Franklin/Education readings
[electronic texts of Franklin: http://www.geocities.com/peterroberts.geo/Relig-Politics/BFrWr.html#bfclws]
Franklin, “Proposals relating to the education of youth in PA” (1749)—also in Labaree 3:397.
[hypertext version: http://www.archives.upenn.edu/primdocs/1749proposals.html
[in B Franklin on Education, TC, 1962]
128: cites Rolling, Method of Teaching and Studying the Belles Lettres, Turnbull, Observations on Liberal Eduacation, as well as Locke
130: ‘that more useful Culture of young Minds”
Note how he plays upon the metaphorical register of culture, suggesting they can now turn from cultivating agriculutre to minds.
But I see here the metaphor of the metonymic education that he will emphasize: just as plants are cultivated, so his proposal for education will focus on a more metonymic register of culture: the contexts of the learning and its purpose; the soil and the flowering.
133: both the useful and the ornamental
[version of lanham and style]
Also note the linking of swimming with letters (footnote): a skill and habit to learn
134: all taught to write a fair Hand.
The first principle—gets to this metonymic register of cultivation.
Not only is hand the metonymy (the synecdoche for writing), but how the learning is to take place, and the understanding of writing itself as a form of working/creating with the hand.
Extended in his comparison to drawing [further in his footnote with reference to Locke]
The metonymic senses of hand (beyond the metonym itself):
Note that it follows the swimming reference, and implication of gesture. Connection to drawing: this is writing as handwriting. Figure as visual sense, (and in more original oratorical sense of the figure one makes).
His extensive footnote on drawing: focuses on this visual sense of figure: note that the argument is that a visual figure/description can be more effective than writing in words. Reinforced with quotation from Locke. This is an anti-iconophobic view: the picture is more engaging and powerful, words merely fleeting [even echoes of Talbot: pictures retain, words are lost] The importance of physical figuration (which would extend to visible presence of oratory, I presume–why franklin is concerned about the manipulation/danger of putting things into words in a/b?
But also note that this is not simply speech over writing (anit-derridean): talking still about figures, about representation. See it rather as a reminder of a material presence in writing, or that will become writing–by way of writing as drawing, as the drawing of figures (and later metonyms, but forgotten (just as iconic figures become dead metaphors (Mitchell): drawing conclusions, impressions, reflections, etc.
These long footnotes as a version of lanham’s looking at–a kind of hypertext here, where the argument is repeatedly broken and reinforced, but thus in which the narrative is not able to seem transparent. Page 134-5 is particularly striking with three footnote quotations from locke: could we imagine this from our students? A kind of return to rhetorical padeia also in terms of commonplace (vs view of originality?)
Measure of Franklin’s ‘realist’ idea, against the classical Latin school tradition: begins not with trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric)–but more practical version we can think of as writing, rithmetic, reading (with the focus on writing as both useful and ornamental.
The second subject refrence, artihmetick, acoounting–further situates the kind of writing, and its connections to his schooling: making figures in writing tied to figures of numbers, accounts (thus writing tutors also arithmetic.
The Locke footnote: the habit of keeping accounts [whose echoes thus connect this to franklin's habit/art of virtue--as writing/accounting the self--all tied up with the rhetoric of 'habit'. Note locke's use of a relevant metonym: 'behind-hand'
The third: language taught by grammar, stiles of writers.
This is also about habit (proper and correct)--but presents, by way of locke, a view that an understanding of grammar must underlie this--and the grammar of his own tongue.
136: quoting locke: still a matter of the 'hand': "handsome or awkward way of expressing'
Key emphasis: learning one's mother tongue. Reference made to Romans learning Latin first--not Greek.
[could tie this in to the problem of English grammar--as it is constructed in 18th c., is still this problem of another tongues, specifically latin, grammar]. And so though the method of learning such grammar may be traditional–the intent is closer to what we think of today as ‘rhetorical grammar’–of not teaching grammar apart from one’s mother/intuitive language.
