The Value of Templates

1050 Fall 2016: Lukianoff and Haidt

some templates from Lukainoff and Haidt

"They Say/I Say": The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing

Cathy Birkenstein and Gerald Graff

Creating Your Own Templates

“One of our key premises is that these basic moves are so common that they can be represented in templates that you can use right away to structure and even generate your own…It is true, of course, that critical thinking and writing go deeper than any set of linguistic formulas, requiring that you question assumptions, develop strong claims, offer supporting reasons and evidence, consider opposing arguments, and so on. But these deeper habits of thought cannot be put into practice unless you have a language for expressing them in.” (ix)

rational voice

mad cannibalist

mad cannibal

yes BUT

restrained mad cannibal

critics reading of tone

Naysayers....

Phyllis Benay. "They Say, “Templates Are the Way to Teach Writing”; I Say, “Use with Extreme Caution”." Pedagogy 8.2 (2008): 369-373.

Graff and Birkenstein: “We are aware, of course, that some instructors may have reservations about templates. Some, for instance, may object that such formulaic devices represent a return to prescriptive forms of instruction that encourage passive learning or lead students to put their writing on automatic pilot....The trouble is that many students will never learn on their own to make the key intellectual moves that our templates represent. While seasoned writers pick up these moves unconsciously through their reading, many students do not” (xiv – xv).

While I agree that the twists and turns of academic writing are highly complex and require practice, I am also convinced after fifteen years of teaching expository writing that these moves are intrinsically connected to increasingly complex ways of thinking, which then become evident through increasingly complex rhetorical structures. The difference between the so-called seasoned writer and the unseasoned one is not just the process of unconsciously absorbing academic moves, but rather the acquisition of more complex cognitive platforms that demand and then allow for the use of more complex devices. I am not completely persuaded that the templates offered in this text facilitate that process. On the contrary, it is possible that the facile fill-in-the-blanks format impedes the ability of students to truly understand and integrate why these writing maneuvers really matter. (370)

Stealing Ideas is Plagiarism. Stealing Structure and Phrasing is Smart Writing.

Academic writing requires presenting your sources and your ideas effectively to readers. Templates allow you, the writer, to organize your ideas in relationship to your thesis, supporting evidence, opposing evidence, and the conclusion of the argument using methods good writers already use.

So What?: Explaining the payoff of your thinking/ writing

SO WHAT : By looking at the insistence of heterosexual power in Ghostbusters in conjunction with the defeat of female power, we can see that male bisexuality is privately acceptable but must result in public heterosexual power, which most readers don't see; this is important because it changes our analysis by suggesting that actual sexual practices are far less important to gender relations than the display of power through heterosexual tropes.

This pattern changes

[PRACTICE? ANALYSIS? ASSUMPTIONS? CAUSATION (SOME REVERSAL OF THE INITIAL BELIEF OF RELATION OF TWO THINGS)? ORDER (CHANGE IN THE INITIAL UNDERSTANDING OF WHEN THINGS HAPPEN)?]

by

[HERE YOU EXPLAIN THE CHANGE].

a secondary source-- basically a data collation

http://www.runleiarun.com/ghostbusters/chapter11.shtml

So what: noting the connection between phallic symbols and female power changes our analysis, suggesting that sexuality becomes a way to conquer female power

I had initially thought that Ghostbusters reinforced masculinity. But the treatment of the marshmallow man can be linked to the idea of masculinity in the movie. This reveals that heterosexual power, as opposed to behavior, is key to the movie.If the defeat of Gozer demonstrates that men must publicly embrace heterosexuality to defeat women, the suggestion that the ghostbusters help her agent, the stay-puft marshmallow man, "get laid" would seem to endanger the men further by ceding heterosexual male power to Gozer. However, the idea of all the ghostbusters banding together with the decidedly phallic feature marshmallow man in search of a sexual experience shows how very flexible sexual behavior is as long as it results in decisive male heterosexual power over women (symbolized by the explosion of white goo over the city). In essence, the increased bisexualty of male behavior, or at least male to male connection, makes the men have more powerful moments of heterosexual control

SO WHAT : By looking at the insistence of heterosexual power in Ghostbusters in conjunction with the defeat of female power, we can see that male bisexuality is privately acceptable but must result in public heterosexual power, which most readers don't see; this is important because it changes our analysis by suggesting that actual sexual practices are far less important to gender relations than the display of power through heterosexual tropes.

Application

Paragraph 1: I initially thought that Bertocci's claim that the men must become bisexual to defeat Gozer explained the sexuality in this text. But the insistence on heterosexual power of the ghostbusters shows that a turn to bisexuality cannot explain all. One way that they are different is that the end result is an eruption of male power and sexuality that defeats a woman who disappears into a yonic space, but they are still similar in terms of men having to join together sexually for this to happen. This suggests that violence against a female character changes the turn to bisexuality in Ghostbusters. One could argue that male heterosexuality in Ghostbusters become valuable because it is a means of defeating female power. This allows considerable latitude in male sexuality--they can indeed "cross streams" and have emotionally and physically close relationships-- as long as, ultimately, their turn to each other results in overpowering a woman sexually. In this sense sexuality becomes far less important than gender relations--in essence sexual becomes a private matter as lomg as it results in public, visible domination of women through sexuality.

