A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Comedy Central and Rhetoric

Pragma-Dialectics offers rules of engagement for argumentation. I want to look at the question, How might a student of Burke’s critique an ethical argument differently? My answer casts the two camps in different timeslots on Comedy Central’s schedule. I hope to discuss disagreement between our readings meaningfully and with a view to engaging our students.

Identification is a rhetorical emphasis preferred by brain-hungry extraterrestrials. The mandibles always appear just after a speech establishing how closely the concerns of Planet Gormand parallel those of Earth. A likely story. Persuasion thus follows the logic of narrative, as Keith and Lundberg illustrate through Hitler’s tale of the German people as victims (53-4). Likewise, speaking of General Petraeus as a “relief pitcher coming to the mound with bases loaded” places an argument about Afghanistan within an interpretive plot. Burke used literary analysis as a springboard, so he understood how we tell stories to bridge division and see past the limits of our respective experiences. A direct appeal to identification is analogous to a novel which expects the reader to “identify” with a main character.

Thus, a student of Burke’s might view rhetorical moves which establish common ground with more suspicion than a pragmatico-dialectician. But mark that for Burke, all persuasion depends upon some form of identification (he arrives at this idea after considering the categories of nothingness and existence in the Gospel of John, which just goes to show how far argument by analogy can take you). And because the human need for identification arises from the human tendency for division (“If men were not apart from one another, there would be no need for the rhetorician to proclaim their unity” [Burke 23]), it makes sense that we become more aware of persuasion as identification through a consideration of political difference. The same mode by which same-sex couples argue for marriage rights is navigated by corporations portraying themselves as “taxpayers like you.” “They” become “us” through identification.

Such a perspective can equip cynicism. The creators of “South Park,” a defecation-centered animated television program, continually satirize attempts to establish identification. Empathic types find it tough going when they visit South Park. While they argue for recognizing a shared humanity, they are constantly confronting giant spiders and aliens behind the curtains of rival belief systems. "South Park's" humor may be said to defend division and forestall identification. The proliferation of non-humans mouthing arguments from our current national political debates is funny, but it can also be seen as indicating that identification itself is ludicrous. Burke would not have shared the same political outlook, nor arrived at the same conclusions as Trey Parker and Matt Stone, yet the duo’s satirical comedy appears to be informed by a similar understanding of rhetoric. This understanding can be expressed with a negative/defensive inflection, viewing humor as defense against coercion.

Advance a persuasive argument, satire will squeeze it. At first, satire seems suited to social conservatism in the way that its ridicule tends to spare the status quo by default. Yet, Jon Stewart-produced news programs model another approach. As our preeminent venues for rhetorical analysis, “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” name-check informal fallacies from tu quoque to “reductio ad hitlerum” during their round-up of current events. Just as with “South Park,” Stewart and Colbert have found that sitting beneath the foolscap puts one in a powerful position to act as rhetorical watchdog. Witness Stewart’s exchange with Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala (linked in Jones 159). There Stewart continually emphasizes his role as an entertainer, claiming that this rhetorical mode remains distinct—as delineated by Cicero (Keith and Lundberg 27). The implication is that entertainers are exempt from the rules of responsible argument. But, on his own show, Stewart leaves the cynic’s clay jar to advance positive claims about the way we ought to argue. His humor assumes good intentions, assumes the value of maintaining the conversation when we argue. His attitude corresponds to the view which framed the Amsterdam rules included in the chapter by Jones.

The Amsterdam rules offer guides for “proper engagement” rather than work at naming failed arguments (Jones 172). While Jones denotes this approach as “utopian,” the crucial difference to appreciate in the approach is its positive, practical, interpersonal orientation. Whereas one could identify logical fallacies alone with a text, going Dutch requires negotiation with another person. I have planned to use video clips of “The Daily Show” during the Op-Ed unit. In Stewart we have an accessible week-nightly performance to evaluate against standards for engagement. There are also, frequently, jokes.

Everything is Rhetoric

In reading for this week, I began thinking about rhetoric and argumentation not only as important skills for our students but as a particular skill for us as teachers. As composition instructors we are teaching our students how to persuade through writing. We are reading their papers for logical fallacies, for insufficient presentation of evidence, and for a correct understanding of writing within an academic context. It is a large part of our job to make sure that they have the skills to communicate effectively as college writers. But if all language is rhetoric, then how do these concepts apply to the language that we use to teach our classes?

