Friday, October 10, 2008
Week 8 Discussion of Readings
This week I would like you to discuss Coogan's article, "Community Literacy as Civic Dialogue." What do you think about how Coogan approaches community literacy in contrast to Flower? Are there any signficant differences and/or similarities between the two authors that you would like to discuss? Thinking about our discussions regarding Over-the-Rhine, how might Coogan's work here inform how we approach an oral history of this neighborhood?
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Week 8 Blog
At the onset of Cogan’s article, I interpreted the term “civic dialogue” to mean community talking. Based on the assumption that my interpretation of this definition is correct, I approached the reading with the notion that Cogan’s students were commissioned to immerse themselves in the community where their school is located to record the historic experiences of the inhabitants. The purpose behind this task was to begin the process of decreasing the instances of crime and eliminate the stereotypes that surround this complex of public housing. The students endeared this opportunity and reflected heavily on their predisposed notions as to what a community in need displayed. As most college students would, the class struggled with a general understanding of the purpose; are we trying to accomplish a specific goal for a specific type of person, or are we documenting individual accounts for the sake of preservation? I believe that Cogan purposely created this atmosphere to foster the maturation of his students from naïve young adults to conscious, informed young adults. Personally, I grew up in a very sheltered home where having teachers as parents put me in the situation of not knowing people worked during the summer until I had my first job! Often this is the mentality of young college students who are being exposed to worldly issues for the first time. Coogan has provided them with a somewhat controlled opportunity to experience world issues for the first hand and form beliefs of their own. Simply put, there arose a situation where the line between advocacy and inquiry became “gray.” By sharing the feedback he received from community members and advocates he informed, or educated the class as to what oppositions they might face in the course of their work and by the nature of being informed or aware, the students were able to cope with adversity to the best of their ability. In contrast, I believe Flower has implemented her philosophy, which I see as being theory before practice. In other words, front loading of information, data, anecdotes, and the inclusion of many interested participants from any willing aspect of the community are informed from a theoretical perspective before they communicate with individuals from the identified community. I decipher Flower’s explanations as investing a great amount of time unraveling the different meanings and then choosing the appropriate context of a word for actions that must take place in such an effort as community literacy. For example: community, literacy, inquiry, and “writing about versus writing for versus writing with the community.” (Flowers, 155)
Intrinsically, educating her group before placing them in a collaborative setting. Both of these approaches have merit and produce results. The question remains with no answer, are the results of one approach more efficacious than the other? With the ever-evolving sphere of learning styles, I do not believe exposure to differing approaches is a hindrance to learning.
Pertaining to Over the Rhine, I believe that in the context of our class where the members are cognizant of the circumstances that exist within this community and the fact that our class is considered a graduate course, I believe that we have been fortunate to have exposure to the research and will succeed in the interaction with community members and do our personal best to enjoy the privilege of their time, experience, and willingness to collaborate.
Coogan’s oral history approach, as described in the article “Community Literacy as Civic Dialogue” is very valuable. Although his approach does not involve as much open “conflict” or “controversy” as Flower’s problem/solution-based sessions at the CLC, I think it can be equally rewarding to both the participants and the students.
Coogan describes his approach as “intercultural inquiry ‘lite’” (with a reference to Flower) and describes how “civic dialogue forms a continuum with advocacy” (96).
His account of Bronzeville and his ability to create stories that reveal the “complexity of real lives” are helping to create empathy in the community. But does that change anything? Empathy doesn’t pay the bills, but changing someone’s heart may change their mind and (call me Pollyanna) it may change their lives too.
The reaction of the community activists actually surprised me. Questing Coogan/Illinois Institute of Technology’s credibility, motivation and projected value, caused them to rethink and analyze what they were doing. However, I think the challenges actually helped enhance their project.
Flower addressed some push back in this week’s reading also. She touches on the teacher who criticized Raymond’s language/grammar in his column/play from “Let’s Talk About Drugs,” but she doesn’t address her specific response to the teacher. I am torn because I see the value in his contribution but I also think that on some level “students need to learn the strategies of academic discourse” (Flower 192).
I think that Coogan’s “Civic Dialogue” is definitely in line with the project going on in Over-the-Rhine. The resulting artifact may be different, but I see the process and rhetorical goals as very similar.
Coogan sums up his mission on page 96: “The project performed a political critique of classicism and racism, not through a rigorous analysis of political arrangements or through issue-oriented advocacy, but through a rhetorical activism more locally attuned to the absence of dialogue, empathy, and understanding in public life.” As I understand it, that is a mission shared with the Over-the-Rhine project.
