Thom's The Problem of Credibility

Thom, James Alexander. The Art and Craft of Writing Historical Fiction. Cincinnati, OH: Writer's Digest, 2010. Print.

James Alexander Thom was formerly a U.S. Marine, a newspaper and magazine editor, and a member of the faculty at the Indiana University Journalism School. He is the author of Follow the River, Long Knife, From Sea to Shining Sea, Panther in the Sky (for which he won the prestigious Western Writers of America Spur Award for best historical novel), Sign-Talker, The Children of First Man, and The Red Heart. He lives in the Indiana hill country near Bloomington with his wife, Dark Rain of the Shawnee Nation, United Remnant Band. Dark Rain is a director of the National Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Planning Council. The author's Website is: www.jamesalexanderthom.com.

The concern of history and the concern of language, for that matter, is a question of truth. What is true? What is the truth? Language is never ending. An utterance communicated does not end with the last word but moves to the listener, the reader for interpretation and meaning. What was said? What does it mean? I think those are two different questions.   History, like language, is never ending. When an event is recollected, it becomes a history, and even when that remembering seems to end, people are still looking for "the truth" or another history of that event. So I see language and history always being partial to the extent that there is space unaccounted for -- gaps and fissures. How are we to fill in these gaps and fissures in truth? What do we call that which we do to fill in the gaps? I think it is the work of fiction, and I think that because we need fiction to fill in the gaps that we cannot talk about "the" truth but rather "a" truth. And so here, we are getting at how I see the English classroom being something more than literature. I see the English classroom as the place of examining the gaps and fissure of story. Some say everything is an argument (Graff) and some say everything is a narrative (Schaafsma). I think they are one and the same. We tell a story because we are sharing our argument. We make an argument because we have a story to tell.

I began this project thinking about what a novel can do that nonfiction could not. I wanted to think about what a piece of historical fiction like Ben Mikaelsen's Tree Girl  could say about the genocide of 200, 000 Mayas in the Guatemalan Highlands in the 1980s could do that a nonfiction text could not do. I think I can make a good argument for the way fiction can represent a truth and appropriate a metaphor for the purposes of expressing themes of resilience and cooperation so inherent to Maya life and the depict Mignolo's rhetoric of modernity through the logic of coloniality in its characterization while considering its young adult audience.  However, I am beginning to see how this novel leaves fissures in need of further inquiry, and that is why it is important to read -- not for what it does but for what it does not do. It does not tell the truth; it tells a truth. When frame for this story has a beginning and an ending; that which history does not. The language of Gaby's story, the protagonist, stops when the book is closed, but the meaning does not.

What James Alexander Thom discusses in his book about the craft of writing historical fiction is the problem of credibility, or to be more specific: the problem of too much credibility.  Thom talks about readers being misled by the credibility of the author of historical fiction, but I would argue that readers are often misled by texts more generally, and this, we may see, might be the renewed objective of the new English classroom: to see all texts as both a story and an argument. Indeed, readers can learn a great deal from reading; we can learn "facts" from the writer. Many such texts, specifically historical fiction pieces, contain indexes and bibliographies because writers are great researchers -- a combination of novelist and historian. However, despite bibliographies and even prologues that state "this book is a novel, everything in it is true and can be verified in research references" or "this novel is based on historical events," the writer must draw on inferences to tell a story. There is a certain degree of verisimilitude.

Truth is the aim of inquiry but most of the greatest theories are actually false; however, such inquiry does constitute progress with respect to the goal of truth, so it is possible, according to Karl Popper, for one false theory to be closer to the truth.  And with  literature or creative writing, verisimilitude has the property of seeming true, of resembling reality. As discussed in my post  about Slater's meme, how language makes imitation possible, in order for text to hold persuasive for an audience, it must be grounded in a seeming reality. So we can think about mimesis as evolving into versimilitude rather than being a copy or reproduction of an idea. As we discussed in the post about Slater's meme, a meme is imitated but never copied, so ideas are shared but are never exact thus always alive and taking shape through transmission. Here we cannot talk about history as being true or of a text being "fact" because historical "fact" must be interpreted and then crafted into a story by a writer for a reader who then interprets this new text for "fact" or a "truth."  Of course, inferences are influenced by one's own expectations and personal bias and experiences, but when we come to a text that has any version of the word "history" in it, readers tend to let their guard down and take up the "historical" as "the" truth rather than considering the rendering or fiction that is inherent in any text.

