Two students in my Writing 105 class, Shanna and Shawna, had trouble understanding‹and accepting‹some of the aims of the class. As the syllabus indicated, the class would be, in part, an attempt to become better critical readers, thinkers and writers. We began the class by discussing critical literacy and what it meant to "enter the conversation" of a university. In discussing the texts we read, we put value on reasoning and clarity of thought. Our initial discussions formed the basis for what would be valued in discussion: informed, intelligent talk, for instance, over unsupported "opinion." Most students understood that the same criteria should be applied to their writing.

But after reading their first formal papers, I realized Shanna and Shawna did not place much value on critical thinking. Or, if they did, they either had not attempted to think critically for the purpose of the paper or had been so unsuccessful at doing so that I had trouble detecting where they were making the attempt. (I certainly attempted to find their arguments; I doubt I'll ever spend as much time reading and responding to a five-page paper as I did with Shanna's first paper. To give them credit, I don't think I was as adept at aiding them in the writing process as I should have been). If I had to reduce their papers to a single sentence, here's what they would say: "College is different from high school" (Shanna) and "More happens at college than high school" (Shawna).

As I pondered the causes for the similar flaws of their first papers, I couldn't help but wonder whether it had something to do with their friendship. On the first day of class, when I asked everyone to tell me their names and something they like (I started by saying, "I like The Replacements"), Shanna told us she likes "fun things" and Shawna said she likes "cheerleading." Shawna also said, "Isn't it funny that we're in same class, we're on the same hall, and our names are Shanna and Shawna," or something along those lines. I didn't mind, of course; I was elated someone was talking without any prodding. It was clear they would become best friends, and they did. They came to class together, always had to sit next to each other, had the same views on most issues (when they expressed them), and liked the talk to veer off into discussions of sororities‹both were pledging‹and "boys." That, in brief, was the context that led me to wonder about their friendship and its effect on their lack of interest in critical thinking. It's really interesting that they were in fact a small community within the whole class. I wonder if the community metaphor, as practiced in their mini-community, might have ironically validated their lack of thought. The class encouraged forming thought through talk, in a community of people with common goals. We worked in groups. If someone had an appealing idea for a paper topic, or an interesting way to approach a paper, I encouraged others to take what they could from those ideas. For Shanna and Shawna, I realized, this meant forming their thoughts about Writing 105 together, both in and out of class. The two of them did not want to engage in critical thinking, and each of them validated the other's thoughts on that subject. The community should have been generative, but in this case it led to isolation, to cloning.

Shanna and Shawna led me to think a lot about resistance in the classroom. They sparked many issues for me. I still puzzle over the conflict between the "banking model" of education and the studio curriculum, and about some students' deep desire for conformity. I wonder about the strong resistance I have felt from students when I ask them to move away from strict notions of the "sanctioned" ways of writing (see Cathy Fleischer, 1990).

One piece of this puzzle comes from Jane Tompkins "Pedagogy of the Distressed" (1990). Tompkins says teachers of English no longer have to contend with the banking model of education (as discussed by Paulo Freire in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed), "at least not in higher education, at least not for the most part"(653). Most professors, she claims, consider the banking model obsolete. While that may be the case, it does not mean we do not have to contend with the banking model; after all, students come to us with views of education shaped by years of schooling, and the banking model, or something akin to it, seems to have some hold on their expectations of learning‹expectations sometimes at odds with our approach to Writing 105. Many of our students, judging from my one semester in the classroom, still have an attachment‹degree varies widely‹to the notion of education as, in Freire's words, "an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor." Early in the semester, when I distributed topics for the first formal paper, a minor (and rather fun, I must admit) rebellion took place in my classroom. The topics, some students said, were too vague. "I want you to tell me what to write," said Nicola, whose writing (in two brief assignments) consisted mostly of summary. Hmm: Tell me what to write. Obviously I would have to contend with notions of education in opposition to the ones I hoped to put into action.

Some students accepted a class without simple rules and answers. One student, on the second day of class, told me, "I don't like to write. I like to watch TV." But as the class progressed, I could see quite a bit of improvement in her writing; it seemed to me she was enjoying it. In a recent conference I asked her whether that was the case. She told me she'd had the same English teacher for three years in high school, and all he wanted the students to do was summarize. "I've never done anything like this," she told me. She likes the sort of writing we do in 105. And Nicola, who wanted me to tell her what to write, became one of the students most actively engaged in the class.

But moving away from conformity does not always come so easily, and some students resist the change. They have been taught to conform, to value conformity, and they do not want to give up the rigid rules of high school. (I am generalizing about high schools; not all schools, obviously, encourage such strict adherence to form.) As a teacher, working against conformity means questioning the education these students have received. For these students, Writing 105 presents a dilemma: The teacher will not tell me the rules (not in as clear a way as I'd like); and, even worse, he or she may question the rules of my previous teachers. Teachers should be right! The rules of writing have been deposited in their brains in high school, and now‹to extend the metaphor far beyond Freire (and beyond where my own instincts tell me it should go)‹they want to collect the interest in the form of high grades in college courses. They view writing as a way to demonstrate learning, rather than as a learning process itself; they want to demonstrate what they know.