IIT took a somewhat different approach to CLC with their service-learning project and Coogan acknowledges that they did not establish a forum of Community Conversation or adopt any of Flower’s techniques. My understanding is that the project was based more on an oral tradition that focused on family history and personal memories of the neighborhood. For example, when Gloria Yearby and other residents in Bronzville reminiscence, there is no indication that rival hypotheses was used in the process. Mentors did not apply the “story behind the story” strategy either.
As we get ready to jump into service-learning projects ourselves, the IIT project provides some tips on potential pitfalls. What does one do when there is resistance to a project before it ever gets off the ground? Coogan doesn’t indicate how he addressed the concerns of the activists but they must have reached some consensus since the project forged ahead regardless. Although not defined / couched in those terms, ethics became an issue in at least one situation. In “Everyday Culture,” Danielle was trying to preserve the purity of what she heard but her partner in the collaboration, Deborah Brown, was unhappy with the end result; she felt misrepresented and generally unhappy with how she was portrayed. How does one avoid that? Perhaps the situation could be averted entirely if they reviewed the final draft together to make sure the storyteller was satisfied with the representation / text?
At CLC, interpretation was one of the challenges with Raymond Musgrove’s play also. Raymond’s teacher was not happy with the final result. The work did not in any way represent the effort put forth by a teacher who might feel they’re fighting a losing battle in teaching the strategies for academic discourse (to have their position countermanded by mentor-students to boot!).
The more I read, the more I doubt my own ability in this sphere. Service learning is not for the faint-hearted. In our upcoming projects, my sense is that we need to keep our partners appraised as we go, expect some misunderstandings, always work for resolution, and most important … never give up; but then again, what do I know!
Both Flower and Coogan embark upon inquiry. However, Coogan's purpose appears to be more socially conscious in the context of public empathy and civic dialogue "community talk." He did so by engaging the Bronzville neighborhood activists (p. 96).
Coogan's perspective is in direct contrast to Flowers more institutional (public education) approach with high school teens. Coogan was concerned with making the entire community a classroom as opposed to a specific set of students.
The previous Week Seven blog addressed the issues of collaboration and self esteem. So does Coogan. The Bronzville Oral History Project encouraged neighborhood residents to tell their individual stories. This enhanced the self esteem of the individual residents in the following ways:
1) Talking about your life is a way of validating who you are. 2) Sharing experiences empowers the community resident because it allows the individual to educate those who have an entirely different life experience. 3) Documented oral history gives the community resident his or her own place in history.
Coogan begins by explaining the importance of building trust in the process of developing the oral history project; i. e., encouraging people to "open up." Coogan stated that his assumption that people would want to open up to him was naieve.
Coogan also points out that language has its limitations when it comes to articulating the past in terms of its bigger and imposing interpretive picture. The challenge here is to get the person who tells the story to articulate what has not been articulated (p. 98). This process must be conducted in the framework of enhanced trust toward the interviewer and self esteem in the mind of the story teller.
Coogan writes: "... To see our beginnings as something to share, however, is to see our development as indispensible to democracy" (p. 102). In other words, the raising of consciousness through individual language expression will ultimately result in a collective movement toward freedom and empowerment.
Colwell: I believe that the process of sharing individual oral histories offsets and undermines the kind of stereotypical views of people who live in poverty. Here, a class of people become more up close and personal which can pave the way for a more empathetic response from those outside of the poverty experience.
Jill: The distrustful reaction of the community activists comes from negative experiences with people who see themselves on a personal crusade to impose their particular agenda on the community. This kind of problem is the precise reason why both patience and collaboration across difference is so essential for the implementation of an effective community literacy project.
Anna: my grandmother used to say that, "there is many a slip between the cup and the lip." In other words, the best of intentions can fall short. However, intentions that fall short do not necessarily have to pave the way to Hades or you know where.
1)The owner of the renowned Macy's Department store failed in 7 previous businesses. 2)Abraham Lincoln had a complete nervous breakdown when his wife died prior to his becoming President of the United States.
Failures or unwanted results can be building block learning experiences for later success. Re-evaluate your methods or perspectives, perhaps, but never doubt yourself. Coogan says, "We all begin where we are" (p. 103).
I think that Coogan’s approach is much more subtle, less geared towards a specific goal or outcome. I think that whereas Flower would like to see a project try and work at achieving a particular change in society (though that may or may not occur, the intent to change exists), Coogan is willing to “see what happens” from it all. I did think that the oral histories that Coogan did were effective and did bring about some changes (both in the students and the community), but I also understand how this “free exchange” can be unnerving for many involved.
