Asao B. Inoue's Infrequent Words

Entry 42 Too often in our lives, we don’t encounter arguments in the meaningful and ethical ways that schools, colleges, and academic disciplines often understand or assume them to be, nor do we encounter finding common ground, forming agreement, or making ethical decisions collaboratively. We don’t usually find people engaging in any of the habits I listed at the end of the last blogbook post 41 . What we get are unproductive shouting matches on CNN or Fox News, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, or Facebook. People often just shout their claims at each other with little interest in engaging with anyone else’s evidence or reasoning, little interest in protecting those with whom they are engaging, and little interest in investigating their own biases or the ways their words do harm in the world.  Let me give you a simple example of what I mean. About 2 or 3 times a year, I get hate emails and tweets directed at me. Usually, they come after right-wing or conservative news media have poste...

Entry 40 In my last post ( post 39 ), I discussed the ways white male authors and their historically cultivated habits of language deeply inform the CCSS and its appendix essay , which explains the focus on “argument” over “persuasion” when teaching language and writing to high school students in the U.S.  But I was just getting started in explaining the problems with the appendix essay and the focus on argument. There’s more. I’ll continue in this post. The reason I go into such detail about the appendix’s discussion is that it is indicative of most logics in all course or programmatic outcomes, in both secondary and postsecondary contexts, and it’s good to know what we must orient ourselves against and why if we wish to be antiracist.  The appendix’s discussion of “writing” explains three kinds of writing students should learn: “argument,” “informational/explanatory writing,” and “narrative.” However, half or more of this larger section in the appendix on writing focuses on ...

Entry 33 A big part of using any set of literacy standards or learning outcomes in a classroom are the models used to demonstrate such things to students. Sometimes the models are dictated by required curricula and sometimes they’re chosen by teachers. An antiracist orientation would help a teacher to consider the nature and histories of their models of “good writing” in ways that implicate the models and teachers in white supremacist and racist systems, even as many of us are required to use those models in our classrooms as teaching devices. The kind of antiracist orientation I’m speaking of in effect asks: Who does the model represent in society and our classroom? How is that representation, and the habits of language it assumes, connected to the history of racism and WLS in society? Who is that ideal embodied languageling that the model invokes or conjures and what are its effects when circulated in our classroom? How do we (teachers and students) make sure that we do not reproduce...