I would like to make a distinction here between verisimilitude as a "likeness or semblance of truth" and something altogether different which would be...what...that which is not at all like the truth or some form of essentializing even. Thom recounts a situation where he read historical fiction, one that had a claim about being true and verified by references. He says that he tried to verify the author's version of some story by finding others who had accepted this author's account, talking to other authorities on the topic and eventually writing his own version in one of his novels.After coming upon some "obscure scholarly refutation," Thom realized he had perpetuated a myth in his novel. The original novelist had started a "false" version, and because of Slater's meme, this idea of history kept recirculating. Is the lesson here to go to the beginning? Where does a story begin? What truth can you verify? No text can be credibly enough, but I don't think that is the point -- whether it is historical fiction or memoir. For a reader to glean any truth, the text must reflect realistic aspects of human life and the writer must be able to render the story to have the credibility that promotes the willing suspension of disbelief in the reader.  The novel, and history, and language, contained in a text (a beginning and an end contained on a page)  is a total illusion of life within itself. It is a closed fictional world (even if it is label nonfiction, memoir, autobiography, biography, essay). The credibility then cannot come from research and "facts" or accounts of an event; the credibility must be seen in terms of the text's own internal logic. While the reader's inference and interpretation pose a problem for mimesis; the answer to this problem is to see verisimilitude as a technical problem to resolve within the context of the novel's fictional world or the memoir's rendering of the writer's world.  The truth of a text is in its internal logic but the verisimilitude of this logic will always be deferred because the text's grounding in the real can always be contested.

A text is always a site of struggle (most of the time a political, social or economic struggle) over the real and its meanings. What is truth? What is verisimilitude? As an English teacher, we can think about these questions in every text we read, but I think that the novel, particularly the historical fiction novels, offer a site of entry for our audience (middle and high school students) to do inquiry. In making sense of the novel's internal logic, the reader is faced with his own ignorance of the past. What is truth? What is fiction? What are the remainders that have settled into the fissures of the narrative waiting further inquiry?

Fain, Perez, and Slater's Educating for Democracy, Changing the World

Fain, Stephen M.,, Slater, Judith J.Callejo-Pérez, David M.,eds. Educating For Democracy In A Changing World: Understanding Freedom In Contemporary America. New York : Peter Lang, 2007. Print.

Chapter 11, "Language of the Curriculum: Memes of Practice," Judith J. Slater

Judith J. Slater is a co-author of Higher Education and Human Capital: Re/thinking the Doctorate in America (2011), Collaboration in Education (2010), The War Against the Professions: The Impact of Politics and Economics on the Idea of University (2008), Teen Life in Asia (Teen Life Around the World) 2004), Pedagogy of Place (2003), The Freirian Legacy (2002), Acts of Alignment: Of Women in Math and Science and All of Us Who Search for Balance (2000), and  Anatomy of a Collaboration: Study of a College of Education/Public School Partnership (1996).

Educating for Democracy (2007) is a response to the events of 9/11 and argues that while the Bush administration further militarized the United States to protect the country, he carried this movement of regimenting systems to what Cintron calls a "discourse of measurement," a discourse that brought on initiatives such as No Child Left Behind. The ever-increasing threats to our nations security began a self-inflicted threat to freedom in and with Americans.  The irony is that freedom, as a requisite condition for democracy, became part of a discourse of measurement that redefined democracy. Democracy in America has become something much more narrow and controlled -- a thin democracy. And this trend has threatened the education in America -- equating learning with test scores and democracy with capitalism. The authors caution Americans and ask that we be more aware of the practices of the state alerting readers to instances of abridgement of our freedoms and pointing to what is influencing such practices.  As I am considering critical pedagogy and the practices of teachers in middle and high school, I am looking at how Slater, in particular, considers the rhetoric of curriculum. What is the logic at work here?