The Writing 105 curriculum does not offer enough rules for these students, who do not want to release themselves from the sanctioned constraints of their high school English teachers‹especially when doing so means critical thinking, as opposed to adhering to an easily-defined, new set of rules. (New rules would make sense to these students. After all, they would be replacing the high-school rules with the college rules). I have some sympathy for these students' dilemma. They've been told the rules, and now we're changing them. Maybe they've had the rules changed on them already, when shifting from class to class in high school. If that's the case, then we risk being viewed as one more element in "a game of choosing the right rules from a perplexing array of must-do's, never-do's, and sometimes-do's" (Fleischer, 36). But valuing critical thinking is certainly a less constraining classroom ideology than demanding summaries and adherence to the five-paragraph essay. Some students find the lack of clear constraints perplexing. They want instructions, and do not‹I'm afraid‹want to engage actively in learning. With simple rules, education may be viewed a game‹and a game without much connection to life outside the classroom. "As it is practiced in schools," Fleischer says, "writing all too often becomes a game in which students strive to communicate with their teachers‹but are able to communicate only in limited ways and only if they say what it is they have to say in sanctioned ways" (36). In such a situation, she says, literacy becomes "a literacy of conformity." Working against that socialized conformity, encouraging students to see things from different perspectives, I learned, is often resisted.

Resistance can obviously take a number of different forms in the classroom. Sometimes a student wants to set herself apart from the class, or wants to express displeasure at a perceived conflict between the course's goals and its practices‹two modes of resistance (or, in some instances, opposition) explored by Carol Lea Winkelmann in "Talk as Text" [see also Chris Madden's essay in this edition of Reflections]. Ironically, resistance sometimes has to do with a strong desire to conform. And that desire, I believe, often stems from the ways students have come to view learning. With that in mind, I will take a closer look at Shanna's and Shawna's work in my Writing 105 class.

One assignment in the class asked for a response to the "Sex" section of Michael Moffatt's Coming of Age in New Jersey. Both Shanna's and Shawna's responses made the same points: the article was "disgusting"; Moffatt should have stressed "love" rather than sex, and he lacked tact and class. Shawna wondered why Moffatt had written "Sex." "I am not exactly sure why Moffat wrote this repulsive article," she wrote. "If I had to guess I would imagine it would be to bring sexual behaviors of college students to the consciousness. This article was not called for. If he wanted to write this type of article he could have shown some tact and class." Similarly, Shanna said Moffatt "has no taste and definitely no class." She said, "Some of the information Moffatt put in the article was okay to read because it was general information that one could read in a magazine." They used similar language in their papers ("disgusting" or "disgusted," "class") and wrote in a colloquial tone. They had read "Sex" together, they told me, and had obviously talked about it quite a bit. Together, they had decided what meaning the article had for them, and their papers reflected their common belief.

What struck me most about both of their responses, and still does, was their unwillingness, or lack of effort, to argue against Moffatt's extensive use of explicit student accounts of sex at Rutgers. Rather than saying that Moffatt does not explain his purpose in writing "Sex," Shawna simply says she doesn't know why he wrote the article. She then guesses why he would write it, and says, in the next sentence, that "this article was not called for." In a similar manner, Shanna does not examine what she writes, saying, in essence, that some of the article "was okay" because it was similar to what "one could read in a magazine." What magazine? Seventeen, or Hustler? Clearly they needed to examine their writing more closely. In a note to Shawna, I said:

You express many opinions in the paper, but you don't attempt to convince me of those opinions. I believe that you could have written for two pages on any of a number of issues (Moffatt's explicitness, college as a "meat market," the categories for women, what guys in college have "on their mind," etc.), but instead you mentioned these issues without supporting them. You want, in a sense, to strive for a sensible argument. You might, in this paper, have argued against Moffatt's use of explicit language. (You can't do that simply by saying it disgusted you, although that's a valid point.) You could have offered examples from the book where Moffatt's use of descriptions was excessive; you might have indicated that he conveyed his points with the overall narrative, and that the descriptions were not needed to the extent that he used them.

Obviously Shanna and Shawna were not reading critically‹not with any depth‹and their writing reflected their lack of thought. But more than that, the thought behind their papers, so similar in what they said, had obviously been formulated together. They validated each other's responses to Moffatt, and doing so, in their case, meant expressing opinions but not examining the reading in a critical or analytical manner.

Both Shanna and Shawna seemed to think I should offer a few instructions‹use seven transitions, four quotations, eight paragraphs, etc.‹and grade them on the basis of whether they followed the rules. They wanted what David Bartholomae (1983) has called "the Big Bang theory of writing instruction." Under such a method, students take the rules and then put them into service:

Students are given instruction in writing as a subject‹sometimes through lectures, sometimes through textbooks, sometimes through classroom analyses of prose models‹and then, when they are ready, they write. The assignment, then, serves as a test (301).

