Robert Brooke arrived at a concept regarding the self more similar to my own view, compared to those of Peter Elbow and Walter Ong, in his essay discussing the sociological theory of the "underlife" in relation to the classroom. According to this theory, one's underlife comprises "those behaviors which undercut the roles expected of participants in a situation" (141). He goes on to discuss how both students and teachers engage in a game-like series of actions that "show that their identities are different from or more complex than the identities assigned them by organizational roles" (142). People, he argues, generally try to make new roles conform to part of their present identity and work only to shape it through rejection or acceptance of these new roles in new contexts. These individual stances, exhibited through observable behaviors, set one's identity apart from the rest and in this way, "the self is formed" (144). He provides examples, the one in particular about the lesson on fermentation resounding for my experience in a bar tending class; I set myself apart by trying to learn the basics of alcohol production and understand it as a process while others only memorized what was necessary to pass the exam and be able to bar tend (the product). Yet I did notice those who had tried to only memorize the information were able to apply that knowledge to what interested them, just as I had, but by a very different path. Anyhow, I thought his argument about the self was valid in that he implies both conscious and unconscious showing and hiding of facets of our identity. We judge what fits in a situation and we put it forth; this does not mean we aren't anyone else, but rather that we have a visibly selective identity. Thus I also think it's appropriate to say that students need to think of themselves as writers in order to write better; this brings them in closer proximity to their voices and allows them to say what they have to say. Teaching writing as a "disruptive form of underlife" would therefore lead to an even closer proximity to one's identity for simply increasing informed awareness of it.
Lisa Delpit brings attention to the issue of inequality in the classroom environment due to the culture of power enacted in our society. She places blame on white academics for establishing a discriminatory (with or without intention she does not specify) educational system which favors primarily white, middle-class students in terms of established societal norms for success. She argues that current classroom practices treat poor or minority students unfairly, labeling them as remedial or misbehaved, and that solutions to help these students succeed often are too indirect and useless for real improvement to occur. Arguing that this stems in part from cultural differences between white and black educational practices (for example, the issue of authority she presents), she also suggests that in the U.S. "students will be judged on their product regardless of the process they utilized to achieve it" (287); this makes the learning process more difficult for non-white students because they are expected to understand the process when in reality they have, she argues, never been properly taught that process to begin with. I am not sure how widely correct her observations are when applied to the American population as a whole, especially back in the 80s, but I expect her results are probably still quite shocking today in a society that claims to be racially transcendent. While we may have passed laws making discrimination illegal, education still suffers in that teachers, like she argues, do not always know how to deal with students from different backgrounds with different experiences, from any culture, since the educational system still tailors to that same white, middle-class demographic. I think it's true when she says that we all are experts at what we know best and thus we all need to approach education on a more personal level in order to really learn anything. This goes beyond class and race, and right to the foundations of human connection. How can we learn anything, she asks, if we don't listen and hear from our hearts? This speaks to all inequalities, all differences in conviction, not just the plight of the teacher and student misunderstanding and miscommunication related to race and socioeconomic standing.
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