137: as far as possible methods of instruction he has in mind–cites Rollin in footnote (Belles Lettres first vol.) and suggest he has excellent methods for teaching french to frenchman which are applicable. p. 140, at end of footnote 13, indicates that since Locke’s time, serveral good grammars (for english, not latin) publishd: brightlands, greenwood’s
Whatever the grammar methods–my notion of it as a more progressive/rhetorical grammar is supported in how he turns in the same paragraph to elaborating that language is learned also through writing style, habit of writing (140), handsome expression.
Clear and concise style: yes, the traditional view carried into Strunk and White. But the returned focus on the materialty, the hand, the figure of writing–here also played out in focus on cultivation through imitation (as in franklin’s a/b), the writing of letters (again: think of this as returning to the metonymy, that gets lost in the dead metaphor of “letters”–the writing/shaping of letters). What is new to us in this old view (pace lanham): an understanding of rhetorical–as moving between transparency and mediacy–as embracing an embodiment of writing: handsomeness that comes through the use and training of the hands. [a kind of theatrical anti-theatricality]
The digital link: lanham here comes in with the modeling and demonstration that we see with computer
So, yes, the teaching of grammar; but also an interest and emphasis on idiom and idiomatic understanding of learning and using language: thus also a resistance to the traditional view of grammar still with us (policing and prescribing against the idiomatic) and perhaps also against fears of the latest explosion of idiomatic–in the languages, both useful and artful, of the web.
141: Pronunciation.
Clear view of the rhetorical tradition Lanham has in mind (the oratory that gets lost in later composition), declamation. Note two things in his footnote: clarifies that pronunication for him menas the manner of voice/modulation (back to a more metonymic, embodied view of ‘voice’–a matter of vocal chords. And thus this ‘manner’ is about style as looking at. A point he makes in saying delivery and persuasion come through manner more than matter.Wants more art, less matter. [note, contrary to preseciptive grammar (which has lost this sense of rhetorical padeia): franklin does not define pronunication as correct speech or idiom, but proper use of voice to fit the subject.
Can use this as well to highlight the contradictions in rhetoric that are always there: he is arguing for a theatrical understanding, which best presents itself as natural (fliegelman). But as Lanham argues: the contradiction that is always there is less problematic when it is enacted rather than repressed. Could argue that this same contradiction is evident in BF's technology of virtue: but also that we see him enact it, show its process.
To do: grammar reading
-further explore the kinds of grammar teaching methods franklin would have in mind: rolling, greenwood, other books from the period that focus around this emergence of teaching english grammar. Also then consider how this fits with and challenges the establishment of english grammar (and the difficult influence of latin)
-look into the use of these long footnotes: is it common? Can it be viewed as hypertextual (multiple windows); read grafton?
Also consider my use of this notebook program as a way to think of toggling between at and through
The ‘mechanics’ of writing: we have made this largely metaphorical, meaning matters of style and structure. Franklin reminds us of the root of this, that writing is done with the hand, that writing is learned with the hand (with pencil to paper)—just as one learns to draw. This is certainly at the base of what we see in the Autobiography: the significance of emulating the ‘character’ of other writers, imitation—where the senses of hand and character are all given play. [or as lanham shows: there is a more material, even embodied view of style, that is looking at, not just through--in my terms, that understands writing and expression to be metonymic (or arrived at through metonymies of gesutre, voice, hands) on the way to becoming metaphors of style--or oscillates between them.
But I would like to add to that understanding the recognition that a key here is in the need in learning (and learning as a writer) for experiment and error, for draft and sketch.
[a place where ‘useful’ lines up more with the descriptive]
This re-contextualizing of writing with drawing and the ‘useful’ evolves out of the focus of the education he would have seen with Brownell, with that which challenges the traditional Latin school.
[so links to make here: 1) grammar 2) dewey and an understanding of the ‘useful’ that is not merely utilitarian, but is about linking true understanding to what JD calls hand-work]
135: note his footnote on Locke’s view of the usefulness of arithmetic and accouting for all, not just merchants. Developing the ‘habit’ of seeing your accounts, keeping accoutns. This is the premise of the art of virture—the role writing plays in shaping character.
Note the phrase for falling into ruin: ‘behind-hand’. Similar to keeping in countenance.
