Responding to Gee and Delpit

Blog entry: Gee is the one who begins the chain of utterances. He tells Delpit and other readers about the idea of primary and secondary discourses and how they can affect the student and in what ways they do so. He is broaching a new idea and giving it out to the world to see if he can change a few minds or receive criticism in return. Delpit offers Gee criticism of some of his ideas or moderate adaptation of definitions of terms. I agree with Delpit’s side of how a student can transform the secondary/dominant discourse to further their own exploits and work the system. It is up to the teacher to teach them about the dominant discourse (in a way that is still respectful to the home discourse) so that they will have access to that tool and be able to transform, not necessarily acquire (unless they want to) the dominant discourse. That way, students will be able to gain power, further careers and relationships and succeed in school because they will be able to interact with more people. It is like using a universal language, it promotes communication between groups who may not otherwise be able to engage in conversation because their home discourse it so different. They can then rely on a more well known discourse to converse. This seems rather important to show teachers the importance of teaching the “superficial” features of grammar and mechanics so that students will be able to use those tools to help them. It is not empowering to a student for a teacher to “not-teach,” or refuse to teach grammar and mechanics so as not to offend the home discourse. It is actually restrictive. These articles seem to enlighten me to the fact that grammar and mechanics, while boring, are extremely important and useful at all stages of life. I just want to know how to pass on this belief to students as well as how to not offend the home discourse in my attempt to show why a dominant discourse is useful, but they don’t have to use only the dominant discourse.

Quickwrite #1 The varying terms that Gee uses in his article relate together to create an argument about the meshing of home and school cultures. Gee utilizes customized terms such as primary and secondary discourses to identify the discrepancy between them, if there is one. Not all primary and secondary discourses differ between students, but for the most part, I believe that they do. Then Gee moves further into the two discourses to see how they relate and differ to each other and how students either move fluidly, statically or don’t move at all between the two. He notes that a child may be able to acquire the secondary discourse and adapt into it and learn it through acquisition. They can go through this by being in Gee’s version of apprenticeship, in which a child is practicing to acquire another discourse. This then plays into an identity kit, in which a student identifies his or her beliefs via a discourse. This plays into the use of dominant and non-dominant literacies and meta-knowledge, all of which are used to get ahead in life. These relate to literacy teaching because this is how a student thinks and may be a cause of a struggle and is a concern when learning how to teach varying types of students. It also shows how the varying levels and places that students are at can contribute and affect the student’s future and why literacy is so important.

Quickwrite #2 Delpit uses her terms to serve the same purpose as Gee, I think. Although, we could think of Gee as the dominant/secondary discourse and she is adapting or “transforming” his basic concepts of terms and using them to serve her own purpose of responding to Gee and pointing out the flaws that she sees in his argument. Delpit’s terms also show how students’ multitudes of discourses that they have access to affect how they learn, how they function in society and how they are either excluded or included in a community due to their hold on a discourse. All of these things are crucial to being able to teach literacy by adapting the discourse to the student as well as the student to the discourse. Delpit’s main problem with Gee seems to be that she believes not-teaching, or choosing to not teach students grammar so as to empower the student and not critique their home discourse, is a cop out. She mentions teachers showing students how to “cheat” the system by giving them the language and discourse tools to work the system. It is more showing the students how to transform the dominant discourse to help them through life, whether it is in schools, in jobs, in personal relationships.