Author: Trish

Class size in college writing (an old paper)

[This was co-authored with Reinhold Hill in 2007, based on research done in the late 90s at our then-institution. People have sometimes cited it, although it wasn’t published, so I’m posting it.]

The issue of class size in first year college writing courses is of considerable importance to writing program administrators.  While instructors and program administrators generally want to keep classes as small as possible, keeping class size low takes a financial and administrative commitment which administrators are loath to make in the absence of clear research.  While the ADE and NCTE recommendations of fifteen students are persuasive to anyone who has taught first-year writing courses, they often fail to persuade administrators who are looking for research-based recommendations.  And, in actual fact, class sizes at major institutions ranges from ten to twenty five students.

Unfortunately, anyone looking to the available research on class size in college writing courses is likely to come away agnostic.  While there is considerable research on class size and college courses in general, there are several important reasons that one should doubt its specific applicability to college writing courses.  First, much of the general research on class size includes students of all ages.  Second, the research often involves the distinction between huge and simply large courses, such as between forty and two hundred students,  whereas most writing program administrators are concerned about the difference between fifteen and twenty-five students. Third, the courses involved in the studies often have very different instructional goals from first year writing courses.  Finally, the assessment mechanisms are often inappropriate for evaluating effectiveness and student satisfaction in writing courses.

In other words, the NCTE recommendations for writing courses are not based on research, and the research on class size in general cannot yield recommendations.        At the University of Missouri, we were given the opportunity to engage in some informal experimentation regarding class size.  While the limitations of our own research mean that we have not resolved the class size question, our results do have thought-provoking indications for class size and program administration.  In brief, our work suggests that reducing class size, while very popular among instructors, appears not to result in marked improvement in student attitudes about writing unless the instructors use that reduction in class size as an opportunity to change their teaching strategies.  In other words, we seem to have confirmed what Daniel Thoren has concluded about class size research: “Reducing class size is important but that alone will not produce the desired results if faculty do not alter their teaching styles.  The idea is not to lecture to 15 students rather than 35” (5).  If, however, instructors are able to take advantage of the smaller class size, then even a small reduction can result in students perceiving considerable improvement in their paper writing abilities.  We do not wish to imply that reducing class size should not be a goal for writing program administrators, but as a goal in and of itself it is not enough – we need to be aware that pedagogical changes must be initiated together with reductions in class size.

1. Institutional Background

Our study, largely funded by the Committee on Undergraduate Education, was the result of recommendations made by a Continuous Quality Improvement team on our first year composition course (English 20).  That team was itself part of increased campus, college, and departmental attention to student writing.  As a result of that attention, the English 20 program underwent philosophical and practical changes.

The most important change was probably the shift in program philosophy. While there remains some variation among sections, the philosophy of the program as a whole is to provide an intellectually challenging course in which students write several versions of researched papers on subjects of scholarly interest about which experts disagree.  Students write and substantially revise at least three papers, each of which is four to five pages long.  There are four separate but connected goals in these changes.  First, for instructors, our goal is to provide a teaching experience which will make the teaching of first-year composition appropriate preparation for teaching writing intensive courses in their area.  Hence, instructors need to develop their own assignments.

Second, for students, one goal of the course is to enable students to master the delicate negotiation of self and community necessary for effective academic writing.  As Brian Huot has noted, research in writing assessment indicates that students tend to be fairly competent at expressive writing, but have greater difficulty with “referential/participant writing” (241).  Our sense was that this assessment is especially true of students entering the University of Missouri.  They are quite competent at many aspects of writing, but they have considerable difficulty enfolding research into an interpretive argument.  Thus, we did not need to teach The Research Paper that Richard Larson has so aptly criticized; nor do students need instruction in personal narrative.  Instead, students needed practice with assignments which called for placing oneself in a community of experts who are themselves disagreeing with one another.  Achieving this goal was nearly indistinguishable from achieving the goal described above for instructors–assisting instructors to write assignments which called for an intelligent interweaving of research and interpretation into a college-level argument would necessarily result in students’ getting experience with that kind of assignment.

Our third goal was to teach students the importance of a rich and recursive writing process, one which involves considerable self-reflection, attention to the course and research material, and substantial revision in the light of audience and discipline expectations.  Research in composition indicates over the last thirty years suggests that such an attention toward the writing process is the most important component to success in writing, especially academic papers (Flowers and Hayes, Berkenkotter, Emig).

It should be briefly explained that this is not to say that the program endorses what is sometimes called a “natural process” mode of instruction–that term is usually used to describe a program which is explicitly non-directional, in which students write almost exclusively for peers and on topics of their own choosing, and which endorses an expressivist view of writing.  In fact, attention to the writing process does not necessarily preclude the instructor taking a “skills” approach to writing instruction (that is, providing exercises or instruction in what are presumed to be separable aptitudes in composition) but it does necessitate course design with careful attention to paper topics.

And this issue of modes of instruction raises our fourth goal–to enable instructors to use what George Hillocks calls the “environmental” mode of instruction.  When we began making changes to the first year composition program, it was our impression that the dominant mode of instruction was what Hillocks calls the “presentational” mode, which

is characterized by (1) relatively clear and specific objectives…(2) lecture and teacher-led discussion dealing with concepts to be learned and applied; (3) the study of models and other material which explain and illustrate the concept; (4) specific assignments or exercises which generally involve imitating a pattern or following rules which have been previously discussed; and (5) feedback following the writing, coming primarily from teachers.  (116-117)

It is important to emphasize that this mode does not depend exclusively on lecture.  A class “discussion” in which the instruction guides students through material by asking questions intended to elicit specific responses is also presentational mode.  Insofar as we can tell, a large number of instructors used class time to present advice on writing papers as well as to present writing products which students might use as models.  Instructors then used individual conferences in order to discuss strategies for revising papers.

The dominance of this mixing of presentational and individualized modes of instructions in our program had two obvious consequences.  First, it was exhausting for instructors.  An instructor’s time was generally split between the equally demanding tasks of preparing the information to be presented in class and engaging in individual conferences with students. The standardized syllabus recommended four papers; each class has eighteen to twenty students; many of our instructors teach two classes per semester.  Instructors were forced to choose between not providing individual instruction for students on each paper or spending a minimum of eighty hours per semester in conference with students.  If instructors are also spending six hours per week preparing class material, and three hours per week in class, they are spending one hundred and seventy five hours per semester per class on their teaching–not including the time spent grading and commenting on papers.  Standards for good standing and recommendations regarding course load assume that such students are spending only one hundred fifty hours per semester on each course.

It should be emphasized that shifting instructional mode and changing the syllabus to only three papers cannot solve the problem of overworking instructors.  Class preparation and time in class account for one hundred thirty five hours per semester; if instructors spend forty-five minutes grading a first submission and only fifteen minutes grading a second submission, an enrollment of twenty students brings their commitment to one hundred ninety five hours per semester per course, and this amount of time does not include any conferences.

An informal survey of our instructors indicated the consequences of these conflicting expectations: some instructors did minimal commenting on papers, some instructors permitted their own status as students to suffer, while others encouraged students to write inappropriately short papers, and all were over-worked.

The second consequences of the programatic tendency to alternate between presentational and individualized modes of instruction has to do with Hillocks’ own summary of research on modes of instruction.  Hillocks concludes that the presentational mode of instruction is not as effective as what he calls the “environmental mode”: “On pre-to-post measures, the environmental mode is over four times more effective than the traditional presentational mode” (247). In other words, our instructors were working very hard in ways that may not have been the most effective for helping students write better papers.

So, we wanted instructors to use the “environmental” mode of instruction, which

“is characterized by (1) clear and specific objectives…(2) materials and problems selected to engage students with each other in specifiable processes important to some particular aspect of writing; and (3) activities, such as small-group problem-centered discussions, conducive to high levels of peer interaction concerning specific tasks….Although principles are taught, they are not simply announced and illustrated as in the presentational mode.  Rather, they are approached through concrete materials and problems, the working through of which not only illustrates the principle but engages students in its use.”  (122)

In the environmental mode, one neither lectures to students, nor does one simply let class go wherever the students want.  Instead, the instructor has carefully prepared the tasks for the students–thinking through very carefully exactly what the writing assignments will be and why.