138: turns to grammar. Note that it is focused on writing style, what I would associate today with rhetorical grammar. And I think this is informed by the underlying critique and difference that is drawn with the tradition of learning Latin grammar (rather than the useful, mother tongue)
This is brought out in the extensive footnote of Locke’s views
135: grammar of his own tongue, of the language he uses.
[and note how metonymy is once more brought out: use is defined metonymically: whose business in the world is to be done with tongues and their pens
[a metonymic view of communication—a focus on how communication takes place, and where, more than what; as well as a pedagogical view of motivation for learning coming from use
[link here to cremin’s ‘business of learning’
136: continuation of note.
Reiterating that the gentlement are judge by use of their own langauge, but not taught to care and ‘cultivate’ it
“handsome or awkward way of expressing themselves in it”
So: the ‘handsome” use of language is a key.
138: next turns to Writing letters “to form their stile”
[with footnote that retierates this, against learning the custom of Latin, of no use at all]
Echoes here of how he describes his own education in writing with the Spectator.
But also his complaint: that students be told how, not just be corrected
141: who should give his reasons..
Then turns to variety of reading content: history in particular
145: note how he argues students can study greek/latin: when they desire to learn the languages of the learned. Echoes here of how scholes talks about curriculum (gen ed coming after the major, after they know what they desire–franklin reversing things as well); also of dewey: learning needing desire/purpose from student.
148: while reading natural history, might not a little gardening be taught and practiced.
Furhter use/significance of the metonymy of the culture metaphor. Also a link to dewey: a definition of use that is not about merely trade skill, but a spirit of inquiry (and the view of education as a flowering combined with practice
Think of Thoreau’s use of this: my point is that this great metaphor of education is focused on a metonymic character that emphasizes the contexts of learning.
This metonymy (once again of the hand): evident in the footnote 25 where Locke refers to value of visitng ‘artificers’, insight into the manual arts, so see their ‘manner of working’. Thus links to manner of working in rheotorical arts: here the metonym of artisan that gets lost in ‘art.’ Specifically note the view: value of the shop/workshop: showing students the working behind the work, the process of the art.
And this also returns us to his opening metaphor of cultivation: the metonymy, as I saw it, now brought home. To further elucidate, we could cite Thoreau: the value of laboring with one’s hands at the heart of his theory of uncommon learning.
150: his final point/footnote about the aim/end of education and learning.
Note how this seems to start out vaguely–do good to men, and with some religious connotation (glorify god, citation of milton). But turns in his further quotations to more Dewey echoes of the end of learning is to be able to continue learning: growth; application of mind; art of living (thus, an art that aims to continue the art: in effect, a process or means to an end that doesn’t end, that continues the process (better understood as process)
Franklin, Autobiography (Norton edition, lemay)
9: bookish inclination. Note this is what determines father to send him into printing [a case of metonymy]
11: Manner of my writing
His first description of his interest in writing/learning experience.
Father critiques his manner: which is about elegance of expression.
Edeavors at improvement
[note that it is not mechanics—spelling and punctuation, but something we would call style—perhaps an antecedent for his later proposal for the enlgish school.
Then turns to his first lesson with the Spectator: attempting to imitate.
‘words that should come to hand’
Note both hand and manner relate to the metonymy/process of writing by hand.
The imitiation here is about the emulation—learning by practice, but a further view of transcription [maybe in emerson’s sense?]: as the example he gives shows, turning writing from prose to verse, reinventing it.
Franklin is aiming towards mastery—and ambitious of becoming an ‘English writer’. [so one difference with the point made by Thornton that mostly taught to copy, not to author. Here franklin is learning to be an author by emulating the practice of writing, in a very physical/metonyic senses of method, manner, sound, measure—then moving out into the more metaphorical senses of style and elegance of expression: in that sense, the metonymic roots of writing.
I would also note that the pedagogical ideas here (as reiterated in his plan for the academy) strike me as imaginative, progressive, not as we might associate with copying. I could apply dewey here, perhaps even some recent views of teaching writing by doing—the practice of writing
The key is that this metonymic focus on manner has as its objective the ability to write by one’s own hand—the pedagogical impulse is pragmatic, learning how not what to write.
