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Dialogical Model of Liberational Pedagogy
by
Steven Mark Streufert
A Project
Presented to
The Faculty of Humboldt State University
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts
April 1998
ìProblem-posing education is revolutionary futurity.î
--Paolo Freire (65)
ìConventional education makes independent thinking extremely difficult. Conformity leads to mediocrity. To be different from the group or to resist environment is not easy and is often risky as long as we worship success. The urge to be successful, which is the pursuit of reward whether in the material or in the so-called spiritual sphere, the search for inward or outward security, the desire for comfort--this whole process smothers discontent, puts an end to spontaneity and breeds fear; and fear blocks the intelligent understanding of life.î
--J. Krishnamurti (9-10)
ìLiberation is a matter of hearing out the world.î
--James Moffett (1983, 88)
Education is no simple affair, involving as it does the entirety of the human psyche as well as its social context and background. To engage the developing mind is to mingle one's manipulations with the future, and to encounter an unknown past every bit as mysterious as the ontology of selfhood. To dwell in the present moment of the classroom is, then, to walk a tightrope from which the teacher may at any moment fall into hypocrisy or, worse yet, the commission of perhaps unintentional but possibly irreparable mental and emotional encumbrance of the students whom s/he seeks ostensibly to help, educate and empower. In the writing classroom the real issue is not standards nor "correct" grammar and syntax--although these do matter, secondarily. Rather, the crux of the effort, which the teacher must bear in constant awareness and conscientious ethical sense, is in the epistemology of creativity, in the self-knowledge of expression. Between the social and the individual is what Vygotsky calls the "zone of proximal development," wherein the learner is either enabled to come forward into relationship with the world, or is discouraged and falls back into solipsism, egocentrism and silence. Unfortunately, pedagogical methods of the past (and, anachronistically, the present) have served as much on the side of the latter case as the former. This essay seeks to consider the problematics of and to offer alternatives to the problems of educating and learning. Drawing upon the theories of James Moffett and Mikhail Bakhtin, and referring contextually to the works of Lev Vygotsky, Paulo Freire and Louise Rosenblatt, it aims to further the advancement of a humanistic and student-centered curriculum. It describes a pedagogy which respects learners as equals, as true individuals along the ways of growth, within institutions ideally promoting liberty and creation, rather than rôte mimicry and stale repetitions of the errors of the past. In an educational paradigm within the language arts where the dialogical and discoursal nature of social and personal consciousness is recognized there is no need for entrenched hierarchies of status and the oppression of verification; the discoursal and dialectical utterance, the primary spring of both self and society, becomes the focus of a perpetual learning in which teachers and administrators may and must participate as much as their supposed "subordinates." This is the only approach which conduces to democracy and an awakened, responsive polis capable of living up to such ideals as self-determination and enlightened collectivity, capable of living as creative symbolic analysts rather than either domineering demagogues or timid victims.
Though we will deal primarily with the educational and epistemological theories of Moffett and Bakhtin, this essay is ideologically contextualized by the libertarian pedagogy propounded by Freire in his influential Pedagogy of the Oppressed. As does Freire, this essay seeks to declare and reveal the moribundity of an outdated system of social control which has for so long merely perpetuated negative hegemony where independent thought and discovery should reign; and it does so by exploring readily available and workable options for liberation in education. So long as oppressive and hierarchical models dominate in the classroom learning will be stunted and ideologically biased towards co-option by the status quo, business-over-being, standards-oriented methods of the past. Using a metaphor of cultural imperialism, Freire boldly declares that ìHomes and schools (from nurseries to universities) exist not in the abstract, but in time and space. Within the structures of domination they function largely as agencies which prepare the invaders of the futureî (135). Freire, in opposition to this, outlines a model of education which is co-operative, mutually informing for teachers and students, and necessarily dialogical in nature. Freireís method seeks to aid students to collectively recognize what he calls ìlimit-situationsî (80), wherein the difference between hopelessness and liberatory potential is made by ìhow they are perceived by women and men at a given historical moment.î In other words, contingency and consensus are a social environment in which individuals must strive for expression, yet the situation is one which no individual alone may change.
The coming to awareness of what Freire calls the social ìcontradictionî of internalized patterns of inequity is the starting point of learning, the anchor for self-development, the mirror of the desire to come into oneís own power in opposition to the forces which oppress, both external and psychological. As he puts it, in statements that strongly mirror Bakhtinís and Moffettís in their process-oriented view of social change, students:
...may discover through existential experience that their
present way of life is irreconcilable with their vocation to
become fully human. They may perceive through their relations
with reality that reality is really a process, undergoing con-
stant transformation. If men and women are searchers and
their ontological vocation is humanization, sooner or later
they may perceive the contradiction in which banking education seeks to maintain them, and then engage themselves in the
struggle for their liberation (56).
Freire argues that the dynamic of oppression is implanted through internalization of relative roles in both oppressor and oppressed, that each ìhousesî the other, and that liberation must be undertaken by all segments of a society, not just the oppressed revolutionary underclasses. Educationally speaking, he says, ìThe teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all growî (61). That the contradiction is social necessitates that awareness of it grow in a co-operative learning situation. The Marx-influenced ìcommunalismî and social revolution of Freire are, however, quite distinct from the materialism of modern Marxist governments (for these are failed revolutions), as well as from the historical dialecticism of Hegel. Freire seeks not just a periodically terminal synthesizing of opposites, but a constant synergetic development which surpasses mere contradiction--not mere thesis and antithesis resolving fatalistically into synthesis, but one which takes the name ìcomradeî seriously in interactive pursuit of an elusive utopia of continual free learning. He makes it clear that in the struggle for learning (that is to say, liberation), neither ìobjectivism nor subjectivism, nor yet psychologismî will do; what is required is ìrather subjectivity and objectivity in constant dialectical relationshipî (32). For Freire, there can be no development without this energy of fortuitous opposition and co-operation, without fecund difference and mutuality (as William Blake says, ìIn opposition is true friendship.î). Ultimately, it is that ì...human beings in communion liberate each otherî (114); but this communality is not homogeneity: ìEvery entity develops (or is transformed) within itself, through the interplay of its contradictionsî (117).
