Franklin ideas:
8.15
After reading more into the history of composition, emerging from rhetoric (Connors). The pressure in the post 1860s explosion of university is for more practical approach to writing/composition. And thus a traditional split is thought between rhetoric as theory and composition as practice (reinforced in the distaste early of rhetoric for grammar). Connors shows this pressure is there even earlier in early 19th, with growth of small colleges and evident in Walker’s teacher’s assistant and ‘rhetorical grammar’ (in more recent times, an attempt to make the theory of grammar more practical with writing)
So with franklin, see an even earlier (as I read it) interest in rhetorical grammar–or in a more practical view of traditional rhetoric and grammar (tied to classics)–and what I am interested in, a view moving toward writing (even if not named composition or even writing as such) that is practical and based in practice, that is part of his ‘business of learning’–but also (is this my major point?) brings us today back to a theory of writing pedagogy in its focus (by way of locke) on the hand of writing. While that hand can certainly be historicized as part of the ‘practical’ context for writing (as handwriting, tied to book-keeping)–I would argue that this historical context (including reading Franklin on this business of learning to write a hand) further evokes a theory of metonymical pedagogy.
The stake of this for understanding franklin’s ‘hand’ in writing pedagogy: we can re-envision his role. For example Bloom–yes we are following out his middle-class precepts (can’t this be said of the university in general?)–but the obvious lacuna for me: her very interest in autobiographical literacy, in the link between literacy and learning to write and writing oneself, is not just evident in franklin but part of this (as I call it) metonymical pedagogy.
Stake for my emerson project: see this pedagogy in emerson, where also an interest in learning grammar and autobiographical literacy (in the same passage of AS with life is our dictionary) is connected to metonymies of the practical and the near, the familiar. My speculation then is that though we have tended to view Emerson and his scholar as a Romantic revisioning of the ‘business of learning’ practicality we find in Franklin, that in fact there is more of franklin there. [a latter day version of elbow vs bartholomae?]. Here the reverse is the case: there is more practice in Emerson’s theory. But the same problem. Despite the prominence of Emerson, there is little of his theory in our practice of literary education (a premise of the project).
May 2008
–Thinking of this as both an initial chapter/introduction to the Emerson’s school project: setting up the ‘rhetorical padeia’ that is there but lost in where English goes (lanham, scholes)–with my focus on the materiality/metonymy of writing/language. A technology of writing and technology of self that we find in Franklin–and now find returning in the digital.
–and using the essay ‘hand/writing’ as a potential lecture–elaborating the end, where I want to go–by way of lanham, and reach toward neglected ideas in emerson (his ‘way to learn grammar’), by establishing franklin’s notion of literacy and literary education as: technological, material, embodied.
–for the franklin essay: need to develop how this technological/material view of writing (in a sense, hayles applied back to franklin, or franklin urging a media specific analysis and pedagogy for learning writing) from his discussions of the school connects to the autobiography (and 18th c rhetoric/the habit/swimming issue) and compares with the kind of writing pedagogy we find in that time. Perhaps a forgotten model of ‘rhetorical grammar’. What are the dominant pedagogical models found in books of 1750-1800 (or to link up to Emerson, 1830s)?
[original, from 2004/5]
An article that focuses on his interest in the method of writing he disucsses in Autobiography: looking more closely at his ‘literacy autobiography” and its historical references—sense that there are some methods there that, while looking very traditional in terms of grammar, actually offer us insight into a shift in focus on what we think of today as more progressive—grammar in context. Part of an idea I could tie in with Scholes, the lost legacy of rhetoric for english departments.
Or focus on thinking/comparing franklin’s interest in a grammar/writing of method and means (and not merely prescription, but description) to the current differences and debates between traditional and a descriptive linguistics like transformational (or more to the point, the approaches to grammar informed by modern linguistics such as ‘rhetorical grammar’]
Cf the Noguchi article in TG as an example, where the focus is on tapping into intuitve grammar understanding, and shaping it, using it for correction.
