Course Blogs: Writing in a Collaborative Environment

Teaching Digital Composition with Blogs

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In "Teaching Digital Composition with Blogs," Krista Kennedy lists four different types of course blogs:

Individual blog by Instructor: an instructor's blog offers an alternative course-management system through class announcements, lecture notes, syllabi, policies.... But an instructor's blog preserves a traditional classroom hierarchy, reduces the students' understanding of writing to what the teacher can advise, de-emphasizes writing as a contextually determined practice, fails to promote the students' voices. And it offers absolutely no infrastructure to entice students to keep writing after the course.

Individual Student Blogs: promote ownership of work, encourage reflection, are less constrained by community norms, demand some technological responsibility, and increase the likelihood of a student's writing after the termination of the course. But individual blogs make classroom community more difficult, demand an outgoing personality, and require more time for assessment.

Small-Group Blogs: encourage collaborative reflection, are conducive to peer review, and are a good communication tool for other group projects. One of the problems of group work is the teacher's inability to assess who is doing the most/least work, and the students' frustration from this inequality of effort with an equality of grade. The blog infrastructure alleviates this problem. Because the blog documents the author of each post, the teacher can see who is doing the work and who isn't. But the group nature of a communal blog diffuses responsibility for (and pride from) the blog as a whole. And the students will not keep writing after the end of the course.

Class Blog: promotes ongoing discussion, is more conducive to comments, and is easy to assess. This type of blog is great for a literature course. But individual voices can get subsumed, and the lack of individual ownership diffuses responsibility and pride. And the students will not keep writing after the end of the course.

The last three of these four types of course blogs encourage students to have a voice in a community that extends beyond the classroom. Because of this transformation of the classroom's community, blogs provide opportunities for students to address multiple audiences simultaneously. In other words, not only do non-student readers increase the likelihood of a student's enjoyment from writing, they emphasize the role of audience in writing.

The first class discussion about audience has to address privacy concerns. The general guiding principle for online behavior is "Don't write or upload what you wouldn't want your parents, kids, or future employers to associate with you." Bring articles to class that exemplify potential problems and facilitate discussion.

Once students readily acknowledge privacy concerns, they're ready for the expanded community. This means the teacher has to find ways to draw external readers to her course blogs. One way to attract readers is through a free ad-exchange service, like Entrecard.

Don't think of an ad-exchange service as a distraction from the course. Entrecard's categories facilitate a discussion of how students can establish a theme for their blogs, and how those themes help to determine their blogs' audience.

Entrecard offers still other pedagogical opportunities. If a course uses individual student blogs or small-group blogs, then the students will have to create advertising banners like this one on the left. An advertising banner is an opportunity for a class discussion about image design, a popular topic for most composition textbooks.

While composition textbooks limit discussion to the interpretation of images, advertising banners enable a conversation about the creative process: how to use the image to define an audience; how to attract and control the viewer's eye movement through imaginary lines, color, contrasts, shifting planes; and how that eye movement plays a role in the viewer's interpretation. In other words, a teacher easily can transform an ad-exchange service into a pedagogical tool.

When used effectively, Entrecard can solicit a minimum of 300 extra visitors a day to a course blog. Of course, there are other marketing tactics that you can assign:

1) Students can label their posts with tags that will help search engines find the students' posts.

2) They can leave insightful comments on popular blogs; the comment template has a field where students can leave their blogs' URL and thereby link their comments to their own sites. (Teachers can have the students email links so the teacher can find them and give the students credit.)

3) Students can advertise the title and link of each new post on Twitter.

4) Students can join blogging communities through an interface like MyBlogLog and send a message to their communities with the title and link of each new post.

5) Students can Digg their posts. If a student adds the appropriate code to her blog's template, more readers can rate her post, and each post's rating will appear on the post itself. The higher the post's rating, the higher the likelihood that the post will attract even more readers.

But if you don't require it, the students won't do it, and if you require too much, the students won't do it. Although I would provide the students with a lengthy list of marketing tactics, I would assign only two or three that I as their teacher can easily keep track of--like their exchanging ads on Entrecard, commenting on popular blogs, and Digging their own posts. If you don't require any form of advertising, you're decreasing the likelihood of strangers commenting on your students' posts, which diminishes both the attractiveness of blogging and the learning opportunities that a blog provides. Students need a hearty traffic of visitors in order to practice addressing different audiences.