SO WHAT : By looking at the insistence of heterosexual power in Ghostbusters in conjunction with the defeat of female power, we can see that male bisexuality is privately acceptable but must result in public heterosexual power, which most readers don't see; this is important because it changes our analysis by suggesting that actual sexual practices are far less important to gender relations than the display of power through heterosexual tropes.

Connection: Female Power

Connection: Religious symbols

shot from below/looking up; "prehistoric bitch"

masculine apppearance "are you a god?" power over animals,

churches, pyramids,

"no one steps on a church in my town"

"are you a god"

Contrast: Human vs Animal

"Prehistoric bitch", dogs, "nimble little minx" vs "we have the tools we have the technology" "Dr."

tall buildings; churches; pyramids; shot from below/looking up; "prehistoric bitch" "we neutronized her" "we have the tools" hold guns at crotch level; "sticks"; african american man off to side; men usually shot in groups; column to sky; marshmallow man dressed like sailor; "my town"

Contrast: female power vs phallic symbols

Connection: Phallic Symbols

tall towers, buildings, hold guns at crotch level, call them "sticks" "tools," marshmallow man explodes into white goo...

Anomaly

3 Caucasian men shot as a group, touch each other often, cross streams

marshmallow man:

sailor looking "to get laid"

slits in face

masculine identification

manly profession

__The fact the scene is shot from below__ is surprisingly like __calling Gozer a "prehistoric bitch"_ in terms of _outcome._

By this, I mean _____the outcome__ is ____making women seem powerful because they are visually bigger__ in ____being shot from below___ and the same holds true in ___calling Gozer a prehistoric bitch___ in terms of ____bitch being a term that connotes a strong woman who is attacked for her power __. Noticing this pattern of ____portraying and attacking female power___ suggests that ____Gozer's masculine appearance____ is also a part of this collation because it _____ portrays a female power while suggesting it is not appropriate __.

Encounter

To what extent does bisexuality replace/change heterosexulaity in terms of power over women in Ghostbusters?

Why does [PARTICULAR ASPECT] surface in [PARTICULAR WAY]? (order/causation/

analysis)

How does [PARTICULAR ELEMENT] modify [PARTICULAR PRACTICE/ANALYSIS/ UNDERSTANDING]?

To what extent does [ELEMENT 1] replace/change [ELEMENT B]? (order/causation/

analysis)

the emphasis on the fluidity of sexuality suggests we need to examine why they defeat a symbol of masculine heterosexuality

Good encounter questions tend to be open-ended.

Encounters usually focus on a specific part of the object of inquiry

Encounters usually focus on the higher learning objectives

How do I do it?

You've been doing it all along! We have specific phrasing templates with the collation template and the standard so what, as well as the "connectors" in "combining elements..."

The questions for collations and applications, and the models of essay maps are structural templates: they show you how to arrange/play with ideas

counterargument

We do not mean to imply simple causation, but rates of mental illness in young adults

have been rising, both on campus and off, in recent decades. Some portion of the increase is surely due to better diagnosis and greater willingness to seek help, but most experts seem to agree that some portion of the trend is real. Nearly all of the campus mental-health directors surveyed in 2013 by the American College Counseling Association reported that the number of students with severe psychological problems was rising at their schools. The rate of emotional distress reported by students themselves is also high, and rising. In a 2014 survey by the American College Health Association, 54 percent of college students surveyed said that they had “felt overwhelming anxiety” in the past 12 months, up from 49 percent in the same survey just five years earlier. Students seem to be reporting more emotional crises; many seem fragile, and this has surely changed the way university faculty and administrators interact with them. The question is whether some of those changes might be doing more harm than good.

The Value of Templates

yes BUT OUTCOME

The press has typically described these developments as a resurgence of political correctness. That’s partly right, although there are important differences between what’s happening now and what happened in the 1980s and ’90s. That movement sought to restrict speech (specifically hate speech aimed at marginalized groups), but it also challenged the literary, philosophical, and historical canon, seeking to widen it by including more-diverse perspectives. The current movement is largely about emotional well-being. More than the last, it presumes an extraordinary fragility of the collegiate psyche, and therefore elevates the goal of protecting students from psychological harm. The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses into “safe spaces” where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that make some uncomfortable. And more than the last, this movement seeks to punish anyone who interferes with that aim, even accidentally. You might call this impulse vindictive protectiveness. It is creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse.

Synthesis: collations to application

So it’s not hard to imagine why students arriving on campus today might be more desirous of protection and more hostile toward ideological opponents than in generations past. This hostility, and the self-righteousness fueled by strong partisan emotions, can be expected to add force to any moral crusade. A principle of moral psychology is that “morality binds and blinds.” Part of what we do when we make moral judgments is express allegiance to a team. But that can interfere with our ability to think critically. Acknowledging that the other side’s viewpoint has any merit is risky—your teammates may see you as a traitor.