2. Other Research on Class Size and College Writing

The relevance of the considerable body of research on class size is largely irrelevant to first-year composition.  Glass et al’s 1979 meta-analysis of 725 previous studies, for instance,  remains one of the fundamental studies on the subject.  Yet, it includes a large number of studies on primary and secondary students; hence, there is reason to wonder what role age plays in the preference for smaller class size.  A more recent, and frequently quoted, meta-analysis of college courses which claims, as measured by student achievement by final examination scores, that class size has no effect on student achievement begins with classes as small as 30 to 40(Williams et al 1985).  But, this study does not appear to have included a writing course.  Considering that the study was restricted to courses with “one or more common tests across sections” (1985 311) it is unlikely to have been a composition course; if it was, then it was one which presumed that improvement in writing results from learning information which can be tested–a problematic assumption.

A more fundamental problem–because it is shared with numerous other studies of class size–is the measurement mechanism.  That is, examinations are not appropriate measures of student achievement in courses whose goal is to teach the writing of research papers (see Huot, 1990, CCCC Committee on Assessment, 1995, White, 1985, White and Polin, 1986); hence, any study which relies on examination grades is largely irrelevant in terms of its measurement mechanism.

Finally, there are good reasons to doubt the implicit assumption that course goals and instructional method are universal across a curriculum.  Feldman’s 1984 meta-analysis of 52 studies does not list any study which definitely involved a writing class; most of the studies, on the contrary, definitely did not include any such course.  Smith and Cranton’s 1992 study of variation of student perception of the value of course characteristics (including class size) concludes that those perceptions “differ significantly across levels of instruction, class sizes, and across those variables within departments” (760).  They conclude that the relationships between student evaluations and course characteristics “are not general, but rather specific to the instructional setting” (762).

This skepticism regarding the ability to universalize from research is echoed in Chatman who argues that class size research indicates that “instructional method should probably be the most important variable in determining class size and should exceed disciplinary content, type and size of institution, student level, and all other relevant descriptive information in creating logical, pedagogical ceilings” (8).  And, indeed, common sense would suggest that there is no reason to assume that research on courses whose major goal is the transmission of information applies very effectively to writing courses.

3. Methods and Results of Our Research

We had two main assessment methods.  Because we were concerned about reducing the time commitment of teaching English 20, we asked instructors to keep time logs.  The mainstay of our initial method of assessment was a set of questionairres given to students at the beginning and end the semesters.  While questionnaires are a perfectly legitimate method of program assessment, they do not provide as complete a picture of a program as a more thorough method would (for more on advantages and disadvantages of questionnaires in program assessment, see Davis et al 100-107).  Given the budget and time constraints, however, we were unable to engage in those methods usually favored by writing program administrators for accuracy, validity, and reliability such as portfolio assessment.  We are relying to a large degree on self-assessment, which, while not invalid, has obvious limitations.  Nonetheless, the results of the questionairres were informative.

Because the program goals emphasize the students’ understanding of the writing process, the questionnaires were intended to elicit any changes in student attitude toward the writing process.  We were looking for confirmation of three different hypotheses.

First, there should be a change in their writing process.  Scholarship in composition suggests that we will find that students begin with a linear and very brief composing process (writing one version of the paper which is revised, if at all, at the lexical level).  If English 20 is fulfilling its mission, that second set of answers will indicate that the majority of students end the course with a richer sense of the writing process–they will revise their papers more, their writing processes will lengthen, and they will revise at more levels than the lexical.

Second, their hierarchy of writing concerns should change.  According to Brian Huot, composition research indicates that raters of college level writing are most concerned with content and organization (1990, 210-254). In various studies which he reviews, he concludes that readers, while concerned with mechanics and sentence structure, consider them important only when the organization is strong (1990, 251).  That is, readers of college papers have a hierarchy of concerns, in that they expect writers to be concerned with mechanics, correctness, and format (sometimes called “lower order concerns”), but that they expect writers to spend less time on those issues than on effectiveness of organization, quality of argument, appropriateness to task, depth and breadth of research, and other “higher order concerns.”

Beginning college students, however, often have that hierarchy exactly reversed: they are often under the impression that mechanics, format, and sentence level correctness are the most important to their readers, and deserve much less attention than the argument (or substance of the paper).  Hence, if English 20 is succeeding, there should be a shift in student ranking of audience concerns.  That is, their beginning questionnaire answers will indicate that they pay the most attention to lower order concerns and least attention to higher order considerations (whether or not the paper fulfills the assignment; if the paper is well-researched; if the evidence is well-presented; if the organization is effective).  At the end of the semester, they should demonstrate a more accurate understanding of audience expectations–not that they have dropped lexical or format concerns, but that they understand those concerns to be less important for success than the higher order concerns.

Third, there should be variation in student and teacher satisfaction with the courses.  This shift is more difficult to predict than the other hypotheses, but it does make sense to expect that the sections in which students receive greater personal attention would be more satisfying for both instructors and students.  In this regard, we expected to confirm what a report from the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems has identified as “an overwhelming finding”: that students believe they learn more in smaller classes, and that they are far more satisfied with such courses.

As with many studies, our results are most useful for suggesting further areas of research.  One area should be mentioned here.  The very constraints of the assessment method–a quantitative and easily administered method–meant that we were asking students to use language other than what they might have.  Open-ended interviews with students would almost certainly elicit much richer results.  One advantage of our study of class size was that it was part of experimenting with various changes in our program; thus, a large number of sections participated in the study as a whole.  Each semester, we had about twenty sections participating in the study in some form or another, and each semester at least four were held to an enrollment of 15 students.[i]  We also designated at least four sections “control” groups, meaning that we did not reduce class size, or consciously make any of the other modifications to English 20 we were contemplating.

An important limitation of our experiment should be mentioned before discussing the results. We ran the experiment over three semesters (WS97, FS97, and WS98), but were only able to use the survey results from the second and third semesters (because we changed the survey between the first and second semester).  In the first semester that we did the experiment, we made a conscious attempt to balance each group in terms of instructor experience and subjective judgments regarding the quality of their teaching.  Given the intricacies of scheduling, however, we were unable to maintain the balances over the next two semesters of the experiment.  This imbalance obviously affected the experimental results in ways that will be noted.

In terms of reducing the time that instructors spent on the course, reducing class size did not have markedly good results.  In FS97, instructors teaching the smaller sections averaged just under twelve hours per week, but they averaged just under fifteen hours per week in WS98.  The control groups reported spending an average of ten and fourteen hours respectively.  Thus, reducing class size did not reduce the amount of time that instructors spent on their courses.

The instructor surveys indicate some reasons that their time commitment might not have reduced.  In FS97, for instance, the teachers mentioned that having a smaller class size inspired them to make changes to their teaching–creating new assignments, taking longer to comment on papers, conferring with students for longer periods of time or more often, adding in an extra paper.  In other words, the instructors took the opportunity to try something that a class size of twenty had previously dissuaded them from trying.

Obviously, this experimentation on the part of the instructors would have had some kind of impact on our own experiment, but it is impossible to predict what it would have been.  It may well be that we would have had very different results with the same instructors had they continued with a reduced class size for a second semester.  Working with that class size for the second time, they might have made different decisions about how to spend their time.  It’s also possible that this experimentation accounts for some of the unpredicted results in regard to student satisfaction and writing process, but, again, it is impossible to know.  Thus, one conclusion which we can draw from our own experiment is that one is likely to get better results by having the same instructors work with a reduced class size for several semesters in a row.

As was mentioned earlier, students were given a survey at the beginning and the end of the semester, eliciting their views of the relative importance of various aspects of the writing process, the amount of revision (and kind) in which they typically engaged, and their understanding of the expectations of college teachers. Most of them were comparison questions, asking the same question about the students’ high school experiences at the beginning of the semester that were then asked about their English 20 experience at the end.  For instance, students were asked: “What aspects of a paper were most emphasized in your high school English course?” at the beginning of the course and “What aspects of a paper were most emphasized in your English 20 course?” at the end of the course. Students were asked to select five aspects of writing a paper most emphasized in high school and five most emphasized in their English 20 classes.  The results from FS97 are shown in the table below.  The area of emphasis is listed in order, and the number is the percentage of students who listed that area among their five.  One term which should be explained is “Thesis statement,” which we take to mean, because of the emphasis of our program, revising the central argument, and not simply rewriting the last sentence fo the introduction.

