Restriction in the Compostion Classroom

Restriction seems to be common in composition today as well as in the past. Mary Astell encouraged women of her time to disregard “vanities” and do something meaningful. She urged them to write, but it was commonly accepted that rhetoric was only successful in Latin. This posed a problem because most women on the seventeenth century were not schooled in Latin. Astell combated this notion by making the point that rhetoric was part of their daily lives, so it could be practice in languages other than Latin.

Lisa Gerrard comment on the restriction females still seem to meet today in her essay “Feminist Research in Computers and Composition.” Gerrard states, “Computers have long been precieved as male machines, and computers culture as an exclusive boy’s club,” (Gerrard 186). She attributes this to the male domination in computer advertisements. “An analysis of computer advertisements found images of confident male executives interpreting computer output and women as typists, computer phobics, and bimbos,” (Gerrard 186). Gerrard offers that males’ comfort with technology and computers may stem from exposure as children. Gerrard claims that students often begin their computer experience with games. “Students’ first encounter with computers is likely to be games---games designed for boys,” (Gerrard 188). The games target males rather than females, but Gerrard acknowledges that manufacturers have begun to target female audiences. It does seem that women of today are considered masculine if they are competent with computers just as the women of Astell’s day who practiced eloquence would have been. I think that computer use has come along way though because there are many women quite competent in computer use, but I think Gerrard’s article does speak to the need to pay attention to gender in the class as well as culture. Gerrard reminds us “that not all women are oppressed in the same way, that in addition to being female, women may be oppressed because they are lesbian, black, or poor, and that they may---by virtue of being white, heterosexual, or middle-class—be members or groups that oppress other women, (Gerrard 190).

In “The Persistence of Difference in Networked Classrooms: Non-negotiable Difference and the African American Student Body,” by Todd Taylor, the oppression of Standard English is acknowledged. Taylor tracked three students to prove this claim. Stephanie whose “…uses primarily a standard, professional (white) dialect,” but lacks computer experience (Taylor 225). Chris who has greater computer skills than Stephanie, he but is “…less comfortable speaking in class…perhaps due to self-consciousness about his predominately black spoken dialect,” (Taylor 225). Felicia use a “…mostly black dialect…” and lacks computer skills like Stephanie (Taylor 225). Taylor focuses more on body language to express confidence and shyness, but I find the shyness of Felicia and Chris due to their dialect interesting. Perhaps Standard English has been stressed so long and so rigidly that it is beginning to become like Latin, away to prevent certain groups from joining scholarly discussion.