Little bit of a side note… I contacted the registrars office this morning to see if they had any information about when the University of Houston started documenting Mexican-American students and they referred me to the Institutional Research Office. So at the moment I am waiting to hear back from them. Hopefully they have some useful info.
As far as my research goes, I completely forgot that I had checked out several books from our library at TAMUCC that specifically dealt with Mexican American in Houston. The titles of the books are; Ethnicity in the Sunbelt: A History of Mexican Americans in Houston, Brown, Not White: School integration and the Chicano Movement in Houston, and Chicanas and Chicano in School (which does not specifically focus on Houston but more of an overall perspective).
Ethnicity in the Sunbelt: A History of Mexican Americans in Houston
The book is divided into time periods from 1528 to the 1980s. I think the second section of the book will be most beneficial to our research because it focuses from 1930 to 1960 and the section is called “The Mexican American Generation”. It explains the need for change in the city during that period and a post-war community. There are also several tables and graphs included in the text that further explain race populations in Houston, the different social classes represented at the time, and percentages of white people with Spanish surnames.
Brown, Not White: School integration and the Chicano Movement in Houston
The entire book will benefit the research because it explains the struggles of Mexican-orgin people and how they fought for rights in public schools. It also discusses how they established identities through all the struggles and the various movements within the city that allowed Mexican-Americans the rights that they have today. Included in the text are illustrations and pictures of rallys and picketers which display and strong sense of cultural pride.
Chicanas and Chicano in School
With the two other books focusing on Mexican-American movements in Houston, this particular book can be used as a reference or comparison to other parts of the country and how they handled similar situations. It discusses children in Los Angeles, their school lessons and insights of progress.
The Sexes
In Elizabethada A. Wright and S. Michael Halloran’s essay, the two discuss teaching methods in American to 1900 and specifically refer to the styles of John Brinsley and Catharine Beecher. Both Brinsley and Beecher share ideas that students learn through basic mechanics and writing by practice, they stress the need for student’s vocabulary, skills, and understanding the text, and both address the need to study important authors to obtain those skills. But their differences in pedagogies is much more interesting than their similarities. Brinsley teaching method to obtaining “purity” was though the practice of “emulating classical models and internalizing the grammatical and rhetorical forms of the classical languages,” while Beecher’s method to attaining “purity” is through examination and analysis of writers in English (216). I also find the fact that Brinsley was concerned with teaching boys and Beecher with girls is fascinating, because pedagogies tend to vary when they become sex specific, just as the essay points out that Brinsley preferred texts to be read aloud and Beecher chose aloud and in silent.
Writing in the Middle Class
I found this section of the essay most fascinating because it explained how people of the middle class who were not in school were able to teach themselves to read and write, especially women and nonwhites. The system of giving children the opportunity to learn because books were available to them is the whole reason that the middle class had a chance in education. Of course at some point the upper class would try to take their education back and the concept of “correct” English came into play, but with Adams Sherman Hill developed “correctness” that appealed to the middle classes that gave “students the social mobility they sought” (231). The essay points out James Berlin’s view of the relationship between the middle class and the rhetoric of correctness:
English studies is a highly overdetermined institutional formation, occupying a site at the center of converging economic, social, political, and cultural developments at the end of the nineteenth century, developments that continue to affect today (231)
In Stewart’s essay, he discusses the emphasis on English departments and how they favor the study of English and American literature, composition is for graduate courses, and speech and linguistics are in other departments altogether. He also says that departments will offer “studies of film, women’s studies and technical writing…but these studies are superficial and often transitory departures from what English departments perceive their main business to be” (121). I disagree with Stewart’s comment and fully believe English studies embody all of these elements no matter what level they are being taught at. Yes, at one point English department’s favored literature, but it is now moving in a completely different direction, while still maintaining its literature upbringing.
I have to take a time out away from English for a moment and show some love to everyone at the Caller Times. The fatal shooting this morning was an ongoing story and everyone did a really great job contributing to it.
