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Copyrighted Material chapter six INTO THE CLASSROOM Pedagogical Approaches to the Rhetoric of Intellectualism and Anti-intellectualism COPYRIGHTED ForMATERIAL the past ten years, to engage my first-year composition students in the important work of thinking and writing critically about the messages concerning education and intellectualism that surround them, I have been introducing them to the prominent voices—both academic and popular— sending these messages. I have also been aiding them in examining the context, rhetorical strategies, and potential consequences of such messages. With the goals of teaching students how to think critically about the rhetoric that surrounds them and also how to effectively and thoughtfully employ rhetorical strategies in their own communication of ideas, the first-year composition course has seemed an appropriate place to encourage students to analyze and respond to this rhetoric. It is important to engage students in a study of the rhetoric of intellectualism and anti-intellectualism in the United States not only because it shapes education reform, public policy, and public ideas about literacy and learning but also because it influences students’ own attitudes, experiences, and actions. In addition, it is important for us to employ a pedagogical approach that encourages and empowers students to become critical, active participants in these academic and public 119 conversations because (as the survey in chapter 1 makes clear) students’ voices are not currently present in these discussions. In this chapter, I discuss two examples of my work engaging undergradu- ates in a critical analysis of the rhetoric of intellectualism and anti-intellectu- alism in the United States. I describe the assignments and discern both what students learned from their work in the class and what rhetoric, composition, and literacy studies scholars can learn from students’ conclusions. In both examples, I emphasize students’ responses, and (when possible) feature their individual voices in order to begin to address the problem of the absence of students’ contributions to academia’s and the public’s considerations of these issues. My hope is that we (as a field and as academics) can continue to encourage and facilitate student participation in these larger discussions. The two examples that follow present the work and contributions of my students at the College of Staten Island (CSI). Functioning as both a community college and a senior college in the City University of New York (CUNY) public higher education system, CSI has a unique student body comprised of primarily New York City residents who come from working- or middle-class homes, who are often first-generation college students, and who have a diverse range of racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds and COPYRIGHTEDeducational experiences. Like the nineteenth-century American lyceum, Brookwood Labor College, and the Lindberg Center’s basic literacy pro- gram, CSI has not been viewed as a site or sponsor of intellectualism. Despite beingMATERIAL an institution of higher education, the college’s history as a public open-admissions institution and its current hybrid status of community college and senior college contribute to its not being considered a site of intellectualism in the twenty-first century. In fact, a number of students have noted the college often gets referred to as CSI: The College of Stupid Idiots. For these reasons, an examination of CSI students’ experiences and views builds on and expands the findings and conclusions of the three case studies highlighted in this book. “BE STUPID”? THE POPULAR CULTURE ARTIFACT ANALYSIS The primary writing assignment I have used in my first-year writing courses is what I call a popular culture artifact analysis. The assignment: select a popular culture artifact (for example, a TV show, film, advertisement, commercial, or song) that sends a message about learning, intelligence, intellectualism, or education in American culture; analyze the message it sends; interrogate how it sends that message (the rhetorical strategies 120 Into the Classroom used to persuade the audience); and consider how that message may af- fect society’s beliefs and actions. My goal for this assignment is to engage students in exploring their society’s views of education and intellectualism as expressed by popular media. I focus on the media because they function as what Henry A. Giroux has called a substantial “educational force” (The Mouse 2). Positioning popular culture artifacts as the subject of rhetorical analysis in a composition class can help students critically examine—and consequently challenge—these influential forces mediating views about learning, education, and intellectualism in American culture. This work is particularly relevant for composition classes because popular culture texts are part of the rhetorical situation in which students are being educated and from which they can become participants in the larger discussions of intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. To prepare students for