WS97

HS

CONTROL

CLASS SIZE

Organization

71.66

Drafting 67.4

Peer Review 86.5

Grammar 61.92

Logic 65.3

Revising TS 71.2

Logic and Reasoning 57.38

Peer Review 65.3

Logic 61.5

Format 54.8

Organization 57.1

Revising Organization 53.9

Revising one’s TS 51.78

Revising TS 51

Organization 48.1

WS98

HS

CTRL

CLASS SIZE

Grammar 73.7

Peer review 87.5

Organization 85.7

Organization 67.7

Organization 75

Peer review 85.7

Logic 60

Logic 65.9

Logic 66.7

Research 55.9

Revising ts 59.1

Research 61.9

Format 54.4

Revising one’s organization 48.9

Revising ts 59.1

The results only partially confirmed our hypotheses.  We had predicted that the students would indicate that their high school writing courses put the most emphasis on grammar, format, and outlining and the least emphasis on revision.  We discovered, however, that high school instructors, while putting much emphasis on lower order concerns (e.g., format and grammar) do also emphasize some higher order concerns (e.g., organization and reasoning).   We also discovered more variation between semesters than expected.  While the WS98 results were much the same, with the five areas of most emphasis in high school being (in order) grammar, organization, logic and reasoning, research, format, and outlining, revising one’s thesis was second from last (with only 33.6% of students noting it as an area of emphasis in high school).

Our hypotheses were partially confirmed in that, in both semesters, the high school courses put the least emphasis on any form of revision: revising one’s grammar, revising one’s organization, or engaging in  peer review.  There was consistently a shift from high school in terms of greater emphasis on revision–it is interesting to note, for instance, that students perceive their high school courses putting considerable emphasis on organization (71.66 and 61.7), but almost none on revising organization (18.9).  Similarly, while students noted that grammar was emphasized in high school (73.7), revising one’s grammar was not (36.5).  In contrast, while English 20 is perceived as putting much less emphasis on grammar and usage (24.9), that number is much closer to the number of students who perceived an emphasis on revising one’s grammar and usage (25).  We infer that there is considerable variation among high schools–more than we had predicted–but that most high schools emphasize grammar and format more than English 20, and that English 20 emphasizes revision more than most high schools.

It is also interesting to note that students tend to report considerable experience with group work in high school courses.  Yet, students consistently reported little high school emphasis on peer review.  This discrepancy suggests that high school groups are not being used for peer review, or that–despite being put in these groups consistently–students do not perceive the peer reviews as important.

Students were also asked what aspects of a paper college teachers think most important by selecting four out of eight possibilities.  We had expected that this question would show a shift from lower order to higher order concerns–that, for instance, the method of library research would be rated high at the beginning of the semester, but would be replaced by the sources and relevance of evidence.  As with the previous table, the results from FS97 are presented in order, with the number representing the percentage of students who selected that aspect among their four.

FS97

HS

CONTROL

CLASS SIZE

Clarity of org

65.8

Clarity 71.4

Method 80.8

Correct grammar and usage 57.28

Logic 65.3

Persuasiveness 80.8

Logic and reasoning 57.38

Persuasiveness 55.1

Clarity 71.2

Persuasiveness of argument 55.12

Grammar 36.7

Logic 61.5

Mastery of subject 54.7

Mastery 36.7

Sources 50

WS98

HS

CTRL

CLASS SIZE

Clarity of org 69.5

Clarity of org 78.4

Clarity of org 76.2

Logic 60

Persuasiveness 71.6

Logic 66.7

persuasiveness 58.5

Logic 65.9

Persuasiveness 61.9

Mastery 54.8

Grammar/format/sources 34.1

Mastery 50

Grammar  50.5

Grammar 47.6

What is possibly most interesting about these charts is what is indicated about the high school preparation.  Students are relatively well informed about college instructors’ expectations before they begin the course; what little change there is in the control group in the first semester (and the almost complete lack of change in the second semester) suggests that simply being in college for one semester will inform students’ audience expectations.

The second most interesting result is that the reduced class size was a distinct failure in the first semester by our own program goals.  We did not want instructors emphasizing the method of library research; it was positively dismaying to see that listed as the greatest area of emphasis.  This result is typical of what Faigley and Witte have called unexpected results, and it is one consequence of how instructors were selected for the study.

Because scheduling of graduate students is often a last minute scramble, there were not specific criteria for participating in the reduced class size experiment.  In FS97, one instructor had participated in considerable training (Adams), one was still using a version of the old standardized syllabus and had participated in no training after her entry into the graduate program several years previous (Chapman), one was taking comprehensive exams and had engaged in only the required training (Brown), and one had participated in some training above what was required (Desser).  Adams generally engaged in the environmental mode; Chapman and Brown almost exclusively in presentational mode; Desser largely in environmental mode, but with some reliance on presentational.  Similarly, the instructors had a variety of years of experience–ranging from two to nine years.  As will be discussed below, the number of years of experience had no effect on the results, but the extent to which a person participated in training did.  In regard to the question discussed above, for instance, one can see the range of training reflected in the range of answers: Adams had only 9 per cent of students list method of library research as important; Brown had 37.5; Chapman had 41.6; Desser had 30.77.  In other words, the amount that a person participated in departmental training was reflected in the amount that their course reflected departmental goals.

As mentioned above, the exigencies of scheduling prevented our being able to balance the study groups.  Thus, what we generally called the control group was not necessarily analogous to the other sections in terms of instructor quality, experience, or preparation.  We have, therefore, also included the average number for each question–that is, the average number for all eighteen sections included in the study.

Students were asked about their perception of any change in the quality of their papers.  In asking this question, we did not assume that students were necessarily accurate judges of the quality of their papers, but we did think that their answer would provide a more specific way of evaluating the course than our course evaluations provided.  That is, whether or not they think their papers are better seems to us a useful way for thinking about student satisfaction.  The number represents the percentage of students who checked that item.  “Average” means the average number for all eighteen sections participating in the study.

Substantially better

Somewhat better

same

Somewhat worse

Substantially worse

control

40.1

44.9

4.1

0

0

size

21.2

55.8

15.4

3.9

0

average

34

WS98

Sub better

Some better

same

Some worse

Sub worse

ctrl

23.9

53.4

15.9

2.3

0

size

16.7

61.9

11.9

4.8

0

Here again one sees the results of how instructors were selected to participate.  If one looks at this same table for FS97 in regard to individual instructors, one sees a wide variation in student reaction.

Sub better

Some better

same

Some worse

Sub worse

adams

0

54.5

36.3

0

0

brown

0

50

37.5

12.5

0

chapman

25

50

25

0

0

desser

38.4

46.1

15.3

0

0

It is striking that the different sections had very nearly the same percentage of students who reported some improvement–where one sees the greatest difference is in the number of students who reported substantial improvement.  At least with these four instructors, the more training the instructor had, the more likely students were to report substantial gains.

Only one of these instructors participated in the study the next semester–Desser.  In WS98, Desser was in the control group, and the results were as follows:

No answer

Sub better

Some better

same

Some worse

Sub worse

11.1

5.5

55.5

22.2

5.5

0

Another instructor, Ellison, participated both semesters.  He was in another kind of experimental group fall semester (he met regularly with a faculty member and a group of instructors to discuss assignments, teaching videos, and so on) and reduced class size WS98.  One sees a similar pattern in the difference between the two semesters for his students–when he had a reduced class size, more students reported substantial and some improvement:

Sub better

Some better

same

Some worse

Sub worse

fs97

15.7

57.8

21

0

0

ws98

20

70

0

10

0

Granted, it is dangerous to speculate on the basis of two instructors, but it is intriguing that these instructors received very different results with a reduced class size.  If these instructors are typical, then one can conclude that the same person will get better results with a reduced class size.

