On Lu's "Professing Multiculturalism:The Politics of Style in the Contact Zone"

I wanted to make a few notes and general thoughts about Lu's essay before really coming to any conclusions on my thoughts. So in rough form, here they are ...

"Why is it that in spite of our developing ability to acknowledge the politicalneed and right of "real" writers to experiment with "style", we continue to cling to the belief that such a need and right does notbelong to "student writers"? (491) - very catching. I love this question because Lu seems to be questioning the purpose for teaching writing. Do we teach writing to engage students in wider society? or do we teach writing to engage students in a specified soceity? or do we teach writing as an avenue for which students can learn who they are and find their own voice? Or is do we teach writing as some strange combination of these? (For the record- I think the latter).

The basics - as we have talked about in class before and Lu points out as well, students get caught up on "the basics" or the grammar skills and then deem themselves as "not good" at writing. Students then get frustrated and may give-up. "And they feel muted and reduced by the curriculum because it does not seem to recognize that they arequite able to grasp subjectsother than "grammar" and demonstrate their understanding of such subjects satisfactorialy to themselves, if perhaps not in writing to others." (491-492) - Is it not one of the first thing we learn in education courses that students learn in different ways? Some are auditory, some visual etc.? Why do we focus on and not move past the basics, or find a new way of teaching the basics?

"Contact Zone" - Pratt describes as space where various cultures "clash,and grapple with eachother, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power" (cited on pg.492).

"I define the writer's attempt to "reproduce" the norms of academic discourses as necessarily involving the re-production - approximating, negotiating, and revising - of these norms. And I do so by asking students to explore the full range of choices and options, including those exculded by the conventions of academic discourses." (492)

Regarding multiculturalism, Lu raises some good points. Students from different cultures may in fact understand English just fine, but have different ways of presenting and writing than our culture. I don't think that makes their writing wrong or less good. I think what Lu implies in her writing is that we need to take the time to understand where student writers are coming from - what their culture is. We need to take time to study other cultures and how they write, what does academic discourse consist of in China, for example? She also questions the standards we hold student writers to - those who are "good" we hold to lesser standards of keeping "accurate" grammar etc. while those who are "not good" are held to higher standards and criticized for not accurately following "the basics".