Of course, "visitors" are not the same as "readers," but this difference can promote a valuable classroom discussion about how to turn "visitors" into "readers": the timeliness of a post's topic, a captivating title that clues the reader into that topic, an image or video that draws the viewer's attention to the post (or a series of images that move the viewer's eyes throughout the post). Once the visitor is already looking at the post, stylistic devices, an effective sequence of information, vivid illustrations, and other standard topics of a composition course will transform that "visitor" into a "reader."

The next class discussion to have is how to turn a "reader" into a "return reader." Interestingly enough, the best advice for turning "readers" into "return readers" doesn't come from composition textbooks. Students will find the best advice in other blogs--on blogging-resource sites like Problogger and Blog Assistance, as well as buried in marketing and money-making blogs. Have your students run a Google blogsearch on "return readers" and "blog building." Ask them to bring advice from the blogosphere into the classroom. This will acclimate them to research, include them in the teaching process, and encourage an active-learning environment.

Free services like Google Analytics show a blogger how many new and repeat readers she has each day, which posts they read, how long they spend on the site, how they encountered the site, etc. If the course blog doesn't belong to the teacher, require the students to sign up for such services, because they help students determine what what worked and what hasn't, what has given them a voice, and what deprived them of it. Services like Google Analytics provide rhetorical mirrors that reassign the pedagogical role from the teacher to the student--in her desire to enhance the inherent draw of her writing.

Another important class discussion to have is how to encourage comments. Timely posts catch readers while they're still experiencing an event, before they've had a chance to intellectually process their opinions; in other words, a timely post can capture a reader's desire to discuss its topic.

Polarizing statements help a reader to identify her own stance in a debate, which increases a reader's recognition that she has something to say. But this can have negative consequences, too. Consider these comments on a post about the last presidential debate:

TheBoBo says:

Obama is still stuttering around Ayers and ACORN - I sure hope McCain hits him hard on those again because he just completely sidestepped that altogether. Obama just continues to lie about his associations.


pak lah says:

i dont really follow this presidential debate but isnt mccain suggesting nuclear energy that seems blurry on its policy and may cost burden to taxpayers? but anyway i dont side to anyone and im not american either. Should any of these men wins it is time to walk the talk.


Jenny Lynn says:

BAHZING! Finally! I kept yelling at the tv screen, and THIS debate he was finally listening to me! LOL! Thank god for Joe the Plumber, we just needed a good clear example, and "poof" thank you Joe. Still would hav like Romney, but I really like John McCain and Palin. AND! (I swear HE could hear my screaming at the TV because when I said to him WHAT ABOUT THE PALIN is a C*NT t-shirts, McCain brought it up just a breath later!) BAHZING!!!


Akira says:

Remember Obama? : "If you have something to say to me, say it to my face!" Finally McCain realized the friendly old fair-minded grampa routine is not getting respect or support.

I think McCain is still too polite. If he's gonna go down, he should at least go down in a blaze of glory, not pretending that Obama is just another mainstream politician.

Too little, too late?


Eowyn says:

Yes, McCain was much tougher in this last debate, but I was exasperated by how inarticulate he is. But at least he provided more specifics, instead of the usual mantra of "I can do it. I know how to get it done."

It was Obama that truly amazed me, changing so many of his prior positions. He sure sounded like a moderate. This is yet another reason why I find him frightening: It takes a very very facile liar to be able to lie so smoothly. He is the biggest con-man this country has ever seen. God save us.


Zephyra says:

I didn't like either McCain or Obama in the debate. What do you think about Bob Barr?
A is A


Robin says:

I thought McCain was much better than in the previous debates. I'm not American but I've been following the campaign because, like it or not, whoever gets elected in the States affects the rest of us as well. We've just gone through an election here in Canada where the campaign lasted a total of 38 days and there were 2 debates. It amazes me how Americans can put up with a process that lasts almost 2 years and that to become President you have to spend in excess of 500 million! Watching the news the day after the debate, I think Joe the Plumber received more coverage than the candidates!!!


AVROHOM BILGREI says:

When is B.O. going to talk "ENGLISH" rather than "FIGERIN" and start "FIGURING" out how to talk ENGLISH rather than EBONICS ?
TO MENTION LOUSY DICTION IS VERBOTEN ?
HEAVEN FORBID ONE NOTE HIS "BLACK" ENGLISH !
Perhaps he should be more "discriminating" and articulate the final "g" , not to do so is "N.G." !
Eloquent is one thing, inarticulate is another !
Verbal detail is one of the building blocks of "eloquence" !