There was not always a correlation between amount of training and survey results. For instance, students were asked whether their enjoyment of the paper writing process had changed.  This question was intended as a slightly different way to investigate student satisfaction–ideally, the course would improve both the students’ ability to write college-level papers at the same time that it increased their enjoyment of writing. We were unsure whether or not the question would elicit useful information, however, as we predicted it might be nothing more than an indication of the rigor of the instructors’ grading standards–that students might enjoy writing more in courses with higher GPAs.

Substantially more

Somewhat more

same

Somewhat less

Substantially less

Adams

0

27.2

63.6

0

0

Brown

0

28.7

62.5

12.5

6.25

Chapman

0

41.6

41.6

16.6

0

Desser

15.3

46.1

38.4

0

0

average

7.35

There is not quite as close a correlation between training and results as there was in regard to improved ability, but it is interesting that instructors with more training did not have any students reporting a decrease in enjoyment.  Similarly, the instructor with the least training–an instructor who tends to rely on the presentational mode–had no students report that their papers were substantially better after taking English 20, and the lowest number of students reporting that they received substantially more (12.5) or somewhat more (12.5) attention in English 20 than they had thought they would get.

We had assumed that students in the sections with fewer students would report more individual attention, but this was not necessarily the case.  The table below shows the results for FS97 and the results for Desser and Ellison for both semesters.

Sub more

Some more

same

Some less

Sub less

ctrl

38.8

38.8

14.3

0

0

average

Class size

34.6

19.2

32.7

9.6

1.9

adams

27.2

45.4

18.1

0

0

brown

12.5

12.5

56.2

18.7

0

chapman

33.3

16.6

25

16.6

8.3

Desser fs97

69.2

7.6

23

0

0

Desser ws98

22.2

38.8

33.3

5.5

0

Ellison fs97

31.5

40

30

0

0

Ellison ws98 (red)

31.5

36.8

26.3

0

0

Here one sees no striking correlation to amount of training, nor to instructional method.  We speculate that this lack of correlation results from the more important factor being the amount that the instructor engages in individual conferences with students.  While one does see a striking difference for Desser, there is no change for Ellison (the apparent change is simply the result of 5.2% of his WS98 students not answering that question).  The (highly tentative) inference is that reducing class size will not necessarily result in any group of instructors giving students more individual attention than any other group of instructors might do, but it may result in particular instructors doing so.

This range of results in regard to instructors with lower class size indicates our most important result:  that reducing class size does not increase overall student satisfaction if the instructor uses the presentational mode.  Reducing class size might, however, increase the student satisfaction and confidence on an instructor by instructor basis.

The final table that has provocative results is in response to the question: “If your writing process has changed, in what areas have you seen the greatest change?” Students were asked to select five.  The table is arranged by descending order of frequency in the control group.  The number represents the percentage of students who selected that area among their four.

CTRL

PLA

Class size

Close

Wkshp

Organization

57.1

Library research

51

Revise TS

44.9

Logic

42.9

drafting

30.6

27.1

28.9

45.6

27.1

Peer review

30.6

Revise org

30.6

Time management

26.5

Knowledge of format

24.5

18.6

26.9

29.4

20.8

Write elegant sentences

20.4

Computer use

14.3

Internet research

14.3

Knowledge of grammar

12.2

Reading course material

4.1

reading

2

outlining

2

WS98

ctrl

Close sup

size

wrkshp

Org 48.9

Logic 48.9

Rev org 45.2

Org 41.7

Rev ts 42.1

org46.8

Logic 42.9

Peer rev 41.7

Peer rev 40.9

Rev ts

Org 38.1

Revise org 41.7

Rev org 36.4

Rev org

Rev ts 35.7

Logic 40

Lib 28.4

Computers 27.7

Peer rev 28.6

Rev ts 36.7

The survey results as a whole did not indicate important gains in the reduced class size sections.  For instance, on average, the students in FS97 did not feel that they received more individual attention than the students in the control group did.  They showed slightly more shifting from lower order to higher order concerns on the whole than did students in the control sections, but a fewer number rated their paper writing as “substantially better.” At the beginning and end of the semester, we asked students how much of a paper they typically revised; we expected that students in the smaller class sizes would report engaging in greater revision than in the control groups.  But, that was not the case.  At the beginning of the semester, 22.4% of students in the reduced class size sections reported changing under 10% of a paper between drafts compared to 16.1% of students in the control groups.  At the end of the semester the results were 9.6 and 4.1 respectively.  The largest gain for the reduced class size group was in the 11-25% range (from 41.4 to 51.9) and in the 26-50% group for the control (28.6-40.8%).  Similarly, the control group had a larger number of students who reported that they revised “substantially” than did the instructors whose class sizes were reduced (22.5 compared to 17.3).

Students perceived the greatest emphasis in the course was on peer review; revising the thesis; logic and reasoning; revising organization; organization; format; drafting.  They saw the greatest change in their writing processes in regard to: peer review; organization; thesis revision; organization revision; library research.  In other words, the students saw the greatest changes in at least one area that they did not think that the instructors had especially emphasized (library research).  Most discouraging, 3.9% of the students thought that the papers they were writing after taking English 20 were somewhat worse, and 15.4% thought they were the same.  (None of the students in the control group thought their papers were somewhat worse, and only 4.1% of students thought their papers had remained the same.)

Looking at the results for individual instructors, however, has very different implications.  Instructors teaching the reduced class size sections did not necessarily have any training, and they were not required (or even encouraged) to change their teaching practices to take advantage of the reduced class size.  Instructors who taught reduced class size who did have some kind of previous training did have markedly different results. If an instructor engages in presentational mode, as some of our instructors did, then there is not an obvious improvement for the students in being in a smaller class.

There is, however, some reason to doubt that assumption.  For instance, according to Hillocks, research on grammar, usage, and correctness in student writing indicates that knowledge of grammatical rules has little or no effect on correctness in student performance.  That is, the transferring of information about writing does not improve writing itself.

While lecturing has repeatedly been demonstrated to be of little use in teaching writing, there is no reason to conclude that it is useless in other sorts of courses.  Common sense suggests that a good lecturer can lecture equally well to 15 students or 50 students–indeed, the research on class size indicates that the ability to present and communicate material in an interesting way may well be more important than class size for lecture courses (see, for instance, Feldman 1984).  The environmental mode of instruction, on the contrary, is almost certainly affected by class size.  As McKeachie has said, “The larger the class, the less the sense of personal responsibility and activity, and the less the likelihood that the teacher can know each student personally and adapt instruction to the individual student” (1990, 190).

[i]. The other kinds of sections were: ones with an attached peer-learning assistant; ones whose instructors met regularly with a faculty member to discuss the course; ones in which students met exclusively in small groups with fewer required contact hours per semester.

If Dems are elected, they’ll do what we’ve been doing!

In the last few days, a common claim (what scholars of rhetoric would call a topos) has emerged among Trump and GOP loyalists, and it’s that, if Democrats gain the House and Senate, they will force their political agenda on the country, block Trump at every point, and be vindictive toward Republicans. And, because they will be so awful to us, we are justified in amping up the aggression of rhetoric and actions against them. In other words, Democrats will treat Republicans as Republicans have treated Democrats, and therefore you must act aggressively toward them as a kind of self-defense.

This argument will work. It generally does. It worked when Democrats used it (and Democrats have used it several times). It also worked when Athenians, proslavery rhetors, and Germans did it.

To people good at logic, it seems like an incoherent argument, but to people who think entirely in terms of in-group/out-group domination, it looks good. It’s also appealing to abusers, but that’s a different point. It’s a kind of pre-emptive self-defense.

And it works because it’s a way of resolving the cognitive dissonance created by the wobbling of a previous argument—that God wants us to triumph over our enemies, and anyone not fanatically committed to the political agenda currently determined to be the in-group desiderata is an enemy. Because we are engaged in God’s will, normal ethical conditions don’t apply—we can do to others things we would be outraged were they done to us.

An ethics of in-group domination is, so it is claimed, God’s will. And God will reward us for our destroying our enemies. Giorgio Agamben calls it a “state of exception” in which we are excepted from normal rules about behavior—we honor the law by not obeying the specifics of the law. We are open that the powers of government will be used to favor one political party, but, while doing that, we’ll claim that that party is really the only legitimate one—all real Athenians, Germans, Americans vote this one way.

