DRAFT VERSION
The Problems with Renouncing Power
One method of empowering students has been to renounce (denounce?) the instructor’s
power in the classroom. In this method, instructors hand over some measure of their
classroom control: syllabi creation, grade determination, collaborative learning, and other
manifestations of instructor power. Bartholomae has already discussed many problems
with removing the instructor–student power differential from academic writing. Its
limitations are something that critical-democratic instructors do not refute; Shor, for
example, acknowledges that “the critical-democratic character of such pedagogy is
limited by the institutional authority I bring to the class and by the institutional setting
which frames our work (such as the requirement that I give letter grades)” (pp. 74).
Though the classroom Shor and his students create is probably one of the truest examples
of critical pedagogy, he cannot deny the limitations of an institutionalized setting. The
limits come into stark reality over the issue of grading, and he explains: “But, still, the
critical-democratic character of such pedagogy is limited by the institutional authority I
bring to the class and by the institutional setting which frames our work (such as the
requirement that I give letter grades)” (pp. 74). When outside power structures reveal the
limits of his critical-democratic classroom, he spends several passages confronting his
discomfort with his own power. Similarly, Straub and Lunsford
Most of the problems that manifest from renouncing power stem from its artificiality. As
Shor acknowledged (pp. 74), the instructor retains many forms of power in a classroom
setting—even a critical-democratic classroom. Temporally, the instructor has generative
power to choose the type of pedagogy students will experience in the class, maintenance
power as the “expert” in the room, and final “veto power” over students’ ideas in the
form of grades. Physically, the instructor retains power through their location in the
room, mannerisms, and “outsider” body (clothing, age, and socioeconomic status come to
mind). Shor notices, for example, that even his presence in a “democratically” circularstructure room displaces students who want to be away from the locus of control (pp. 65),
and he uses his physical presence to redirect students who have gone “off topic” during
collaborative group work (pp. 48).
This artificiality leads to the second problem: student rejection. Students resist
indoctrination into a power structure unless it is something they achieve for themselves.
Shor notes this happens even with his critical-democratic pedagogy: “As the teacher, I am
inviting and allowing the students to practice democracy rather than they having won this
right for themselves…. This makes power-sharing and social critique risky Utopian leaps
for them….” (pp.74, emphasis in original). Unless students achieve power through some
struggle, they mistrust it and resist it as something coming from a power source.
Students usually resist indoctrination through forms of “underlife.” Underlife, as
paraphrased from Brooke, consists of the undisclosed1 acts of resistance to the normative
roles resulting from a power differential (1987). In fact, Brooke locates critical pedagogy
Brooke might call these acts “unconscious,” but I prefer “undisclosed” because they are not entirely
unconscious—some are even premeditated. However, even premeditated acts often remain unvoiced:
subordinates and superiors rarely discuss their strategies of resistance with each other.
1
itself as a disruptive form of underlife (overtly disrupting the power structure) enacted by
instructors (pp. 723 and 728). He also identifies three student acts that constituted
contained underlife behaviors (resisting roles without demanding radical change to the
structure): creative use of classroom ideas, game playing, and evaluations of the
classroom (pp. 723 and 724–728).2
Brooke calls for making the underlife acts conscious—indeed, he claims that making
students “conscious of their differences from their normal roles” is the goal of writing
instruction (pp. 731). But the third problem of teachers renouncing power is that we
cannot make students’ strategies conscious (in my term, “voiced”) unless we
acknowledge their efforts as legitimate rhetorical acts. Bartholome (1985) astutely notes
that students continually strategize to adapt to the discourse community of their different
instructors (pp. 606). In doing so, he notes that they simultaneously appropriate the
discourse and are appropriated by the discourse community. This link is important.
When instructors disdain the significance of their own power in a classroom, they
simultaneously dismiss the significant underlife strategies students have taken to
negotiate the instructor–student power structure. This dismissal is phrased in many ways:
for examples,
 “Many have learned to manipulate the teacher for a good grade by mimicking the
teacher’s opinions” (Shor, 1996, pp. 51).
 “When the teacher makes his agenda for a piece of writing known, the student is
likely to attempt to give the teacher what he wants. Why should she do
otherwise?” (Straub & Lunsford, 1995, pp. 8).
