When the First Voice You hear is Not Your Own

For possibly the first time since reading Bruffee's essay on collaborative learning, I finally found an essay that got me excited about composition theory. In Jacqueline Jones Royster's When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own, I found an argument addressing all of my questions and problems - especially those dealing with academic discourse. This was an article I finally was able to read all the way through, actually engaged in and excited about, instead of annoyed with.

Royster writes towards the end of her essay "Students may find what we do to be alienating and disheartening....Their experiences are not seen, and their voices are not heard." If she is talking about academic discourse - She's right on the money with my feelings. Royster argues that teachersneed to listen, pay attention to the voices and differing experiences and interpretations. She writes, "We need to get over our tendencies to be too possessive and to resist locking ourselves into the tunnels of our own visions and direct experience." I feel academic discourse does just that, academic discourse says (as Royster writes) "You people are intellectually inferior and have a limited capacity to achieve." What academic discourse should be, in my opinion, if it is to be the space for true learning and expansion of knowledge to take place, is to engage people in different experiences. There should not be a need for students to "fake-it" until they understand the moves of writing for academia. Academia, teachers, instead need to encourage voice, encourage experience; academic discourse should be the ultimate cross-boundary discourse.