Members of that party believes themselves entirely entitled to something (such as political domination of various other countries, enslaving other people, exterminating various groups, political domination within a state or country). So, while that party is in power, it is shameless in its harnessing as much of the governmental power as it can to further its interests and crush any other parties. And, this is the important part: it is a party that believes there are no restrictions on what it is entitled to do in order to get its way. That’s why it has no shame—because it thinks of the world in zero-sum terms (we either eliminate or are eliminated).

And, when its power begins to wobble, it begins to reckon with how the groups it has oppressed might feel about their oppression. And it projects onto other groups how it thinks of the world—you either eliminate or are eliminated. Because it can’t imagine a world in which disparate groups coexist, it assumes everyone else behaves the same way. Because it is a group with an inchoate reptilian brain way of responding to situations that makes everything zero-sum (if something benefits the other group it must hurt you), it assumes that the “other” group getting any power will mean that group will respond in just as eliminationist as they have.

If you have a propaganda machine that has been cranking up in-group fanaticism by reducing all issues to in-group/out-group, and presenting politics as a zero-sum (any gain on their part must be a loss for us)—in other words, Fox, Limbaugh, Savage, and all sorts of other media and pundits (Mother Jones, Keith Olbermann, Michael Moore)—and your claim of eschatological determinism means that you have been excepted from normal rules of ethics, then you are rhetorically boxed in. You can’t just say “We were wrong about this policy.”

You either have to say that you were wrong, not about your claims about policies, but your claims about how politics and thinking about politics works. If your audience thinks about how, you lose them, since how you’ve argued is obviously wrong.

So, what you do is persuade them that the Other is just as awful as you are, and will behave just as badly as you have. That’s the argument Cleon used to persuade people to endorse genocide (he lost on the second vote), it’s how proslavery rhetors argued for violating the property rights of slaveholders (by prohibiting the manumission of slave contracts), and it’s how Nazis argued for continuing the war when it had obviously been lost.

It should, therefore, be troubling that McConnell is now using this argument, and that it’s become a right-wing talking point.
One of the logical problems with it is that the only way that the audience can be fearful or outraged at the possibility of Democrats’ forcing their political agenda on the country, blocking the sitting President at every point, and being vindictive toward Republicans is if they don’t object to that kind of behavior in principle. They think it’s fine to do that to the other party, but they would never stand for being treated that way. They are thereby admitting it’s bad behavior.

But, they say, it isn’t bad because their group is good and the other is bad. Or, in other words, they think they should treat others as they would not want to be treated. They are, quite explicitly, rejecting any ethics (or anyone who would promote an ethics) that says you should do unto others as you would have done unto you.

The people who argue that democracy is based in Judeo-Christian ethics are, as any history of the Enlightenment makes clear, right in that the notion of universal human rights and fairness across groups was grounded in the notion (not particular to Christians or Jews, but supposedly a foundational value of both) that a deeply religious ethical system treats all groups the same, regardless of their religious (or political) affiliation.

They’re wrong about most other things, but they’re right about that. So, it’s interesting that that is the rule they’re so unwilling to follow.

The current GOP/support Trump talking point is that the Democrats will behave as badly as the GOP has. And that’s taken as a reason to vote GOP. Isn’t it actually a reason to condemn the current GOP? It’s actually an admission that the current GOP is shameless, unethical, and an open rejection of what Christ calls us to do. The GOP has officially rejected Christ. Since they claim the moral highground, that’s more than a little problematic.

Right-wing rhetoric as pre-emptive self-defense

The right has shifted to a very old kind of rhetoric—our political situation is one in which a war has been declared on us and our values.  Our attempts at self-defense have just riled THEM that much more, and they are now determined to exterminate us. They have moved from symbolic violence and political oppression to actual violence. Therefore, we are justified in trying to exterminate them from the political scene, because that is a controlled and measured response to their actually trying to kill us—no system of ethics, no sense of fairness, no concerns about legality or process should limit what political actions we take against THEM.

This never ends well.

It’s also never literally true. It’s only ever used by people in positions of power whose “existential threat” isn’t that they’ll be exterminated, but that they will lose their current political power (usually hegemony).

After all, a genuinely minority group, whose existence (as opposed to political hegemony) was threatened wouldn’t have as one of their responses the extermination of some other group. They wouldn’t have the power to make that happen. Only a group that has the ability to exterminate an out-group—that is, the group with the greatest political power–can make this threat a plausible basis for large-scale political action.

There isn’t a war on Christmas, or a war on Christians; Aryans weren’t threatened with extermination; slaveholders didn’t have to worry about a race war that would enslave them; the GOP doesn’t have to worry that “liberals” will storm gated communities. In all these cases, media worked their base into political violence against an out-group on the fallacious grounds that it was justifiable self-defense (the out-group intended to exterminate them). It wasn’t, and they weren’t. And we’re there again.

Currently, the right-wing propaganda machine is doing two things: preparing its base for a factional state of exception against any non-Trump supporters, and setting up the talking points to rationalize political and judicial violence against non-Trump supporters.

There’s a lot of talk right now about Nazis, and the right-wing talk about Nazis (and a non-trivial amount of left-wing rhetoric) gets it completely wrong.

Here’s what happened with Hitler: he said things a lot of people were saying, but he said it in a way that made many believe that he completely understood them, that he was a reliable ally against Marxism, that he would break the logjam of current politics, that he would cleanse the Agean stables of current politics by getting rid of all the bad people. In other words, he told people that politics isn’t a question of politics—that is, political discourse isn’t about argumentation regarding our policy options, but a question of identity. There are good people, and there are bad people, and politics is a question of getting good people (meaning Hitler) in place, and everyone having faith in his ability to get things done.

Politics, in this world, isn’t about policy argumentation, but about pure commitment to the person who seems to have good judgment about everything, including all political issues.

Hitler came across as a person with fanatical commitment to values a lot of Germans thought were good values—German hegemony, a revitalized military, economic autarky, crushing the left. He never supported his policy agenda with policy argumentation (he couldn’t). But, he persuaded a minority of people that he had a good plan; he persuaded a larger number of people that he was better than communists. Once he got into power, because the conservatives refused to acknowledge that democratic socialists are not communists, he enacted policies that made things better for a lot of people in the short-term.

And, because a lot of people liked the short-term what, they didn’t look into the how. Hitler improved the lives of many people in Germany, and granted the “Christian” right and the military a lot of what they wanted, so they went along with the politicization of the judiciary, the demonization of dissent, and the criminalizing of opposition political parties. They did so because, in the moment, they were getting what they wanted. They liked the outcome, but they were all eventually pulverized in the maw of the how to which they acquiesced.

It’s never about the what; it’s always about the how.

And one important part of Hitler’s how was his use of exterminationist policies justified as a kind of pre-emptive self-defense. Union leaders, communists, and democratic socialists were the first people rounded up by the Nazis, on the grounds that their beliefs constituted a threat to Nazis. The assertion was that they intended to exterminate Nazis, and therefore Nazis were justified in suspending constitutional rights in self-defense for a war that hadn’t yet happened. A lot of people don’t realize that the Holocaust and other serial genocides were justified as self-defense, against a group that, it was claimed, had been at war with Aryans already. Hitler and the Nazis insisted on calling the attack on Czechoslovakia a counter-attack. And many Germans, including the ones who might have been able to mount the kinds of protests to slow things down, didn’t protest because they liked their better financial situation, they liked the rollback of lefty policies (they liked the bans on homosexuality, birth control, and women’s rights), and they liked the sense that Germany didn’t have to apologize anymore. They liked being proud of being German. They liked winning.

For a long time, large groups of Americans have been mobilized to support any political figure who advocates banning abortion, regardless of anything else about that figure. If, that person also insists that gun ownership should be unregulated, and politics is about expelling or exterminating the out-group, they can count on a fanatical base. None of those slogans (they aren’t really policies) is defended through policy argumentation (the gun issue gets the closest, but it’s still pretty far away).