We don’t think of teaching as “argument” in the traditional sense, but I think a large point both of the readings made is that all communication is a kind of argument and involves a certain amount of convincing. We work at convincing our students that the assignments we are asking them to do have merit, that they are capable of doing the assignments that we ask them to do, and that our basic expectation is that they will attend class and do their assignments. We put these ideas forth through writing, like our syllabus, blogs, or the e-mails that we send our students. We put these ideas forth through the words we say out loud in class, which are often crafted spontaneously and require us to adapt to many different situations, balancing between communicating effectively, capturing student attention, respecting the student, respecting the integrity of the course, and a million other things. We also create messages through nonverbal communication—I know that I worry about what I am wearing, how I am fidgeting, and how organized I look to my students. These things add to our ethos, or credibility as a speaker who is presenting the rhetoric of the course of Writ 101.

Keith and Lundberg talk a great deal about audience. On page 19, they talk about different strategies—each with pros and cons—for adapting to an audience with “significantly mixed viewpoints.” As teachers, we know that our students have wildly diverse backgrounds, not just in traditional ways but as students and writers. We know that our words may be less convincing to some students. The “common element” all our students share is their desire/need to pass the course. Additionally, audience is an important concept for us as students. We talk about many similar topics in Writ 101 and Writ 540—but we speak about them in vastly different ways and at vastly different levels of complexity. This is due to our understanding of what is expected of us by our audience. Our audience when we are teachers expects us to explain information in the simplest terms possible, and then to build on that information. In our graduate-level classes, we are expected to demonstrate our knowledge and preparedness to our instructors. The rhetorical situation is different.

Keith and Lundberg talk about a “second persona”—asking the audience to see themselves a certain way through the rhetoric that we use, and I think that this is an important concept in our rhetorical model as teachers (Keith and Lundberg 14). As some of the first teachers that our students will ever encounter, we are, in some ways, teaching them appropriate ways to be college students. Making expectations clear through a written document like a syllabus presupposes students as capable of completing assignments, as responsible enough to get themselves to class, and as mature enough to behave appropriately in a college course. The way that we shape rhetoric toward our students allows us to shape a way that we would like them to behave.

Additionally, our job involves teaching our students how to effectively use rhetoric. How important is it that our students understand logical fallacies? I took a writing-intensive course on Argumentation as an undergraduate, and I think that these models have always helped influence my thinking and my writing. I think that students often inherently recognize when logic is fallacious but lack the vocabulary to articulate why. I think a basic understanding of logic and argumentation is essential to understanding how to craft an argument. Logical fallacies are often taught without context, outside of the sphere of writing. I found the Jones article student-friendly and possibly will use it to help students understand how the appeals they are making are working.

Wikipedia: Not Just A Purdy Face (or, in fact, any face at all)

I will begin by saying that I was more-or-less in agreement with both the readings, and I felt both had strong individual merit. While I’m an avid user of Wikipedia, I still tend to regard it with the suspicion of someone educated to research primarily in the Dewey Decimal System – Wikipedia seems so easy, so at-your-fingertips, so virtual in the sense of the word that means almost, but not quite. Purdy’s article complicated that assumption for me, and created a convincing argument for Wikipedia as a model of good, active research skills. Brent’s play-by-play definition of the “rhetoric of reading” was equally well thought-out, and if we are to believe him that reading is a persuasive act, then his text succeeded for me.

However, what fascinated me most about these two articles was their juxtaposition to one another on our syllabus. Purdy’s Wikipedia vs. Brent’s Rhetoric of Reading. In style and tone alone they are light years apart from one another – Purdy writes cleanly and informally to a student audience, while Brent is jargon-heavy and aiming for academic and professorial readership. Purdy is very up-to-date technologically speaking, while Brent’s article is nearly 20 years old – perhaps not ancient, but certainly dated: 1992 was the year that the internet was first opened to commerce, and still five years before I was to see a computer for the first time.

The fissure in these articles appears to me most clearly in the idea of the author. Brent’s discussion of the “rhetoric of reading” relies very heavily on the background presence of an author. He writes:

“However, texts refer not just to the world but to a world-view; not to an unmediated state of existence but to the author's perception of the state of things. There are therefore two steps between the world and the reader's perception of it: the author's interpretation of the world, and the reader's interpretation of the author's text. The process of reading, then, is not just the interpretation of a text but the interpretation of another person's worldview as presented by a text.”

