Blog #5: Designing Writing Assignments for Working Class Students at the College Level

October 17, 2016

Mack, Nancy. "Ethical Representations of Working-Class Lives: Multiple Genres, Voices, and Identities." (2006) Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture. (6)1: 53-78.   Online.

Nancy Mack’s central contention is “that working-class students need writing assignments in which they can occupy an authoritative position . . . that is not discounted as underprepared or limited but (is) a respected, working-class-academic identity (54).”  She goes on to say that the types of papers traditionally assigned to working class students frequently discount their “experiences, histories, and ways of making knowledge,” focusing instead on topics with which they may have little experience or interest. I would suggest the way the academy creates these barriers to students who identify as working class is the same way it creates them for other students who are outside of what she calls the “competitive, elite culture.” She points out the unacknowledged stigma attached to working class students, the assumption of an inherent “deficit or liability;” the same assumptions that attach to many students of color entering major universities. These assumptions ripple out in many directions, impacats of which are to disempower, undermine, and alienate students, often resulting in their dropping out before they graduate. The point here is not to say that all of this can be attributed to how students are treated in composition courses; however, Mack cites a report showing that the skills working class students worry about the most are their writing skills, and that marginalized students, among whom are women, working class, and students of color, leave “university because of their perception that their writing is fundamentally unacceptable (56).” To combat this problem, Mack developed a theory that stresses the importance of recognizing the plural identities working class (and other marginalized) students bring with them to the writing table; for example, the struggle of students to reconcile their identities of upwardly mobile students whose use of the language of  the academy is exactly that interpreted by their friends and family as “getting too smart for the rest of us” or in some communities of color, “acting white.” Writing assignments should give students “the discursive space” to create their own academic identity that “legitimates and ethically represents their multiple identities” (60) as workers, students, and all the other identities they bring with them into the classroom. The model Mack describes to do this is a multigenre research project that focuses on either family, community, or “peer group folklore.” She particularly emphasizes the folklore project as an opportunity for students to combine direct one-on-one interviews with academic readings; the final project is presented as multiple pieces of writing from different genres. The final step is what she calls an “expository cover letter” which students use to reflect on the processes they used in creating their project because, as she concludes, “Reflections can help us to connect theory to practice (74).”  Mack’s ability to join theory to concrete classroom assignment is the value of this article and why I think it is useful to other students in terms of creating assignments. She raises issues that must be considered to teach successfully in classrooms with students from a diversity of backgrounds.