And they aren’t argued via policy argumentation because they can’t be—they’re incoherent. The argument is that abortion should be banned because it is bad, and so banning it will end abortion but banning guns will not reduce shootings and the constitution says gun ownership for militia members should be protected but that means that no one can restrict gun ownership at all but the first amendment doesn’t protect all speech so the theory underlying the NRA reading of the second amendment doesn’t apply to any other amendment but it’s a good argument and banning immigration will reduce immigration so banning works with abortion and immigration but with guns it just criminalizes the activity but that argument doesn’t apply to abortion or immigration because. Just because.

The NRAGOP (that is, the part of the GOP that dutifully repeats and acts on NRA slogans) insists that the second amendment be read as though any restriction on individual gun ownership in any public space is prohibited. But they don’t read the first amendment as providing the same protection for speech (see, for instance, their attempt to prohibit doctors from talking about guns in the household, the restriction of what the CDC can say about guns, or the contradictions about teachers’ first versus second amendment rights). So, yeah, the NRAGOP argument about the second amendment is not grounded in a consistent principle about how to read the constitution because the NRAGOP doesn’t read the first and second amendment the same way.

And anyone who says that banning guns is useless but banning abortion and immigration would be helpful doesn’t understand how major premises work.

When you can’t defend your policy agenda rationally, and the GOP can’t, because it can’t explain why it’s the party that tried to hang Clinton is not only supporting Trump, but Kavanaugh, and is enacting policies that increase the debt (while having gotten its panties into a bunch about the debt), can’t defend its contradictory readings of the first and second amendments, doesn’t support policies that would actually reduce abortion, and, well, the GOP can’t defend its policies rationally.

So, what it does is claim that the possibility that white fundagelical men might lose some of their power means that everything that matters about the US will be exterminated, and so people who support their political agenda should react in panic.

That’s proslavery rhetoric. That’s prosegregationist rhetoric. It’s hyperbolic and destructive.

If the GOP has a good policy agenda, then it can defend that policy agenda through policy argumentation. It doesn’t because it can’t.

And that’s important. The GOP can mobilize its base on all sorts of grounds, and can give talking points to your family and friends, in which they shift the stasis to which group is better, or who supports abortion, or whether HRC laughed about a rape, but what it can’t do is give them the means to engage in policy argumentation. Because their policy agenda is indefensible on those grounds.

Writing Centers and copy-editing

Faculty and administrators at UT are extraordinarily supportive of the University Writing Center, something I attribute to the previous directors who set in place a good culture and set of processes. We get fan mail, financial support, and faculty who cheerfully run workshops for us. And our end-of-consultation and follow-up surveys show that students appreciate what we do—98% of 13k surveys say they love what we’re doing.

But what about that 2%?[1] And what if I include faculty who grump at me in meetings or email?

One really interesting complaint, that comes from faculty and students, is that we won’t “edit” student writing. And what they mean by “edit” is go through a paper and write in the “correct” version of every “error” (what is more accurately called “copy-editing”).[2] These people (again, less than two percent of our visitors) want the Writing Center to be, not just directive, but red-pen editors. And they want it because they care about writing, but they care in different ways:

    • They just want someone to edit their writing because editing is hard.
    • Some people believe that editing (or “writing” as they call it) is a specialized skill set they don’t need to acquire—knowing the correct rules of grammar is a kind of knowledge unrelated to (and less important than) content knowledge.
    • They think sentence-level correctness is important, and easy to convey.
    • They think careful attention to sentence-level decisions is important, and they can point to a time when someone harshly editing their writing opened a new world.
    • They want to read error-free writing.

I appreciate that these people want the UWC to do something that they think will make writing better.

What they don’t understand is that there is a field of research on writing center practices and, in fact, on directive vs. non-directive methods of commenting. There is also a long history of practice. People in writing centers want to improve students writing—it’s our mission, passion, and reason for going to work. If red-pen copy-editing of consultees’ work resulted in students being better writers, we’d do it. We don’t because experience and research show that, despite it seeming like the obviously right choice, it doesn’t really help most students.

When I was hired at the Berkeley Writing Center, in the late 70s, there was no training. They hired people who wrote good papers with no grammatical errors, and we met once a week for the first year or so to talk about what was happening in our consultations.

I thought my job was telling people how to change their papers, so I did. That’s what most of us did, and no one told us not to. But, quickly, I learned that wasn’t useful. A good teacher who is giving sensible writing assignments gives a lot of information in class about his/her expectations, about the discipline, about the assignment, and I hadn’t heard any of that. I didn’t actually know what the consultee should do.

And that’s what was happening across writing centers in that era—writing centers learned that consultants shouldn’t evaluate because consultants don’t know the criteria by which a faculty member will evaluate. We shouldn’t pretend to have knowledge we don’t have. That’s why writing centers are non-evaluative—because no one should evaluate the papers of a class who hasn’t been intimately involved with the class.

Well, okay, but why not correct all the commas?  Well, first off, because rules about commas aren’t all that clear—these are rhetorical as much as correctness choices. And, oddly enough, that applies to a lot of “rules” that people think are grammatical, but are stylistic, and vary from one discipline to another (passive voice, bundling nouns as though they’re adjectives, comma splice, use of second person, modifying errors that result from passive agency).

And a lot of “errors” aren’t easily corrected errors of “grammar” but signals of muddled thinking. Errors in predication, mixed construction, reference, modifying, parallelism, metaphor use, and even style choices such as whether to use passive voice/agency often can only be corrected by reconsidering an argument. We can’t just “edit” or “correct” a paper because shifting correcting mixed construction is a cognitive, not grammatical, choice.

In addition to all that, we shouldn’t just rewrite student papers for them because we’re a teaching unit. Except for the rare people who become professors, and even not for them until the moment they are engaged in a discipline, most writers don’t learn much about writing by having someone else go through a paper and correct errors.

We think that red-penning a paper is a good strategy because we can often look back and remember some very dramatic moment when we benefitted from having a paper red-penned. We got it back, looked it over, and tried to figure out what all the marks meant, and how they made the paper better. We learned. We assume it would help all students (as a colleague said, a certain amount of narcissism is probably necessary for success in academia)—that’s what initially made me mark up consultees’ papers. But we aren’t like most students. That moment was generally one when an expert in the field (thus, someone with considerable expert authority) helped us learn discipline-specific discourse (such as graduate school) at a moment we wanted to learn that discourse. I appreciate the faculty who red-penned my work, and I applaud others who do that for students who are at a moment when that is useful information.

The writing center is not that moment. You are that moment, and only for some of your students.

Writers who are anxious to learn the conventions of a field are often appreciative of directive advice as to how we’re not meeting those expectations, and faculty are always people who were that kind of student. We forget that we were atypical. So, yes, red-penning the work of a fairly advanced and very promising student who wants to be an academic can be profoundly useful. But, to be blunt, that is not the job of the UWC because we don’t know who is and is not very promising in a field. Our job is to teach. Not direct.

And most students don’t benefit from that kind of red-penning—they don’t look again at the corrections; they just make them.

As I tell students in my class when I explain why I don’t edit their first submissions, I’m not going through life with them editing their papers. I need to teach them to edit their own papers. If I teach them to rely on me to correct their papers, I’ve done them a disservice. The UWC doesn’t help students be better writers if we copy-edit their papers. Our mission isn’t helping students turn in better papers; it’s helping students be better writers.

[1] In UWC exit surveys, this is less than 2%. It’s a higher percentage of faculty who email or call me, since I don’t get 97 calls or emails about how what we do is great, but it’s still a very small number of calls. Still and all, all of the emails or calls are from people who really care about student writing, and I love that.

[2] “Correct” and “error” are in scare quotes because a lot of times it isn’t a grammar error, but a disciplinary or personal preference. People often assume that, if you don’t copy-edit, you don’t care about sentence-level correctness issues at all. We care about them very much, enough that we ensure that our consultants engage in practices that, unlike copy-editing, are likely to have long-term impact on student writing.

Right-wing propaganda and being clever about resentment

Tucker Carlson on the protestors of Kavanaugh.  It’s kind of rhetorically brilliant.