This positioning relates to the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin who, writing under the oppressive censure of the Soviet regime, enacted a radically subversive theory of the ìcarnivalî of personality. This carnivalesque view emphasizes the deeply ambivalent nature of language and identity in a festival atmosphere of shifting meaning-making. Bakhtin seeks a true democracy of the mental world, one inherently social wherein, ìConsciousness becomes consciousness only once it has been filled with ideological (semiotic) content, consequently, only in the process of social interaction,î (Bakhtin Reader 52). This is an epistemology in which the external and internal being of the subject are inextricably amalgamated with those of others. It is a ìheteroglossicî social configuration where there is always a ìprimacy of context over textî (Holquist 428), and meanings strive centripetally or centrifugally for emergence in a flux of meaning. Within the ever-changing ìlogosphereî of meaning: ìSigns can arise only on interindividual territory.... The individual consciousness is a social-ideological factî (Bakhtin Reader 52).
For Bakhtin there can be no artificial severing of the personal and the social as one finds attempted in oppressive systems of governance and ideology. Rather, there is constant ìanswerabilityî between participants, a situation where every utterance predicts and relationally alters the one that follows it in a discoursal situation. This functions as well within the individual, who bears an endlessly intermixing, internalized ìdialogismî of voices and forces which constitute the psyche: ìEverything means, is understood, as part of a greater whole--there is a constant interaction between meanings, all of which have the potential of conditioning othersî (Holquist 426). So, only in the recognition of the undecidable, unfinalizable nature of the individual, in all of its potentiality, may an institution (be it national or educational) truly operate in full sincere accord with the real nature of human development and consciousness. As Freire says, ìAuthentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communicationî (58). Just as Freire, working as he did with mainly illiterate, rural Brazilian peasants, takes as the optimal idiom of education the liberation of the capacity to conceive of oneself and oneís comrades in the fullest sense of the word as human beings, so Bakhtin argues for a liberating sense of self oriented in the imagination and freedom of creative and relational impulse, one which can reveal the interlocking intertextuality of personalities.
In the face of an intrusive central governance apparatus, Bakhtin chose creative subterfuge, indirection, and yet radical honesty. This is what he means by ìcarnivalî--that identity is fluid and playful, intermingling and ambiguous. For Bakhtin it is a myth that any one interpretation, meaning or definition of personality can stand as more than a momentary manifestation. Every occurrence, as well, is one that has incredibly mixed origins and ends, an utterly ambiguous being in any given moment. Bakhtinís alternative to the suspicious modality of oppression and secrecy is to don masks of alterity in order to celebrate, not to deceive, to enter the democratic carnival rather than the mutually conceded to and applied gulag of limitation and deleterious judgment.
The area where this takes place is the realm of the ìutterance,î in which speech acts in dialogue interact meaningfully and in struggle for expression, for transient emergence into collective being. In that it is so central to not only our interaction, but our definitions of self and world as well, the idea of the ideological and situational nature of language is central to the elaboration of Bakhtinian theory. Bakhtin is not so much concerned with language as a static entity as he is with how it acts and is acted upon by individuals in ideological situations. He reveals language as central to all political and social issues. As Robert Stam has said:
The Bakhtinian formulation has the advantage of not con-
stricting liberatory struggle to purely economic or political battles, extending it to the shared territory of the utterance. Bakhtin locates ideological struggle at the pulsating heart
of all discourse, whether in the form of political rhetoric,
artistic practice or everyday language exchange. Bakhtinís language-oriented view of social practice brings a discursive dimension to the leftist axiom that ëeverything is politicalí (123).
In light of this statement, Bakhtin is in concord with Freire; yet Bakhtinís notion of the utterance as part of an internal process of dialogue, as well as an outwardly expressed ideological action, expands from Freireís often literal-materialist position to one which takes full account of the reality and relativity of the subjective psyche. Whereas Freire seeks to overcome subjectivity in favor of communality, Bakhtin stresses that the logosphere is inherently infused with subjectivist ambiguities; and likewise, the subjective consciousness cannot be separated from ever-multifarious internalizations of, as well as relations with, the outer social world. For Bakhtin there is constant ìmultivocalityî within the mind, with many voices acting in chorus at all times. We are by nature, and to the extent that we are irrevocably social creatures, ìheteroglossicî to the core.
