On Herzberg's "Community Service and Self Teaching"

Ever since we first discussed Hairston's piece in which she talks about the importance of keeping politics and social issues out of the class room, I've felt compelled to bring more social issues into the classroom, and I've been looking for ways to practically do that. While I've come up with some ideas of my own for shifting my course next semester to help my students think about writing in relation to the world, I was glad to read about Herzberg's experience of practically confronting social issues in the classroom with his students.

Admittedly, the project Herzberg takes on with his students--studying illiteracy, teaching them tutoring skills, and beginning a tutoring program with them--sounds overwhelming for me as a teacher with little experience. However, I can still appreciate the overarching ideas Herzberg is passing on in sharing his experience, and I can keep in mind some of his learned experiences when working to draw my class out in discussion and critical thinking on social issues.

I know that when I was a freshman in college, as many of our composition students are, I did not even begin to understand systematic oppression. In many ways, I still only have limited knowledge on how society is designed to discriminate against particular groups of people, because I belong to several privileged groups. However, I was impressed that Herzberg had a close enough understanding of the thought process his students were going through to help them make the jump from fixating on individualism and meritocracy to understand that the very systems around which our lives are based and set up to encourage those with opportunity and to assume that when someone doesn't have advantages in life, it's through a fault of their own.

Of their time early on in the program, Herzberg writes, "The students tended to see their learners, quite naturally, as individuals with personal problems--alcoholism and drugs, mental breakdown, family disintegration, or some nameless inability to concentrate and cope." I like Herzberg's classroom approach in that he doesn't blame students for their naive understandings of privilege, but instead, he meets them where they're at, in their own level of understanding, while also challenging his students and making them uncomfortable with what they've previously known to be true.

When I compare the ending place of Herzberg's students to their starting place, I'm can't help but be impressed. He writes, "What the students' final papers show, then, is a sense of life as a communal project, an understanding of the way that social institutions affect our lives, and a sense that our responsibility for social justice includes but also carries beyond personal acts of charity." In my eyes, you have to have an in-depth understanding of your students and the knowledge and understanding they bring to the table to have a semester turn such successful results.

However, what I've pulled from this article is not only the strides that Herzberg was able to make, but the way that he has helped me continue to reframe my thinking of social issues with composition. Again, as a new teacher, I want to make those connections--I want to talk to my students about important issues in the classroom and to show them that writing is not separate from real life in these ways--but I struggle to readily see those connections on my own, much less make them for my students. Herzberg writes, "These efforts belong in the composition classroom because of the rhetorical as well as the practical nature of citizenship and social transformation." What I take from that is while it's important to talk about social issues in the classroom for the sake of thinking about rhetorical situation, these issues matter on their own, even aside from rhetorical connections. As teachers (especially as teachers in the humanities), we do have a responsibility to inform and engage our students when it comes to what's going on in the world. I don't think that means there's a black-and-white instruction book on how to do this, or that it has to look the same from one teacher to the next, but it does mean that we have the opportunity to help our students think bigger, beyond the frame of just passing a required composition course.

the

students'

final

papers

show,

then,

is

a

sense

of

life

as

a

communal

project,

an

understanding

of

the

way

that

social

institutions

affect

our

lives,

and

a

sense

that

our

responsibility

for

social

justice

includes

but

also

carries

beyond

personal

acts

of

charity

the

students'

final

papers

show,

then,

is

a

sense

of

life

as

a

communal

project,

an

understanding

of

the

way

that

social

institutions

affect

our

lives,

and

a

sense

that

our

responsibility

for

social

justice

includes

but

also

carries

beyond

personal

acts

of

charity