Testing and College Preparation: What I Learned by Listening to My Students

As a side project in the final weeks of this semester, my Comp II students read and responded to Kenneth Bernstein's lately popular tour de force "A warning to college profs from a high school teacher." The piece, written on the occasion of Bernstein's retirement from teaching high school civics, first appeared in the journal Academe. The article entered the public conversation when it was reprinted for the Washington Post online column "The Answer Sheet." Bernstein, whose retirement happens to coincide with the entry of the first generation of students educated under No Child Left Behind into college, argues that the incessant standardized testing that has come with NCLB has created a generation of students who are unprepared for college. This is because, according to Bernstein, school curriculum from the third grade on is designed to help students pass the yearly tests. This type of pedagogy, which focuses on memorizable and repeatable material, test-taking strategies, and so on, dominates the curriculum, pushing out any pedagogies that inculcate the kinds of critical thinking and analysis expected in college.

This is not a new argument. Even if I think he's right (I do), I have to admit that these arguments are a little tired. Every generation, it seems, has a reason why the next generation is less prepared. So, though I think Bernstein is likely at least partly right, his argument smacks of the Myth of the Golden Age fallacy.  And these arguments are not uncommon. This argument is repeated by critics of NCLB, the new critics of Common Core, and (germane to my own research) by high school teachers convinced that the internet is destroying the English language (it's not, by the way). Such pronouncements that the sky is falling are common in the public conversations about education. What is not common in the public conversation are the actual views of the students effected by these policies. Now that the first of these students have finally reached college, the time is right to ask what they think about their own preparation.

This became the goal of the side project I am relating here. In order to give a voice to these students, my class read about the issue, responded in a couple of online discussion board posts, and finally hosted an open discussion to which we invited interested stake holder experts in the field including our writing director, English Department chair, the Vice President for Academic Affairs, and a professor from the education department who specializes in assessment. We also had guests from off campus including a former State Teacher of the Year who is now the program director of a non-profit that supports our state's largest urban school district. (We also invited a couple classroom teachers but, ironically, they were both busy proctoring standardized tests on the day we hosted our discussion). These experts were invited to participate, but primarily as passive audience members who were allowed to ask questions.

Our discussion came primarily from the issues that came up in our discussion board posts, which began with a fairly straightforward question: Bernstein argues that standardized testing under NCLB is the reason students are unprepared for college. So, did you feel unprepared for college? If so, in what ways? On the other hand, do you feel that you were in fact prepared and, if so, what kinds of things prepared you?

I was actually surprised at how many students reported that they did feel like they were prepared for college learning. Admittedly, there are a few of them whose writing caused me to question whether or not they are prepared as they think they are. But by and large, these are typical second semester students, no worse than those I taught when I first started teaching composition in 2007. What was also surprising to me was how few students mentioned testing, or even curriculum, in their posts. Certainly, some of the savvy students knew that these posts were in response to an article about testing, so their answers should probably mention this. But testing was never the center of their posts, and came up very rarely in the narratives we heard during our discussion. This was true both of students who reported feeling prepared and those that didn't.

Many reported that they felt unprepared for the kinds of writing they would do. Others mentioned being unprepared for the work load, having never really had to do substantial and substantive homework before. But most of these students felt that, overall, they were prepared and so these news ways of learning were a matter of adjustment. Those few who reported feeling completely unprepared did not blame testing, or even mention it. Instead, their narratives focused on a lack of support in the classroom. One student, who was raised in a military home, talked about how often he moved to new schools. Most of these schools, he says, were very poor. Teachers were dealing with large class sizes with few resources, where they were having to provide supplies for their classrooms. This led to situations in which the teachers were often over worked and burnt out, and he often felt that he was being left to his own devices to try to learn. Significantly, he never wrote an academic essay, even of the maligned five paragraph variety, until he got to college.

In contrast to his experiences, my students who reported feeling well prepared came almost exclusively from middle class, even wealthy, suburbs. When asked what made them feel prepared, a surprising number of them did not even mention curriculum. Instead, they talked occasionally about involved teachers, and many of them talked about their parents, often mentioning that they were expected to perform well. One student even explicitly stated that what he learned in the classroom had nothing to do with the fact that he feels prepared. For him, most of what is most difficult to adjust to in college does not relate to curriculum, but instead includes the life changes that come with college: getting used to work load, and working a part time job, and living away from home for the first time. For this reason, the people who most prepared him were his coaches and relatives who stressed work ethic and resilience.

Interestingly, these responses suggest that, at least in the eyes of our students, our ability to be successful in college has less to do with coursework than we might assume. Instead, those students who feel most prepared had positive and involved support systems including teachers, parents, coaches and others.

This probably shouldn't be so surprising. In literacy studies, we've known at least since Deborah Brandt began her grounded theory studies of literacy sponsorship that family support systems have far more to do with literate ability than in-school experiences. If this is true in all areas of learning, perhaps when we assess our students' success, we have to begin to look beyond connections between test scores, textbooks, and curriculum. When our schools are failing, perhaps our texts and lesson plans aren't the first place we should look. Perhaps we should figure out where these extracurricular influences are failing or missing, and find ways to intervene in these areas. Standardized tests tell us very little about these things. In fact, as others have argued, standardized tests may do even more harm to these students since tests tend to privilege the kinds of knowledge not available to children in marginalized communities, where these support systems are often most lacking.

Alternative Assessment:

So we may know that the kinds of things we learn about our students through testing them may not actually predict their preparedness for college, but the fact remains that we do need some way to assess our students. We have to find out what they are learning. It might be very trendy for us teachers to hate standardized testing and to talk about how damaging it is. But we are doing little good if we are not able to propose alternative methods of assessment.  With regard to this, we can learn here from our home schooled and private school students.

At the university where I teach, a midwestern Christian university representing a fairly conservative demographic, we have a healthy number of students who were not in public schools, but who were educated in private schools or were home schooled. Most of the students in my class who were educated at home or in private schools had never taken a standardized test except for the SAT and ACT college entrance exams. Yet, all of them are at least proficient. A couple of them are among my best students. So we may have much to learn by looking at the ways in which these students were assessed.