Anonymous says:

Apparently you haven't noticed that Palin rarely pronounces 'g's in words ending in 'ing'.

Three different types of readers commented on the post: named (and linked) conservatives, named foreigners who don't have a vested interest in the post's topic, and an untraceable anonymous commenter. Although the blog's conservative slant helps readers to identify their own positions in the argument, its polarizing statements prevent dissenters from feeling that their comments are welcomed.

Notice that the commenters are not replying to each other. This is the result of the post's failure to acknowledge different viewpoints. Because the blog preaches to the choir, those who feel comfortable enough to reply don't express different enough opinions to get a conversation started. When dissenting readers get the gumption to reply to such a post, their responses are likely to appear both agitated and agitating, like they're flaming a war by just responding. By simply acknowledging different viewpoints, even polemic bloggers can reduce the likelihood of this conundrum.

Timely posts and polarizing statements are not the only way to solicit comments. A post can directly ask readers a question.

But when this tactic appears forced, it ultimately fails. Not only do questions have to be relevant to the post as a whole, but the readers' answers have to provide missing pieces to the puzzle. In other words, the post becomes a collective effort at understanding.

Once a post attracts comments, the student's replies to those comments can either encourage future comments, or dissuade other readers from contributing. Dave Taylor reminds us of what a blog's reader looks for: "I don't want to read just your [the blogger's] opinion. I want to read other people's responses to your opinion and, ideally, your retorts to them" (See Michael A. Banks' Blogging Heroes, p.9). The experienced blogger routinely has to think of answering one reader in terms of writing to other readers. Taylor offers the following advice: "Instead of reacting defensively--or offensively--what you want to do is what any business needs to do when they encounter criticism. Take a deep breath, and then come at it from the perspective of 'How can I make this a plus?'" (7).

But this should be open to debate in yet another class discussion. Bring a post's comments to class. Discuss how the blogger's replies affect the students' desire to join the conversation. Role play "blogger," "commenter," and the "silent reader." Ask the "silent reader" to explain how the "blogger's" response affects her desire to pay attention to or participate in the discussion. Let the students use their observations to make their own authorial decisions.

Internet popularity won't appeal to every student, so I encourage students to earn an income from their blogs. I tell my students they can use their blogs to host advertisements, sell their own products, write reviews, or collect donations (tips for their posts).

I also recommend that they Google the term "widget" to learn how to modify their blogs for self-expression.

While I'm a strong supporter of course blogs, I have to discourage teachers from assigning technology and marketing tactics that they themselves don't use. If you're thinking about assigning blogs next semester, sign up for a Blogger or Wordpress account. Start blogging and applying these marketing tactics ASAP.

If you encounter problems or develop any questions, feel free to reply to this post or contact me.

Even the Student Who Fails Learns a Valuable Lesson

At NSU, Dean Sandra DeLoatch has denied Steven D. Aird tenure because of "the overwhelming failure of the vast majority of the students he teaches." This decision did not come out of the blue. Over the course of his tenure track, Aird repeatedly had received pressure to raise his passing rate to DeLoatch's standard of 70%.

Aird argues that this would require grade inflation. From five different professors, Aird gathered the statistics on two standard exams for a core-curriculum freshman-biology course. In the Fall of 2005, the median grade was an F.

Attendance probably plays a significant role in this low performance. According to Scott Jaschik at Inside Higher Ed, "Other professors at Norfolk State, generally requesting anonymity, confirmed that following the 80 percent attendance rule would result frequently in failing a substantial share — in many cases a majority — of their students." Aird's attendance record shows that the average student attends his class only 66% of the time.

Aird interprets the problem to be one of where to set the bar. He produces a clever sports analogy to support his position:

“Show me how lowering the bar has ever helped anyone,” Aird said in an interview. Continuing the metaphor, he said that officials at Norfolk State have the attitude of “a track coach who tells the team ‘I really want to win this season but I really like you guys, so you can decide whether to come to practice and when.’ ” Such a team wouldn’t win, Aird said, and a university based on such a principle would not be helping its students. (Jaschik)

According to the logic behind this analogy, students are merely potential players who can get cut from the team.

University spokeswoman Sharon Hoggard maintains that NSU upholds the accreditation standards imposed by SACS. She feels that Aird's pedagogical strategy "goes against our [NSU's] very mission, which is to provide an affordable high-quality education for an ethnically and culturally diverse student population." The diversity factor is relevant since NSU is a historically African-American university that caters to students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds.