One of the rhetorical problems that the Right Wing Propaganda Machine faces is that it is fueled by resentment–all of its rhetoric relies heavily on telling “real” Americans that they don’t work as hard, but get more; they look down on real Americans; they are living off the hard work of real Americans, while continually screwing them over. It’s called producerism, the notion that there are producers, and there are parasites, and it’s long been a staple of right-wing toxic populism (a rhetoric not limited to Republicans, as this book shows).

Producerism is a kind of tricky rhetoric to use unless you’re arguing for unions, and it’s especially tricky if you’re using it to you argue for policies that actively hurt the working class. And if you’re trying to use it to argue for a political party that is giving massive tax cuts to the rich, and you’re irrationally and blindly obedient to probably the laziest President in American history, how do you do that?

Carlson can’t argue that those are the children of rich kids, and thereby condemn rich kids, because there are rich kids in the White House, who are openly using their position in the White House to make themselves richer.

So, he picks two professions in the elite that his base likely hates: orthodontists and lawyers.

One of many fascinating things about the very calculated turn on professors (it started in the late 90s) is that it wasn’t just on the basis of professors being communists or atheists (since it’s easy enough to show that most professors aren’t communists or atheists) but as rich people who don’t really work. They are, as the interviewees in Cramer’s Politics of Resentment say, people who sit down to work, and who shower in the morning. That’s true of bankers, too, or hedge fund managers, or CEO, or Trump. The RWPM needs the rage of resentment, and needs it carefully turned away from being resentful of unjust tax cuts, Trump’s corruption, Graham’s allowing Trump to buy his compliance, so it has picked targets who can’t really fight back, aren’t really the problem, but about whom it’s easy to build up rage.

This is projection–there are people who are screwing over the working class, but it isn’t professor, orthodontists, or lawyers (well, lots of them are lawyers, so maybe I have to modify that). It’s a specific kind of projection: scapegoating. And it works.

 

The GOP moral panic about false accusations of rape is appalling

What we have is a GOP trying to engage in moral panic in favor of a SCOTUS candidate who is claiming that he is a victim of false sexual assault accusations, a candidate who needs to be put in place so that he can protect a President who bragged that he assaulted women while advocating murdering men who didn’t assault women.

This isn’t about false accusations of sexual assault. The GOP has no problem with false accusations of sexual assault. Trump made them. If you want to protest what’s happening, make the Central Park Five your profile. THAT is the example that proves this moral panic is sheer white privilege.

Until Trump apologizes, we know this isn’t about concerns about innocence. It’s about privilege.

What’s wrong with the “women should be afraid that their sons will be accused of rape” meme

[Edited to include the meme I’d seen elsewhere that I couldn’t find at the time I wrote this.]

The meme circulating is almost everything wrong with current GOP rhetoric (GOP rhetoric wasn’t always this bad, and being conservative does not mean you have to be stupid). It’s engaging in a false binary, shifting the stasis, asserting empirically indefensible claims, reducing  women to mothers (and, in some versions, wives), and fear-mongering. It’s also weirdly entangled in racist experiences of the justice system. And there is the really bizarre argument that Ford’s accusations can be dismissed because they’re politically motivated, which is a subset of the rape culture topos that rape accusers have bad motives.

Sometimes this meme is explicitly connected to Kavanaugh, and the accusation against him. And it’s sometimes asserted that a male can be convicted on the basis of a single woman’s word. While there are people arguing that Kavanaugh shouldn’t be confirmed because of this accusation, far more are arguing that his confirmation shouldn’t be, as the GOP is doing, rushed. They are calling for an investigation, perhaps by the FBI. Some are simply asking that Kavanaugh testify under oath about this incident. Some are saying that, in addition to his stance on Roe v Wade, he shouldn’t be confirmed. The reactions to the accusations about Kavanaugh don’t neatly split into two.

The dominant argument is that the charges should be investigated, exactly the opposite claim of the meme. So, this meme shifts the stasis from “we should slow down in this confirmation process” to “women are slutty mcslutfaces who love accusing men of rape because men go to jail over one slutty mcslutface’s word.”

[Edited to add: just to be clear, the argument that most critics of the process are making is that we should slow down this process, and investigate the claims. So, it isn’t critics of Kavanaugh who are cutting short an investigation–it’s his defenders.]

Obviously, women who make accusations of rape are more likely to have their lives destroyed than the men, but there are cases of men being charged who have been falsely accused of rape. And it’s true that major figures will weigh in and insist on punishment even before the trial, such as Trump’s false accusation against the Central Park rapists (which he’s never retracted). So, if you want to worry about someone in power who will make and refuse to retract irresponsible accusations of rape, you might look at Trump. It’s interesting that the cases that get so much media attention tend to be white men (Rolling Stone grovelled, but Trump never has, for instance). The media is very worried about the lives of white males whose lives might be ruined by rape accusations, less worried about how the lives of accusers are always in ruins, and meanwhile almost entirely ignoring that the real crime is convictions on the basis of false accusations. And, to be blunt, suburban GOP white women don’t need to worry that their sons will be convicted of rape on the grounds of the word of a single woman who has no supporting evidence.

There are mothers who need to worry about that, though–the mothers of the Scottsboro Boys, of course, the Central Park Five (whom Trump wanted executed). There are false accusations of rape, and, yes, men have spent a lot of time in prison over those false accusations. Men have been indisputably exonerated.

But the Kavanaugh confirmation has nothing to do with whether white men are falsely accused of rape. That’s the most cunning and wicked stasis-shift of all. Hearings are supposed to be about getting to the truth. As I crawl around the internet, I’m finding that one of the most common defenses of Kavanaugh is that Ford and her supporters have bad motives for their claims. For instance, they claim it’s suspicious that Feinstein delayed releasing the letter, although that’s clearly explained in the initial letter–she requested confidentiality until they could speak. (They don’t know that–they’re drinking the flavor-aid, and dutifully repeating the talking points they’ve been given, not realizing they’re uncritically repeating stupid arguments.)

But, here’s what matters: people who care about the truth don’t care about the motives of people. It doesn’t matter whether Ford has good or bad motives; what matters is whether what she says is true. (Or not, what matters is that the GOP and Kavanaugh’s response is they’re deep in rape culture.) When someone argues that Ford doesn’t get her claims to be investigated, they are openly saying that they favor rabid political factionalism over the truth.

And that’s where the GOP is these days. And it’s tragic. A healthy democracy has people of good will and intelligence reasonably arguing for various policies from various perspectives. The GOP is openly opposed to democratic deliberation.

Apologia as incompetent as Kavanaugh’s

I was trying to think of an apologia as bad as the case being presented for Kavanaugh, and this one came to mind. It’s kind of an unfair comparison, though, since they’re amateurs. It also ends up being hilarious, which is kind of redeeming.

Rod Blagojevich‘s is up there as far as completely incompetent–instead of one apologia, he went to a whole bunch of outlets, played the victim, kept promising he would answer the charges, but didn’t do it in any of the interviews during which he insisted on his innocence. It isn’t clear that there was a good strategy for him, though, as the damning tape was easily available, his argument that what he did wasn’t so bad would seem like splitting hairs to most people, and, most important, even before that tape was released and he was accused he had an unbelievably low approval rating.

A lot of people make fun of Jimmy Swaggart’s weepy apologia for having been caught with a prostitute after having driven a stake through Jim Bakker, but it was actually quite effective. At that point, he was trying to persuade a pentecostal audience for whom weeping is a sign of sincerity, and he cited David (a really problematic citation), and many people were willing to accept his repentance. The larger organization was willing to accept his repentance, and, in fact, the resolution faltered over issues of money and authority. He was able to hang on to much of his sources of wealth and power, however, because his apologia made all the right moves, especially the comparison to David (at least until the second incident with a prostitute.)

Richard Nixon, Dan Harmon, Tiger Woods, and Mark Sanford all managed effective apologia, through a one-time deflection, an authentic act of restoration, a persuasive claim of rebirth and redemption, or an insistence on repentance and refusal to talk about it more.

Of course, for me the most obvious would be the defense of slavery, which was surprisingly lame, but those rhetors didn’t have the expert advice available to Kavanaugh et al.

But, really, the obvious comparison is every apologia Trump has made. Kavanaugh’s defense is incompetent in exactly the way that the GOP apologia have been since 2016. It’s a doubling down.