One young man reported that his schooling was very independent. He was often learning on his own, reading and completing home school curriculum. In order to assess his learning, his parents made him teach them the material he had been reading. This was, as it turns out, a bit problematic. He reports that his parents, who were not highly educated themselves, often knew less about his subjects than he did. So, he was responsible for his learning in a way that most educators would not be comfortable with. Certainly, his success has come in part through his own ability and self-motivation, but his parents' method of assessment, albeit possibly an accident of their own insufficiency, did some very important things. By having to relate to his parents what he had learned, he had to become conversant with the subject. He had to go beyond the ability to recognize the right answer on a multiple choice test. Insead, he had to achieve literacy of the subject in order to choose relevant knowledge, compress it into manageable parts, and relate it to another person in a communicative way.

Literacy of the subject matter was even more important for one young woman in my class, whose parents were much more purposeful in their assessment. This young woman reports that her parents required a great deal of writing in which she was expected to critically engage her subjects, writing in a way that showed her comprehension of each subject. Her mother's grade, which was not necessarily attached to quantifiable, objective measures (like a test), was assigned based on her mother's impression of how well she did in the subject over the course of the year. It was, in a sense, "made up." Yet, despite never taking a standardized test, and having been assigned grades by arguably dubious standards, she is one my my brightest composition students.

Bernstein's biggest critique of NCLB in general and standardized testing in particular is that tests cannot prepare students for the kinds of critical thinking expected of them in college. Because of this, we're invited to assume, strategies that prepare students for testing privilege thinking strategies that do not depend on critical thinking. Indeed, one of my students related that teachers were often teaching test-taking strategies, aimed at helping students figure out answers to questions they did not actually know. In this sense, and if this is common, a certain amount of public school curriculum focuses not on academic subjects at all, but on how to fool the tests.

What's striking about the forms of assessment more common for my home schooled and privately schooled students is that they don't just assess what a student has learned by testing their knowledge on a multiple choice test. Instead, their methods of assessment (critical essay writing, "teaching" the material) have pedagogical aims of their own. In relating what they had learned, these students also had to become conversant with the material, synthesize it, and construct arguments from and about it. In these models, assessment does double duty. It tests a students knowledge of their subjects while also teaching the skills, conventions, and ways of thinking privileged in college classes.

Certainly, these forms of assessment aren't quantitative, and thus don't necessarily carry the pretense of objectivity. But they are better. And so public school systems may have much to learn from these methods that might help us to develop forms of assessment that are more productive for our students.

The Rhetoric of My Office

This year, for the first time ever, I have my own office at the institution where I teach. Having to choose things to hang on the walls and deciding which books would need to come from home to sit on the bookshelf in my office was a new experience for me. So, as I added things over the course of the first semester, I became aware of just how conscious I was about the choices I was making (I don't know why that should have been surprising to me, but it was). Mainly, I was aware of how aware I was (meta-awareness?) about what these choices would communicate about me--my preferences, philosophies, and even my teaching style. My office is, as it turns out, a rhetorical device. This, I admit,  rather juvenile realization was re-enforced when a student came into my office for a conference, sat down on my hand-me-down love seat, looked around for a few seconds, and said, "I'm judging you by the things on your office." It is (and I told him so) appropriate for him to have done so. This is because my office communicates definite messages, some purposeful, some haphazard, about me as a teacher and as a person.

There are relatively obvious, and certainly purposeful messages being communicated through the things I've hung on the walls. I expected these things to be an expression of the way I see the world, the things I care about, and ultimately the ways that I wish to be viewed. These include Warhol themed nick-knacks like a calendar with a Warhol quote and Campbell's soup cans designed after the famous Warhol paintings (an interesting inversion in which the actual Campbell's soup brand drew inspiration from an artist who drew inspiration from their own graphic design). I added these art themed elements to go along with the one wall hanging in my office that I didn't go out and find, which was a poster print of a Kandinsky painting. I chose this poster out of a stack of things hanging around which had been abandoned by previous faculty. These things included a lot of classical themed stuff (Shakespeare stuff, mainly). I chose the Kandinsky piece because I prefer the modern over the classical, the pop over the cultured, the deconstructive over the refined. I added to these pieces a Dali style melting clock I bought at Hobby Lobby, so that my office is full of references to Modern art.

In addition to these, I hung a TOMS shoes flag (which the company smartly includes in the purchase of every pair, with a note encouraging buyers to take pictures with their flags in the exotic places where they where TOMS shoes. A bit of marketing brilliance). I also have a concert poster from a Cake concert, which is printed using vegetable based dyes on recycled paper, and which explicitly says so on the bottom of the poster, a Kurt Vonnegut themed piece of graphic art, and a poster sized copy of the mural at 826 Valencia, a youth literacy center in San Francisco. These all operate to give the office a sort of pseudo-hispster vibe which is in keeping with the way I see myself and wish to present myself--a hopefully unpretentious, socially aware hippy type guy, disguised in preppy clothes.

Of course, these things aren't very big and the office is actually, despite all these accoutrements, relatively sparse. I haven't changed the wall color, so the office is a drab, institutional off-white. The pictures on the wall are of relatively uniform size and are hung in a more or less straight line around the office, and I have, for a member of the English faculty, relatively few books on one rather cheap book shelf (which was already in the office when I moved in). I have only 45 of my own books in my office, all of them Comp/Rhet themed. This is compared to the many hundreds I have crowding our office at home. I also have a couple binders of research articles and some small books left on the shelf by a previous tenant. Though these decisions were not purposeful, they do communicate an understanding of my own position. I am contingent faculty, on contract for one semester at a time. Though the English department and I are happy with each other, and don't plan to break up any time soon, it is nevertheless possible that any one semester could be my last (especially since we keep getting our budget cut). And even if I remain on board, the university could hire a tenure track faculty member who needs the office, and so I could be shipped down the hall to share with another adjunct. So it would be rather presumptuous, and possibly a waste of time to pound too many holes in the walls or to haul too many books up the stairs. These decisions were not really purposeful, and so perhaps they're not strictly rhetorical, but there is a clear connection between these decisions and my own understanding of who I am. Thus, understanding my position provides a proper lens for understanding my decorating decisions.