However, race is not the heart of the discrepancy. The heart of the discrepancy is a conflict between opposing pedagogical strategies. According to Hoggard, "Every student doesn't learn in the same way. It becomes the duty of the faculty member to find ways to ensure that his or her students are understanding the material." In other words, Hoggard would argue that the only bar to be set is not for the student, but rather for the teacher. While Aird puts the onus of performance on the student, Hoggard and DeLoatch put the onus of performance on the teacher.

What is the role of the teacher in a university classroom? What is the role of the student?

One way to explore the first question is to figure out to whom or what the teacher is responsible. Aird would argue that the teacher is responsible to the material. He sets the bar for the students to jump into the material at a certain degree of proficiency. Those students who can't or won't jump high enough are banned from the material--presumably because the material is sacred enough that careless or un-knowledgeable hands shouldn't touch it.

Hoggard and DeLoatch would argue that, with American citizens' diminished access to math, science, and reading-comprehension skills, and with minorities' even further reduced access to these skills, the teacher works not for the material or even for the student, but rather for our country or a particular race. In this scenario, the teacher has a responsibility to prepare the student for the active engagement that democracy demands of its citizenry. In order to salvage our nation's economy in the face of outsourcing science and research, this active engagement includes the student's adaptability in our highly competitive global economy.

From this perspective, the teacher sees our society through the avatar of the student. It's a fascist perspective in the sense that we are all just servants of our nation's or a particular race's history. If we eliminated the concepts of the nation state and race, and the teacher envisioned instead a global society through the avatar of the student, the perspective would be Stalinist. In both perspectives, the student loses his or her individualism.

When American students lose their individualism, they get angry. They don't like it when we teachers say, "Don't focus on what I want. Interpret me solely as a tool to facilitate your servitude to our country/world." They dismiss us as fascists or communists--because structurally, we are.

Of course, Aird's strategy also ignores each student's contingent identity. The student's face either disappears in the face of the material, or gets excluded for the failure to do so.

Ironically, this exclusion preserves the student. In other words, Aird's pedagogical strategy does more to maintain the student's individualism than Hoggard and DeLoatch's, specifically via the exclusionary act of failing the student. For this very reason, some students might prefer Aird's pedagogy--because it preserves their ability to resist, which endows them with the agency of choice: they can choose to pass or fail the course. When students can't fail as easily, because they're infrastructurally surrounded by a totalitarian university's "student support system," resistance is futile, and so too is the individualist desire to take control of one's own fate. The student becomes reduced to an object that gets cradled or mishandled. The only individualist voice such a student can assume is a victimized one that blames the teacher, university, or even the injustices of the social system.

Obviously there is a way to merge strategies. The teacher doesn't have to remain aloof, deny each student's different personality, or avoid technology that produces infrastructural support for the student's engagement with the material. These aren't necessary factors in drawing the clear line in the sand that endows the student with the freedom of choice. But students need a high bar, not because the material is too sacred for unworthy hands to contaminate, but rather to evoke the concept of aspiration, and to encourage the student's understanding of the role of his or her own determination. This isn't exclusionary. Quite the contrary, even the student who fails learns a valuable lesson.

No Offense, Doug: Critical Thinking Beyond the Pleasure Principle

In the comment section of the last post, Doug made the following statement:

What propels me into critical thinking isn't duty, or heroic altruism, or any other such world-historical imperative; it's sheer enjoyment. If our students can't learn to feel that enjoyment, they won't do it.

I hate to always do this. I'm a theory guy, so here comes the dreaded theory. In Seminar XX, Lacan identifies four discourses that I think are relevant to why Doug might be mistaken in his belief that students have to enjoy in order to learn. For the sake of this post, I'll oversimplify Lacan's four discourses, but only to the extent of reducing their nuances:

1) The source of agency doesn't come from the individual, but rather from some idealized imagining of knowledge itself. The impossible objective of this discourse is to produce a mastership of knowledge. If we were to translate this into critical-thinking skills, then this is the call to master a primary text, all of its nuances, etc. The primary point of critical thinking in this discourse is to question the paraphrasing's fidelity to the primary text.