Police fatally shoot man outside Corpus Christi convenience store
In Harvard’s attempt to push writing instruction in secondary schools, they ended up devalued the need for it in first-year composition. Private academics were the basis for a student’s preparation of college, so if colleges wanted to improve student quality, they would have to raise admission standards by starting at the schools. So now the preparatory schools were faced with teaching English and writing to their students and would be evaluated on a public level. Of course, the classic and common mistake of grading students on spelling, punctuation, and grammar was made and the once imposed teaching on the prep schools turned into blaming them for their writing instruction.
Not only did Harvard have problems with writing instruction, but also the issue of taking away the classics. Charles W. Eliot’s privileging of English and modern languages was an attack on the classics and took time away from them. One reason for this was that the “classics simply weren’t doing their job in producing entering students who could handle English well enough. The traditional claim of the classicists was that their subjects provided the mental discipline students needed to succeed in all their subjects” (28). Personally, as much as I would like to disagree with this, being a fan of the classics, I have to agree that the narrow-mindedness of studying and learning only the classics restricts the student from obtaining a broader prospective of the English studies. In 1872, Professor Robert Hill proposed that English should come at the freshman level of a student’s course instead of the second year. In order to do this he established a course that would meet three times a week for three hours. The third hour consisted of no outside classroom work and would give freshman “glimpses of the world in which they supposedly lived” (31).
Adams Sherman Hill’s essay focused on a more serious effort to teach children to use their native tongue “correctly and intelligently” (47) and to provide the students with practice in writing and speaking it. The goal was to have students become familiar with a few familiar and recognizable works in English literature to help with methods of though and expression. Institutions did not accept the process and methods initially and it actually took convincing by providing a basis and breakdown of coursework. Within the new methods, there was a high demand for learning the mother-tongue, English.
Till he knows how to write a simple English sentence, he should not be allowed to open a Latin grammar. Till he can speak and write his own language with tolerable correctness, he should not be set down before the words of another language. Whatever knowledge he acquires, he should be able to put into clear and intelligible English (51)
It seems that both essays argue for one thing or another, but never a commonality of teaching methods. One says the classics are not enough to teach students because they do not allow a broader understanding of the world around them. The other argues in a demand for student’s fully comprehending the English language and that they should not speak or write in any other languages until they have mastered English, which is the exact opposite of allowing them to open their minds into other perspectives. By forcing English as the mother-tongue, they are diminishing the outside perspective of the world around them.
The first part of the reading is entitled “Emerson and Romantic Rhetoric,” which I have to admit was not at all what I thought it would be about. The composition/rhetoric side of the classics has completely thrown me off course because I dive head first into a topic and it turns out to be something that I never expected. For instance, the reading focuses on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s perception of rhetorical theory and how he was a follower of Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. Because of his loyalty to Blair, Emerson incorporated oration with other forms of writing for one purpose; to discover and communicate truth. According to Robert Cushman, the individual must “discover truth on their own, in their private, visionary pursuits,” (44) and they must have the urge and desire to discover it or it will never come. Language and metaphor can help that discovery to obtain ultimate truth. Roberta K. Ray explains the use of the metaphor as ”the exploitation of the outer world to explain the inner world of mind and spirit” (44). Ray says that human’s existence relies upon finding God, and only then will man grasp the higher truth. As Ray calls it, “truth is a state of mind… the communicator can serve as a midwife helping other to give birth to their own thoughts” (45). The communicator has the power, through language, to serve others as a gateway. They can show the path, but not teach it. It has to come from within. Once that relationship is established, man can find truth at the intersection of the inner and outer, the object and subject, idea and matter. This is where language comes into play. Emerson explains that “words are signs of concrete objects” (47), therefore natural language would be the only way to express the realm of truth. He says:
Without the language of the sensory, the ideal cannot be name manifest. Conversely, without the ideal, the world of nature is mere sense data without order of meaning. The point of intersection between outside and inside is language (48)
In other words, truth cannot be obtained without language, nor can one express truth without natural language. According to Wittgenstein, “the limits of ones’ language are the limits of one’s world” (53).