Slater begins her chapter talking about the use of language. Of course, in the field of education, mass beliefs and behaviors about education and schooling are communicated through language, and such beliefs are duplicated as that language makes its way through district offices, then faculty meetings, and then the classrooms. We, the education community, make certain assumptions about this language, this semantic environment, and for the most part, the assumptions are that this is what we "should" be doing, especially if it is "research-based." The language, however, is based on an ideology about what education and schooling is supposed to be and do. What is this ideology? "What allows this transformation of idea to language to occur? More importantly, what ideational representations do we place out there in print and between people and institutions that lead to action or inaction, to political, social and economic predispositions that permeate the common agreements that we have about who we understand and misunderstand each other and the institutions that we create to enforce and perpetuate them" (144).  Slater considers the mechanism of  memetics here.

Citing Richard Dawkins (1989) who coined the term memes to represent those elements of culture that are passed on by imitation, Slater  explains that by naming things and ideas, we given them a "boost in their quest for imitation and replication, building more and more memes around theme that are maintained and grow in size and complexity...for example, standardized testing takes on a new meaning within and without the original context that it was designed to represent" (145). Because memes are what Slater calls "second replicators unique to human beings," they vary as they are passed on, never passing exact copies, from person to person. We think, act, and learn through imitation and instruction as we evolve personal ideas that are in the interest of the replicating memes, according to Blakemore (1999). For example, the movement from A Nation at Risk to the legislation of  No Child Left Behind demonstrate how ideas were copied from site to site across the country and how classrooms began to look more and more alike as they taught to the test. Teachers stopped talking about what the text is doing and began talking about how to select the best answer because of the spread of memes. But what is it about the language or our minds that explains why some minds imitate and others resist replication? Does the memes need to be more easily imitated in order for it to spread? When I did some research last semester comparing the discourse of two mandates, it was clear that the "standards mandate" was followed and replicated over the "genocide mandate" primarily because the language was more "thin" or easily to replicate.

Slater asks, "How can less spreadable memes be sustained and compete concerning decisions about curriculum and instruction? What conditions would create environments for alternative memes to penetrate the discussion about education?"

If we first think about the functionalist use of language as a form of social control,we can think of language for transmission of information to establish relationship among people. The language itself may not be what controls, however, but rather the interpretation of the language. Slater says that the most powerful meme is democracy, but what meme of democracy is being imitated? Whose version of democracy should be imitated and how is this communicated? Slater writes, "The communicative function uses of mass media, the press, movies, television, and the Internet to help raise aspirations of people as they strive to be like others and this is facilitated by imitating memes. The world keeps going on the collected wisdom, information that helps control the environment from one generation to the next, creating cultural and intellectual cooperation that we take for granted in our meme-driven world" (150). It seems to me that this meme-driven world is, in fact, merely symbolic in nature. It is an imitation and not the real; the rhetoric of democracy, a democracy of competition and measurement, is the verbal world of schools. Slater and Hayakawa call this a false map. The imitator, perhaps a teacher, believes the prejudices of maps that are presented are the actual territory, maps with misinformation and error, rhetorical maps. Because so many teachers believe the map, the meme, is scientifically based and because we believe the source has authority because he or she is in a position of power, then we believe the maps (or language).