This piece admittedly serves little particular purpose other than giving me something fun and interesting to think about. But it does provide an example that indeed there are many texts that can be analyzed outside of those we think of an technically and traditionally academic. Indeed, applying this type of analysis to other, larger forms of space commonly reveal important lessons about the politics of space, the symbology of urban/suburban design, and the assumptions that guide the way we live and move in our environments. These types of analysis, in short, teach us a great deal about ourselves.

Nike Celebrates [Under?]Achievement

We all know what sneaker commercials are like. A freakishly talented celebrity super human performs amazing feats of strength or skill, usually against either a minimalist silence or against an expensively produced, raucous rock song.  Time will likely be slowed so that we can appreciate the agility and poise of our Superman, as flash bulbs momentarily silhouette his amazing physique. Then, in close up, we see his shoes. And on the shoes, the swoosh, or the swish, or the basket pattern, or some other form of highly recognizable iconography. And maybe we're supposed to think, "it's gotta be the shoes that make him fly." Or maybe we're just supposed to see that he's wearing these shoes, so they must be the best.

We all know this commercial, because it's every commercial. Through these ads, companies exploit our own wish to be great by showing us those who truly are and then drawing connections between that greatness and their product. NIKE has been a master of these type of ads at least since the introduction of their Air Jordan line in 1985. A prescient example of this style is this early commercial for the Air Jordan I.

In this example, we see all the genre conventions that have come to typify sneaker ads (Spike Lee's internal rhymes and Looney Tunes character cameos have, thankfully, fallen out of favor). We see His Air-ness on an outdoor court, alone of course, like a tragic Greek hero. The soundtrack is silent, save for the sound of a jet engine, throttling up before take off. As the pitch of the engine rises, so too does Jordan, flying through the air in slow motion, assuming the pose that became the apparel line's universally recognizable logo. Finally, as he slams the ball through the hoop, we hear a thunderous echo, and we hear Jordan ask, "who says man was not meant to fly?"

The ad hardly talks about the product at all. We don't hear anything about how light the shoes are, how springy the heels, how solid the ankle support. Instead, we are shown only the very epitome of greatness, followed by the simple statement "Air Jordan. . ." NIKE sees no need to sell us the product based on its merits. They needed only to connect the shoe to Jordan's greatness (a connection Jordan was all too happy to help make. He was fined $5000 every time he wore the shoes in a game because they did not fit uniform standards. If he's willing to pay so much money to wear the shoes, they must be good.)

Because this strategy is so well known to us all, and because it is so tried and true, NIKE's 2011 "Find Your Greatness" campaign might be a bit of a surprise. This is because the "greatness" the ads in this campaign celebrate are nothing like the greatness that we would associate with a Michael Jordan (or even his counterfeit copy, LeBron James). The "Jogger" ad, which might have been the most memorable ad of the campaign, provides a good example of NIKE's much different kind of greatness.

This ad shares a few noticeable things with it's 26 year old predecessor. It's remarkably silent; we hear nothing but the sound of crickets at dusk and the crescendo of footfalls on asphalt. It features a human being in solitude. This seems to be the mark of discipline. The characters in these commercials are still out working, alone in their determination, while others have gone in.

And yet, there is one profound difference in these ads. As he gets closer to the camera, it's clear that the lonely character in the "Jogger" ad is not Michael Jordan, the world class athlete--the best to ever play his sport.  Rather, he is a morbidly obese fourteen year old from London, Ohio named Nathan. He runs awkwardly and sweats profusely, but he's catching up to the camera, which is also moving along the deserted road. And, as he runs, a voice proclaims that ". . .greatness is no more unique to us than breathing. We're all capable of it. All of us."

The brilliance of the ad is that it celebrates the un-athletic, the un-talented, the banal. What's more, it calls it "greatness." So, these ads present NIKE apparel, not as the apparel of the elite, winning championships and MVP trophies, but as the apparel of the kid, winning a battle against himself and against his own body. Greatness in these ads isn't the super-human talents of the superstar. Greatness is a kid having the courage to change the direction of his life, against all odds and against the doubt of others. This, perhaps ironically, makes the ad very powerful, because it celebrates the Everyman. It speaks to the consumer that doesn't want to be a superstar, but instead wants to be healthier, wants to live without being ashamed, wants a date to prom, and it says, "we've got the apparel to support that, to support whatever 'greatness' means to you."

Electoral Maps and Visual Rhetoric

Maps were very important Tuesday night. A ubiquitous feature of network coverage of elections is the large digital map, coded with the now definitive red and blue. As networks reported races and results, they invariably used touch screen maps to zoom in on states to look at county by county results. As the evening started shaping up, analysts used maps to explain scenarios that would get each candidate to the magical 270. So, as important as maps have become in these discussions, it is smart to examine these maps. They are, despite seeming to be object graphs of voter behavior, discursive in nature, and thus worthy of analysis.

The rhetorical nature of these maps is evident in the fact that, in the morning after the election, my Facebook news feed was full of this map:

This map seems to be an objective graph of how each county voted. Surely, there's no way to spin this map; it simply is what it is. Yet, it's not surprising that this map was being shared by my Republican friends, rather than my Democrat friends. The attractiveness of this map to my Republican friends is simple to explain: it contains a lot of red. The implicit argument, then, is that a huge section of this country is conservative, or at least Republican, and last night's results are a product of those slightly-less-American coasts. I had one friend even make the comment that "ninety percent of the country is red." But of course, square miles don't get to vote: people do. In this way, this map, as a graphic representation of the electorate, is a bit misleading.

Here is a different picture of the country:

This Rorschach Test looking map is a map of the United States, distorted to account for population. It is a county map, like the one above, except that the sized of the counties is adjusted so that they reflect population rather than land area. The colors on this map reflect the election results, by county, of the 2004 election (here is the county map from 2004. It looks nearly identical to 2012). This map is topical rather than topological.

On this map, the red isn't near so overwhelming. And, obviously, the blue is much more prominent. As one of my students said of this map, "this map is a lot more magenta." The highly divided nature of the country is much more evident in this map, and it is easy to see that the population centers of the country  are solidly blue.

The point here is that no piece of information, even a seemingly objective map, is devoid of rhetorical construction. The way that a map as a graphic representation is constructed, presented, and passed around must be interpreted. These two maps contain different assumptions about the information they present, and thus imply different arguments about the political picture of the United States. Understanding these may greatly inform our understanding of the nature of the electorate and last night's results.

