Basic Writers and Liberal Education

I was surprised to realize I myself regarded the concept of basic writers quite like the doctors Mina Shaughnessy describes in her first paragraph, who she says look at patients as other and thus separate their own health concerns from theirs. Teachers who regard their students in this manner cannot possibly create a healthy relationship with them if they are looked to as the learned authority figure, rather than a partner in experience. I hate the term "catching up" since it implies one is left behind somewhere in a "normal" learning process; however, I think everyone develops at their own rate due to the complexity of contributing factors from all walks of life so there is thus no possibility for accurate gradation or staging scales. Like Shaughnessy, I believe that instituting impossible standards "radically lowers the standards" (235). Strict enforcement of meeting established standards stifles exploration in those who are excelling while at the same time producing mental blocks in those who cannot quite comprehend the standards just yet. She argues that the "issue is not the capacity of students finally to master" any given aspect of literacy development, "but the priority" being placed on it (237). In a rewards and punishments system, served by ignorance and authority, what do students learn? The rules of an unfair game, not an education in thought processing. Shaughnessy argues that teachers must "dive in" so to speak and engage themselves in the learning process as a student to their students' learning experiences. They must learn to avoid "underestimating the sophistication of our students and ... ignoring the complexity of the tasks we set before them" (238) and therefore enable a better exchange between them.

Patricia Bizzell introduces William Perry's stages of college student development into adulthood: Dualism, Relativism, and Commitment in Relativism. Dualism deals in absolutes, wrongs and rights, questions and answers. Relativism provides a context for individually persuasive argument that allows for some exploration within self-interest and the teacher's interest. Commitment in Relativism is the process by which a student learns the proper judgment for making decisions with consideration for others values and experiences. Because not everyone goes to college and/or experiences these stages of development, because they must be undertaken and do not simply unfold, Bizzell argues that his stages are not necessary to the normal course of development and are instead of cognitive stages, "philosophical assumptions" that can be altered (449). Commitment in Relativism is a stage that arises, she argues, out of liberal education from a basis of pluralism, eventually transcending the stages of Dualism and Relativism. Bizzell believes that Perry's stages do not happen in any specific time frame (Freshman, sophomore, etc.) and may not even happen at all in college for some writers. This is accounted for, she argues, by the gap in students' wide variety of experiences with teachers. If a teacher facilitates a certain viewpoint from one of these stages in an appropriate way, they may encourage a student to move onto the next stage. She warns that we must not try to rush students through these stages of development, though, since she agrees with Perry that an emphasis should be placed on "the function of education as acculturation, not training" (452). This acculturation of students refers to the culture of liberal education, in which teachers are "teaching them to think in a certain way, to become adults with a certain set of intellectual habits and ethical predilections" (452-3). We become persuaded into the liberal academic community as we develop into the Commitment in Relativism stage through our education.