2) The individual subordinates knowledge to the production of pleasure and/or the recuperation of a loss. Again, in terms of critical-thinking skills, this is the call for new and new, more pleasurable applications of a theory, paradigm, metaphor, etc. When not a call for pleasure in itself, this discourse calls for the recovery of a loss, such as in marginalized discourses. The primary point of critical thinking in this discourse is to question the appropriateness/accuracy of the transposition from the application's original context to such new contexts.

3) The source of agency in this discourse comes from some idealized imagining of authority that governs over the subject. The subject sees only knowledge/information in others, and thereby suppresses other subjectivities (other people's personal lives, etc.), with the ultimate objective of producing recognition for oneself. In terms of critical thinking, this discourse questions the careful negotiation of different (types of) information in a critical community.

4) The source of agency in this discourse comes from pleasure itself. This discourse subordinates any possibility of mastership to the production of new knowledge. The production of knowledge is the sole objective of this discourse. In terms of critical thinking, this discourse is the closest to deconstruction: a question of premises and then of their relationships to conclusions.

In order to create his cool little "mathemes," Lacan makes the outlandish claim that these are the only possible discourses. While this is obviously untrue, his explanation of how we circulate through the different discourses brings about an important point. We teachers want our students to be capable of all of these different discourses and their different types of critical thinking.

Therefore-- no offense, Doug-- we don't want our students to reduce their critical thinking skills to only those that derive from or produce pleasure.

The Bill O'Reilly Syndrome, Jackass, and the Brawndo Effect: Critical Thinking in the Classroom

I'm sorry to have posted such a long post. I'll try not to do this again in the future. But this is a pedagogical problem that I've been trying to work out, and I feel it's silly for me to have access to you all without getting your input. I've been trying to define the primary obstacles to critical thinking. Thus far, I've identified what I believe are two such obstacles: the perpetual state of "going with the flow" that produces stubborn ideological adherences, and the growing social tendency to reject appeals to reason.

I know everyone hates Heidegger and theory, but Heidegger describes this “going with the flow” as such:

Being-lost in the publicness of the "they"[,] Dasein has... fallen away from itself... and has fallen into the "world." "Fallenness" into the "world" means an absorption in Being-with-another, in so far as the latter is guided by idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity. (See Macquarrie and Robinson's translation of Being and Time, 220.)

Within its original context, Heidegger's description refers to a manner of human existence ("das Man"). This form of existence enables a student to attend to oneself, others, and the world, but "in a mode of groundless floating" such that attention is "everywhere and nowhere" (221).

As the expression "going with the flow" suggests, the student experiences “the publicness of the ‘they’” as both an extension of the self and a source of agency. In other words, we are dealing with identity politics. The student forfeits personal critical thinking in favor of a collective judgment (222), which results in a “knowing it all” attitude (ibid). For some reason, Bill O'Reilly comes to mind. Heidegger describes this attitude as being a part of an individual’s general movement into an interpretive “groundlessness” (223). However, the social component of "going with the flow" hides the interpretation’s groundlessness (ibid). Moreover, the sense of “common knowledge” endows the student's uncritical movement with an illusion of correctness and stability (ibid).

In "A Pedagogy of Force," Mark D. Halx and L. Earle Reybold make the following observation about critical-thinking skills:

If learning requires effort, then critical thinking requires absolute exertion. In 1941, Mortimer Adler noted that learning is painful. He also cautioned that thinking is "fatiguing not refreshing." Kroll (1992) suggests that students are often more comfortable with "ignorant certainty" than they are with "intellectual confusion." When students first begin to think critically, they often experience discomfort because critical thinking calls for students to reflect; set aside their established assumptions; and consider other, sometimes counter, perspectives. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, students too often enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. (296-297)

According to Heidegger, anxiety (in Halx and Reybold’s terminology, “the discomfort of thought”) causes a person to flee from critical thinking. This anxiety comes from a sense of uncertainty that leads a person to perceive the indefinite objective of critical thinking to be totally meaningless (Heidegger 231).

In other words, the sense of meaninglessness is the ultimate source of our students' anxiety.

Subsequently, the student “flees” from the anxiety-producing indefiniteness of critical thinking by adhering to definite entities within the world-- in Halx and Reybold's terminology, "the comfort of opinion." What Heidegger describes—this "going with the flow," this fleeing towards “the ‘at-home’ of publicness” (234)—in fact amounts to the logic behind ideological adherences like Bill O'Reilly's. Ideological adherences reveal a flight from the anxiety-producing indefiniteness of critical thinking in favor of more definite entities within the world (233-234).