Here's one more, just for fun. What are the [barely] implicit arguments imbedded in this graphic?

Astronauts, Cosmonauts, Webster's, and Opa: A Literacy Narrative

As an academic, issues of access to literacy have been very important to me.  Much of my recent research has been over students' abilities to successfully navigate the different rhetorical situations of online social network writing and more formal in-school writing. I've found (as have several other researchers), that despite the anecdotal complaints of teachers and parents that student writing ability is being destroyed by online writing, that students are remarkably adept at changing their writing style to reflect the rhetorical needs of the situation. One of the questions that remains open, however, is to what extent access plays a role in this ability. Most of our research has involved students at four year universities, or high-performing, college-bound high school students. Because this demographic is, to be frank, rather homogenous, most of the subjects of our research have had ready access to technology in the home, and thus have substantial practice writing in digital formats gained outside of school. Because of this, we don't really know whether or not people with less access are less able to negotiate these different rhetorical situations. This is an important research gap because we know that access to the basic tools of literacy is very important to a student's ultimate literate ability. In order to demonstrate this here, I will recount a literacy narrative of my own (an assignment I give students) in order to show how important access to books, and literacy sponsorship were to my own development.

In our house, we always had books. I can remember having collections of Little Golden Books, a staple of childhood when I was growing up. We were also once given an entire box of hand-me-down books that had belonged to my aunt but that my empty-nester grandmother was cleaning out of her house. We held these dear, and many of these books remained in our house throughout our childhood, and in fact, many are now in my parents' attic. But, to me, these books were old and outdated. Beyond this, my two sisters and I shared them, so, in a sense, they belonged to everyone and to no one.

Then, one Christmas, my Opa (which we called my grandfather. He's from Maine, but my grandmother was German, so we used the German Oma and Opa for them) gave me two books. One was a paperback Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. I remember being especially pleased that he had given me something which had been meant for college students (it was called Collegiate after all) and I took this to mean that my Opa believed me to be especially intelligent. The other book was a thin, hard back picture book about the space race between the US and the USSR. The book went back and forth between the innovations of both space programs, and ended with a picture of an American Astronaut and Soviet Cosmonaut shaking hands on a space station limb.

I was incredibly proud of these books. These were the first books that I had ever had that were exclusively mine. I didn't have to share them with my sisters, and on top of this, they were brand new. Ownership seems to have been very important to me. The fact that these books were mine made them very prized possessions. I attribute is gift with the beginning of my love of books. In fact, even now, I check very few books out of the library, because ownership of the book still feels important to me. I often explain to people that the book itself is the trophy for having read the book. My bookshelves are trophy cases. There was also, as there are in many literacy narratives, an emotional component to this story.

At the risk of performing amateur psychology, I would point out here that I was raised by my mother and my step-father. My Opa, who was the grandfather I spent the most time with, was technically my step-grandfather. Because of this, I suspect that beyond the wonderful newness of the books I was given, I may have also loved the books because they were, to me, symbols of acceptance. I was being given books by a man who famously loved books (he had a room in his house that was gradually filling floor to ceiling with books of his own). So his gift of books seemed to say "you're one of us." In this way, my sense of ownership extended beyond the books to ownership of a family, and gave me a sense of identity. I am a book lover, just like my Opa.

My own literacy narrative, if my experience is acceptably representative, suggests a couple of things about literacy. One of which is not surprising at all: that sponsorship is vitally important to literacy. My relationship with a book loving grandfather was the catalyst for my own love of reading and writing. The less explored feature of my narrative is the extent to which the materiality of literacy may be important. My own story suggests that having access to materials that I personally owned and controlled was an important aspect of my early literacy. This understanding has important implications with regard to the issues of access and the literacy divide, especially in the digital era when the most powerful learning tools are not books, but computers--a relatively expensive investment. To what extent will personally owning and controlling books, computers, iPods, and e-readers put some students in a position to outperform students with less access to these technologies?

Gotye and Digital [Pop] Culture

This post is intended to argue that the Gotye mash up above is evidence of Gotye's understanding of the mindset of digital culture. But instead of jumping right in, I intent to enter the conversation through the back door, in order to provide some theoretical background to what I am going to argue about Gotye's piece.

A couple years ago, Steven Hopkins, a graduate school colleague of mine wrote and presented a paper for a graduate seminar in which he presented the Gregory Brothers as an example of web 2.0 success (I hope I don't mis-state his argument. If I do, I look for him to correct me in the comments section). The Gregory Brothers, a musical group made up of a set of brothers and one of their wives, are now known for Autotune the News, the Obama Kick Ass Song, and of course the Bed Intruder Song (a phenomenon that I've addressed in the past).

Understanding the Gregory Brothers' success relies on two concepts important to theorists of digital culture and literacy. The first is Alexander Reid's concept of Rip/Mix/Burn. Reid cites Lawrence Lessig as the originator of the idea, which states basically that participatory digital culture relies on the ability of participants to rip material from other sources, and to combine these artifacts until a new artifact is produced through these combinations. Reid argues that this is, in fact, how cognition works. If this is the case, all cultural artifacts (whether art, discourse, or any other intellectual endeavor) are culminations of the artifacts, attitudes, ethics, and tropes that influenced them. This understanding, to Reid, problemitizes our understanding of issues like copyright, since nothing can truly be the product of one author/artist. All intellectual work is communal.

In the digital era, this process of Rip/Mix/Burn is exemplified in artifacts like fanzines, YouTube mash ups, and so on.  This is, of course, what the Gregory Brothers do on their websites. In order to make their videos, they bring together news clips, soundbites, and images and set these to music. So, they start with other people's copyrighted material, mix it up, add their own creativity, and produce something new.

The second important concept in understanding Web 2.0 success is Michele Knobel and Colin Lanksheare's idea of a Web 2.0 "mindset." For Lanksheare and Knobel, print culture was built around a "scarcity model." Hemingway was valuable because there was only one of him, and his success relied on his having been signed by Scribner. In order to become a successful writer, one must do so through the professional mediator of a publishing house. If one was to become a successful musician, one must be signed to a record deal. In this mindset, value came from an artifact's rarity, and the dissemination of that artifact was carefully controlled by professionals who supposedly knew what was good, and what would sell.