At first, I was surprised at the hesitation and questioning that was encountered from several activists and community leaders when Coogan was presenting his ideas for the project with Bronzeville. But as I read the article, I better understood their frame of reference – I got why they might be unsure of what the outcome would be when there was no specific “societal change” being suggested or offered or worked towards. And I think that this point is highlighted upon again, to a degree, at the end of the article when Coogan includes the dismay Deborah Brown has with how she (and thus her community) was portrayed by Danielle. Apparently there was some miscommunication and misunderstanding of what was going to be done with the oral histories and that discussion never took place (“I had intended on speaking with her before sending the print journal to be printed.”) I think that is what the activists, who were mentioned early in the Coogan article, were “fearful” about – what will the outcome of this project be? Is it really going to help the community, or would this project simply be an example of good intentions gone bad?
Obviously, what happened between Danielle and Deborah is a another case of what happened in Borland’s “That is Not What I Said.” These instances should serve as constant reminders to those who are about to begin projects and work with those in communities that communication needs to persist entirely through the process, otherwise what was done, could easily be undone.
First of all, I’d like to say that Coogan’s definitions of two terms are really helpful and thought provoking.
Ideology – ideas that produce language
Activism – “ideological” work “opposing the discourses of the present”
I feel like we’ve been bandying both of these terms around for eight weeks now and this is the first time that I’ve really felt that I have an nonmuddied idea of what they mean.
Secondly, I would say that I am more comfortable with Coogan’s framing of a community literacy project than I am Flowers’. For me, Coogan is arguing for making a connection across difference to foster a greater sense of community rather than instituting a “Community Conversation” to necessarily solve a community problem. In fully acknowledging the difference between advocacy work and political progressiveness, I think Coogan is more socially just in his work, frankly. I’m not sure that his work would necessarily lead to more social ramifications than Flowers’, but I do think it is more socially responsible to a large extent. From his essay, the methodology of his project objectifies the community participants less and forces the community academic to view the community as a construction of members more than Flowers’ approach. To me, Coogan’s work seems to acknowledge this more completely and give a unique voice to each interviewee. This may be a perceived impression on my part based on the differences in the works that we’ve read by Coogan and Flowers, but Coogan’s really seems to go further in allowing the inherent individuality of the members of his project to be seen.
I think the flavor of Coogan’s project is to create a sense of community in the actual act and interpretation of the project and then for the physical artifact that is created to attempt to contain / retain as much of that sense of community as is possible while attempting to foster a similar (though necessarily different) sense in whoever would encounter it. I think to a large extent this is what Coogan means when he says that politically progressive academics need to “enable a temporary tethering of community across the racial and class boundaries that divide us.”
What I think was so powerful and meaningful about Coogan's project was that it's purpose was to show an entirely different way of looking at the area of Bronzeville from the outside. He opens with the typical "story" about the area: "Not only is it filled with poverty, but also all that comes with it: gangs, drugs, violence, unemployment, welfare dependency, and a crumbling economic and physical infrastructure." Coogan warns about the danger in thinking this way: "a lack of information and experience can lead to a lack of understanding and empathy that, in turn, can lead to prejudice."
What Coogan's project does is to get the community to go beyond these socially problematic distinctions about Bronzeville and realize that there are human beings with individual stories and experiences that make up a strong community. The people that Coogan's students interviewed more often than not referred to their living environment not as a crime-ridden ghetto but as an actual community where people cared about one another.
The capture and circulation of these stories rejects the traditional "story" about the are of Bronzeville that Coogan opened his article with and is a way to get society at large to go beyond just looking at Bronzeville as "the projects" and realize that real people who hold strong values and convictions live there and raise their families there.
I agree with Jason in that "Coogan is arguing for making a connection across difference to foster a greater sense of community rather than instituting a “Community Conversation” to necessarily solve a community problem...From his essay, the methodology of his project objectifies the community participants less and forces the community academic to view the community as a construction of members more than Flowers’ approach."
I think this is evident immediately when Coogan gets such strong resistance from the area's community activists. It forced him and his students to evaluate and reevaluate their purpose and approach in doing the oral history project.
Coogan’s project would be a useful one that may help to change the perceptions of how people in Bronzeville are viewed. Flower’s program was more about empowering the youth of the community. Flower’s students “rivaling,” “the story within the story” and the pride and dedication that “Raymond” has in writing the play about the dangers of drugs do give the students a voice – temporarily. The same is true of the Bronzeville oral history project. But I see aspects of “subject matter” present in the way that the citizens and the finished works are viewed.