We avoid rather than confront the sources of our anxiety, and our current stage in the globalization process is filled with anxiety-producing indefiniteness, particularly on the level of conflicting ideologies (the Western ideological war against Islamic fundamentalism, conservative vs. liberal ideology, etc.). These ideological conflicts reverberate on the level of identity formation. Globalized media and increased travel, both for work and enjoyment, render a local source of identity as being an insufficient interpretive framework—without providing a more stable, global source of identity to replace it.

As a result, our students cling to more definite, often-material entities in the world-- in lieu of the anxiety-producing indefiniteness of critically negotiating unstable local, national, and global citizenry. After the anxiety-producing indefiniteness of September 11, many businesses facilitated this movement away from anxiety-producing indefiniteness. According to Markus Giesler, part of what we now consume are definitions of ourselves as we merge with our products on the level of identity. The iPod led that movement by transferring marketing’s focus from the identity of the company to the identity of the consumer. Consumers individualize their personal consumer choices to thematize their pedestrian activities. In the face of the anxiety-producing uncertainty of our current global environment, now many people use their consumer choices to label themselves-- for example, as Christian, conservative, multicultural, or environmentally conscious.

The ideological and material adherences of identity formation don't in fact block the indefiniteness of critical thinking. Instead, the person has to avoid critical thinking first, before that individual can cling to the material statements of an ideological precipice. In this sense, ideological and material adherences are symptomatic of a preexisting repression of critical thought. In other words, they are not the cause, but rather the effect of repressed critical thinking.

Media trends reveal another symptom of repressed critical thinking that is perhaps a response to the stubborn ideological and material adherences of identity formation. There is a growing movement to reject appeals to reason. Since 2000, the Jackass slapstick comedy troop has produced a franchise, complete with spin-offs such as Viva la Bam and Wild Boyz. In addition, the franchise has inspired an all-female version called Rad Girls. The strategy for this style of comedy involves the production of contrived, often physical conflicts for the comedy troop to overcome—not through reason, but rather via physical endurance and laughter (a bodily release of tensions). To facilitate this strategy, the conflicts are always decontextualized and thus deprived of greater meaning. For example, Jackass Number Two's opening dislocates the Spanish cultural practice of the Running of the Bulls—specifically from Pamplona, Spain to suburban America. Deprived of its historical/geographical/cultural content, the cultural practice is reduced to the absurdity of fear and aggression. In other words, the opening to Jackass Number Two portrays a closed-minded and distinctly American perception of the Running of the Bulls: uncritically, we Americans tend to see the Spanish cultural practice in terms of the absurdity of our corralling bulls through our own neighborhoods. The movie frequently dislocates and dissembles cultural practices, such as the Indian medical practice of using leeches and the cultural practice of interacting with cobras. The comedic style’s dismissal of reason (both that of our own and others) is in fact a dismissal of interpreting difference, often in an intentional confrontation with that difference. As a scene in the second Jackass movie demonstrates: You in India put leeches in your eyes; I from California will put leeches in my eyes, and from an American perspective we will experience solidarity, because now I am as absurd to my own ideology as you are to my ideology. In other words, the dismissal of reason has an ethical component to it, particularly in the context of our current ideological war. The strategy pursues solidarity, but outside of the realm of the seemingly insurmountable obstacles involved in ideological uses of reason.

The rejection of reason has affected marketing trends as well. Like the Axe cologne commercials, the Brawndo advertisement denies the supremacy of reason in our decisions—namely through statements such as "What are electrolytes? I don't know, but they're extremely awesome." The advertisement instead privileges instincts, and predominantly that of aggression: “Drinking [Brawndo] will make you wonder why you haven’t ever crushed a human skull with your bare hands. But you won’t have to, because you’ll already know that Brawndo tastes how that would feel, which is like having sex with a tractor trailer in a parking lot. Grrrrrrrr.” The source of this aggression becomes more evident when we look at an earlier source of the Brawndo advertisement. The Canadian comedy troop at Picnicface.com won the contract for the Brawndo advertisement by making similar advertisements for a fictional energy drink, Powerthirst. The organizational structure of the Powerthirst advertisement parallels that of the advertisement for Brawndo. However, unlike the advertisement for Brawndo, the Powerthirst commercial admits an instance of cultural contact. In the Powerthirst advertisement, if you give Powerthirst to your white babies, your white babies will run "abnormally fast"—so fast "that people will think they're Kenyans" and "they'll get deported back to Kenya." The moment of cultural contact is unintelligible. The Kenyans are "abnormal." Rather than attribute normalcy to foreign cultures, the advertisement instead encourages this unintelligibility of "abnormalcy" for ourselves—namely through a suspension of our reason.