We cannot be rendered down into singularly limited existences or systems of thinking. Personality, perspective and roles are ever contingent and relative to particular circumstances, as much a part of immediate circumstance as they are based upon held beliefs, remembered feelings and experiences, or ideologies and learning from the past. Any educational system attempting to so delimit the free expression of spontaneous, interactive personality is in violation not only of the potentiality of its studentsí minds, but also of the very force which generates thought and expression. If we are truly dialogical beings, as Bakhtin claims, then we cannot be developing and living in actuality if we are not constantly aware of ourselves as inside of discourse; like the tension which holds the atoms together to form matter, Bakhtinís logosphere relies on the actualized, dialogized presences of its participants. Without this mutuality, made strong with ideological tension--as Stam puts it, there is naturally a ìplurality of voices which do not fuse into a single consciousness but rather exist on different registersî (128)--the educational institution in question would fall into monologism. This is what Freire refers to as ìnarrativeî education, a situation of discoursal hegemony where students are mere recipients of stipulated ìfactsî and likely stories. Freire calls this piling up of quantitative information the ìbanking modelî of learning, relating it to the colonial dominance of Latin American nations by economic and cultural models originating in the north and in Western Europe. For Bakhtin, this situation would be analogous to the Sovietsí attempts to regulate ideology and public discourse through propaganda and the threat of censure or the gulag. Hence, any educational or societal system which does not allow for and encourage free dialogical interaction is a smaller or larger form of tyranny, the teacher in this case acting as a type of minor dictator or policing agent of the mind.
An ideal praxis for the interactional classroom could be modeled from Bakhtinís theory of ìhybridization,î wherein there is a ìmixing, within a single utterance, of two or more different linguistic consciousnessesî (Holquist 429). Speaking of the novel as a social model, Bakhtin sees these artistically represented discursive voices as being mutually illuminating:
...as distinct from the opaque mixing of languages in living utterances that are spoken in a historically evolving language... the novelistic hybrid is an artistically organized system for bringing different languages in contact with one another, a system having as its goal the illumination of one another, the carving-out of a living image of another language (Dialogic Imagination 361).
Could not this theory be adapted to the ìopaqueî domain of social and educational interaction in order to produce the same ìilluminationî in the classroom, under the ìartisticî guidance of a dialogically-aware teacher?
Bakhtinís ideas may be contextualized and revealed by the similar yet qualitatively differing ones of a contemporary Russian, Lev Vygotsky. More scientific and pragmatic than Bakhtin, Vygotsky nonetheless treads similar theoretical ground, adding a categorical structuring to the study of the psyche which tempers the relativism of Bakhtin. He comes to a point, late in Thought and Language, where he declares that words and language, both inner and outer, private and social, are only ìa generalized reflection of realityî (256). What this means is that the map is not the territory. In other words, what we are in consciousness, what we feel and think through in inner or egotistical speech, and what we say either in social discourse of written expression are all distinct categories. They flow into one another, interrelate; but they must be known on their own terms. The word not only is not the thing, but it is also not the thought, nor the motivational impulse behind it; nor is it final, objective nor stable. It is part of--as Vygotsky points out when speaking of the relation between thought and word--ìa living processî (255). Language is not quantitative, though categorical and socially contingent; it and the consciousness based upon it are qualitative. In this fluid reality of language, how may we speak of standards as if they were static? How may we remove ourselves from categorical and situational language use and pretend that what we are doing when learning is distinct from lived and momentarily altering experience?
When he says that the ìword was not the beginningî (ibid.), he emphasizes ìthe deedî as primary, as the reality of context and contingency which produce the utterance, which is ìthe end of development, crowning the deed.î In this model, language is a coming into being, a realization of self within a moving, but understood, relational context. Through the ìzone of proximal developmentî consciousness arises as no longer purely subject to external, standardized language forms, but participatory within and with them, authoring them. This motivation runs developmentally from the early stage of autism, through the congeries and complexes of semi-muteness, up to ìpseudo-complexes,î and finally to a rational and conscious comprehension of the context and relation of things, events and people as ìscientific concepts.î The latter are what Moffett refers to as the realm of theorization, which is an ideal of development; but the former are roughly correspondent with recording, reporting and generalization, and are just as valid and important for the mature language user. The effective teacher must know how to identify the level of proximal development of his/her students, and negotiate this approximation towards fluency within a zone which is nurturing of the potentiality of the student. The negational alternative is a scenario which takes advantage of naiveté in order to indoctrinate the impressionable with false or spurious concepts masquerading (but not in the Bakhtinian sense!) as truths.
This type of ìscientificî knowing and expression is not absolute, nor final. Rather, as Vygotsky concludes, all language functions within an ìinflux of sense;î and words never mean simply one thing, a dictionary definition, but are always (as in inner speech, which survives as something more than vestigial, beyond the developmental stages of childhood) ìthe sum of all the psychological events aroused in our consciousness by the word.î If sense and meaning, connotation and denotation, are part of psychological reality, then their being is not stable--they are contingent, relative, and thus personal, subjective and social: ìA word acquires its sense from the context in which it appears....î Meaning and sense are rooted, then, in ìa dynamic, fluid, complex whole, which has several zones of unequal stabilityî (245). These zones are the levels of speech which Vygotsky outlines, moving from a deep, underlying consciousness, through an internal sense of self and motivation, into translation from inner speech, moving outwards into relation. At each of these levels language is changing its nature, until ìfinallyî externalized into the moving, reflective domain which is a living whole, what Bakhtin calls the logosphere--the ideal state for educational procedure.
We see, then, that language may be studied as the classic static and structural, Saussurian langue, but that it never ceases to be linked, in its actuality--and in fact rooted in--its functional, relational use as parole. Saussure, seeking scientific certainty, divides languaging into these falsifying dichotomies in order to stop its chameleonic reality from affecting his results. He wants to graph out something that is essentially fluid and multi-dimensional, transtemporal even, and personal. He recognizes this in his influential idea that the semiotic, linguistic sign is arbitrary; but he shies from the full implications of this idea, later so exploited by post-stucturalist theorists. Bakhtin begins with these implied, undecidable aspects, and constructs what has been called an ìanti-linguisticsî by many of his exegetes. Of course, he is against structuralist studies of language; for this approach is a false abstraction for him, a static attempt to impose a totalizing inertia upon what is really a moving system akin to the river of Heraclitus (which is an ever-changing flux, and will never be the same river again). In the classroom this idea must never be forgotten; with every move the teacher must be adaptive, interactive and open to the real status of the heteroglot collectivity of the class.
