Elitism Encoded within University Settings
Like many students, I started to search for the courses with the clearest, most rigid grading criteria. “Writing” became a euphemism in my experience for “cultural awareness” in a white-upper-middle class sense. There were two versions of this, one that required you understand the self-assured confidence white-collar parents teach their children and the other was the over-coming marginalization narrative, composed in the language of that managerial class.
Writing scared me because it then meant a good grade was linked to words and phrases I would never had heard as a child and had not mastered. Writing meant knowing the norms of a culture to which I did not belong. Writing was part of this:
Professors who called me names and insulted me were responding to a cultural norm. My father (a nurse) and my mother (a classroom paraprofessional) would never have questioned their superiors: doctors, teachers, etc. There was a deference to authority, deeply ingrained. And the argumentation skills are not the same for a first-generation student as for the child of the managerial class.
Math and science were my safe spaces, where I could ace any test, score perfect, and know I could defer to the professor. The text was (generally) correct, and if you did spot a mistake, you could ask politely and the professor or TA would check the math or code.
Writing? These were horrible classes of heated debate, which left my stomach aching and my head throbbing. I’d leave at breaks and not return. I’d do anything to not take a writing course, the entire time I had been writing for the local newspapers since high school. Writing fills hundreds of journal pages and bins in my basement. I never stopped writing outside the classroom - but I have nearly no confidence with academic genres. The anxiety paralyzes me, enough that I sought out an educational therapist to help me with my focus to pass the writing classes on areas for which I was already a professional writer!
The therapist worked with a doctor, who prescribed various medications. They resulted in hyper-focus and some really good weight loss, but they didn’t help me actually complete assignments without panic. Still, I was riding my bike 100 miles a week in the mountains!
Pushing through the MFA started in 2004 and ended in 2017. That’s a long time to struggle with the format of peer review and instructor feedback in writing and creative courses. The feedback was brutal, and often done in front of an audience.
Little tiny class markers in the writing class reminded me of my isolation. I hadn’t been to live theater, a concert, a museum, et cetera, until I was an undergraduate student. I hadn’t taken vacations to interesting places. My world wasn’t the one reflected in writing prompts, assigned readings, or the activist pedagogies of some professors. My goal was to get a job and help my family and community. Period. This entire “self-improvement” thing? Not something to which I could relate.
Classmates talked about taking a year off to travel. They went places during summers. Their writing mentioned people, places, and ideas that were foreign. And when a reading was supposed to be about experiences like my own, I wanted to shout, “Hey, that author knew he/she had a safety net. That’s not the same as being poor, with three generations living in a one-bathroom house. Not the same at all.”
Writing courses still scare the heck out of me… and I teach writing. I constantly worry if I’ve become what I dreaded. The unintentionally elitist professor who judges students unfairly because they defer to my authority or that of peers. “Speak up! Take a stand!” These are not so easy.
Even in my doctoral program, I dropped a couple of classes that felt like Utne Reader Salons for the secretly initiated. The anxiety of writing the “right way” and expressing the “right” views was paralyzing. I could barely put a couple of words to page without hyperventilating. It wasn’t healthy, so I found classes like, “Writing in the Sciences” to reduce the stress.
When you worry that you need a specialized therapist to pass writing courses, maybe the courses are the problem?
Writing scared me because it then meant a good grade was linked to words and phrases I would never had heard as a child and had not mastered. Writing meant knowing the norms of a culture to which I did not belong. Writing was part of this:
https://www.vox.com/2017/9/11/16270316/college-mobility-culture
University of Cincinnati psychologist Shane Gibbons, who has researched this topic and counsels first-generation students, said these students are often raised by parents who have working class jobs — and in those work places, being assertive or individualistic can get you fired.
"I think that experience of the parents' workplace is transferred to children," he said. "There's less of challenging of authority figures, but to some professors that looks as if the student isn't trying."
In addition, research shows that first-generation students tend to go to school for different reasons. An annual UCLA survey finds that first-generation students are more likely to go to school because their parents pushed them to do so — and because they see it as a way to ultimately get a job and support their family.
In contrast, middle- and upper-class families instill very different values from an early age.
Sociologist Annette Lareau followed dozens of children for a decade and found in her 2003 book, Unequal Childhoods, that more privileged children tend to be raised to reason with and question authority.
She named this parenting style "concerted cultivation," and found that the skills that these children develop translate well to a middle- and upper-class environment.
And it's those people who fill the quads and administrative buildings on college campuses, and they come with a certain worldview about how successful humans should act. This is also true of second-tier schools, where students come from less affluent backgrounds, but administrators still come from upper-middle class backgrounds and exhibit upper-middle class expectations.
Professors who called me names and insulted me were responding to a cultural norm. My father (a nurse) and my mother (a classroom paraprofessional) would never have questioned their superiors: doctors, teachers, etc. There was a deference to authority, deeply ingrained. And the argumentation skills are not the same for a first-generation student as for the child of the managerial class.
Math and science were my safe spaces, where I could ace any test, score perfect, and know I could defer to the professor. The text was (generally) correct, and if you did spot a mistake, you could ask politely and the professor or TA would check the math or code.
Writing? These were horrible classes of heated debate, which left my stomach aching and my head throbbing. I’d leave at breaks and not return. I’d do anything to not take a writing course, the entire time I had been writing for the local newspapers since high school. Writing fills hundreds of journal pages and bins in my basement. I never stopped writing outside the classroom - but I have nearly no confidence with academic genres. The anxiety paralyzes me, enough that I sought out an educational therapist to help me with my focus to pass the writing classes on areas for which I was already a professional writer!
The therapist worked with a doctor, who prescribed various medications. They resulted in hyper-focus and some really good weight loss, but they didn’t help me actually complete assignments without panic. Still, I was riding my bike 100 miles a week in the mountains!
Pushing through the MFA started in 2004 and ended in 2017. That’s a long time to struggle with the format of peer review and instructor feedback in writing and creative courses. The feedback was brutal, and often done in front of an audience.
Little tiny class markers in the writing class reminded me of my isolation. I hadn’t been to live theater, a concert, a museum, et cetera, until I was an undergraduate student. I hadn’t taken vacations to interesting places. My world wasn’t the one reflected in writing prompts, assigned readings, or the activist pedagogies of some professors. My goal was to get a job and help my family and community. Period. This entire “self-improvement” thing? Not something to which I could relate.
Classmates talked about taking a year off to travel. They went places during summers. Their writing mentioned people, places, and ideas that were foreign. And when a reading was supposed to be about experiences like my own, I wanted to shout, “Hey, that author knew he/she had a safety net. That’s not the same as being poor, with three generations living in a one-bathroom house. Not the same at all.”
Writing courses still scare the heck out of me… and I teach writing. I constantly worry if I’ve become what I dreaded. The unintentionally elitist professor who judges students unfairly because they defer to my authority or that of peers. “Speak up! Take a stand!” These are not so easy.
Even in my doctoral program, I dropped a couple of classes that felt like Utne Reader Salons for the secretly initiated. The anxiety of writing the “right way” and expressing the “right” views was paralyzing. I could barely put a couple of words to page without hyperventilating. It wasn’t healthy, so I found classes like, “Writing in the Sciences” to reduce the stress.
When you worry that you need a specialized therapist to pass writing courses, maybe the courses are the problem?
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