Web 2.0, on the other hand, functions according to a proliferation model. One becomes successful in digital culture by "going viral." And this relies, not on the professional wisdom of publishers and recording studios, but on the mouse clicks of viewers who like what they see and hit the share button. The Gregory Brothers, a band, became popular not when they were noticed by a studio for their "original" pieces, but when they were noticed by Internet users for their mash ups. Culture, according to Lanksheare and Knobel is shifting in such a way that this mindset will become dominant.

The entertainment industry proper, however, has been reticent to the changes this second mindset calls for. The entertainment industry, and the music industry in particular, has in fact, engaged in open warfare with the second mindset through  anti-piracy movements and PSAs, and law makers have responded with bills like the SOPA. The recording industry, including many musicians, has often militantly protected copyright. In this way, the industry has been rather retrograde with respect to its response to digital culture.

Because of this,I was a bit surprised and also pleased with this video by the recording artist Gotye. To produce this video, Gotye (who signs the video with the shortened form of his given name "Wally") trudged through the numerous parodies and covers of his song "Somebody that I Used to Know" that had been posted on YouTube and pieced together a new rendition of the song using these clips. Rather than circling the legal wagons and going after all of these video makers for copyright violation, he has instead himself ripped these samples, mixed them, and produced something from them. He has helped write his own fanzine.

This suggests that Gotye has adopted what Lanksheare and Knobel call the "second mindset." He hasn't just allowed the remixing of his song, but has in fact participated in the remixing process himself. In this way, he shares authorship with his audience, in much the same way as a blogger does when he enables the commenting function on a blog, then responds to commenters. He's allowed his sing to become an artistic wiki. Furthermore, he acknowledges that the form of the remix was ityself "inspired" by [ripped from] a Kutiman YouTube video. He also provides a link list to all the "original videos" of the "Somebody" covers he has used, and admits (in a tone that looks like apology) that he could not include all of the covers  he found.

What Gotye seems to understand is what the rest of the industry seems to have missed with regard to the new mindset: that the parodies and samples of his song did not harm him by violating his copyright. Rather, they brought attention to the song and they added to the conversation about its value. He seems to understand that art is a communal process, in which artists (and consumers) inspire and react to one another. The image of a solitary genius is a myth. Authorship is always shared. And the result of this shared authorship, in this case, is a haunting and aesthetically beautiful piece in its own right.

Looks Like Mad: Imagery and Mediation

Last week, at a training class for public officials I attended, someone brought a newspaper which had a montage of four pictures (like the one above) of James Holmes, the accused gunman in the Aurora, CO movie theater massacre. Holmes's appearance in court had been the conversation du jour for the twenty-four hours or so before. The descriptions from the media of these images and video clips included words like "strange," "detached," "bizarre," and so on. These reports seemed to lead inevitably to speculation about whether or not these images suggested that Holmes was mentally insane or if he was, perhaps, acting in order to prepare for an insanity defense.

During a break in our class, one of my fellow attendees showed me the front page, pointed out the photos, and said something like, "look at him. Do you think he's crazy?" Always one for pedantry, I said "well, I think that the editors of this paper were able to choose four photos that made him look crazy." I then added, "I think these photos say more about how the editors wish for us to see Holmes than they do about Holmes himself." I don't intend to argue about whether or not Holmes is mentally ill (to tell you the truth, I don't watch the news much and don't have any interest in engaging in those kinds of discussions anyway), but rather I want to use the conversation to discuss the reliance on  imagery as evidence, and to interrogate it a bit.

What's interesting to me about the discussion in my training class, and with similar discussions in the media, is that we (viewers/discussants) were being asked to decide whether or not Holmes was mentally ill based on the evidence of how he "looks" in photos selected for us by editors, rather than on the immensely anti-social nature of the crimes of which he's accused. Our impressions about the way he "looks" seems to carry more rhetorical weight with regard to the question of his sanity than does his actual behavior.In a way, we were being asked whether or not the way he looks might serve to explain, or even excuse the way he actually behaved.

For me, this is a testament to the power of visual evidence on our culture. We readily assume that visual evidence, in the form of photographs and especially in the form of video, is an unimpeachable and unmediated form of proof. After all, if we can see something, we can assess it's truth ourselves. If one wanted to prove a particular person broke into a store, for instance, a copy of the surveillance tape settles is. We know the actions of police in the Rodney King assault were abusive because we saw the assault on tape. And with the proliferation of cameras in modern public space in the forms of camcorders, media crews, police car dash cams, traffic light cameras, surveillance cameras, and cell phones, we have been acculturated  into the understanding that anything can be recorded, and recordings tell us the truth. Seeing is, as we say, believing.

We, therefore, tend to accept visual proof of any concept, event, or phenomenon as unmediated truth. Thus, we fail to interrogate visual imagery in any significant way (except maybe to argue about whether or not an image was staged or Photoshopped). We must learn to be careful, though, when considering visual evidence, just as we would be with any other kind of evidence. We must learn to ask who recorded this image. What was their purpose in doing so; what did they include and what might they have left out; how was it edited and why was it edited this way; what is the context of this image? These kinds of questions help us to determine just what a visual image is actually evidence of. They allow us to determine how much of the truth a visual image actually shows us. It is not enough simply accept that, because we see an image, we are privy to the whole truth of any situation.

One of the readers I have used to teach composition contains an interview by textbook authors David Rosenwasser, and Jill Stephen with photographer Joseph Elliott. In this interview, Elliott makes reference to a distinction he makes between artistic photographers as "Stagers and Recorders." Recorders, like Andreas Gursky, attempt to capture reality as they see it in front of them. Their photographs are somewhat journalistic--one might say "slice of life." Stagers, such as Gregory Crewdson on the other hand, well, stage their photographs. They plan them ahead, set lighting, build sets, use posing actors, and so on.

