Table Of ContentDOCUMENT RESUME
ED 461 859 CS 217 809
AUTHOR Blitz, Michael; Hurlbert, C. Mark
TITLE Letters for the Living: Teaching Writing in a Violent Age.
Refiguring English Studies.
INSTITUTION National Council of Teachers of English, Urbana, IL.
ISBN ISBN-0-8141-2803-3
ISSN ISSN-1073-9637
PUB DATE 1998-00-00
NOTE 186p.
AVAILABLE FROM National Council of Teachers of English, 1111 W. Kenyon
Road, Urbana, IL 61801-1096 (Stock No. 28033-3050: $18.95
members, $25.95 nonmembers). Tel: 800-369-6283 (Toll Free);
Web site http://www.ncte.org.
PUB TYPE Books (010) Opinion Papers (120) Reports Descriptive
(141)
EDRS PRICE MF01/PC08 Plus Postage.
DESCRIPTORS *College Students; Cultural Context; Educational
Cooperation; Higher Education; *Letters (Correspondence);
*Social Environment; *Violence; *Writing Instruction
IDENTIFIERS Personal Experiences; Personal Writing; *Teaching
Perspectives
ABSTRACT
This book takes up issues of violence in the lives of
college students and looks for possibilities of teaching composition as an
act of peace making. Through a variety of writings, the book illustrates
students' experiences on the city streets of New York and in the small mining
and steel towns of western Pennsylvania. One section of the book reports on a
project that linked one author/educator's (Hurlbert) research writing class
and the other author/educator's (Blitz) freshman composition II class. In the
semester-long project, the classes researched and wrote about their own
neighborhoods and the neighborhoods of their interstate partners. The book
states that these two groups of students taught each other about the places
in which they live and the ways in which they live there, and in many cases,
what each learned about the other was "shocking." It also shares with the
reader letters in which the two author/educators reflect upon their work as
teachers, in an effort to understand the personal and cultural implications
of what students write and say. (Contains 101 references.) (NKA)
Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made
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official OERI position or policy. 1
Michael Blitz 8- C. Mark Huribert
( 2
Refiguring English Studies provides a forum for scholar-
Refiguring
ship on English Studies as a discipline, a profession, and
ENGLISH
a vocation. To that end, the series publishes historical
STUDIES work that considers the ways in which English Studies
has constructed itself and its objects of study; investiga-
tions of the relationships among its constituent parts as conceived in
both disciplinary and institutional terms; and examinations of the role
the discipline has played or should play in the larger society and public
policy. In addition, the series seeks to feature studies that, by their form
or focus, challenge our notions about how the written "work" of En-
glish can or should be done and to feature writings that represent the
professional lives of the'discipline's members in both traditional and
nontraditional settings. The series also includes scholarship that con-
siders the discipline's possible futures or that draws upon work in other
disciplines to shed light on developments in English Studies.
Volumes in the Series
David B. Downing, editor, Changing Classroom Practices: Resources for Lit-
erary and Cultural Studies (1994)
Jed Rasula, The American Poetry Wax Museum: Reality Effects, 1940-1990
(1995)
James A. Berlin, Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring College English
Studies (1996)
Robin Varnum, Fencing with Words: A History of Writing Instruction at
Amherst College during the Era of Theodore Baird, 1938-1966 (1996)
Jane Maher, Mina P. Shaughnessy: Her Life and Work (1997)
NCTE Editorial Board: Pat Cordeiro, Bobbi Fisher, Xin Liu Gale, Sarah Hudelson,
Bill McBride, Al leen Pace Nilsen, Helen Poole, Jerrie Cobb Scott, Karen Smith,
chair, ex officio, Michael Greer, ex officio
4
Letters for the Living
Teaching Writing in a Violent Age
Michael Blitz
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
City University of New York
C. Mark Hurlbert
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
National Council of Teachers of English
1111 W. Kenyon Road, Urbana, Illinois 61801-1096
Staff Editor: Kurt Austin
Interior Design: Tom Kovacs for TGK Design
Cover Design: Evelyn C. Shapiro
NCTE Stock Number: 28033-3050
©1998 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved. Printed
in the United States of America.
It is the policy of NCTE in its journals and other publications to provide a forum
for the open discussion of ideas concerning the content and the teaching of En-
glish and the language arts. Publicity accorded to any particular point of view
does not imply endorsement by the Executive Committee, the Board of Direc-
tors, or the membership at large, except in announcements of policy, where such
endorsement is clearly specified.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Blitz, Michael.
