Computers and Composition 16, 167-169 ( 1999) ISSN 8765-46 15

0 1999 Ablex Publishing Corporation All rights of reproduction reserved

The Writers We Happen To Teach: An Epilogue

HUGH BURNS

Texas Woman’s Universiry

This we know: The computer-based writing class has placed new technical and critical responsibilities on writing instructors. This special issue of Computers and Composition has illuminated how teachers are exploring the personal and professional complexities of gender. Add yet another set of cultural responsibilities for writing instructors. Thanks in part to a rich computer-based pedagogy of hypertext journals, MOO seminars, synchro- nous discussions, list discussion debates, webfolio reviews, e-mail posts, many brave new interactive women and men are writing their way out of the cultural closet. The very idea. Right in our academic cloister. How democratic. Let freedom ring!

By building a critical appreciation of gender theory-it paradoxes, its troubles, and its revelations-our instructional practice in this technologically rich, freedom-rich curricula will be formed and informed. Be not afraid. Just as we have a responsibility to bring our pedagogy up to date with changes in technology, we have a responsibility to become more gender aware. Matters of gender, ethnicity, or diversity may bring culture shocks to the composition classrooms, but I don’t believe this community is as surprised as many might be in the academy when gender happens in computer-mediated composition.

One faculty member, an artist, confided in me at a summer technology and education institute. Don’t panic, he said. The artistic opportunities he was most interested in were not his, for he was already the “artist he happened to be.” No, he suggested that the most important artistic contribution he could make was in allowing his students to use new technology to become the artists they happened to be. Good advice.

Our vocation as writing teachers is to help students understand that they are the writers they happen to be. It is a risky business, teaching writing in a culturally diverse world. Students are constructing themselves in new ways on Web sites and revealing themselves in computer-mediated writing assignments. So, when the writers we happen to teach happen to discover themselves, we are at least witnesses and perhaps accomplices.

Social construction validates the belief that teachers have passive and active influences, for the most promising gender theory research suggests complex interdependencies. Gender is a performative construction within the material practices of culture, so many sociologists argue. It follows, therefore, that the technology of writing and the technology of computing are material practices of culture. Such new tools certainly help reveal the complexity of genders under construction.

-- Direct all correspondence to: Hugh Bums, Texas Woman’s University. Department of English. Speech, and Foreign Languages, Denton, TX 76204-5829. E-mail: <hburns@twu.edu>.

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Before such technology, writing teachers normally would not know as much about a student, for knowing students could mean trouble. But, now teachers know. Sometimes they are the first to know. A computer-mediated writing teacher faces a challenge, it seems, to separate the deeply personal relationship from the deeply professional response. With computers or without, teachers must continue to encourage students to express their true selves without having to take responsibility for any philosophical epiphany or any psychological turmoil that may ensue.

How do composition professionals properly teach this generation of writers who may write revelations never imagined only a few years ago? Two contributors to this special issue write about such student self-revelations on the Web. Randy Woodland explores the issues of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students coming out via the Internet. Laura Sullivan examines how female students explore their lives by writing autobiograph- ical hypertexts. When writing assignments encourage self-revelation, then teachers may become more involved in students’ personal lives than they might want to be. You’ve been there. You’ve done that.

Teaching writing with technology means teachers have a greater responsibility to make curriculum and instruction safe havens for students’ differences-ideological, gendered, ethnic. This responsibility is heightened by the fact that the computer-based classroom makes it especially likely that students will reveal their differences to one another, even at a distance, sometimes especially at a distance. The infinite variety of relationships among men and women makes possible every attitude or tie or discourse between the sexes. Again, such technologies as the World Wide Web, chat rooms, MOOS, and discussion lists have amplified students’ voices and intensified unique forms of self-expression. Not surprisingly, the most technological and innovative faculty members may find themselves balancing the responsibility of opening the world with the role of cultural gatekeeper.

Students have a culture, a language, a socioeconomic status, societal perceptions, and personal perceptions. This they bring. What composition teachers bring is the opportunity for students to appreciate a unique individual voice and identity in the institution’s public space, Though the academy is designed as the place where worlds collide, not all are pleased when collisions happen. Still they happen everyday.

Mixing technology and cultural matters such as gender and diversity stirs up an institu- tion’s cultural cosmos. Yet, the mission is to profess the enduring values of a liberal arts education for women and for men. Professional leadership must not avoid the cultural and political dynamics of gender at the very moment that this emerging technology amplifies such an important topic. Issues of gender and of diversity must resonate in our discussions of computer-based curricula in composition and communication.

When it comes to gender, what should the profession profess for computers and writing?

. That our curriculum and our teaching are gender neutral.

. That our instructional practices are fair across the board.

. That our networked classrooms are safe havens for individual differences.

. That our writing curriculum stimulates freedom of expression and values all human discourses.

. That students think critically and critique thoughtfully about how technology intensi- fies the public discourse on gender, ethnicity, class, and economic status.

The Writers We Happen To Teach 169

As one student recognized in a final course evaluation of my computed-mediated composition course:

When we have our thoughts on the screen and all it takes is a flick of the finger to send it, we

might just DO IT--communicate truths we wish we had kept hidden. Being too personal, too real. Electronic self-revelation. High-tech embarrassment.

Electronic self-revelation is here to stay. High-tech embarrassment. perhaps. But, this we know: The technologies most suited for the teaching of writing in the next millennium will promote gender-expressions as never before. Going are the notions that higher education is impersonal. Going are the truths we wish they had kept hidden. Gone are the safe social expectations-for students and for teachers alike.

Writing teachers, especially those who throw open their classrooms to the world, must find new ways to trust in the native spirit of the human spirit. Then and only then shall the academic enterprise and the learning experience be enriched. If such a search demands our understanding gender’s paradoxes and troubles, then so be it.

The networked democracy is working. The writers we happen to teach happen to be free.