Stagers, according to Elliott, see themselves as "more honest" than Recorders because they are willing to show their hand in their photographs. Elliott explains, "any photographer is clearly implicated by the process of taking photographs." He goes on to say, "a photographer is inevitably selecting what to shoot and thus what not to shoot, and he or she is always framing the shot in various ways." In other words, the photographer necessarily acts as a mediator between the subject and the viewer, simply by choosing what to photograph. For instance, in the examples I've provided in the hyperlinks above, Crewdson's photographs are obviously staged in order to capture his artistic vision. But even Gursky, a Recorder, has framed the photo in order to capture a certain geometry, chosen a time of day that best suited the lighting he wished to capture, chose from some number of prints that which best fit his aesthetic sense of composition, and so on. So, though his photo may provide a "slice of life," it is necessarily a carefully chosen slice.

This concept has application when considering non-artistic images (those which we may use as evidence) as well. A newspaper photographer, a crime scene detective, or a cell phone user photographing a police officer on a traffic stop all, like an photographer/artist, chooses what to photograph, and by necessary extension, what not to photograph. There is always something going on in the margins, outside the frame. The photographer is always deciding that this is the thing he wants to photograph, and this is when. Even the most objective photographer is choosing what to photograph and when to snap the shutter, and in this way mediates the "truth" that the image captures.

This holds true of video as well. This is an important point because we give video an even greater evidentiary weight than we do still images. After all, videos are real time. If I want to test whether or not the photo editor who put together the four photos of James Holmes had fairly represented his demeanor for the whole of his court appearance, I might watch watch the video of the entire proceeding.

But in video, as in still photos, mediation occurs simply in the act of pointing the camera alone. Then, the act of editing the video adds another very important level of mediation. For instance, look at the effect editing had on the video below.

This is a very chilling example of the ways in which editors of video can more or less create truth that may or may not fairly represent the "reality" that the camera filmed. Of course, most camera operators and editors are not so unfair as the editor of this video, but the process of mediation remains the same even when editors truly wish to present images fairly. She still must edit a video based on what she believes is important, based on how she interprets the event.

Even an unedited video is subject to the limitations of framing, camera angle, video quality and so on. For instance, the cameras from a police dash cam might lead to an entirely different understanding of an event when viewed from one camera angle than when viewed from another. What if you were asked to decide whether or not the shooting filmed in these hyperlinks was justified based on the first video alone? You would believe you had seen the event as it really unfolded. After all, you saw it happen--from the officers own camera. The first video seems to clearly show officers shooting a man who was simply walking away. But of course, when you watch the second video, the limitation of the first becomes clear.

It is, therefore, important when judging the value of an image to ask why this photographer took this particular image at this particular time and in this particular way. Was this taken by a journalist who wishes to sell copies? An advocate of some particular cause hoping to make a certain emotional impression? Might this photographer have left something out, and if so, what and to what effect? What context might we be missing when viewing the images alone?

By positing these questions, I don't mean to turn readers into conspiracy theorists, assuming that photographers are trying to trick us. The point is that all photographers, videographers, and editors must make decisions about what the viewer will see and how they will see it, simply by the limited nature of what they are able to show. Furthermore, the choices choices are rhetorical. They take specific images, at specific times, and for specific reasons. An image is not an unmediated and inherently subjective window into truth, but rather a limited and controlled argument. Visual images are certainly very powerful pieces of evidence, but they must be treated as what they are--pieces.

Remember this next time you're presented with an image that is said to be indisputable truth of something.

Digital Divide and Public Outcry

This photo by Rusty Costanza appeared on the front page of the Times-Picayune on July 17th, accompanying an article about a hotel implosion and concerns by residents of the nearby Iberville housing project that particulate dust from the implosion might be hazardous. Interestingly, when readers called and e-mailed author Katy Reckdahl to complain, it wasn't about the implosion itself, but about the photograph. Readers were outraged that the eight year old child in this photograph was playing with an iPad, an expensive "luxury" item. The response was enough that Times columnist Jarvis DeBerry wrote about the outcry days later. His column sparked more debate on the issue, as commenters and commentators began to argue about what people on government assistance should be allowed to possess, presumably on the public dime. His column, as I write this, has 451 online comments in addition to the phone calls and e-mails that spurred the column in the first place. The issue has also gained the attention of more serious writers, academics, and think tanks.

The predominant debate has been whether or not people who are poor deserve to have things that are not necessities (an issue handled quite well by Jane Devin, whose blog led me to this story in the first place). While I think that, at the heart of this debate, is the feeling that many in the middle class seem to hold that, because they they foot the bill for those on subsidized food/housing, they exert a "sense of ownership" (Baker) over them, or at least over their activities. After all, if it's my money that they are using, I should have a say in how they spend it. Of course, as Devin points out, this sense of ownership and control seems only to extend to poor beneficiaries of government assistance but not the wealthy (if I buy a Chevy tonight, I still expect to pay for it, despite the fact that "my" tax dollars saved the company). Many in the middle class, then, seem to have what Devin calls "a kind of backwards jealousy," toward the poor. Though they may live in 800 square foot apartments in often dangerous and neglected housing projects, they didn't have to pay [much] for them. Meanwhile, I've had to pay for every bit of my 1700 square foot house. (That is to say, I'm slowly paying back a mortgage company who trusted me enough to buy a house for me, in no small part because I have a job, for which I am qualified by way of an expensive education paid for by federally subsidized loans, offered to me because Sallie Mae trusted the co-signature of my solidly middle class hard working parents.) Certainly, I shouldn't see these people "playing" with "luxury" items bought with "my" money.

But of course, we're not talking about "fancy rims," or "gold teeth," or "Air Jordans," (DeBerry). Instead, the luxury item held by a child (who, I guess, we think is supposed to be working to earn it) is a powerful literacy tool. As DeBerry explains:

The sight of a kid in public housing with an iPad doesn't offend me. Actually it gives me hope. So many poor people have no access to the digital world. They fall behind in school because of it. They miss the opportunity to apply for certain jobs. Yes an iPad is an expensive gadget, but we can't deny its usefulness. As computers go, an iPad comes cheaper than most laptops and desktops.

Most of us in the middle class would not, even for a moment, consider the digital divices in our own lives to be unnecessary luxuries. After all, we balance our checking account online, and pay bills online. our cell phones have replaced our landlines and are thus our basic tool of communication. We use our household computers, laptops, or tablets for work, for school, and for important social interactions.
 