But what, then, of texts with no author? Wikipedia is so multi-authored that the author ceases to exist – the text is ever-changing and endlessly open. Thus it breaks down the relationship of author to reader as put forth by Brent – there is no authorial perception, because the author cannot be pinpointed. Brent stresses that “the interaction between reader and text must be seen as being in the service of a larger process: making contact with the mind of another human being.” All right – how about a hundred minds? A thousand minds? A million? Wikipedia is an authorless space – no one takes credit, no one defers to anyone else, and the reader has essentially the same power as an author would; the ability to change the text at will.

Furthermore, Purdy discusses Wikipedia’s adherence to the idea of a Neutral space – where does Brent’s ideas of persuasion fit into this? If the text is authorless and purportedly neutral, how can we tweak Brent’s “rhetoric of reading” to resonate with this? The internet is, at times, an authorless space – there is a constant push-pull of sources and an almost never-ending wealth of information. Indeed, haven’t people called this the Information Age?
“It is, of course, possible to read for simple information retrieval,” Brent tells us, “building up a repertoire of disciplinary knowledge for no immediate purpose other than to pass a test. However, the rhetorical model of reading suggests that this method of stocking a repertoire is severely impoverished. We build and modify our repertoires more actively by participating in the "textual economy" of producing and consuming texts in pursuit of answers to questions – in the academic context, by writing papers based on research.”

Perhaps there is a different sort of “textual economy” at work in Wikipedia, then. People trade facts and dates and interpretations back and forth until something is briefly settled, only to be traded again for something newer, better. There is most certainly an active participation, which is one of the things Purdy likes best about Wikipedia – an equal dispersal of power between reader and author, the possibility to impact the text as you read it.

I keep stressing to my students the importance of being active, critical readers –Don’t take things at face value, I tell them. Use your own ideas to assess and interpret the ideas of others. And this is very much in keeping with Brent’s idea of rhetorical reading – the awareness that you are being persuaded will help keep you decide whether or not you want, in fact, to be persuaded by a particular text. It is also relevant to Wikipedia, where anyone can edit information at any time. I’d love to give Purdy’s article to my students and have them troll around the site looking for articles to edit, if only as an exercise in active reading – looking for places where their knowledge can augment or surpass the available knowledge, or even just support it.

I'm a Wikipedian, and so can you!

Purdy's chapter on the benefits of using Wikipedia, both as source and research model, provides for several levels of discussion:

Firstly, Purdy's decision to have the text available over the Internet is a clear sign of his own commitment to online content. Pair this with his inclusion (which I thought to be a genius bit of idea-marketing) of screenshots of the Wikipedia article Web 2.0 (including the brief description) and you get a strong sense that Purdy is embracing the collaborative or communal aspects of Wikipedia, New Media, and the Internet more generally. This, I think, is as important a reading of Purdy as any other that I will offer, as his insistence that "some of what happens in making effective contributions to Wikipedia parallels some of what happens in producing effective research-based writing," is clearly an attempt to analogize what happens on Wikipedia to the knowledge-generating aspect of conventional academic discourse (211). And, if I am not mistaken, this is Purdy's attempt to draw these two processes more closely together, in a way that will benefit both communities. (I realize I'm making some distinction between the 'academic' community and the community of Wikipedians, but I don't think that it is at all obvious that the two are not distinct. In fact, Purdy's writing of the article is a call for students, and perhaps less obviously, teachers and professional academics to participate in the Wikipedia format. However, there is the acknowledgement that students already participate, albeit, in a more naive way; and so the article seeks to address this, both from the academic perspective but also the Wikipedian.)

Secondly, Purdy's insistence that readers actively participate in, or, at the very least, read and acknowledge the Discussion tab of a Wikipedia article is key to helping demystify Wikipedia for students. If students can be encouraged to see how the sausage gets made then, hopefully, they will think twice before throwing it in their stew! Additionally, and this gets back to the first point, by reading the Discussion page students can become aware of the "debates, questions, and absences" in the article, thereby witnessing the process of knowledge generation (215).

Thirdly, and most practically, I think Purdy does a service for other instructors by delineating the parts of Wikipedia, how they function together, and what that means to the final product, i.e. article. After reading the piece I immediately wanted to give copies to my students. I agree with Purdy that, "it is more helpful to address ways to use it effectively than to ignore it (and ignoring it precludes some potentially beneficial uses of Wikipedia anyway)" (205). In this connection I think it wise to explicitly deal with Wikipedia, and online content more generally, rather than ignoring it, or trying to correct each student abuse of Wikipedia individually.