Letters for the living: teaching writing in a violent age/Michael Blitz,
C. Mark Hurlbert.
p. cm.(Refiguring English Studies)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-8141-2803-3 (pbk.)
1. English languageRhetoricStudy and teachingSocial aspects
United States. 2. Report writingStudy and teachingSocial aspects
United States. 3. ViolenceUnited States. I. Hurlbert, C. Mark. II Title.
III. Series.
PE1405.U6B58 1998
808'.042'071173dc21 98-13637
CIP
For Mozelle and Terry,
Daina, Roland, Cory, Celine, and Rene
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1. Strangers 1
2. Violence 21
3. Peace 55
4. Letters 89
The IIJP/JJC Interstate Neighborhood Project 94
Letters of Introduction 100
Letters on Neighborhoods 107
Letters on the Neighborhood Book Project 114
Letters of Evaluation 118
5. For the Living 137
Works Cited 171
Index 177
Authors 181
vii
Acknowledgments
As with any book, this one reflects a debt to many people. We want to
thank, first of all, our students who have shared their time with us in
our classrooms and offices, in their writings and projects. Our editor,
Michael Greer, provided just the right blend of humor, vision, enthusi-
asm, patience, and direction to keep us going during a turbulent pro-
cess. Kurt Austin and Zarina Hock guided our manuscript through the
labyrinth. Thanks, also, to Evelyn C. Shapiro and Tom Kovacs for their
design work.
We were the grateful recipients of help, advice, encouragement, and
friendship from Don Byrd.
A number of our friends, as well as colleagues, and graduate and
undergraduate students at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and In-
diana University of Pennsylvania have been particularly supportive of
our mania over the past few years: Louise Krasniewicz, Gerald
Markowitz, Carol Groneman, Jill Norgren, Karen Kaplowitz, Robert
Crozier, Abby Stein, P. J. Gibson, Pat LickLider, Serena Nanda, Geoff
Fairweather, Don Goodman, Betsy Gitter, the members of TWARC
(Teaching the Writing and Reading of Cultures)David Downing, Don
McAndrew, Maurice Kilwein Guevara, Roxann Wheeler, Susan Com-
fort, Gian Pagnucci, Tom Slater, and Elaine WareRosa ly Roffman,
Wendy Carse, Dan Collins, Lai la El-Omari, Don Pardlow, Deloris
Johnson, Immaculee Harushimana, as well as Beth Boquet, Ann Ott,
Janine Rider, Carrie Myers, Karen McCullough, Donna Singleton, Gail
Tayko, John Tassoni, Jim and Kathy Strickland, Manny Savoupolis,
Milagros Vicente, Michele Eodice, Kami Steele, Bob Dandoy, Steve North,
Nancy Mack, Jim Zebroski, Elspeth Stuckey, Bill Webster, Kim Ginther
Webster, Harrison Fisher, Jane McCafferty, Dan Lowe, Jody Hendrickson,
Cal Go lay, Jondi Keane, Marge Byrd, and Rabbi Pincus Miller.
No book the two of us write will be without the traces of thought and
inspiration of Jim Berlin, whose work in composition and cultural stud-
ies opened doors of imagination for us all.
ix
1 Strangers
No more pretending. This is about the living. We don't know who you
are. Can we tell you a story? We are teachers of writing. We want to
change the world. You already know this story. You are in this story. We
think you wrote this story with us. Here's how it goes:
We want to change the world.
We're supposed to change the world.
No one can change the world.
Our students must go "out" and change the world.
Our children will change the world.
Having children and teaching others
has already changed our world.
It's too hard to change the world.
Education should change the world.
We must get out of the way so those who can will change the world.
The wrong people are changing the world.
We are among those who are changing the world.
It's too late to change the world.
It's too early to stop changing the world.
Ours is a society that tolerates violence more and more as a natural part
of life and sees peace more and more as an abstraction. The teaching of
writing is connected to living. Not living in the abstract, but livingand
dying.
What do we find out about living when we read and discuss our stu-
dents' compositions or when we examine our own? What do we find
out about dying? We find that our students face deaths of all kinds
every dayof the body, of spirit, of hope, of desire, of the ability to care.
When we address some of the struggles just to live that our students
face, we also address the tensions that tear at the health of the world. It
is time to ask ourselves: as teachers of composition, are we prepared for
the truly powerful stories our students are ready to tell?
We are going to have to be willing to face the truth that our students
are not only among the living but also among the dying, and, like it or
not, we are fully in the presence of both.
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