This essay is the fourth part of a roundtable on Kevin Gannon’s book Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto. Read the rest of the roundtable here.
Arthur Radebaugh (1958), via Paleofuture.
Developing a teaching manifesto of radical hope, as laid out by Kevin Gannon, is a requirement for a Black, female professor of English. I understand what it’s like to have one’s performance defined by others and determined by unfamiliar and arbitrary preferences masquerading as rules. The mandated use of Standard English in writing classes, when many students don’t regularly express themselves in this form of writing, is one such capricious “rule” in higher education.1 I address this in my teaching philosophy, stating I believe students come into my classes with valuable background knowledge that can be used as a foundation for more learning. As a foundational idea for teaching with radical hope, it is my responsibility therefore to provide tools to support student agency through their use of native languages and dialects in expressing themselves inasmuch as their agency is inextricably tied to my own.
Gannon’s proposition of radical hope encapsulates several components of Professor Laura I. Rendón’s validation theory, specifically in charging instructors with centering student agency by believing students are capable of success and creating a learning environment where students feel they belong.2 Providing validation of students’ lives inside and outside the classroom, as shown in Rendón’s work, is tantamount to student success. Erasing or negating the integral native languages and dialects students utilize—the ways they first learned to express themselves outside of school—results in students with little or no confidence in their writing abilities once they enter college. They internalize, starting with grammar weaponization from K-12, that “they have something ‘wrong,’ that people like them aren’t supposed to be successful in the particular area we’re teaching,” as Gannon indicates (p. 58). This persistent and nagging feeling sets up barriers to these students’ learning in college-writing courses.
The conflict, then, between teaching students they should only write in Standard English and expecting that mandate to provide a welcoming learning environment for all students, as Gannon proposes, becomes apparent. An increasing number of college students are from marginalized communities and other students speak first languages that aren’t English. They have been told their words sound ignorant. Their dialects are unprofessional. The languages spoken are wrong. These languages and dialects, however, are utilized by whole communities. The children of these communities play together, participate in courtship, raise families, and hold jobs, all while communicating in these languages. Then as young adults they enter college and are suddenly faced with the frightening realization that the ways they’ve learned to express themselves won’t help them in their new environment.
Writing instruction doesn’t have to make students feel this way. Instruction that embodies the practice of radical hope would instead “…refuse to accept this hostile and dehumanizing narrative about our student” (p. 131). Instructors practicing radical hope pedagogy could possibly start the semester by delineating various rhetorical applications of the students’ native languages or dialects and Standard English. In-class interactions could be defined as rhetorical situations where the participants aren’t bound by only using Standard English but are required to participate in authentic and organic ways. Instructors who speak in other languages or dialects could use those dialects as tools to show students how expressing ideas can be successful in varied and nuanced ways.
For example, in-class discussion analyzing an event can stall if students hesitate to speak up due to a fear of saying the wrong things in the wrong ways. Removing the dictates of uniform responses allow for low-stakes contributions where the focus is on the analysis rather than on how the analysis is conveyed. Further, a narrative writing assignment can better meet the requirements for a rich essay infused with details if the student is allowed to express the events easily from the comfort of a native dialect rather than an essay produced through the stress of perfect grammar and spelling. The grammar doesn’t have to carry the same weight as the narrative genre expectations.
Proposals like these shouldn’t be construed as advocating for a dumbing-down of writing instruction. We do our students a colossal disservice, and work against an asset-based approach to teaching, if we believed they could only digest less-rigorous instruction. Further, Gannon asserts that while teaching with radical hope may be construed as “an inclusive approach to pedagogy [that] appears to threaten the basic ‘agreements’…some see as essential to the enterprise of higher education” (p. 66). This is exactly the reason why we should commit to this practice. In agreement with Gannon, I propose offering opportunities for expression outside of using Standard English. No course learning outcomes are negated by writing assignments that allow for individualized expression. Reading works in class that are written in a dialect other than Standard English, or which aren’t part of the accepted Western canon, don’t prevent vigorous analysis. Standard English should be taught in college writing classes—as an optional dialect among many valid dialects, one that has specific applications but does not erase the validity of other expressions.
In her 1993 speech accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature, Toni Morrison eloquently described results from the misuse of language:
The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.3
Language can produce nuanced and varied expressions. Language also can create distinctions between those who can access knowledge and those who will be denied access. Gannon emphasizes this battle students are often engaged in throughout higher education, as “[s]ocial and cultural identities have so often been weaponized against students’ educational opportunities” (p. 65). Restricting students to writing only in Standard English for college is an act of erasure and violence against their native languages and dialects. It requires them to place less value on an integral component of their personhood, in the name of elevating a gatekeeping standard that leaves so many students out of academia.
Educated in various expressions of language and word usage, I have the choice to move fluently between them. I can start the semester speaking in Standard English so my students know I’m an expert in writing, qualified to teach them. I can later engage in class discussions in AAVE (African American Vernacular English), my native dialect, so they better understand that our conversations can be low-stakes yet meaningful. They can see my social media posts in some language between these and recognize that this expression is appropriate for that medium.
These are choices I make because I have the tools and the education to understand the fluency of language—the freedom and power of language. My agency in choosing modes of expression must extend to my students. I commit to teaching these variances and applications. Then they’ll be able to experiment with the languages and dialects they’ve been exposed to—including Standard English—in making their ideas public. I learn from their choices and their use of language. In this exchange of ideas, my students will have the same agency and power I’ve been afforded. As Gannon argues, their exposure to “[inclusive course materials and activities] maximizes the odds of reflecting our discipline’s complex content and conversations accurately” (p. 63). This exposure may result in more English educators who intentionally practice radical hope.
None of us have true freedom until we all do. This is my radical, and yet necessary, hope for writing instruction.
- Standard English: English where the grammar, spelling, and punctuation formats are standardized and widely accepted as the language of education. “Standard English.”
- Laura I. Rendon, “Community College Puente: A Validating Model of Education,” Educational Policy 16, no. 4 (September 2002): 642-667.
- Toni Morrison, “Nobel Lecture,” delivered December 7, 1993.