Bakhtin--though he advocates what may to some seem dangerous, and verging on the schizophrenic--is not a mad relativist: the relational nature of relative things must be remembered. Rather, he sees the structure and governing forces of language in the answerability of particular social contexts, through varying dialogic parameters and interactional partners, within a moving heteroglossia of contingency. That this model does not correspond with our desire for a stable structure does not make it less true. Bakhtin does not allow us to escape history, particular backgrounds and future potentialities. He is scientific in this sense--that he recognizes that the real universe may not be pinned to a theoretical construct, nor stopped from changing, nor (especially in the light of quantum physics) ever be determined finally to be simply one thing or another. Again, speaking of the novel as representative, he says:
A dialogue of languages is a dialogue of social forces per-
ceived not only in their static co-existence, but also as a
dialogue of different times, epochs and days, a dialogue
that is forever dying, living, being born: co-existence and
becoming are here fused into an indissoluble concrete unity
that is contradictory, multi-speeched and heterogeneous.
It is freighted down with novelistic images; from this dia-
logue of languages these images take their openendedness,
their inability to say anything once and for all or to think
anything through to its end, they take from it their lifelike concreteness, their ìnaturalistic qualityî...
(Dialogic Imagination 365).
In his science of the destruction of false constructs, Bakhtin allows art to enter as valid, as stemming from something actual, and as reflecting that reality more accurately--albeit less pragmatically--than inductive scientific experimentation ever can. He hypothesizes that from the general principle of heteroglossia we may deduce, and allow for, all possible particulars within contingent situations and utterances. Taking any of these particulars out of context, though, would rob them of their actual being, and render them deadenedly decontextualized and utterly different--therefore invalid as true examples of reality in language and society. Bakhtin demonstrates that parole authors langue, feeds it as it feeds upon it; and at the heart of this authoring which we are all doing, which education surely should have at its center, is dialogue--the plurivocality of our discursive, unfinalizable social environment. As Vygotsky says, ìTo understand anotherís speech, it is not sufficient to understand his words--we must understand his thought. But even that is not enough--we must also know its motivationî (Thought 253). In other words, we must know those or that with which we interact with empathy, as if we were part of it--and in fact, socially, heteroglossically, even somehow mystically, we are.
The need, revealed here, for recognition of dialogue
and interaction in education brings us to the ideas of Moffett, who made
it his lifeís mission to bring students out of mute resignation
and into a dynamic and personal curriculum which promotes expression and
tolerates feeling. It is ironic that the pedagogy of one who advocated
such a position would come to be seen as radical, leftist or overly permissive;
but if one considers the ìoppressionî in education which the
application of Freirian and Bakhtinian models reveal, then it can only
be seen as a patently obvious, common-sensical and necessary methodology.
As Moffett says:
Nothing less than the growth of the whole human being
requires a new integration of learning. What is common to
all subjects should be the unifying force of schools, and
what is common is precisely the human capacity to symbolize
first- and secondhand experience into an inner world to match against and deal with the outer world. The infant does this
already. Such a capacity is not taught; it can only be exercised
more or less beneficially. It operates integratively on all
fronts at once, at all ages. Education as we know it hinders
the growth of this capacity perhaps more than it fosters it.
The learner expends most of his intelligence coping with
the demands of arbitrary contents and arbitrary schedules
instead of using his native apparatus to build his own know-
ledge structures from what he and others have abstracted.
Since the latter is what he will spend the rest of his life
doing, whatever the future, this primary activity, I submit,
should gain priority over all else in education (Universe, 215).
The more publicly known whole language curriculum, which has fallen under much criticism of late for its ìlaxityî on standards, is surpassed in liberality by Moffettís emphasis on the whole being of the student. Still, his methodology has been influential, even if not as widely implemented before his death as he would have wished. As modern cultural theories and the politics of diversity eat away at the calcified edifices of old standards and standardization methods, the Universe of Discourse Moffett dreamed of in the Sixties becomes more and more our world. In the light of new technologies and media of culture, it becomes all the more urgent.
One of Moffettís starting points of debate is against what he calls ìexternal testingî (Detecting Growth 1), in favor of a method which allows for an appreciation of the personhood of the students. He argues that standardized and national testing forms exist mainly for administratorsí and teachersí convenience, not really for a compassionate understanding of the studentís growth:
Comparing individuals against each other hampers every-
oneís progress by creating distracting self-concepts.
Incessantly testing students, finally, amounts to putting
them on probation throughout their youth. This creates
chronic problems of low self-esteem and resentment
toward schools, which should be there, after all, to serve
them, not to shame and intimidate them (Detecting Growth 3).
Rather, he recommends an observational approach which seeks to ìnoticeî and guide a studentís learning via empathy for and relation with that learner. An overt pedagogy using externalized standards misses and cannot measure the ìholistic complexity of thought and speechî which will always be idiosyncratic and particular to each student. Coming as they do from quite different experiences and backgrounds, students will always have variant readings, understandings of language and approaches to learning; and the testing approach (at least in effect, if not exactly inadvertently) serves to whittle away these characteristics of diversity and individuality in favor of a universalized standard which is itself (it must be admitted) idiosyncratic and biased. To argue for subjectivity as we are here is not, however, to advocate a solipsistic relativism. As we explore Moffettís ìGrowth Sequencesî and his theories of abstraction we will see the liberation possible in the world-view he creates from the basis of Piagetian models of development, and how they relate to Bakhtinís radical redefinition of consciousness as dialogic in nature.