 “[College students] spend many hours in school mastering Engfish. The fact that
the teacher and the textbook sometimes employe Engfish suggests to them that
it’s the official language of the school. They’re learning a new language that
prevents them from working toward truths…” (Macrorie, 1985, pp. 299).
In these dismissals is disdain for our own academic discourse communities—our own
power. Because we find our “Engfish” commonplace, boring, unimaginative, we forget to
legitimize the skill students display in “playing” this “game.” The skill becomes a parlor
trick—we intone Plato to our students’ Sophists. And we dismiss their strategies, closing
the issue without genuine discussion of their merits.
If the skills stay unconscious, they become mindless 3. And here is the fourth problem
with renouncing our power. Keeping our students’ skills unconscious means we cannot
help students learn how to generalize them mindfully and apply them into other power
contexts. Bruffee, in discussing “normal” discourse, notes that most discourse happens
between peers, and this is why collaborative learning is important (1984). But a great
deal of professional discourse happens between subordinates and superiors, and all
professional discourse happens within a power structure: someone—the boss, the
2
Many other scholars note students’ underlife resistance, though they do not use that term. In discussing
the Siberia Syndrome, for example, Shor notes that students’ dissociation with the instructor (intellectually
and physically) is a form of active resistance (pp. 1-28).
3
I’m borrowing this term from Fulkerson, who applied it to what happens when instructors work from
unconscious pedagogical values (1979).
customer, the editor of a journal—has final “veto power” over a writer’s ideas. The
instructor, in a classroom setting, is the expression of these superiors, and students
already know how to deal with instructors. Only by legitimizing students’ strategies and
incorporating the instructor–student dynamic into our process can we help students
generalize the rhetorical skills they already have, develop them further, and apply them
elsewhere.
FINAL VERSION
Problems with Renouncing Power
The critical-democratic or “liberatory” method (defined by Shor, 1996) of empowering
students has been to confront the instructor’s power in the classroom. In this method,
instructors often renounce some measure of their classroom control (e.g., syllabi creation
or grade formulation). Shor, for example, gave as much power as he could to his students
(1996). Straub and Lunsford, too, claimed that the worst thing an instructor can do is
appropriate students’ writing (1995, p. 10). Bruffee supported collaborative learning for
its ability to break down instructors’ control (1984).
I want to be clear that I agree with the idea of empowering students, including using
several of the techniques these scholars suggest. But I also agree with Bartholomae that
attempts to remove the instructor–student power differential have fundamental flaws.
Briefly, they include (from the most fundamental, or covert, to the most symptomatic, or
overt):
1. An “empowering” classroom is artificial. Bartholomae (1985), Bizzell (----), and
Trimbur (1994) pointed out that instructors cannot fully empower students within
a classroom because the classroom is a fundamentally disempowering. The
instructor has generative power to choose the type of pedagogy students will
experience in the class, maintenance power as the “expert” in the room, and final
“veto power” over students’ ideas in the form of grades.
2. Students resist indoctrination into a power structure unless it is genuine
(something they achieve for themselves), so they ultimately reject artificial
empowerment and the lesson(s) that come with it. Durst discussed a study he did
on a politically oriented English class, where he “found students extremely
resistant to the view advocated by the instructor and the course reader…. Students
sought and found ways of choosing topics that allowed them to avoid the political
subject matter at the center of the course” (as cited in Durst, 2006, p. 1663).
3. Loathing our own power means we do not acknowledge students’ strategies as
legitimate rhetorical acts, so we never make them conscious. Brooke claims that
making students “conscious of their differences from their normal roles” should
be the goal of writing instruction (1987, pp. 731). Because we find our academic
discourse commonplace, boring, unimaginative (Marcorie, 1985), we belittle the
rhetorical skill students display in “playing the game,” and we dismiss their
strategies without genuine discussion of their merits.
4. Keeping students’ skills unconscious means we cannot help students learn how to
generalize them consciously and apply them within other power contexts.
I should note that critical-democratic instructors recognize these limitations; for example,
Shor acknowledged that “the critical-democratic character of such pedagogy is limited by
the institutional authority I bring to the class and by the institutional setting which frames
our work (such as the requirement that I give letter grades)” (1996, p. 74). But such
acknowledgements do not embrace the power structures inherent in all professional
writing. Only by legitimizing students’ strategies and incorporating the instructor–student
dynamic into our process can we help students generalize the rhetorical skills they
already have, develop them further, and apply them elsewhere.