In my household, which consists of two adults and two toddlers, we have four laptop computers (only one of which is currently functioning), two smart phones (each of which is more powerful than my family's first DOS based 286), and an e-reader. And that's not even all. I have two jobs, one with city government and one with a private university. Each of these employers has issued me a laptop computer, and provides me with access to desktop computers in several locations.
 
It is, therefore, not a stretch to say that computers are, in fact, an indispensable part of modern life. Certainly, computer technology and the literacies attached to it, are necessary for anyone who is to compete for good jobs--the kind of jobs that allow for upward mobility-- in Information Age America. Beyond this, Palfrey and Gasser (and many others) have stressed the importance of digital communities to those born after about 1980. Indeed, for this generation, computer mediated communication is an important part of identity formation. In other words, with regard to both our professional and personal lives, computer technology is extremely important.
 
With this in mind, arguments that the poor do not deserve and should not have access to what are, for the rest of us, indispensable technologies are especially insidious. In an age when many of our most important and influential literacy tools have shifted to digital media, such an argument is like claiming that children in underperforming inner-city schools ought not have access to books.
 
The assumptions behind such a claim are frightening. If I'm giving the people who make such an argument the benefit of the doubt, I will suspect that they are not thinking of the iPad as a powerful literacy tool, but are probably assuming that it is being used primarily as a gaming device, or social networking tool (which may in fact say much their own habits). These arguers may simply be ignorant about issues of literacy and digital access. Cartainly, many people have not accepted that anything beyond what they got in the golden age of their education is necessary for learning (we didn't have all that in my day, and I turned out okay). They may not purposefully be saying that poor children shouldn't have the opportunities that their own children have.
 
On the other hand, Sam Fulwood, a senior fellow at the American Center for Progress argues that:

Anyone alarmed by the sight of that photo surely must believe the poor aren’t deserving of anything save the barest of survival necessities—if that much. What else could explain their anger at the sight of an 8-year-old black boy learning about a world beyond his immediate community with an iPad in his hands?

Certainly, these arguments seem to involve the assumption that those living off of government assistance deserve only the bare minimum: tattered books in inner-city schools, limited and timed access via computers in public libraries, and absolutely no frivolous computer games or social media use. If these are indeed the assumptions of these arguments, then as Courtney Baker suggests "This thinking. . .mistakes education and technology as solely the domain of the entitled."

Certainly, there is a whole history of literacy education that suggests that those in privileged positions (often those who are only tenuously in these positions) tend to block the access of those in classes below them from literacy tools. It is as if there is an instinct among the middle classes to protect itself from those that would be their competition if they were afforded the same educational opportunities.

For me, this idea opens up new research questions: To what extent might this actually be happening today? Are there those who, whether knowingly or not, actively work to maintain the digital divide? Certainly, there are many who benefit from this access gap. These beneficiaries without a doubt have an interest in maintaining the status quo. So, to what extent, if any, does public policy reflect a desire of the middle class (which makes up the bulk of the voting public) to maintain and benefit from the digital divide?

Posthuman Collective Composer

The video above is from one of my son, Aodan's, favorite DVDs. It's an Animusic DVD that Charissa, my music teacher wife, brought home for my boys to watch. The Animusic series is a collection of cartoon music videos featuring machinery of various types playing music. Some of the machines are better-mousetrap style contraptions, others are like giant wind-up toys. The one above features robots on a spaceship playing percussion instruments. As we watched the DVD yesterday (and Aodan drummed along on a toy drum), I remarked to Charissa that I was uncomfortable with the possibilities this particular video explored. I am uncomfortable with the extreme posthuman (or maybe dystopian) theme of machines playing musical instruments without apparent human involvement (this is the kind of conversation I routinely subject my poor wife to). Despite my interest in digital literacies/cultures and computer mediation of human literacy habits, I want artistic sensibility and aesthetic to belong to humans. Humans make art. They may use technology to do so (of course they do; musical staffs and symbols are a technology after all), but it is humans that control it in order to turn sound into art.

Then today, a friend and colleague of mine posted a Gizmodo article about a scholarly journal article by Imperial College-London researchers published yesterday in PNAS called Evolution of music by public choice. This study essentially studied the evolution of sound into music in order to compare it to models of evolutionary biology. In this study, researchers basically (I'm skipping important steps for the sake of space. Go read the article) started with clips of randomized noise and allowed people to rate the clips according to musical quality. The top rated clips were then combined in a semi-randomized "genetic" style creating new clips, and the process repeated itself. Over time, the clips begin to sound like recognizable beats, then melodies, then they finally become relatively complex and interesting musical strains (I listened to all the published examples. I encourage readers to at least listen to the commentary and overview offered on the Gizmodo article. It's pretty amazing).

The idea of the study was to study consumer input in the evolution of musical aesthetic by isolating it. In other words, there was no human writing the music: no experimental artistry by a person trying to play with old conventions, no producer looking for a hook, no band members wanting a solo. In removing the factors these factors so they could look at data relating only to the issue they were studying, researchers also removed the people that are typically associated with making music--that is, the composer, lyricist, and producer. Instead, these processes were automated.

Historically, music is considered a humanistic art form, not because it touches a human audience, but because it is created by a human composer. This music, then, is remarkable because it doesn't have that singular person we typically associate with musical composition. But I think the Gizmodo article oversimplifies when it says that "it's possible for digital music to evolve by itself, without creative input from a composer." It is certainly the case that there is not a single human composer. By getting rid of this figure, this experiment abolishes the concept of the genius artist, individually achieving a transcendent artistic artifact. Instead, there is something decidedly posthuman in the composition of this piece.

When I speak of the posthuman here (a term which involves a kind of spectrum of thought), I'm thinking along the lines of Donna Haraway's "cyborg." This involves the idea that the separation between our selves and the objects we make/use is, as it turns out, rather blurry. As we evolve our instruments, those instruments evolve us as well (this idea of "man as ongoing process" is the central theme of posthumanist theories). It is this interplay between our selves and our technology that make us "natural born cyborgs" (Clark). We are, by our nature, part human, part tool.

The DarwinTunes are composed through the interplay between tool (a computer designed by humans running an algorithm programmed by human researchers) and active human beings (the people voting on which clips move on).