Moffettís Detecting Growth in Language outlines in twenty-five stages an organic expansion process of self-conscious use and awareness of language as the structure of identity and basis of expression in the world. Starting from the ìegocentricityî originally described by Piaget as the ìautismî of the early stages of life, Moffett describes how students in optimal development make use of natural, seemingly innate linguistic abilities, moving towards an increasingly abstract and sophisticated, self-determination and flexibility. This aptitude, latent or partially expressed in the child, is the basis for the mature ìshuttlingî between the various forms of thought and discourse which is Moffettís goal for education. In Moffettís scheme the student is always moving from the basic and only partial consciousness of early experience, and its ìinterior dialogueî and ìegocentric speech,î through interactive ìsocialized speechî (see Universe 47), towards more objective, less personal conceptualizing. Moffett characterizes this growth, modeled in forms of written expression, as a moving from simple recording and reporting towards generalizing and theorizing. So, at first, it is important to start with more obvious relational forms, moving towards objectivity and generalizations (though the latter are also relational, from the Bakhtinian view). For Moffett, adulthood and true learning are signaled by the ability to become ìmetacognitiveî in that, ì...there results a sort of master growth that is meta-linguistic. That is, one becomes detached from language, conscious of oneself as a language user, and able to verbalize about oneís verbalization... able to think about oneís thinkingî (Detecting Growth 66). At the ìtopî end of the abstraction scale, though, the most developed user of language is able to move freely between the various modes as is appropriate either socially or in terms of oneís audience. This is what ìshuttlingî means--the ability to use absolutely formal modalities, whilst retaining and activating for highest impact and most effective communication the other modes, these modes being not ìlowerî forms but simply different ways of expressing oneself sophisticatedly. As Moffett qualifies his position,
Growth does not consist of merely acquiring the tools of
metacommunication to name or state connections explicitly.
These tools constitute the technical prerequisite but alone
are not enough. Always, the learner must learn to judge, as
either sender or receiver, if metacommunication is desirable.
Too often teachers incline to value only the explicit, because
they can see it and thereby know what a studentís thought is,
but explicitness is definitely only half of the matter. Since
not all can ever be said, discoursing is always a matter of
ascertaining how much will do the trick properly (55).
So, there is a looping return to the inherently dialogical nature of language, to its foundations in answerability, yet one which is more conscious and resilient, knowing how to use the modes subtly.
In a Bakhtinian sense, then, Moffettís actualized literacy is multi-vocal, heteroglossic, and dialogic. A result of inner diversity and the ability to open-mindedly consider all options, the entrance into dialogue is social, an elaboration of an inner empathy for oneís possible selves, for the potentialities of words and ideas, for diverse idioms, which is mirrored by the plural world of social discourse. This mirror also reveals the social foundations of that very individual subjectivity which many would so like to pretend is distinct and separate from the world outside. Personal being is not purely self-generated. Freireís communality, the solidarity despite irony and ambiguity advocated by Richard Rorty, as well as Bakhtinís emphasis upon the social origins of identity all argue against this view. As Moffett puts it: ìDialogue is verbal collaboration, which means that utterances are chained by the reciprocal prompting of each speaker by the other. Sender and receiver constantly reverse rolesî (Detecting Growth 56 ). This is Bakhtinís answerability expressed perfectly (though Moffett had surely never read the theoristís work when these ideas were first developed).
Moffett advances somewhat from Bakhtinís emphasis upon the carnivalesque. Without the ability to be monological, the dialogic fact of language and consciousness is made meaninglessly unconscious and is rendered to the level of mere instinct. It is to Moffettís credit that he is not a pure idealist of dialogue; rather, he continuously seeks to incorporate the greatest diversity not only of voices themselves, but also of levels of voice, registers of diction and discourse, modalities of appropriate speech acts. As he expresses it, ìDialogue may of course vary tremendously in maturity but the less developed a speaker the more she is limited to dialogue. Growth consists of extending oneís range of kinds of discourse by learning to monologue at different abstraction levelsî (56). Hence we move from the first growth sequence, ìToward generalizing more broadly while elaborating more finelyî (15), to the higher level which yet mirrors the earlier form with nearly perfect symmetry, yet greatly expanded in effect and reach: ìToward increasing consciousness of oneself as a language user and of the language alternatives one has to choose fromî (Detecting Growth 66). It is the ìas above, so belowî alchemy of this formulation which allows the mature form to be not the mere replacement of the earlier, younger one. Rather, the language user may incorporate it with sympathy, use itís modality when appropriate, and be unlimited in potential understanding as a perennial learner, student and teacher--indeed, ìto play freely the whole symbolic scaleî (Universe 28). A barren adult indeed is one who discards the magic, spontaneity and deeply felt reality of the youthís perspective. The dialogic capacity, then, proves to be an intellectual fountain of youth, promoting social eudaemonia, moving towards the utopia of Bakhtinís carnival and Freireís society of comrades.