Of course, this logic of meme does not put much faith in the minds of teachers to resist meme or to produce new a new meme that might cultivate a profession of critical thinkers. Language is symbolic, and while its interpretation has the power to shape action and inaction,any new meme will not necessarily be any more true than the last. Slater argues against "oververbalizations, smoke screens for action and ideas, guided by words alone rather than facts that should guide us," but the "should guide us" language here assumes the curriculum workers can "create and imitate memes that lead to more appropriate ends" (151). She asks "rather than letting the memes of imitation of programs and ideas control the endless duplication, let those on the front lines, who know the student population best, work toward the goals of equity instead of having the solutions come to them ready made and impenetrable"(152). She is referring to the timelines, penalties,  funding and the legislation to measure equity and accountability. 

I am not convinced that those on the "front line" can shake the years of mimesis that pervade their pedagogy, but I do think that Slater ends her chapter with an important point about democracy and what a rhetoric of thick democracy can do to counter the logic of meme. Democracy is not about imitation; it is the antithesis. Democracy is complex, messy, and alive. Slater says that an orientation to this type of democracy requires another form of thought and language that is open to debate and dialogue so that they truly reflect the underlying values of a society.  "We have to be careful what memes we aid and abet and which ones we as yet have the opportunity to create" (153). Indeed, we do, but the question really needs to be "What is the answer to the logic of meme?"

Carr's Educating for Democracy

Carr, P. (2008). Educating for Democracy: With or without Social Justice. Teacher Education Quarterly, 35(4), 117-136.

What kind of democracy are we talking about?

When we talk about competition, higher standards, and accountability, we are talking about capitalism and free market. When we talk about be responsive to needs of all students, serving as a force of disrupting status quo (inclusivity), and moving toward a participatory, critically engaged community of learners, we are getting at social democracy. what kind of democracy are we enacting and teaching to our students?

The first section of Carr's article has proven to be the most helpful for my understanding of what happens in the classroom, specifically what knowledges are at the center and the margin of the pedagogy (the vision and materials of the classroom). Epistemologically, what counts as knowledge in that space? Are students learning inclusivity, participation, and critical engagement? Or are they learning obedience and conformity?  This either/or is certainly a binary that we can trouble, but I tend to see the overt and hidden messages of schools to be more about obedience and conformity to the idea of America as a free market rather than a social democracy.  And for the majority of my students (and their families) who are living in the periphery of the free market, I think enacting a social democracy will help them to construct alternatives or at least begin the delinking that Mignolo talks about. Carr calls this binary thin and thick democracy: 

The thick interpretation involves a more holistic, inclusive, participatory, and critical engagement, one that avoids jingoistic patriotism (Westheimer, 2006) and a passive, prescriptive curriculum and learning experience (Apple, 1996). This version of thick democracy reflects a concern for political literacy (Guttman, 1999), emancipatory engagement (Giroux, 1988), and political action (McLaren, 2007) that critics of the traditional or thin conception of democratic education have articulated. The key concern for the thick perspective of democracy resides in power relations, identity and social change, whereas the thin paradigm is primarily concerned with electoral processes, political parties, and structures and processes related to formal democracy. (118)

 Another way of looking at this is as I have stated above which is seeing "thin" democracy as that privatized, market democracy. If we teach our student to compete by making test scores the purpose of education, and if we say that our goal is to make students employable, then we are participating in the neo-liberal agenda. I think Carr is not actually arguing against agendas, but arguing for a different agenda -- one of social justice. Social justice is required because we must actually engage and disrupt the neo-liberal agenda before and while we are constructing a more "thick" democratic agenda.  We must develop civic literacy if we are to shift schooling.