I agree with Jason in that, “Coogan is arguing for making a connection across difference to foster a greater sense of community rather than instituting a “Community Conversation” to necessarily solve a community problem.” I don’t think that the final product of Coogan’s project objectifies the people of Bronzeville, but I think that Coogan’s students viewed the community as subject matter instead of people. I keep thinking about how the students describe working on Coogan’s project. The idea that Mei-Sun thought she would have “all these amazingly fascinating stories about people who grew up in Bronzeville,” and the impression that “most people didn’t think they’re lives were all that interesting, and difficulty she’s going to have “to find actual stories.” (98) While she acknowledges that she would probably respond the same way, it seems she was looking at them more as a commodity to get her story than as human beings. The nameless student, who when giving his presentation used “grim statistics on education, home ownership, average income, and employment,” had reduced the Bronzeville citizens to mere numbers. The information was given as an example of how Danielle “was quite effective…spoke out against him,” arguing that, “statistics can lie,” but the fact remains that the unnamed student probably came off in the interviews he conducted as treating the interviewees as subject matter. Deborah’s disappointment with Danielle’s portrayal of her also tends to suggest that these students may not have been prepared adequately for this project.
Although I think there were problems with the perceptions of some of the students involved in Coogan’s program, I do think his concept was a good one and could be useful for Over-the-Rhine oral histories. I think that going into it with the end goal being to learn about the people who live in a neighborhood is a good approach. Taken in that context, it could be any neighborhood anywhere. If the participants can leave their preconceived notions and stereotypes behind and go on the premise that the people are same as you, (they just live somewhere else) there could be a successful outcome.
I’ve struggled to articulate a couple times in blog or class the notion that the CLC project seems to be driven on a one-way street—the object being for mentors (college students) to empower the target subjects (secondary students) to find their voice, stand up, and speak out in a way that their experience and point of view will seem valid and be recognized by existing power structures. Mind you, I’m all for that but have felt that there was something missing—that the flow of perspective needed to flow in both directions. The CLC model that Flowers shares acknowledges difficulties in each session (semester?) and of longer-term difficulties. I can’t help but wonder how much of this has to do with the transient nature of the mentors, who—for the most part—are there for 10-12 weeks and gone. Some find a way to incorporate their experience into their studies or lives, but most simply move on—most feeling better about their efforts. There may be a public reception or recognition of student’s work, a printed poster or publication—but strong evidence of lasting change (empowerment) in the community is not clear.
Perhaps it is the nature of the way Coogan wrote his article that attracts me to the idea of oral histories being more powerful. Coogan shares a great deal of his (college) student’s trials and tribulations (mostly from their journals) about their experience. Yes, a target’s sharing of stories can be remarkably empowering, but the stories from those obtaining their stories can be equally powerful (even empowering in some cases). Like CLC, there’s little tracking evidence to suggest permanent change takes place on a wide scale.
The recognition by interviewers (or story gatherers) that their original perceptions of State Street were often different from the reality of their experience is powerful—even empowering in that what they understood as the common perception of State Street was often wrong. I’m attracted to this model in that it (Coogan) seems to be at least concerned about the effect the State Street oral history project has on his students. It’s seems less “client-driven” than Flowers’ CLC model.
NOTE: One thing we all need to be concerned about is how (if) we transcribe any histories we record. In “here Comes Granddaddy” (p11/99) Gloria Yearby transcribes the contraction of “because” as “cuz” rather than “ ‘cause.” Such transcriptions remind me of the early Appalachian travel accounts and color fiction. They demean the speaker, making him/her appear less than literate and perpetuate stereotypes..
I think the most significant differences and similarities between Coogan and Flower's approaches is the fact while each approach calls for an intercultural inquiry, Coogan's approach does not attempt to aim for social change, whereas Flower's model does. I do not feel that either of the appoaches is more successful than the other. I think each approach has its place. I think that Coogan's model is fitting for an oral history project, whereas Flower's approach may be more fitting for an activist or social movement, i.e. The People's Movement. What I found most beneficial from Coogan's essay is also the journal writings of the students that expressed their thoughts about the overall project, as well as their thoughts about the people they interviewed. Before reading this essay, I kept wondering what I would ask the person I interview for the oral history project. i think like Mei-Sun, I was expecting to uncover some "fascinating stories" about over-the-rhine, but then I realized that you can gain valuable information about community from the everyday stories. Many times it's about the "story-behind-the-story". Jen: When you said the students may not have been as prepared as they needed to be because of Deborah's disappointment with Danielle, I think only shows that you can never really be fully prepared for an oral history project. I think Deborah's disappointment with how her interview was portrayed only highlights the difficulty of doing an oral history project. While the interviewer may think that they are interpreting and relaying the subject's words as accuartely as possible, i.e. Deborah's words were "trancscribed literally", the end result still may not be what the subject was trying to get across. This is evidenced in the oral history reading "That's Not What I Said" by Katharine Borland. Borland is an expert if you will, so prepartion is not a question, however, she still struggles with communicating her subject's meaning accurately.
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