this analysis, I typically assign a few articles by the scholars and cultural critics cited in chapter 1 who raise some of the primary issues about education and intellectualism that concern young people my students’ age. Among the readings I have assigned are Mark Edmundson’s “On the Uses of a Liberal Education: As Lite Entertainment for Bored Col- lege Students,” Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” and Thomas COPYRIGHTEDde Zengotita’s “The Numbing of the American Mind.” I also typically assign an article by Richard Hofstadter (“Democracy and American Anti-Intellec- tualism”) in order to expose students to the historical nature of this rhetoric. I supplementMATERIAL these readings with one or two that model for students the type of popular culture analysis I am asking of them. Those articles include Dianne Williams Hayes’s “Athletes, Outcasts, and Partyers,” which argues films about African Americans in higher education rarely depict them as anything but athletes, outcasts, or partyers; Aeon Skoble’s “Lisa and American Anti-intellectualism,” which claims The Simpsons sends an anti-intellectual message; and Steven Johnson’s “Watching TV Makes You Smarter,” in which he contends some television shows require and foster critical thinking. In addition to discussing the course readings, I prepare students for the written assignment by modeling, with them, the process of rhetorically analyzing a current popular culture artifact. In the past, we have analyzed an episode of the television comedy Community, the game show Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?, college websites, and a variety of advertise- ments. Recently, I have used Diesel’s “Be Stupid” ad campaign. I discovered the usefulness of this ad campaign for modeling the work of popular culture artifact analysis a few years ago when it produced a surprisingly rich discus- sion about education, class, and intelligence—a discussion I present now to Into the Classroom 121 demonstrate the effectiveness of this assignment in engaging students in a critical analysis of the rhetoric of intellectualism and anti-intellectualism in the United States.1 In 2010, the clothing company known as Diesel launched its “Be Stupid” ad campaign—a campaign espousing the philosophy that to “be stupid” means to take risks, to think outside the box, to pursue “a regret-free life.” The message—clearly targeted at youth culture—is delivered through ads with playful slogans and provocative images, and a hip video replete with dance-inducing disco rock music. Hinged on the ironic argument that to “be stupid” is actually “smart,” Diesel’s ad campaign at first seems compel- ling and refreshing. However, the billboard-style ads, with their life-size text shouting slogans like “Smart May Have the Brains, But Stupid Has the Balls” and their shocking images of bikini-clad young women exposing themselves or young men engaging in dangerous behavior, send more than a “think outside the box” message. These ads equate a regret-free life with “being stupid” and depict that life as one based on destructive, reckless, lewd, and lascivious behavior. When Diesel released its “Be Stupid” ad campaign, not surprisingly, it received some significant attention immediately. Critics were appalled by the COPYRIGHTEDlewd images and the call to “be stupid,” while others lauded the company for promoting uniqueness, thinking outside the box, and fun. I encountered the ads a few years ago as I was walking through the subway tunnels in Manhattan.MATERIAL On my long walk to the subway exit, I was greeted by the “Be Stupid” mantra again and again, along with a plethora of sibling slogans like “Trust Stupid,” “I’m with Stupid,” “Stupid Is Spreading,” “Think Less. More Stupid,” and “Smart had one good idea and that idea was stupid.” I was repeatedly startled not only by the slogans but also by the accompany- ing images of young women exposing themselves and poised in provoca- tive positions and young men walking confidently away from destruction, engaging in dangerous behavior with a smile, and behaving lasciviously. A few days after running into these ads, I brought them into the compo- sition class I was teaching at the time because we were just beginning the popular culture artifact analysis unit. That particular semester the theme of the course was American popular culture at large (not the rhetoric of intellectualism and anti-intellectualism), so the assignment was broader: to analyze a popular culture artifact for the messages (any) it was sending to its audience. After encountering the Diesel ads, however, I thought they would be a good example of a current popular media artifact we could use to practice as a class the type of analysis the writing assignment was asking 122 Into the Classroom of students. Because the rhetoric of anti-intellectualism and intellectualism was not the theme of the course, this particular class of students had not read Hofstadter or any of the other articles I typically assign. We had also not discussed the topic prior to my bringing in the Diesel ads for group discussion.
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