In connection with Purdy's article I wanted to highlight a few quotes from Doug Brent's Reading as Rhetorical Invention:
Knowledge, Persuasion, and the
 Writing of Research-Based Writing in order to highlight some of the key aspects alive in both readings:

In connection with Brent's concept of a "rhetoric of reading," Wikipedia not only offers students and teachers a way to expressly recognize the knowledge-generating aspects of the research process, but also to witness it, and put it into practice. More importantly, the community aspect of Wikipedia offers a clear line to what Brent sees as the "larger process" a rhetoric of reading could help us to understand, "making contact with the mind of another human being." I offer Brent's definition of a rhetoric of reading:

"In common with any theory of reading, it must be able to account for the first stage of the reading act: the creation of meaning from symbols on paper. However, as a rhetoric of reading, it will account for this process in the context of the rhetorical framework. This means that the interaction between reader and text must be seen as being in the service of a larger process: making contact with the mind of another human being" (Brent Ch. 1).

In connection with the idea of web-based, multi-contributor content Brent proposes to us the idea of "virtual work":

"2. Being persuaded begins with evoking a virtual work from a text, a virtual work that can legitimately differ from reader to reader.

3. This virtual work--loosely put, the "meaning" of the text--is evoked as a transaction between the text itself and the reader's personal repertoire of associations and knowledge, the rhetorical situation, and the shared verbal meanings collectively attached to the words of the text by the reader's linguistic community. The overarching guide in this process is the reader's attempt to impose a coherent and unified meaning on the text" (Brent Ch. 3).

This concept of "virtual work" is mirrored by the content production of a Wikipedia article, where a literal virtual work is produced, "evoked", and where "meaning" is produced through an online "transaction between the text itself and the reader's personal repertoire of associations and knowledge, the rhetorical situation, and the shared verbal meanings collectively attached to the words of the text by the reader's linguistic community." In other words, Purdy's advice to engage the discussion page of a Wikipedia article is a way for students to come to understand and reflect upon their own rhetorical reading strategies.

Lastly, I just wanted to give one quote from Brent as a way to mirror or suss-out some of the salient features of Purdy's essay, especially as it regards "Using Wikipedia As A Process Guide" (211). Again, I'm making the connection that I made above, regarding an analogy between the Wikipedia-process and the knowledge-generating aspects of academic discourse. So, In conclusion, I leave you with this quote from Brent:

"We build and modify our repertoires more actively by participating in the "textual economy" of producing and consuming texts in pursuit of answers to questions--in the academic context, by writing papers based on research. Therefore, to delay immersing students in research until their repertoire is formed is to deny them access to one of the most important of the processes that form it. This is clearly a self-defeating proposition" (Brent Ch. 5).

Putting the Eco in Ecocomposition

“Global warming isn’t real, you know,” a student announced. Of course this assertion was intended to make me flustered and start a ruckus. Did it work? Maybe a little. The discussion stopped short of a ruckus, and the question was not nearly enough to engender a full-fledged flustering. This was an amazing opportunity to lead the student to an awareness of the ways in which his personal experiences, ideas and social contexts inform his view and perception of the world. Dobrin and Weisser claim that, “By exposing students to this multitude of perspectives, we can hope to help them develop mature positions of their own” (582). The student held a very firm position, yet he was not aware of the forces that led him to the formation of his belief.

The idea that who you are is inevitably and intricately linked to what you write has been embraced by composition theorists since the 1970s and 1980s. Dobrin and Weisser discuss the way that environment shapes the writer in various ways. It “expanded the way we thought of identity, asserting that it emerges not just from the internal processes of the individual, but also from a wider variety of influences: the social conventions we share with other human beings” (567). Drew enriches this idea by bringing attention to the “power of the conditions of that authorship” (65). The writer must also consider the context of the environment in which he or she is writing.

The eco in ecocomposition relates to this idea of individual and shared writing environments. The prefix points to the idea that place and its relationship to the individual are critical categories that influence the language we choose to use to construct our thoughts and ideas. Drew enriches this notion through her description of the student as a sovereign individual passing through in one of many spaces that they will inhabit in a lifetime, “By reimagining students as travelers we may construct a politics of place that is more likely to include students in the academic work of composition, and less likely to continue to identify and manage students as discursive novices” (Drew 60).