The Moffettian classroom is inherently dialogic, depending upon the personal presence of its member individuals in interaction for its real procedure and substance. As Moffett says, ìBecause one discourses in his native language about all matters and at many abstraction levels, there is really only one subject, ...and that subject is discourse itself, of which science and social studies are subclassesî (Universe 212). In the ideals of Moffett, students ìlearn by doing,î not by passively receiving. If there is a fundamental subject matter it is first ìwho am Iî and ìwho are weî --basic philosophical questions. These are always at the bottom of what goes on in the class, whether it be a problem-posing or solving issue, a writing assignment, or a question of literary valuation. The ìdoingî in a Moffettian class consists of social activities which draw upon the personal resources of human beings, primarily, and does not resort constantly to textbooks and outside materials. Students learn to write by writing, using interactive feedback from peers for guidance, and learning to turn errors to oneís advantage: ìIn this action-response learning, errors are valuable; they are the essential learning instrument. They are not despised or penalized. Inevitably, the child who is afraid to make mistakes is a retarded learner, no matter what the activity in questionî (Universe 199). Here we find yet another argument for a nurturing, collaborative classroom over one which rates by standards and grades on conformity. Why should the trial-by-error learning of the ìworld outsideî not also be recognized and taken advantage of in the classroom?
The one constant resource in the Moffettian class is literature, always there to provide a context and discussion point which can be used to reveal the viewpoints and varied experiences of the class members. Literature may act not only as a mirror to particular experience, but also a guide to fine writing style and rhetoric. Therefore, it is indispensable. As Moffett explains in introducing his Active Voice program for writing ìacross the curriculum,î learning ought to be centered upon activities which bring the world to the student holistically and experientially:
Essentially, this is a functional, global approach that, instead
of subdividing English into blocks of content, would teach
most aspects of the subject, including aspects of literature, simultaneously and interrelatedly, through examining student productions side by side with analogous professional writingî (Voice 7).
Writing along with literature can aid the student, through writing assignments which ìexternalize thinking processesî (Voice 14), toward the goal of a writing curriculum that recognizes that, ìComposing words on paper... is... composing the mindî (15). This goal is simply expressed: ìWe must give students an emotional mandate to play the symbolic scale, to find subjects and shape them, to invent ways to act upon others, and to discover their own voiceî (148). Introducing literary materials into an ostensibly student-centered classroom is fraught with difficulties, though, for they bring along an immense amount of controversial baggage. With so much history of debate in the area of literary criticism how, it could be asked, may students respond freely and freshly to a story, poem or essay which has been hashed over in a thousand ways by countless scholars, critics and students? It is possible that fine literary models and the lofty aesthetic standards therein may actually serve, if the teacher is not careful, to increase mute stupefaction or inferiority complexes in younger writers. This question brings us to Rosenblattís theories of literary reception and interactive reader response, which reveal how fine and reputable texts, hence all knowledge, need not be alienating to learners.
Rosenblatt advocates what she calls a ìtransactionalî relationship between the reader and the text, a relation quite similar to the one in the Moffettian classroom where the conduct of learning experiences relies vitally upon the interactivity between students, the teacher and the materials used. She refers to two types of reading, the ìefferentî and the aesthetic. In the former is found the information-oriented approach normally emphasized in schools, one where the reader is primarily concerned with what s/he may ìcarry awayî (Reader, Text, Poem 24) in data from the experience. The latter, often neglected even in Literature courses, is one where ìthe readerís attention is centered directly on what he is living through during his relationship with that particular text (Reader, Text, Poem 25, emphasis added). What is important in this modality, she says, is the synthesis of feelings and associations of the reader. For Rosenblatt these two categories are the poles on a scale which determines the appropriate approach to a given text in a given context and use. The spectrum runs between the most public and the most private readings, but these are not mutually exclusive:
True, there are two primary ways of looking at the world.
We may experience it, feel it, sense it, hear it, and have
emotions about it in all its immediacy. Or we may abstract generalizations about it, analyze it, manipulate it and
theorize about it. These are not contradictory activities,
however... Instead of thinking of the text as either literary
or informational, efferent or aesthetic, we should think
of it as written for a particular predominant attitude or
stance, efferent or aesthetic, on the part of the reader.
(ìS.O.S.î 445)
What this implies is that there is a constant blending of the public and the private, to various degrees, in any reading or relational experience. There is almost always room for the private world of the reader to enter into even a very efferent text. Not to fall into pure subjectivism is important (especially in efferently-oriented courses), but the teacher of any text should not ignore the crucial relevance of the interaction of the student with any given material. This interactional view of reading, which leaves a text open at all times to varied relations with it, new interpretations and ideas, is quite aligned with Bakhtinís logospheric world of constant dialogism in language. It is also nearly perfectly parallel with Moffettís view of the abstraction scale, upon which the mature learner and languager must learn fluidly to shuttle. A writing class oriented along these lines would not offer what Freire negatively characterizes as ìcommuniquésî for the students to memorize, but would rather encourage a truly social environment where personalized living, feeling and critical thinking would not have to be left at the door upon the beginning of the period.
Liberatory reading may lead directly to liberated expression: ì...a personal experience will elicit a definite response; it will lead to some kind of reflection. It may also lead to the desire to communicate this to others whom the boy or girl trustsî (Exploration 70). This discoursal approach leads up to the point where:
Once a student has responded freely, a process of growth
can be initiated. He learns to handle with intelligence and discrimination the personal factors that enter into his re-
action to books. Through a critical scrutiny of his response
to literary works, he can come to understand his personal
attitudes and gain the perspective needed for a fuller and
sounder response to literature (108).
The same maturation would apply to the studentsí lives outside of books, together in the classroom as well as in the rest of their personal lives. Hence we see that literary studies may lead not only to better understanding and practice of writing but also that, when learned transactionally, they can be guides to greater flexibility, ethical appropriateness and flexibility in oneís actions in the dialogic world ìoutsideî of the ivory towers of academia. Learning appropriateness in response is the foundation of ethics, and the starting point for truly sane learning in and about the world, as well as about oneself. There can be no solidarity, and hence no real learning, without the situationalism demanded by Rosenblatt.