Which echoes how franklin—and greenwood before him—discuss the idea of learning english before latin.
Could I take it even a step furhter and suggest that franklin’s method of virture is similarly a ‘rhetorical grammar’? to extent it is about not merely prescribing correction and error, but writing through it. With links to how he also talks about composition (bunyan, the copying, which is about embodying the learning—tie in to fliegelman; or the swimming, thevenout—significance of images
About a grammar that is based in generating new versions of the self.
Historical context: the fact that franklin is interested in the kind of langauge/writing that is akin to the common school, rather than Latin.
Franklin’s grammar of ascent
Franklin’s transformational grammar
[Franklin idea: franklin’s grammar of ascent; or franklin’s transformational grammar
Investigating the lessons of ‘grammar’ and writing that franklin implies—connecting back to a focus on method and rhetoric, a kind of rhetorical grammar that is connected to the kind of rhetorical (and artful) virtue he devises. Thus connecting forward to the grammar debates today, of prescriptive vs. descriptive; and perhaps to the issue of schools and english departments [scholes pointing us back to an origin of english that franklin is also part of in his idea for a school.
Use not only to explore some specific references in franklin of interest to writing and language teachers [the points about grammar and language learning] but for a larger view or preface to thinking about the issue of recovering in american education history—and american literature—the roots of reform]
Observations:
Note how the emphasis in 18th c. education (as presented in Cremin) is on the shift toward a ‘useful’ and practical view of learning that echoes at times with Dewey. So, can look at franklin and his experiences with education and writing (the emphasis on the ‘hand’) as one origin of the progressive education Dewey will take up.
And for my study of franklin, focus on the view of grammar and ‘english’ over latin as central thread. With ties forward to prescriptive vs. descriptive—and even to how writing is viewed in something like ‘inventing the university’
The kind of invention that barthelmae addresses is in a sense what franklin is forecasting.
Hand/Writing: franklin’s grammar of ascent; or franklin’s metonymic pedagogy
Manner in writing: think of this word ‘manner’ (which is the first place bf describes his writing in autobiography) as mostly metaphorized. Much like style: removed of its metonymic origins and contexts. Meaning something that is live metaphor (or the opposite of dead metaphor—forgotten the metonymic connotations of word by making it metaphor). And key: the disemboidiment, the way that we forget (as Franklin is reminding us,) the means of learning manner. [extends to words such as ‘character’ or sort or type—the very kind of words that franklin puns upon in a/b and which are crucial to understanding the culture of print (warner) and emulation (fliegelman). For my part, I am even more intersted in the role of the hand (and the legacy of writing as handwriting).
So, in returning to franklin’s important ‘literacy autobiography’ I want to attend to how he focuses on this kind of metonymic pedagogy—looking at his experiences with writing, the kind of grammar he is interested in: to recover a model of literacy. And to use that to set up for future study an exploration of this metonymic pedagogy (as I can allude to at end of essay): in emerson, dewey, and even in barthelmae?
Benjamin Franklin’s greatest invention is himself. Literary criticism has helped us to see that—to read Franklin’s invention in the midst of his pages, most notably his autobiography. Cox and Warner and Breitwieser: we understand that this is no mere autobiography—or not autobiography understood as mere reflection—but a text as crafted as its author is crafty. In a sense, the autbiography understood as metaphor of the self (olney’s understanding). Point to the great simile: as hands…
But it is also (and this has been forgotten in the literary criticism) a literacy autobiography, a text that is educative in its focus. Cremin. [and through cremin, an understanding that franklin’s views on education—that which the a/b enacts, and which he proposed for the academy—are not ‘narrowly vocational” and are challenges of the traditional, dominant views of schooling.
[I see similar tensions today: where we might particularly think about language/grammar (prescriptive vs. descriptive; curriculum vs. child-centered
Suggest that a way to re-focus on franklin’s more ‘progressive’ and liberating view is to focus on the ‘hand’ of his writing—that the larger issue is one of metaphors v. metonymy: of eductation that focuses on means and embodied learning and one that focuses on ‘manner’ as dead metaphor?