12: refers to this practice as “these Exercises”—bringing out the physical component [and can compare to the other improvement exercise that is very phsyical, for example learning to swim {physical, but not also textual and intellectual]
13: reference to “an English Grammar”: with focus being on the arts of rhetoric
[so first indication of the ‘rhetorical grammar’ approach I read in his ideas—and a reminder that grammar is not separate from rhetoric
18: Bunyan’s ‘method of writing”: note here that the metonymic register of method is revealed in the fact that BF is talking about, in part, the physical appearance of the book, the way the illustrations draw the reader in, just as the writing does.
30: trying their Hands in pieces, poetry
Note the performance aspect
35: Ralph’s idea “to try for a Country School…as he wrote an excellent Hand, and was a Master of Arithmetic and Accounts”. Perfect example of the writing/handwriting pedagogy
36: example of the physicality of printing: connected to ‘bodily exercise’
[and implicitly, how ‘hands’ are still involved, even though printing allows for impersonality]
39: swimming/Thevenot. Referred to as “Exercise”
Note that the way he talks about the exercises echoes precisely with the way handwriting, and thus by extension, writing is talked about: the graceful and easy, as well as the useful.
43: sorts, printer language for duplicate types. Thus metonymic origin of ‘out of sorts’
47-48: the forming of the Junto
For improvement: and note the basis of it: inquiry and essay writing on subject they choose.
61: Vaughn links means (of learning, improvement) with style/specimen of his writing. Again returning us to the origins of learning metonymy that are at work in his conception of writing (extended to virture, ‘character’)
Note his metaphor (for trying to guess who wrote the 1st part: figuring to myself a character. There handwriting and character as virtue on full view.
73; key analogy in his art of virtue discussion (this after his description of the book and the importance of writing/marking pages, the role of the textaul already makes this analogy metonymic
“As those who aim at perfect writng…”
My argument: that this is no mere anlaogy. It refers us back not only to the lesson in writing from earlier, but to a pedagogy of writing/learning. It suggests that the self-representation and originality that one displays through this method is intricately linked to the ‘method’ of writing: and further, to BF’s understanding of how one learns to improve their writing.
74: key link to this pedagogical I see
Book shows ‘means and manner”. Franklin here again using the language unerlying his interest in the English school and rhetorical grammar: not the presecriptive
[my turn to Warner, example of how Franklin’s textuality is read: agree that it is the key. Though suggest that the ‘generality’ Warner empahsizes is a version of reading franklin’s lessons in writing: style, means, manner, etc into metaphor. That is where we have taken them. But there is a particularity, a specificity to his conception of writing in terms of pedagogy that I would argue urges educators to return to a metonymic pedagogy—and to resist the generalizing?
“The Lost World of Colonial Handwriting,” Tamara Plakins Thornton in Literacy: Critical Sourcebook
52: beings with Locke: the focus on learning to write with the “Hand”, tracing engragvings. Note this is the reverse of his tabula rasa view of mind: this is not passive inscription, but active transcription.
Linking written character with human character: 2nd example is franklin
Thus, gets to heart of what I see as a pedagogy of metonymy—which she shows in its connection to handwriting.
So Franklin’s bit in the A/b –‘as those who aim at perfect Writing..’ not only has larger edcuational context (connects to Locke, as well as to his own plans for the academy), but to a lost context of what I call writing metonymy
--does this focus on handwriting then give me a way to contrast this with a ‘metaphorical writing’ that has replaced this underlying pedagogy of writing?
My speculation: we might hear in BF’s lines merely a culture of imitation, and thus something at odds with writing/originality/metaphorics in place since the romantics (the lamp, not the mirror).
But there is an active learning/creation taking place here—one that (in my larger project) I go on to trace in key ‘Romanticists’ of education: including Emerson and Thoreau (think of hdt’s early piece on the journal) and Dewey. A creativity of the hand.
53: notes that in the world of the printing press, print comes to entail self-negation and impersonality (think of warner on this), whereas handwritten script entails the ‘explicit presentation of self’. [another way to tie this in with a sense of creative/active presence of the ‘Hand.’—could connect this key to BF’s art of virtue, the key is keeping track of it by hand, how the charts represent/reflect/shape the character of the self.