It is as if this multicultural tolerance that suspends the logic of difference (your white baby will "get deported back to Kenya") in fact also suspends the conflicts that arise from difference. However, this strategy (the repression of the logic of difference) produces an excessive remainder of aggression. In other words, by repressing reason in the face of globalization's constant cultural/ideological conflicts, we cling to decontextualized, dissembled representations of conflict. The conflict is still there, only irrational—in fact, unrationalizeable.

If a growing number of commercials, television shows, and movies discourages reason, and if these media manifestations reflect a greater social demand to which such media appeals, then these factors reveal a growing individual frustration with the inability to reason with others in society. In other words, the two symptoms of repressed critical thinking work against each other. On one side, individuals uncritically “go with the flow” of available subject positions-- in order to escape the indefiniteness of critical thinking in our current, complex and extremely uncertain phase of globalization. On the other side, individuals avoid intellectually negotiating ideological difference in favor of a suspension/repression of that difference, with the result of a surge in aggression. Rather than embrace the material statements of intellectually “going with the flow,” they embrace the bodily statements (manifestations of instincts) of anti-intellectualism.

Both strategies intellectually deny meaning in the indefiniteness of critical thought. The best way to comprehend this similarity is in terms of sequence. First, a person rejects the indefiniteness involved in critical thinking in favor of “going with the flow.” This produces stubborn ideological adherences. (We can call this the "Bill O'Reilly Syndrome," although the stubborn ideological adherences can be liberal just as easily as conservative.) With the rise of cultural or ideological contact from globalization, the person represses the resulting increase of ideological differences—with the effect of those differences resurfacing on the level of instinctive drives, namely aggression. (We can call this the "Brawndo Effect.")

What we are dealing with here is split subjectivity. Critical thinking enables a person to experience oneself and the world as an open-source code: our program is never complete, but rather always in the process of becoming. Critical thinking enables healthy, conscious change-- both individually and socially. However, our current phase in globalization has provided too many unintentional changes. Our students and many others in our society feel the desire to stabilize their perceptions. We ignore aspects of ourselves that don't correspond with those stabilized perceptions. We split from these repressed aspects of ourselves and become Bill O'Reilly on the level of our statements. To the extent that we want to experience solidarity in the midst of unnegotiated difference, we become Jackasses. We experience the Brawndo effect by getting drunk and wrestling our friends after watching Fight Club or Ultimate Fighting. After we get that aggression out of our system, we return to our Bill O'Reilly identities and continue ignoring aspects of ourselves and dismissing aspects of others that undermine our stabilized perceptions. And we indefinitely postpone healthy, conscious change.

The Bill O'Reilly Syndrome is a dangerously debilitating approach to this globalizing world. Globalization requires critical thinking more now than ever before. As Halx and Reybold explain, "Most definitions of critical thinking emphasize a heightened awareness of multiple points of view and context, as well as an evaluation of one's own thought processes before reaching a conclusion. Thus, critical thinking requires the presence of mind to 'assess and scrutinize "knowledge" prior to its consumption'" (294-295). Until our students can decipher "multiple points of view and context," they won't be able to navigate their globalized world. Until our students can "assess and scrutinize 'knowledge' prior to its consumption," they won't be able to navigate conflicting social agendas. Until our students can evaluate their own thought processes before reaching a conclusion, they won't be able to bring about healthy, conscious change-- either for themselves or for the community.

What I can't figure out is how either to bypass the original repression of critical thinking (in other words, if we were to conceive of the above sequence as merely a student's sequential reaction in each critical instance, and not of something initiated before we get them in the classroom) or to work against the repression of critical thought. If we were to conceive of the above sequence as merely a student's sequential reaction in each critical instance, then the key seems to be to convince the students that there's meaning in the critical process, before they repress the indefiniteness of critical thought. I haven't figured out how to do that yet. Advice?

The only sure-fire way to destabilize what a student holds onto in lieu of critical thinking is for us to deploy some sort of deconstruction, at least as far as I can figure out. The only problem with this approach is that it makes the classroom an antagonistic experience.

Any advice?

Again, sorry for the excessively long post.