In order to expand language, one must open their senses and explore the world. This exploration begins in schools where children are given the opportunity to express themselves through learning patterns with concrete objects or illustrations. In John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education, he says, “education should proceed according to the child’s mental development, beginning with the child’s own sense perceptions and experiences of the physical world” (61). This exploration becomes the learning tool and helps the child establish their natural language. Their creativity is too often overshadowed by the babbling teachers who lead by example. Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi believed that life educates and “children should never be told what they can find out for themselves” (64). This theory inspired Pestalozzi-Mayo-Frost involvement of children’s lessons. Examples from lesson one of the 1839 Easy Exercises advises instructors to allow children to observe various items and hold them in their hands. Once they have done so, questions are asked such as what have you observed and what can you say that it is? The point of the lessons is that there is no wrong answer and gives children the chance to explore their mind for words that describe what they just experienced. This is the beginning of the search for truth.
What began as verbal expression and studies, has evolved, yes I chose to say evolved, into a study of textual analysis, rhetoric and writing. English was originally known as a Professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory at Yale and later Brown University, and was a way to address the public with rhetoric. This inevitably caused the overlook of student’s spelling and grammar because “no one at the time paid much attention to spelling” (5). Since 1770, “English teachers have not found any method to ensure that graduates of their courses would use what were considered to be correct grammar and spelling” (6). Scholes says that a number of things contribute to this; one because ‘correct’ writing never existed and another is that writing ‘correctly’ is not necessary for success in life and were more concerned with the oral performance and the oral rhetoric was valued above other modes of language.
In 1905, the transition began. The oratory art was dead and composition and literature grew as the subject matter. “Instead of reading oration and producing oratory, students began to read literature and produce criticism–and the stage was set for the twentieth-century developments in the field of English” (11).
I think in both the Lundsford and Ouzange, and Anzaldua essays the whole concept is that there is no longer an “us” versus “them” binary. It is the combining of the two that borderlands is working toward as a composition and postcolonial progression. Lundsford and Ouzange’s essay, discusses how postcolonial studies have a tendency to leave out the student voice and the problem is that it focuses “too exclusively on high theory,” but on the same level than “composition is accused of… consistently privileging practice over theory” (3). This dichotomy is what borderlands aims to resolve as Anzaldua further explains in her interview.
Anzaldua describes herself as “Shiva” by explaining that she has multiple arms an legs that dip into various worlds such as brown, white, straight, gay, literary, and working. The “us” and “them”dichotomy no longer exists because, as she explains, we are all made up through various labels. Meaning one label does no suffice in describing an identity.
I also appreciate her perspective on using various methods and languages and methods when writing. Her discussion on code switching is something that I often consider when writing in languages other than English. She makes a valid point when she asks, “…am I going to lose those people who I want to affect, to change? Am I going to lose respect of my peers–who ar other writers and other artists and other academicians–when I change too much, when I change not only the style, but also the rhetoric, the way that this is done?” (41). I believe the switching of the language gives the writing a different perspective and interpretation. Personally, when I read a text that includes the Spanish language I tend to focus on the specific Spanish words and try to translate it without having to look at end notes or footnotes. By doing this, and understanding what the author is saying, I instantly possess a deeper connection with the text, which I think it what Anzaludua is trying to accomplish with her writing.