In a classroom which takes seriously the ramifications of the theorists we have covered every student would be an important member of the society of the class, and without the active participation of each the curriculum would suffer. There must be constant answerability in the classroom, a tolerance of heteroglossia which requires a correspondent assumption of social responsibility on the part of each participant. One of the major problems of the old-school methods is that the students may foist the responsibility for responsivity off onto others, that they may be secretly uninvolved, or that they may hide behind the materials rather than being personally present. Teachers, as well, must learn not to hide behind lecturing and fact, but to be alive and awake to the impulse towards innovation, new thought and imagination. The difficulty of such a proposition is counterbalanced by the potential profound advancement of social realism in education, as well as verbal confidence and personal empowerment of the students. It will not always succeed, but it is a valid hypothesis which, at least, respects along the way the individual dignity of the student. Given ideal circumstances such a class may become, indeed, an ideal, model society.
Today we are living in a society radically different from the one from which traditional pedagogies were developed; and so, we must have a new, adaptive and dialogic methodology that takes into account the actual world in which our students are living. It may be a difficult and (constant) transition, but it is one which is correspondingly full of new potentiality. In light of the current domination of our culture by the inherently dialogic and discursive electronic media of information and entertainment, as well as the increasingly specialized nature of the work world, not only students but also teachers and educational administrators must take heed of the need for new forms of instruction. They must look for new pedagogies which are able at once to engage students already overstimulated and to facilitate their growth in directions which may not seem immediately entertaining, but are more useful and fulfilling in the long run. Some would even say that the accelerated world to which our students are subject presents an irreparable handicap to the growth of more considered and difficult abilities which are slow to bear fruit and full of toil in cultivation. This need not be the case.
We are increasingly living in the heteroglossic world of Bakhtin and the collaborative, the enacted one of Moffett, one where learning must be constantly adaptive, flexible and open-ended. As Myron Tumin points out, there is in Bakhtin ìa reversal of those aspects of print literacy that lie at the center of an older, more encompassing Western tradition embedded in print literacyî (90). It is not easy to alter so fundamentally our approaches to and views of education, either as students or as teachers. Indeed, some students may even display resistance to new, collaborative pedagogical methods. It requires more effort to fight the inertia of the past than to embrace in resignation or stubbornness an older and obsolete way. Unfortunately, teachers may not do this sort of work for the student; but they may--and they must--help to prepare the metaphoric soil for the learner, to ensure, both through their guidance and via appropriate tools, that the fertility exists from which the studentís efforts may flourish. As Tumin points out, though, there are encouraging new possibilities implied by Bakhtinian theory:
Bakhtin, as it were, turns the world of print literacy on
its head, and in so doing becomes a rallying point for all
language educators--both those committed to and those
largely ignorant of networked classrooms--who want to
move beyond the pedagogic and, at a deeper level, the
moral limits of print literacy. The specific appeal of the
networked classroom is that it literally embodies the
structure of post-print literacy. Such a classroom, for
example, automatically seems to refute one of the prin-
cipal tenets of print literacy, that of the writer as
isolated individual, replacing it with a parallel tenet
of online literacy, that of writing and knowledge generally
as social construction... (91).
This is a perfect model for the dialogic classroom, where the writer and learner are not merely alone and subject to cold, objective grading. The trouble is how we may turn these possibilities to our advantage, how Moffettís ìlearning by doingî philosophy may be a means of allowing the educational experience to be one which is part of, not separated from, the larger social factors of the reality our students live in. Technology and entertainment media must not be blamed for the failings of education to reach struggling young learners; nor, indeed, may we blame the troubles of families, neighborhoods, or politics for the failings which do occur. Rather, we must consider the ways in which we , as educators, have failed to make the learning environment a vital and living rival of the television, the streets or the video arcade for the attention and passion of the students. Were we inclined towards the heteroglossic, these factors of our environment might indeed be turned to our advantage as teachers and learners. How, we must always ask, may we include the social background and new modalities of culture and learning in a revitalized classroom?
Students of today have not only an unprecedented opportunity for global community in the internet and world-wide web capabilities of computer technology, but also a correspondingly urgent need to adapt to the requisites of a rapidly changing work world and social environment. More and more, these students will participate in the heteroglossic electronic domains; and their future employers will require skills not only in particular areas of application, but also will demand that they be able to function interactively and independently as what Robert Reich has called ìsymbolic analysts.î These new requirements for adaptation will need not only new thinking, a new, synergetic manner of conceptualizing and working with problems, but will also need, to fully develop, a form of teaching which is radical and encouraging of the new forms of literacy, of the ìsecondary oralityî of our so-called post-modern world. This is a movement Miles Myers characterizes as going from an old, objectified ìdecoding, defining and analyzingî pedagogy to a new ìtranslation/ criticalî form of literacy:
...translation/critical literacy is organized around a
language model of event-based discourse in which readers
and writers fluctuate between participation and observation
and in which various language codes link events to beliefs
and attitudes in society. These codes and the perspectives
they represent are a central part of the subject of English
in translation/critical literacy. This model of language con-
trasts sharply with that of decoding/analytic literacy, in
which language was organized as a generic hierarchy of parts
from phoneme to word to sentence to paragraph and to larger
forms of language. But event-based discourse examines the
same parts and wholes but within the changing relationships
of self, tool, sign systems, speech events, mode, stance, and
style (134).