--so, a technology of the self [foucault]
55: writing in 18th conceived as narrowly defined social and vocational skill—especially business
Learned professions (lawyers and clergy who would need to write) and merchants
‘association of penmanship with commerce’—evident in the academic settings where handwriting is taught.
Thus connections with writing and bookeeping
56: note that penmanship training extended to girls, though not paired with commerce/bookkeeping, but embroidery
But in both cases (noting the echo with Dewey and hand-work)—the metonymic link is between writing and other skills of the hand.
57: the grammar school vs. writing school track (commerce) of Boston is key example of this—thus tied to Franklin’s history
Basis of handwriting instruction: the copybook, “collection of engraved specimens of model handwriting to be imitated by the pupil”
Keyword: specimen, idication of the metonymic pedagogy and technology at work
[the description of what copybooks include, bills, artithmetical stuff, mercantile—reminds us of the way the journal will be used, the kind of daybook: certainly in Whitman’s case.
Further linking this ‘metonymy’ to the circumstance of the journal we see in American romanticism
58: the craft of penmanship
Lowering the prestige of penmanship—the perception of writing master as a person who worked with his hands, craftsman who learned by apprenticeship
Furhter emphasized/understood in the mechanics of writing, the ‘physical process’ (59)
And so the primary pedagogical model: coopying of models, physical imitation.
[and in contrast to this, notes that this mere mechanics of writing is reinforced when an ‘illegible hand’ is cultivated as mark of gentle breeding.
The imitation, again, is something that may seem pedagogically suspect. Though the physical aspect of the practice is where I hear echoes of Dewey: and the need to recall to writing learning the craft and physical nature of the practice—in effect, to return to writing the metonymics of the ‘craft’—rather than thinking of craft in the metaphorical sense of style [or, what a writer does, in effect, to cover up the physical/mechanic aspects of his work]
61: penmanship pedagogy: teaching writing as in how to copy writing, not how to be an original author of writing.
But notes that some copybooks extend to writing letters.
Practice of transcription reinforces notion of reading as passive inscription
Those who go beyond this to original composition are few: literary wits, scholars.
But might it then be that this is what Franklin has in mind (accepting the point that the implications of copying are still involved with passive inscription), as well as what Emerson wants for his scholar (who is still bound up with the connection to a past)
I need to locate in Franklin—as in Thoreau or Emerson—a sense where the transciption, the active process, implies or opens up orginality [what I call original reproduction in emerson]
Wouldn’t BF’s complaint that students need to know the how of writing suggest this? As well as the premise of the art of virtue?Even in the swimming—a related issue of learning a craft
I also wonder if she is missing her own key point here: that the expression of self is implicated historically/literally in the handwriting (in the very copying), a technology of self, even more than the impersonality of print. Perhaps her critique here is bound up with the assumption that authority/originality exists only in the metaphorical conception of writing, original writing as paradigmatic, not bound up metonymically with its models (but rather a clean break/dissimilarity from model/convention)
62: goes on to discuss the range of styles of handwriting, “multiple hands”
Another sense in which our metaphorical view of style is here returned to metonymic conceptions of style (back to stylus, physical process of forming the impression)
65: penmanship as part of public self-presentation (linked to dress and deportment, reputation): so part of the larger context of
67: trick, to make the handwriting gesture look effortless—cf natural theatricality
Note: this further sense in which the ‘hand’ of handwriting is metonymic.
Different hands/styles for feminine and masculine—based on the phsyical process, and thus what the hand represented—‘aspect of physical carriage’.
Female: time-consuming because of aesthtic imperatives (like dress);
Male: the movement that produced the handwriting.
Fliegelman
[can tie in his reading to this contextualized reading of handwriting
2: explores the 18th century and its ‘elocutionary revolution’: where the emphasis on language and rhetoric goes to tone, gesture, expressive countenance
A way in which selfhood and natural language is, paradoxically, performed and displayed in a greater theatricalization.
[echoes of handwriting]
16: refers to Kames and the emphasis on the eye: the visual or material character of a spoken text. [in effect, what Franklin’s father means by ‘manner’—and so what Fliegelman is getting at in his performative is what I mean by recovering the metonymic senses of these words—the understanding that the ‘natural and self that writing expresses is embodied.