I want to explore a particular educational foundation of franklin’s invention—and return our thoughts to what I will call the metonymic ground of his literacy autobiography. To focus on the ‘hand’ of the writing that is being mended. And to argue that Franklin’s ‘grammar,’ the method that he gives to America for emulation, in all its complications with print and the kind of (metaphorical) writing Warner or Cox have in mind, has a more precise origin.
I connect this to his interests in developing a pedagogy of literarcy that challenges the traditional grammar and proposes an education in writing that is descriptive or progressive (to use some labels that this might be compared to)
At stake is a richer understanding of the ‘manner’ and means franklin focuses on, an understanding of how that emerging pedagogy, in returning writing to its metonymy, can still offer us today a useful, engaging way to conceive of literacy learning.
[cremin, 29: activist educative style]
Could assert how my own interest converged: always thought of the means of the art of virtue as key, the writing mechanics, that franklin was inventing a technology of the self; and this past term, my teaching of that from a literary perspective (american literature course) coincided with my discussion/teaching of language and grammar, especially the issues of traditional vs. transformational grammar—and I noticed franklin’s more specific, more precise interest in grammar (which I began to tie to ‘rhetorical grammar’. As I will show, this sense from the a/b is amply confirmed in his proposals for writing pedagogy, in his own experiences with writing school.
So, I want to recover this understanding of franklin’s grammar—of the means and method of rising—and witness its links with writing and literacy more specific to craft, before it is metaphorized (what I mean by metonymic pedagogy)—which is what franklin argues against: showing us the means, the how, not focusing on the product.
Outline
1]introduction
Setting up a return to franklin’s philosophy of literacy learning
For a recovery of the means of learning to write that the a/b implicates but which has been ‘metaphorized’
Focusing on the historical context (and linked to this) the metonymic connotations of writing: manner, character—that franklin’s discussion embodies. The role of learning/writing by hand.
A view of a ‘rhetorical grammar’? looking ahead, how we might—as teachers of literacy—go back to franklin better to understand (recover?) this ‘activist educative style” in dewey, etc. [save more of this for conclusion—the larger work this points to]
Key text from A/b to set this up: the ‘metaphor’ from page 73.
2]the ‘hand’
Link this back to the first mention of franklin’s pedagogical experience with writing:
Which is then carried through to his other discussions of his education, including mention of Brownell
[here, the implications of grammar/writing more significant]
Turn to the history of handwriting and the private writing instructor.
3]the ‘hand’ in locke and franklin’s proposals.
Along the way, tie in the ‘experiential’ and what I think of as metonymic to the sense of emboided experience—for example, that we see in swimming
Swimming strokes are analogues of writing strokes—not in metaphor, but in metonymy; both are extensions of the physical process of creating them.
And that is at the heart of his interest in language learning.
4]conclusion
What can we do with this?
–in the case of our reading of franklin (and our contextualizing of the A/b: perhaps I want to argue that the great metaphorical act of writing the self into existence—and I don’t dispute that this would have been franklin’s end—is mediated by the hand of writing. That there is thus more of a ‘hand-book’ in franklin’s text.
–and for pedagogy:
Ways to tie franklin to educational debates and discussions that follow him (and have perhaps forgotten his legacy)
Dewey: paving the way for an understanding of a similar metonymic pedagogy (point to my project with emerson/dewey); note the ‘neo-deweyan, neo-franklinian point by essay on inventing the university. And perhaps help save dewey from a similar critique of mere utilitarianism
Specifics of grammar debates: prescriptive vs. descriptive? I think franklin’s concerns for an English grammar are anticipations of the current debate. And ironically, it is the traditional (informed by Latin grammar) that aims to teach English. And which franklin himself was upset to see not carried out in his proposals.
Thus, we get an English pedagogy that, if we follow franklin, needs to return to its metonymic roots and resist the
