and modeled for me, “Trust yourself and have some faith, and you’ll make something beautiful.” Thanks to John Mead and David Schaafsma for telling me how important sharing honest academic work can be. Jeremy Salvatori let me stay in Ann Arbor with him during the weekend of my defense and took off work to drive me to and from it – which is only a small excuse for including him here; I would be far less strong and happy without his friendship. Because of Francesca Vitali, I know I can be happy in love and write at the same time. She also celebrated with me after each dissertation accomplishment, which made the whole thing more fun. Melissa Harrison braved new ground with me in multiple ways when we didn’t know anyone else in Chicago. Sarah Grace believed in me. Jodi Nachtwey was a bridge for me between my academic and other worlds and her support and friendship were constant during this process – so was Scott Longpre’s. Brodie Brockie drew a picture of me in heroic posture, reading books for my dissertation -- just in case I started to think research wasn’t adventurous. Thank you to my committee for engaging with this work so fully and dialoguing with me about it. Finally, this dissertation would not exist in any form at all without the academic mentoring and encouragement of Gwen Gorzelsky, who not only mentored me in teaching, researching, and writing academically, but also in doing it meaningfully in the context of the rest of life. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication.........................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements..........................................................................................................iii List of Tables....................................................................................................................iv Chapter 1 “Spirituality in Composition”.............................................................................1 Chapter 2: “Spiritual Pedagogies”...................................................................................47 Chapter 3: “Towards Less Performative Dialogue”.......................................................100 Chapter 4: “Spirituality, Dialogue, and Social Justice”..................................................174 Chapter 5: “Towards a Dialogic Teaching Community”.................................................283 References...................................................................................................................327 Abstract.........................................................................................................................332 Autobiographical Statement..........................................................................................333 iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Primary Discourse and Spiritual Discourse....................................................106 Table 2: Academic Discourse and Spiritual Discourse.................................................173 v 1 CHAPTER 1 “SPIRITUALITY IN COMPOSITION” Critical pedagogy is a term used to describe a set of pedagogies that aim to use classrooms and educational institutions to bring social change towards a more just, more democratic society. Generally, these pedagogies attempt to do this by discussing and trying to demystify societal power relations. Critical pedagogy almost always associates itself with a left-wing ideology, if not explicitly with Marxism. While in 1970 Louis Althusser argued in Ideology that educational institutions exist primarily to recreate the existing power structure and left room for the fact that good teachers and schools might be able to resist this role, critical pedagogy is generally considered to have been fathered by Paulo Freire in Brazil. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed , Freire discusses the way traditional modes of education reify and recreate oppression and a passive reaction to oppression. He outlines a system of dialogic education that he believed if carefully implemented would bring social change towards a more just society. Freire’s ideas were brought to the United States partly by Ira Shor, who knew and worked with Freire. Shor, teaching in an open admissions college in New York, noticed that students who were otherwise unengaged would become actively involved when he used a pedagogy that incorporated students choosing local political and cultural issues that the class would then examine together and write about. While Shor makes the point that this pedagogy can lead to social change, his primary pitch is that such a dialogic, locally tailored, student-centered pedagogy dramatically increases student engagement. While Shor’s pedagogy uses Freire’s ideas of local issues brought to the table by students and then approached through dialogue, other American theorists of 2 critical pedagogy have moved away from this idea, relying more heavily on the ability of the instructor (ostensibly acquired through reading critical theory) to bring critical awareness to the students. James Berlin argues that by reintroducing the political concerns of ancient rhetoric, composition classrooms can be relevant by examining cultural and literary texts for relations of power. Henry Giroux also argues that through the examination of cultural texts a good critical pedagogue can demystify hidden power dynamics and oppression inherent in capitalism. While Berlin and Giroux retain Freire’s interest in Marxist social change through education, much of the dialogic nature of Freire’s pedagogy as well as the belief in student-chosen locally relevant topics is lost. Recently, the field of composition has been revising its beliefs and assumptions about critical pedagogy and the ways to work with ideology in the classroom. The dominant pedagogy in composition for some time, traditional critical pedagogy of the sort espoused by Henry Giroux or James Berlin has come under fire as being arrogant, unresponsive to student needs, and ineffective in bringing change. Russel Durst, for instance, argues for a “less confrontational pedagogy” (“Can We Be Critical of Critical Pedagogy?” 111): which accepts students’ pragmatic reasons for attending college, seeking to establish common ground between teacher and student. But the approach also strives to build social consciousness, seeing these two goals as complementary, not mutually exclusive. Rather than support an oppressive status quo, my approach rests on a recognition that few students are radicalized by critical pedagogy – indeed, far more appear to be alienated by such instruction ... and that seeds of political awareness and action are better planted through a pedagogy that accepts students’ reasonable wish to be successful in school and and career. (“Can We Be Critical of Critical Pedagogy?” 111) While Shor’s work partly consists of descriptions of a high level of student engagement in his own classroom, student “resistance” to critical pedagogy is now 3 commonly referenced, and theorists and researchers have begun to try to investigate how to respond to this resistance. Xin Liu Gale argues meanwhile that those like Shor who seek to reduce teacher authority in the name of more democratic student-centered classrooms ignore the institutional authority the teacher has and cannot possibly escape. Durst uses his study of the classroom of one of his graduate students to make the point that critical pedagogy often ignores the goals that students bring to the writing classroom and that students have good reason to resist such a pedagogy ( Collision Course) . In Who Can Afford Critical Consciousness?, David Seitz demonstrates that middle class teachers often make assumptions about the ideologies of working class students and that these ideologies and the path to change are always far more complicated and specific to each student than we imagine them to be. In order to be effective,
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