M.D. Anderson Library
On Friday, I spent about 5 hours at the University of Houston’s special collections and archive reading room for one reason… to find any documentation that had to do with the first Hispanics/Mexican-Americans/Latinos that attended the university. Going into this study, I didn’t think I would have as hard of a time as I did. With programs such as Latin American studies and Mexican-American studies that the university now offers, I thought there would be a plethora of information, but I could not have been more wrong. The reasoning for this is because when Mexican-Americans first started attending the university, there was no documentation labeling that they were Mexican-American. Instead, they were labeled as white and flew right under the radar, which is interesting because in the 1950s, the university was anti-integration and refused to allow blacks, but an exception was made for Mexican-Americans?
When I got to campus, I met with Richard Dickerson, the university archivist, who I have to give credit to. Without his help I would have been completely lost at where to begin. He requested that I look into the President’s Office Papers, Board of Regent’s minutes, the campus newspaper called the Daily Cougar, and a faculty newsletter called Acta Diurna, as a starting point. Of course, I had already received a couple of important dates such as 1963, when the university became public, which helped establish somewhat of a time line and where to look within the documents.
The Daily Cougar in Special Collections
Each of the mentioned papers is divided into years, which are placed in different boxes, and when I say boxes I mean file folder boxes. Then each box is organized by subject, so depending on what you are searching for you could easily go through lots and lots of folders and boxes. Just to give you an example, the President’s Office papers had at least 44 boxes, there were more, but that’s as far as I got.
So five hours later, what did I learn?
Not a whole lot. I feel like I have barely scratched the surface of this research and need to do a whole lot more. I did find a picture in one 1956 edition of the Daily Cougar of a basketball player with the last name Rodriguez, so that gives me proof that Mexican-Americans were attending the university that year. I also looked at the course catalogs dating back to 1950 and was able to compare English, history, Latin American studies, and language courses offered and how they changed over the years.
So where do I go from here? Back to the books, the research, and the internet.
To begin with, I find it fascinating that I personally lack the historical knowledge of something that I have devoted my time, effort and future studies to; literature. Winifred Bryan Horner discusses the uprising of literature dating prior to 1800, except it was no known as literature, but instead as classical offered through rhetoric courses in Scottish universities. It was rejected, scorned and overlooked, and the terminology was proof of that. For example, the Greek word of rhetoric “hypokrisis” is the root of the modern word “hypocrisy,” and rhetoric to the layperson means empty and insincere speech (2). Enough said.
The 1970s is when that began to change. Composition scholars turned to rhetoric because they were in search of methods to teach writing. And so began the actual desire for a scholarship on rhetoric, and as I have stated in my title, “They can blame it on the Scots;” ‘they’ in reference to those that continue to diminish the value and importance of the literature, rhetoric and English as a field all together.
Which brings me to the center of all rhetoric, at least it’s the center of my world of rhetoric, the section entitled “The Development of Women’s Rhetorics.” There was a lack of secondary and university education for women, which was coined “superficial information” (985) due to the career restrictions that were placed upon women. According to social historian David Cressy, “only 20 percent of women were sufficiently literate to sign their names, even though the Renaissance had improved opportunities for their education” (986). Women were barred from law, religion and political offices and the debate of how to educate women continued. In the eighteenth century, both male and female became literate though reading and writing that was taught in the home. By the end of the nineteenth century schools such as Iowa, Cornell, Smith and Wellesley gave women the opportunity to study rhetoric devoted to classical importance and under women teachers. Women studying at universities led to education improvements, to public speaking and forming their own rhetorical practices. Scholar Karlyn Kohrs Campbell suggested, “women’s rhetoric was based not on culturally dominant values and well-established occasions for oratory but on strategies ‘to subvert popular belief and to overcome unusually significant persuasive obstacles…” (987). What happens then? Women were once again shoved in the domestic sphere where they would be too pure, pious and submissive to male authority. Let me just take a moment to re-evaluate this statement and ask the simple question; are we as women not still facing the same sexist obstacles in today’s society? It seems that no matter how far we have come, no matter the degree of education we receive, or the level of intelligence we achieve, there will always be the underlying shadow of male superiority that people will stereotype women to. A little bit of a banter, but true nonetheless.