Social media makes it extraordinarily easy to join crusades, express solidarity and outrage, and shun traitors. Facebook was founded in 2004, and since 2006 it has allowed children as young as 13 to join. This means that the first wave of students who spent all their teen years using Facebook reached college in 2011, and graduated from college only this year.

These first true “social-media natives” may be different from members of previous generations in how they go about sharing their moral judgments and supporting one another in moral campaigns and conflicts. We find much to like about these trends; young people today are engaged with one another, with news stories, and with prosocial endeavors to a greater degree than when the dominant technology was television. But social media has also fundamentally shifted the balance of power in relationships between students and faculty; the latter increasingly fear what students might do to their reputations and careers by stirring up online mobs against them.

How would you counter argue this? could this have "counterargument" proofed itself?

There’s a saying common in education circles: Don’t teach students what to think; teach them how to think. The idea goes back at least as far as Socrates. Today, what we call the Socratic method is a way of teaching that fosters critical thinking, in part by encouraging students to question their own unexamined beliefs, as well as the received wisdom of those around them. Such questioning sometimes leads to discomfort, and even to anger, on the way to understanding.

But vindictive protectiveness teaches students to think in a very different way. It prepares them poorly for professional life, which often demands intellectual engagement with people and ideas one might find uncongenial or wrong. The harm may be more immediate, too. A campus culture devoted to policing speech and punishing speakers is likely to engender patterns of thought that are surprisingly similar to those long identified by cognitive behavioral therapists as causes of depression and anxiety. The new protectiveness may be teaching students to think pathologically.

1050 Fall 2016: Oberlin Article

Looking Ahead to the Proposal

In mid-December, a group of black students wrote a fourteen-page letter to the school’s board and president outlining fifty nonnegotiable demands for changes in Oberlin’s admissions and personnel policies, academic offerings, and the like. “You include Black and other students of color in the institution and mark them with the words ‘equity, inclusion and diversity,’ ” it said, “when in fact this institution functions on the premises of imperialism, white supremacy, capitalism, ableism, and a cissexist heteropatriarchy.”

The letter was delivered by hand, but it leaked onto the Internet, and some of the more than seven hundred students who had signed it were hit with threats and hate speech online from anonymous accounts. The president, Marvin Krislov, rejected the letter’s stance, urging “collaboration.”

Some would call such students oversensitive. In September, the pundit Greg Lukianoff and the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt published a cover story in The Atlantic called “The Coddling of the American Mind,” arguing that young people taught to embrace “vindictive protectiveness” were being poorly educated for the challenges of the real world. Shielding students from unwelcome ideas was unhealthy for the workforce and the democratic commonweal, they wrote.

But élite colleges don’t educate commonweal-size populations. A guiding principle of today’s liberal-arts education—the gold-filter admissions, the seminar discussions, the focus on “leadership” and Emerson and exposure to difference—is the cultivation of the individual. And students like Eosphoros are where the inclusive-élite model gets tested. If students’ personal experiences are beside the pedagogical point, then diversity on campus serves a cosmetic role: it is a kind of tokenism. If they’re taken into account, though, other inconsistencies emerge. “As far as what people talk about liking, you have to listen to the absence,” Eosphoros said. “I’m actually still trying to reconcile how unhappy I’ve been here with how happy people were insisting I must be.”

In “The Old Regime and the Revolution,” a study of political ferment in late-eighteenth-century France, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that, in the decades leading up to the Revolution, France had been notably prosperous and progressive. We hear a lot about the hunger and the song of angry men, and yet the truth is that, objectively, the French at the start of the seventeen-eighties had less cause for anger than they’d had in years. Tocqueville thought it wasn’t a coincidence. “Evils which are patiently endured when they seem inevitable, become intolerable when once the idea of escape from them is suggested,” he wrote. His claim helped give rise to the idea of the revolution of rising expectations: an observation that radical movements appear not when expectations are low but when they’re high, and vulnerable to disappointment.

A quad-size version of this drama is unfolding. “This is the generation of kids that grew up being told that the nation was basically over race,” Renee Romano, a professor of history at Oberlin, says. When they were eleven or twelve, Barack Obama was elected President, and people hailed this as a national-historic moment that changed everything. “That’s the bill of goods they’ve been sold,” Romano explains. “And, as they get older, they go, ‘This is crap! It’s not true!’ ” They saw the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice. And, at schools like Oberlin, they noticed that the warm abstractions of liberalism weren’t connecting with the way things operated on the ground.

Articulating Purpose through the Problem Statement

________________________________________

Introduction: Explanation of the context of the proposal

1) First statement Describe a goal, desired state, or value that you or your organization considers important.

Connective to signal transition: But, However, etc.

2) Second statement Describe a condition that prevents the first statement from being achieved or realized at the current time. The statement could describe the status quo or define a competing goal, value, or desired state, but it should reveal a clash with the first statement.

3) Third statement Describe some action—a study, research program, experiment, or object creation¬—that could resolve the difficulty.

Mapping statement: A breakdown of the major proposal sections

The top three activities are more likely to yield open ended questions.

Questions from the bottom three categories are more likely to be closed ended.

Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Objectives