It seems to me a way to sum up Fliegelman is to suggest that in this conxtex of performative speech/writing, words like character and style and manner are not metaphors (or not dead metaphors)—and better understood as metonyms.
25: on style. A call for a natural language that “embodies rather than represents thought”
180: defines ‘emulation’ over imitation [with reference to Franklin emulating the writings of the Spectator]
What we can add to this is that emulation for Franklin is also tied to the embodiment of style and manner. In other words, what matters is the means of the emulation—the medium of the hand practicing, working with the engravings (reproducing, like a printer); and note how this then echoes with what makes Bunyan engaging—how it embodies its stories in its material images; and even with swimming—the gestures and movements (reproduced in the material descriptions of Thevenot)
Cremin
Traditions of American Education
29: activist educative style that placed self-education and self-determined education at the core of the american experience
[see here not only the understanding that franklin’s invention is not just literary, but education—but also implications that I want to draw out: that franklin anticpates dewey or progressive education that focuses on experience.
American Education: The colonial experience
266: gets to this more crucial role of franklin’s educational philosophy/example
In pointing to a fact of his experience (brownell school vs. latin school) that points to contrast.
Life as it was and would be vs. life as it had been.
Goes on to define franklin’s (and locke’s) definition of this focus on experience and the useful later in the book—in showing it is not the narrow utiliarianism or commercialism it is often thought of.
[cf 371, 75, 77]
Learning from experience, hands-on learning: we see this clearly in his proposals, informed by locke [and thus in locke’s thoughts on education—cf 362-364, which focuses on the metonymic,]
And then see this in Franklin’s own discussions of writing and learning in the A/b.
368: clearing the rubbish of Latin, style and manner of common sense
On metonymy.
From the perspective of cognitive linguistics: metonymy is language and thoguht (and a way of thinking) that emphasizes the context of its reference, the continguity and cotingency; the syntagmatic over the paradigmatic. And though linguists after Jakobson think about the two as intersecting, from the perspective of cultural history—the kind of perspective I draw from Roof, there are key differences to consider in the force of the metaphorical vs. the metonymic.
In fact, I would suggest that roof’s understanding of metonymic technology at odds with metaphorical aesthetics (she refers to painting), is located in the ‘manner’ of writing and its moves from metaphorical style to, in more recent versions, a kind of return to the metonymy of writing (ie, its technology) in the medium of the digital/hypertext.
[that is, I do not mean to re-assert a polarity of metaphor and metonymy; only to recognize the continuum and shifts of how these polarities have operated. In terms of writing, with the understanding of the ‘hand,’ franklin’s view is more metonymic. At the same time, in terms of the challenge/resistance to the non-useful ‘grammar’ of Latin, I think we see already the kind of metaphorizing of writing with which we still deal
Interestingly, the reference in Roof to WB and the shift from metaphor to metonymy in terms of mechanical reproduction raises a problem in terms of writing. While the reproduction of print shifts writing to the impersonal, it becomes (in view of handwriting history) more auratic, more metaphorical. Writing is thoroughly reproducible in print; but think how that has not limited authority (except in the evolving world of hypertext) even as it has made it more impersonal. This is part of Warner’s argument—to which I seem to be adding the fact that it is the metonymy of hand/writing that is being lost. And to ask what happens to conceptions of pedagogy in that.
Looking for ideas on returning the body to writing.
Sondra Perl, Felt Sense: Writing with the Body
[Heinemann, 2004]
Not much background: applies a psychology/philosophy of ‘felt sense’ from eugene gendlin (focusing techniques for the edge of thinking) to writing: basically, steps for brainstorming, finding writing.
And her brief theory sets out to counter not a history of writing influenced by “grammar” and composition divorced from the hand, but postmodern impasses: ironically, would include views of writing with the body, or more of a writerly focus.
Felt sense as ‘embodied knowing,” but nothing to work with in terms of how writing is bodily.
In fact, perhaps another example where the means of writing are metpahorized—into a ‘sense’ that is just a figure for another way of thinking or focusing the mind.