Hence, it is not just culture that is ever-changing, but the very forms of literacy which we use to understand and the language we use to describe the world.
To adapt as educators in English, while still retaining intact the integrity and formal bases of our field of study, we must apply new tactics not only to make literacy interesting to those intoxicated with the computer and the great influx of stimuli coming from the media, but we must also adapt our ideas of literacy and our methodologies in order to keep literacy itself relevant in a changing world. The possibilities for an open-minded, heteroglossic curriculum are endless. Using the technologies available today students would be able to conference with each other and their teacher or professor, as well as with others or with research tools and databases located at distant campuses. The ability to work inter-actively in this speed-of-light domain would allow them to respond to one another, or to have the instructor/facilitator respond to them, with immediacy and yet the considered attention that is harder to attain in the quite different atmosphere of the classroom. This is not, however, to imply a diminishment in the importance of person-to-person engagement in the classroom setting; rather, it accentuates this need as a factor of balance. Either way, despite the potentially ìalienatingî nature of technology, the situation is social, and determined by human criteria.
Students who learn to think and study in the global manner made available to them by new pedagogies and computers will already be absorbing the skills that will be required of them when they graduate--skills which are becoming nearly as important as traditional literacy itself. By being able to think beyond the immediate and limited, and yet by being engaged in the immediate on a truly personal level, such students will have the privilege--and the burden--of an expanded awareness. As educators, we must be diligent so as not to let such a chance pass us and them by.
Interestingly, the microcosm of the classroom and the macrocosm of the ìglobal villageî are not that disparate when viewed through the two-way mirror of the on-line computer and new forms of literacy. Although not enacted in a physical dimension, conferencing, chat, e-mail and information sharing listservers, not to mention WWW home pages, all provide other sorts of intimacy and sharing that are becoming ever more useful, immediate and translucent. When they are introduced to this realm as a means of learning, communicating and exploring, the written word as well as the visual image will take on a new life for students. Reading and expression through writing will no longer be seen as ìboringî by these students. Rather, they will have a great personal incentive towards literacy: that it is engaging, entertaining and really a part of the social world they live in.
A technologically-aware, diversity-adapted pedagogy which makes an effort to allow the students to recognize the validity of the educational process in their lives, a heuristics which does not present itself as a domain which is outside of ìreal life,î is wholly desirable and needed. A teaching method wherein the studentsí voices and feelings do not matter is doomed to fail. Rather, these personal elements of their being, however much they may seem to be intrusions into the sacrosanctity of the educational institution, are actually the studentsí greatest assets. They are Moffettís primary source materials. They are the channeling points for Bakhtinís energetic, linguistic logosphere. In the writing and reading classroom, the students must be allowed to have something personal to say, some experiential perspective which they may draw upon for interpretation and analysis, or they will have nowhere valid from which to start. In fact, if these personal factors are eliminated or discouraged by some form or other of objectivist and disciplinarian methodology, then the student will be left alone and helpless, totally reliant upon the teacher or a textbook, and most likely will be daydreaming of escape from the cloistered cell of the classroom rather than paying attention to or engaging in the class and its activities. The school is a social environment, and the most effective and moral pedagogy will not deny this fact. The student must be allowed to bring everything and anything that s/he is or imagines--if it is at all appropriate--into play and production in the classroom. Nothing that may cripple this engagement, interaction and symbolic analysis must be enacted by the teacher; interventions must be guiding forms of sympathy, pathos and wisdom. The aware and adaptive educator will find ways to incorporate the studentsí disparate elements of experience, diversity of cultures, even their frustration or violent emotion into a revolutionizing process of personal growth. A student so encouraged and enabled will inevitably have more confidence and willingness to write, read and learn than a student who has been put through the mill of discipline and rote exercises. The curriculum fails when it fails to recognize that the bases of literacy are not only oracy and the new mediacy, but the absolutely undeniable facts of the personality and the psychology of the student.
A radical synergetics of the students with each other, with writing and reading assignments, with media such as the computer, is possible of achievement in the classroom. The school may become for the student every bit as real and important a stage upon which to perform, within which to feel, express and strive for liberational self-discovery, as any other domain of his or her life. Even television shows are vital material for this type of classroom, for the goal is to bring the students in, not to alienate them. Writing or reading need not differ fundamentally from living, just as it is impossible that any form of writing could be anything but creative. A teacher who does not recognize this synthesis is doomed to repeat the errors of the past, to fail to reach the students; such an instructor is bound, in fact, to hamper rather than help their development as writers and as human beings.
If we long for a liberation pedagogy, then we must not suppress the carnival of growth which is a studentís and a societyís birthright. Education must be heuristic, not dictatorial. If we cannot (yet) conduct our classes on the sun-lit hillsides of some natural utopia, or within healthy and green cities, can we not at least let the imaginations of our students go there? It has to be admitted that the human race has not yet realized the dreams of its greatest social thinkers; and so it is with humility as educators that we must enter the classroom and try. In awe of a universe so far beyond the supposed comprehensivity of our former pedagogies and curriculi, should we not allow for new knowledge and visions? Shall we not allow the generations to come to discover and create their worlds without the anguished residue of the 20th Century? Should we not admit that we as teachers, every bit as much as our students, have something to learn? If one thinks about it, the thought is actually quite exciting.
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ìWhat takes learning is the sense of alternative possibilities and the reasons for choosing one over another. Real truth-seeking has always been a collaboration of receptive minds; it requires a willingness to be influenced, reciprocity, which is a strength not a weakness.î
--James Moffett (Universe of Discourse 97)