Ecocomposition relates to ecology in a way that is distinct from ecocriticism. While ecocriticism is a place-based frame of literary analysis, ecocomposition deals with the production of written discourse. It is closely tied to the traditional definition of ecology. In fact, Dobrin and Weisser cite Ernst Haeckel’s 1866 definition of ecology, “the study of all the complex interrelationships referred to by Darwin as the conditions of the struggle for existence” (572). and then suggest that this definition is interchangeable with the definition of contemporary composition studies.

The “eco” points to this notion that an understanding of our physical place in the world is essential to understanding not only the way we write and shape our world, but also composition as a whole. Our “Identity—and how it is manifested through discourse—is shaped by more than social conventions and is also influenced by our relationships with particular locations and environments. The inclusion of ecological and environmental perspectives in composition theory, we argue, is essential to the discipline’s continued growth and development. Composition’s roots do indeed tap into ecological sciences” (Dobrin and Weisser 567).

Owens suggests most powerfully a social duty to participate in the various places that we inhabit and to challenge the trajectory of that environment. Academic institutions have a duty to educate on this, the most important duty entrusted to us due to our cognizance of the situation, our ability to influence, and our duty as citizens of this particular environment. We must “take the existing information on sustainability and begin inventing ways of applying this information to our work as teachers and scholars so as to invite collaboration and exchange between faculty and students” (Owens 33).

I answered my student’s bold claim with a request that he consider other reliable sources and research his hypothesis with a discerning eye. My response didn’t totally miss the mark. However, by proposing that he take into consideration the myriad “attitudes, ideas, ideologies, and perspectives that pertain to place or location,” I could work toward the goal of increasing his critical awareness of the world and his place in it (Dobrin and Weisser 582).

Ecocomp and Ecocrit and etc.

Hi folks! Thanks for letting me join you in the blogosphere.

(I'm not entirely clear what's going on - I think I'm supposed to commenting on the ecocomp readings, but since Mackenzie commented on the same thing last week, maybe I'm a week off...? If I'm out of line, somebody straighten me out! )

Anyhow, I'm just going to toss a few ideas out there about the readings that we did - parts of which I liked, and parts of which I could have done without.

I wanted first to start with a general comment about a trend apparent throughout the readings. On page 577, Dobrin and Weisser work themselves into a bit of a tizzy in their effort to separate ecocomposition and ecocriticism: "Several reviewers of our work have insisted that ecocomposition be treated as a subdiscipline of ecocriticism. It is not. Ecocomposition borrows from ecocriticism , but grows on its own." I think this movement is appropriate - separating the two disciplines - but I also think that implicit in their argument in the notion that teachers engaged in teaching ecocomp are already familiar with ecocrit, and can draw on that knowledge to inform their teaching of writing. Ecocrit is the investigation of the way nature/ecology etc. appear in writing that has already been written; ecocomp investigate how we could and should write about the same subjects, now and in the future. But if a writer, for instance, wants to be the next great American playwrite, they wouldn't embark on the project without first reading the canon of playwrites that have already made their mark, and then determining how they'd like to write similarly, or better, or differently. The same goes with ecocomposition - it's very hard to change the direction of a field without first acquainting oneself with where we've already been.

This is, of course, a round-about way of saying that everyone should read some ecocrit, and get themselves familiar with this conversation that we're all joining. In fact, the book that Dobrin and Weisser mention - Glotfelty and Fromm's Ecocriticism Reader - is a good place to start; I've read it before, I'm rereading it again at the moment, and it's remarkably applicable to this conversation.

I wouldn't bring this up, save for the fact that while they don't acknowledge it, Dobrin and Weisser draw heavily on ideas put forth by some of ecocrit's big names in the past 20, 30, or even 40 years. (In fact, they trot out as revolutionary social theories first posited by Karl Mannheim in the 1920s and 30s, but that's beside the point.) The point is that they reference ideas that have been on the table for a while in the world of ecocrit, and to understand these ideas fully, one should delve into the original (just as we have delved, with much contortion and discomfort, into Marilyn Cooper's early article on ecocomp, postmodern quagmire that it is.) Lynn White's article "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis" (found in the Ecocrit Reader, and written in 1967) gets to a lot of the points that Dobrin and Weisser stress: our big problem is how we view nature, we need to rethink how we talk about nature, we need to reorganize American political thought through writing, etc. Also useful are Joseph Meeker's "The Comic Mode," and Ursula Le Guin's "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction," both of which investigate how we tell stories, and how we can look to ecology as an inspiration for how better to tell these stories. I won't harp on this point anymore, but I think it's a useful one to consider.