Trump’s response (and the GOP response since they decided to submit to Trump) has been pretty straightforward demagoguery: we don’t need to argue about whether what [anyone who criticizes us–Dem, GOP, Martian] says is true because we can show [anyone who criticizes us–Dem, GOP, wimmins, actual Vietnam Vets] have bad motives for making that argument. And their argument can be dismissed because they can be identified as out-group. And they’re out-group because they aren’t rabidly and irrationally loyal to the in-group. Duh.

What we’re saying is that they’re bad for being loyal to their group, but we’re good for doing that. So, for these people, political action isn’t about policy argumentation; it’s about performing loyalty to the in-group.

Let’s be clear: for many defenders of Kavanaigh, this argument isn’t about what is “true” in the sense of a reality that exists outside of group factionalism. And that’s crucial.

Imagine that someone makes a claim: A is/leads to B.

Kavanaugh is a person with poor judgment.

How do you determine if that claim is true?

One way, the demagogic way, is to ask whether he and/or his defenders are in-group or out-group. If you identify Kavanaugh as in-group, then his critics are out-group, and you condemn them by saying they have bad motives. That’s actually kind of weird: you’re saying that what they’re saying is false because they’re out-group. But that has a wobbly major premise: people with bad motives might still be truthful.

For people who find this way of arguing (you are wrong, because you have bad motives, and I know that because you are out-group) they think they can reason from group identity because, for them in-group/out-group is all that matters. In-group members tell the truth, and out-group membrers don’t. People who reason that way are stupid.

When you’re more concerned about the truth, and you think truth and in-group beliefs aren’t necessarily the same thing, then the important question is whether a way of arguing is a way you would think good if you made it. If you’re willing to be a reasonable person, then the important question is whether you are holding the in-group to the same standards as you hold the out-group. Or, in other words, whether you are following Christ.

And, in my experience, no argument for Kavanaugh can meet that standard.

So, let’s just say, none of these people get to claim they’re following Christ unless they want cats to laugh.

Let’s set aside their rejection of what Christ said (while many of them claim to be Christian [not that I’m angry about that, not at all]), and, they never identify Trump as Christian on the basis of his doing unto others as they would want done unto them. They claim he’s Christian because he’s getting them the political agenda that conservative Christians believe to be Christian.

To be blunt, conservative Christians have never been able to make that argument, since American conservative (especially Baptist) Christianity has, thus far, supported slavery, lynching, segregation, anti-miscegenation laws, prohibiting gays from teaching or adopting, dumb claims about race and evolution, “gay” marriage, and, if my math is right, marital rape. [If people want, I can provide the links, but this isn’t really news to any reasonably informed person.]

But, here’s the important point: Kavanaugh’s defenders  can make all sorts of arguments. None of them are very good. But the one argument they cannot make is that they are doing unto others as they would have done unto them.

So, let’s just stop pretending that supporting Kavanaugh has anything to do with supporting Christ.

 

Kavanaugh and the GOP and bungling apologia

Rhetoric is an old art, with what amount to textbooks going back, just in the western tradition, to the 4th century BCE. And, one of the very old concepts in rhetoric is the apologia, or defense speech: the genre of speech in which someone is responding to an accusation. It’s an old concept, and there’s a lot of advice out there as to good and bad practices in apologia. More recently, businesses got interested in the topic, and the field of “crisis communication” was born (with the sub-field of reputation repair). And there are people who work with public figures who can advise people facing accusations as to the best ways to respond.

And they all say the same thing: be clear, take responsibility, be honest.

Kavanaugh, the GOP, and the pundits trying to support him have blown this about as badly as it’s possible. They are clearly not talking to anyone who knows anything about how to handle this kind of situation, and that’s concerning.

There are complicated situations in which no apologia is going to work, or in which it might take months or years. And apologia is a rhetorical strategy–in public rhetoric, it might be purely Machiavellian (the person might not really be very sorry at all). But, there are some principles that are so straightforward they can be taught in a first-year college course in rhetoric. (In fact, they were laid out in a 1973 article.)

So, setting aside the question of ethics or sincerity, the savvy move for Kavanaugh and his handlers to have made was to get advice from at least a first-year rhetoric student, if not an actual expert. Kavanaugh had, from the Machiavellian perspective, an easy case.

The accusation, to be clear, is that, as a drunk teen he tried to rape another teen. No one is claiming that he could not have done it–there is plenty of evidence that Kavanaugh and friends were living a kind of life in which it could have happened. They’re claiming it hasn’t been proven to have happened, and they’re pulling out all the standard misogynist rape culture strategies.

And someone who knew apologia 101 would have told them DO NOT DO THAT. The right response would have been an apologia that  engaged in  denial of intent, bolstering, and differentiation. That would have been something like, “I am tremendously sorry for anything I did in those days–I never had any intent to rape anyone, but I was young, stupid, irresponsible, and drinking too much. I don’t know what I did, but I’m sure I hurt people, and I have put those days behind me” [and then a move to bolstering].

Regardless of whether it was sincere or not, it would have been rhetorically savvy–it would have put opponents of Kavanaugh in the position of trying to attack him for something he might have done a long time ago, for which he has apologized, and which he can plausibly say is not a reflection of who he is now. Opponents would have been trying to deny someone a SCOTUS seat on the basis of the character he had at 17.

But, because they went both barrels of rape culture defenses, Kavanaugh and his supporters have made it clear that he probably still is that entitled and irresponsible person, he doesn’t take responsibility, and they still basically endorse the premises of rape culture. They have made it a question of his character now.

And it’s also now a question of his judgment. And theirs. What is striking to me about the current GOP leadership–and this is a new phenomenon–is the extent to which they reject expertise. There are experts out there who could have helped them with this problem, experts whom they either didn’t consult or whose advice they ignored. And that’s the new GOP in a nutshell. It’s all about each of these guys being all the expert he needs.

Sensible crisis communication is a basic concept in business, and it’s one that’s news to the GOP leadership.

They do it too!

It’s really common in a comment thread for someone to respond to a criticism of one group with a comment along the lines of, “The other group does it too.” So, for instance, if someone says, “Trump supporters are motivated by tribalism,” I’ll count comments till I get to the, “Liberals are tribalists too” or “Both sides engage in tribalism.” The unintentional irony of that response brings me a wicked pleasure.

It’s entertaining because it’s a response that only makes sense if you think of all political discourse as being about which of the two possible groups is better. In other words, it’s a response that assumes rabid factionalism.

Here’s what I mean: why is the person making that comment?

Imagine this exchange:

C: I’m going to vote for Clinton because Trump supporters are motivated only by rabid factionalism.

H: Clinton supporters are tribalist too.

That’s a discussion in which the “just as bad” response is relevant, because it’s showing that the major premise of C’s argument is inconsistent with his own actions—he’s claiming that his vote is motivated by a rejection of factionalism, so that he’s thinking of voting for someone who promotes factionalism is relevant. (I’m not saying the response is true, but it’s relevant to argue about whether they are just as bad.)

Imagine this one:

C: To win over Trump supporters, we need to show them how harmful his policies are to them.

E: That won’t work because Trump supporters are motivated only by rabid factionalism.

H: Clinton supporters are tribalist too.

H’s comment is completely irrelevant to the question of how to persuade Trump supporters. And it’s irrelevant twice over: 1) Clinton supporters could be carry pitchforks and torches and the most rabid factional supporters the world has ever known and it has no relevance for whether Trump supporters are too factional to be persuaded by argument, and 2) the world isn’t divided into Clinton supporters and Trump supporters.

For that comment to make sense, every single issue would be reducible to the relative goodness of the only two groups that constitute the American political realm. That’s how H sees it. H thinks he’s being “fair” and “objective” because he thinks he’s condemning both groups equally. He isn’t. He’s stuck within a limited and politically damaging ideology about purity and motives.

That is the attitude about politics–that all political disagreements can and should be about which of the two possible groups is better (and it’s a zero-sum relationship)—that fuels rabid factionalism.

Political discourse should be policy discourse. Displacing policy discourse with arguments about relative goodness doesn’t help.