My note to Shawna, I believe, helped her realize what it means to write at the university, and that it means more than demonstrating knowledge of a few rules. It did so, in part, by offering some new rules, such as "argue something" and "support your opinions." A few weeks later, in a discussion, she surprised me by disagreeing with another student, Matt, who had said, "If I like it, it's art." Shawna said that wasn't adequate. "You've got to have standards," she said. "You can't just say, 'It's my opinion.'" And she offered some standards of her own.

But Shanna still resisted my efforts to force her to think for herself, rather than have someone else choose what she should say. I offered two possible topics for the final paper, along with the option of devising a topic of the student's choice. In a conference, Shanna said she couldn't understand the topics. One of the topics said the following:

Write a five-page essay exploring the relationship between "critical literacy" and "entering the conversation." What does critical literacy mean? What does it mean to enter the various conversations of the university? Concentrate on the academic side of the university, as opposed to the social life. The paper should do the following: offer a thoughtful, intelligent argument; integrate quotations from at least three of the texts we've read; include personal examples to support your argument. After reading the paper, I should get a clear sense of your view of critical literacy and the way you see yourself entering the (academic) conversation of a university. You must chart new ground from what you wrote in your first paper.

The topic was in many ways similar to the topic of our first formal paper. Almost everyone chose to write on something new. I decided to explain the essay topic (outlined above) as explicitly as possible to Shanna. The topic, I said, assumes a relationship between critical literacy and entering the conversation. It links the two, and many people would probably say that entering the conversation of the university means, in part, becoming a better critical reader, thinker and writer. But, I told her, you could argue against that view. You could argue that entering the conversation means training yourself for a career, for instance. (This was an odd thing for me to do, admittedly; it went against the basic tenets of the class. But it would, I hoped‹I haven't see the paper yet‹force her to think and write critically, and to do so, paradoxically, in a paper arguing against critical literacy as a central part of entering the academic conversation of the university. And she may, in the end, attempt to argue the other side.) The topic, I told her, should be viewed as an opportunity to think about what it means to enter the "academic conversation" of the university.

"I don't like to think," she said.

I did not know what to say, and I'm not sure I do now. I am afraid she meant what she said.

In the case of Shanna and Shawna, the community metaphor did not always help their development as critical readers, thinkers and writers, and may have impeded it at times. That does not mean I reject the metaphor, but only that I've come to see one of its limitations‹a way it can backfire. With two people who respect each other, who have become close friends and come from similar educational backgrounds, it can validate their resistance to whatever new mode of learning the class values. (The community metaphor can, of course, benefit resistant students by leading them to see the way other students value critical thinking, or whatever else is being resisted; it began to work that way for Shawna, as it had earlier in the semester for most students in the class.) When the class values something other than the "banking model," or the "Big Bang theory" of writing instruction, conforming is not easy, and doing so may, in the end, be a form of resistance to the goals of the class.

Al Hoffman
Reflection on "Resisting by Conforming"

[Editor's note: This reflection was origianlly published along with Hoffman's article in 1993.]

When I first wrote "Resisting by Conforming," I was teaching for the first time. I didn't know what to expect from students here at Syracuse. I assumed, as many new teachers do, that my students would be diligent and attentive, that they would wholeheartedly embrace the aims of the class. Many of my students were intellectually involved, but not all of them, and that experience‹having a student, like Shanna say "I don't like to think"‹made me realize how important it is to articulate the goals of the class and to encourage student to see those goals as their own.

I've been teaching for two years now, and I've been doing something that has helped me avoid the likelihood of a student telling me she doesn't like to think. Early in the class, I have the students read two short articles‹one by Linda Alcoff, a philosophy professor at Syracuse, and the other by Christopher Lasch, the author of The Culture of Narcissism. Both articles discuss the importance of critical thought and argument. By reading those two articles, and then discussing them, students realize that this is a class where critical thinking is, in a sense, a rule. Alcoff and Lasch speak about the centrality of critical thought to education, and, if students can come to see the importance of that‹and do so early in the semester‹then the class can become a site for active, engaged learning.

Shanna and Shawna were resistant, in part, because I had not expressed the goals of the class as well as I could have. If I had said, at the start, that this was a class where we would devote ourselves to writing and critical thinking, and explained what that meant, then they might have been less resistant. But I also know that this issue of resistance, and especially the "I don't like to think" brand of it, can't be solved in a simple way. While I haven't again encountered a situation where two student reinforce their anti-thought stance as Shanna and Shawna did, I have had students who resist‹some of the time, at least‹the class's emphasis on critical thinking. (They want to summarize, or "research," which often means paraphrase someone else's thoughts; they have trouble believing they can think of something of value). I do know that if I establish critical thinking and argument as being at the center of the course, and reinforce those goals each time we meet (through writing assignments, discussion, and so forth), then most students, and even those somewhat resistant (often for lack of effort or desire), embrace those goals.

Back in 1990, when I was teaching for the first time, I assumed, erroneously, that any student coming to Syracuse would want to become a better reader, writer, and thinker. In the classes I've taught since that first semester, I've put a greater emphasis on encouraging students to value writing, value critical thinking, and the community metaphor, I've found, can help me establish those values.

‹Al