Another observation, perhaps more useful for our classrooms, comes out of Dobrin and Weisser, and Owens as well: if we want to teach ecocomposition effectively, we have to move away from the limiting phrase "nature writing." This phrase simply perpetuates a dialectic (culture/nature) in which humans generally operate outside of nature, but occasionally mosey out into nature, where they contemplate and ruminate and scribble little notes. (I taught a 300-level Environmental Writing and Lit class here at the U last fall, and that was one of the most consistent comments my students had: "Thoreau's writing is cool and all, but did he actually do anything? Annie Dillard too - I mean, who has time to just sit around in a cabin and write? What about the rest of us?") I think it's imperative to get our students beyond the idea that the only writing about ecology and the environment is traditional "nature writing." Ecological writing, on the other hand, does just what Cooper suggests, and allows us not only to write in an ecological way (as in, engaged with a larger system), but allows us to think in an ecological way as well. We must make it apparent in as many ways possible that thinking ecologically/sustainably is not a specialized, narrowing way of thinking, but rather a broadening, all-encompassing, all-considering way of thinking. I really like Dobrin and Weisser's suggestion to use the internet as an example of this, and allow students to think as agents within a web, not writers observing from a distance.

So, how do we do this? Obviously, it's a hard thing to get our students thinking in new and abstract terms, especially with thousands of years of history working against us. But, it helps that there are other folks out in the world that are heading towards and thinking about the same goals that we are. I think it's really useful to allow our students to see that these broad concepts (sustainability, etc.) are visible and accessible in everyday life, and that people are "ecocomposing" all the time. The best resource I've found for this is Orion Magazine's column called "Making Other Arrangements" in which readers send in 500-word essays about how they're aiming for sustainability in their own lives. It's all really readable, and it's also really helpful that there is also an online commentary component to these, if you wanted to use that as an example of an "ecological" connection (i.e. a community is creating a discourse about these ideas). I had my students read a bunch of these, and analyze them not only for content, but for writing and rhetoric as well.

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/list/C61/

Ecocomposition and Identity

Dobrin and Weisser “assert that identity and how it is manifested through discourse is shaped by more than social conventions and is also influenced by our relationships with particular locations and environments” (567) and that, in light of this, ecological and environmental perspectives must be included to insure that composition studies thrives and remains relevant. Also, they assert eco-composistion has an impact on our culture’s survivability:  “understanding these relationships is crucial to survival” (573). 

Maybe it’s just my combative nature, but I have a difficult time buying that composition and writing, in practical terms, have as much to do with identity formation as they claim. Drew raises the question acutely: 

“What may be problematic, however, in our current thinking about the place of discursive learning, is that students often exist for compositionists exclusively within the classroom, when the material reality of their lives, and the spaces they inhabit, would suggest that this is only a partial picture at best. In addition, if the places of discursive pedagogy are not only multiple, but in conflict as well, then the classroom itself may be more complex, and simultaneously less effective as a location of learning than we might have assumed” (59-60). 

Identity is a malleable thing that changes and reacts to most everything we do. Aren’t the things people engage with the most commitment more influential on their identities? For our students, is writing as much a part of their day to day activities as we would hope? Do they engage in writing and inquiry through writing enough to influence their identities? Don’t they mostly learn in environments outside the classroom, and even outside of the theoretical environments we as teachers attempt to establish? Aren’t our students spending more of their time socializing and watching television than on our writing assignments?  I guess what I fail to see is whether time spent writing is more formative than time doing other things? 

“Costanza and Daly define a social trap as "any situation in which the short-run, local reinforcements guiding individual behavior are inconsistent with the long-run, global best interest of the individual and society" (57). When fashion, consumer addictions, laziness, and social insecurity induce all of us—students and faculty alike—to fall into social traps of unsustainability, then a curriculum that does not provide the tools and the time to identify and critique the implications of such traps becomes a trap in itself. To address this cycle requires recognizing the degree to which social traps infiltrate our institutions” (Owens, 29). 

Owens describes the idea of social traps. As teachers but also members of an unsustainable culture, are we capable of setting anything but social traps? Is sustainability antithetical to our culture? In practice, how do we even begin to design a curriculum that is outside our consumer culture enough to be thought of as sustainable? Does Owens provide us with real solutions to the problems raised by the other readings?