Give them the potatoes

We were discussing Sirc's pedagogy in class and I wanted to return to it a bit. This chapter and some of Sirc's other works, such as "Never Mine the Tagmemics" and "Writing Classroom as A & P Parking Lot," raise a certain question, which is would embracing the avant-garde in the classroom actually deny students an experience they can get nowhere else? That is to say, learning and education take place in an almost infinite number of locations other than the classroom. Does Sirc's work overlook this notion, and imply that the avant-garde must be brought into the institution because students would otherwise not be exposed to it? Certainly this claim is dubious.

Let me be concrete, so as not just to make a straw man of Sirc and his contentions. Sirc talks explicitly about the incorporation of rap music into his classroom. Now, many people learn about, explore, and utilize rap in many different ways outside of the classroom: for example, students who listen to rap music, produce rap music, live in the culture that rap music documents, and so forth. These people are steeped in rap music, as, indeed, all students are to an extent, in that rap music has had an effect on culture at large.

People can encounter rap music in many different forums, inside and outside of the classroom. However, an experience that they cannot get many places is a dedicated classroom experience. As unpopular as it is to say it, the experience of the regimented, stogy old classroom can be as valuable, rigorous, interesting, fun, and rich as exploring rap, playing video games, visiting museums, doing ethnographic research, writing poetry, dropping acid, making democratic social change, furious Wednesday night masturbation, making a short film, documenting the rhetoric of Fraternity functions, scripting a Flash animation, and so on and so on and so on. Breaking the distinction between high and low culture does not mean inverting the hierarchy; it means that the formerly "high" culture still gets to play on an even field with the formerly "low."

As such, I ask myself where else can students get the classroom experience other than in the classroom? In what other situation will they have a network of people who know a thing or two about composition and the institution invested in their writing, studying their writing, thinking about their writing? What is a better place to have a traditional academic experience than the institution historically devoted to such things? Are we denying our students an experience they can have nowhere else if we follow culture and chase the avant-garde? Perhaps the only way to remain vital is to change with culture (THIS ISN'T YOUR DADDY'S COMPOSITION CLASS! ROCK ON! PARTY PARTY PARTY ON THE FLIP SIDE), but does that mean we should do it? Why don't we just train people for the cubicle farms then? That's current and it's what is wanted.

Let's end this farce with a hamfisted analogy: when you go to Idaho, do you get carrots? I'm sure there are some pretty good carrots in Idaho, but where else are you going to get a fresh Idaho potato (I said fresh; you can get them anywhere, but they've been warehoused)? Yes, the institution changes, as it must and should. Yes, the institution will be affected by elements of culture. But do we, should we, believe in creating a panoply of experiences in life (yes, even including boring old school), or should we homogenize? Lumping and splitting will happen, but should we explicitly try and consolidate, preserve, or keep stirring the mix? I don't know, but I keep asking myself, If the classroom becomes the carnival, what does the carnival become? What will become of the A&P parking lot without the A&P?