Not only is the music produced by DarwinTunes posthuman, but it is also an example of another important element of digital culture in that the human half of the composition process is completely collaborative. Just as the singular artistic genius is replaced by a computer program, so also is he replaced by, not one musician, but thousands of consumers, all of which bring to the process their own cultural histories (in the form of chord progressions, dissonances etc. which seem "natural"), personal aesthetic sensibilities, and so on.

Perhaps, then, the most surprising thing about the DarwinTunes is that, after about 500 generations, they start to sound pretty good.  Pieces of music composed, not by an individual or small collaboration of talented artists, but by a process of negotiation between a piece of technology and collective intelligence may, after enough generations, turn out to be as complex and sophisticated as any experimental piece by Philip Glass. This brings into focus one of the fundamental questions we begin to ask when studying digital culture: Just how important is the "expert/genius/author" after all?

Being Really Useful: A (sort-of) tongue-in-cheek analysis of the Thomas and Friends series

As a father of twin sons, I have been subjected to hours upon hours of Thomas and Friends episodes. My sons also have Thomas the Tank Engine models (two of which actually propel themselves and pull wooden train cars), and Thomas blankets. In fact, my wife discovered a potty training breakthrough for our son Beckett by buying him Thomas underwear. She explained to him, "Thomas is our friend. We don't pee on our friends." After this, Beckett, who is innately logical, tried very hard not to wet his pants and, when he had an accident, he would sulk and say "we don't pee on our friends."

Their Thomas craze has subsided some in favor of Veggie Tales and Elmo, but during the height of their Thomas fandom, when we were watching the show constantly, I would make fun of the oft repeated phrase "really useful engine," a phrase repeated ad nauseam in the Thomas and Friends series. I, somewhat jokingly, insisted that the show was designed to brain-wash children into accepting the ethos of being "really useful" as sacrosanct. Of course, I made these assertions in jest, mostly because there is nothing so particularly insidious about teaching children to be useful.

Then, yesterday, I was picking up the horrifying mess my boys hourly make when I came across their "Thomas & His Friends Help Out" DVD. While I walked the DVD back to the living room (I found it in the bathroom, of course), I haphazardly read the back of the sleeve. The description of the stories contains a quote ascribed to the railway director, Sir Topham Hatt: "Helping out is one of the best ways to show that you're a Really Useful Engine." I instantly noticed the divine capitalization used in the phrase Really Useful Engine. This capitalization, usually reserved in modern English for proper nouns and pronouns for the deity, suggests that the ethos of being Really Useful is, in a very interesting way, treated as sacred within the context of these stories. Since this is the case, I thought, perhaps this ethic deserves a little attention. What does is mean to be Really Useful? What makes this ethos culturally appropriate, and what cultural systems does it privilege?

It may be tempting to think it silly to analyze a children's television program, that it is, on it's face, an over analysis, a pedantic intellectual exercise. I admit that this is true. I am, in fact, writing this blog mostly in jest. But, I would also argue that our children's television shows are indeed worthy of scholarly analysis. This is because, considering how much time our children spend watching television, educational and otherwise, it's reasonable to argue that these shows are one of the important activities through which we enculturate our children. In a way that probably ought to make us uncomfortable, it makes perfect sense that the nation that produced the ghastly Struwwelpeter stories also produced the Holocaust (see Katz, Steven B. "The Ethic of Expediency: Classical Rhetoric, Technology, and the Holocaust." College English 54.3. 1992). This is because a society's cultural productions, especially those considered didactic, inculcate its members into the society's organization, ethics, and systems. So, what ethics and what systems are being privileged when we teach our children that it's important to be "Really Useful Engines?"

First of all, understand that within the context of the Thomas the Tank Engine TV shows (I confess, I haven't looked at the books, so I cannot speak for them), the goal of every character is to be regarded as "Really Useful," especially by Sir Topham Hatt, the Director of the Railroad. It is indeed, their only form of payment. The phrase "Really Useful" appears in nearly every episode and is, in fact, part of the theme song of the show. An engine becomes Really Useful in the ways one might expect: by being on-time, by working hard, and by performing well at difficult, work-centered tasks.

This is a decidedly industrial ethic. Work hard, and you shall be regarded as Really Useful. And, of course, to be called Really Useful is the ultimate compliment in these stories. Thomas and Friends, then, privileges an ethos that is undoubtedly industrial rather than, say, one that is relational. In the quote I gave from Topham Hatt earlier in this post, the reader may notice that one "help[s] out" (relational) in order to show that we are "Really Useful" (industrial). This quote, which succinctly provides the moral of these stories, seems to privilege the industrial over the relational. We do the work of relationship (helping out) in order to become industrious (really useful). The relational serves the purposes of the industrial, rather than the other way around.

This seems to fit well with cultural ethic of the industrialized west, specifically the UK and the US where these shows are produced. In many eastern cultures (especially middle-eastern), which are more relational, one might expect an inversion of this moral. One tries to be "really useful" (industrious) in order to "help out" (foster relationships and cohesion). In the west, we tend to privilege industriousness in an extraordinary way. We place great personal value on industrial value. That is to say, we often judge others by their ability to contribute through work. We introduce ourselves to strangers by telling them what we "do," which always means what we do to make money. Indeed, a good puritan work ethic is part of the fabric of our society, a society that counts on its members' ability and willingness to work. Industriousness is an important ethic with regard to the the maintenance of the military-industrial complex, which is, after all, the core of a capitalist society.

What we learn from this (which will not really be a surprise) is that we begin inculcating cultural values at a very early age,a and through seemingly innocuous, even wholesome, media. As an individualistic, capitalist society, we teach our children from a very early age the importance of individual achievement and industriousness. We want them to want to be Really Useful, because our society requires useful members--that is, members who do good work. If these lessons aren't exactly purposeful (I abjure the thought that Reverend Awdry was purposefully brainwashing children into good little corporate slaves) it is only because these ethics are so naturalized that these lessons happen automatically any time we write something we believe to be educational. These lessons just seem seem right and good in and of themselves. The ethics they teach are, for better or worse, sacrosanct.

I hope you've found this analysis Really Useful. Even better if you're a publisher who finds it industrious.