Carr's paper presents his research in the College of Education in a university in Ohio where he had students  (129) and faculty (15) complete separate questionnaires in the 2005-6 school year.  In these questionnaires, Carr sought to understand how students and faculty conceptualize democracy and social justice in education. Students did not tend to see social justice as a fundamental component of democracy and faculty members noted how the controlling mechanisms of education/schooling  (autocratic in nature) often get in the way of democratic values.  One participant commented on how because his upbringing was homogenous, it was easy to be a citizen -- citizenship was narrowly defined, which success connecting it with democracy more explicitly is an important consideration, according to Carr (124). Another finding with the student population was the the "impact and role of power in shaping democracy" -- or at least one particular kind of democracy. Carr quotes Parker(2006) to talk about preparing teachers and thus students for democratic project: 

Difficult though listening is for any of us—especially across social positions—the project is all the more worthy of effort, experimentation, and gumption. In this way, there is some chance that educators might contribute, in a small but significant way, to “re-forming” the democratic public. This public, this heterogeneous group connected by political friendship, fundamentally is one “in which speed takes the place of blood, and acts of decision take the place of acts of vengence” (Pocock, 1998, p. 32). Citizens who possess broad social and disciplinary knowledge plus the disposition to speak and open to one another, whether they like one another or not, are precisely what the  democratic project cannot do without. ("Public discourses in schools: Purposes, problems, possibilities." Educational Research, 35 (8), 16.

Carr's research provides several important considerations for teacher education programs that I see as equally important for k-12 and college education as well. Teacher educators and teachers should address the substance and purpose of classroom practice with emphasis on the quality of what is being taught and the learning produced (identifying central concepts and in-depth understanding). Teaching about democracy and social justice cannot be an "add on" but must be inherent in practice.  He also suggests that we consider the "starting-point" for students as we develop an conceptual framework for social justice education so that students can and will engage critically. He cites Patrick (2003) in Teaching Democracy for an better understanding of this integrated approach: 

Effective education for citizenship in a democracy dynamically connects the four components of civic knowledge, cognitive civic skills, participatory civic skills, and civic dispositions. Effective teaching and learning of civic knowledge, for example, require that it be connected to civic skills and dispositions in various kinds of activities. Evaluation of one component over the other—for example, civic knowledge over skills or vice-versa—is a pedagogical flaw that impedes civic  learning. This, teaching should combine core content and the processes by which students develop skills and dispositions. (p. 3)

Thus, when we work with new teachers or with K-12 students, we need to think about civic learning as both the how and what of education. There are some systemic obstacles to implementing social justice education -- namely, the capitalist democratic framework of schooling, but that is precisely why the effort must be explicit. As Giroux argues, teachers must be politicized; and as McLaren says: teaching is never neutral.

·         Perceptions and experience of the educators in relation to democracy in education and its impact on what students learn about democracy
·         Connection between democracy and social justice
·         Thin – electoral process, political parties, and structures/processes related to formal democracy
·         Thick – holistic, inclusive, participator, and critical engagement avoids jingoistic patriotism and a passive prescriptive curriculum and learning experience – a concern for political literacy, emancipator engagement, political action – the key is in power relations, identity and social change,
·         Shifting toward constrained curriculum, supposedly higher standers, greater focus on employability, accountability – decrease in explicitly teaching for and about political literacy
·         Desirable traits for people living in a community – recycle, clean up, teat old peoplewith respect – but the are not democratic citizenship
·         Galston (2003) and Hess (2004) Teachers must be prepared and willing to address controversial issues in the classroom, and also be able to make direct linkages with civic skills and attidudes  in an explicit way
·         Most education students have a weak understanding of global issues that directly impact lives of Americans, which necessitates further inquiry into the role of teacher-educators
·         Intersection between social justice and democracy
·         Marshall and Oliva (2006) – social justice – equity, cultural diversity, the need for tolerance and respect for human rights and identity, the achievement gap, democracy and a sense of community  and belongingness, inclusion of groups that do not immediately come to  mind – differently abled
·         Moral imperative of ethical and responsible leadership
·         3 key components
o    Progressive or critical theoretical perspective
o    A deconstruction of the practical realities and perpetuation of inequities and the marginalization of members of a learning community who are outside the dominant culture
o    View schools as sites that not only engage in academic pursuits but also as locations that help creat actives to bring about the democratic reconstruction of society (Dantly and Tillman, 2006, 18-9)
·         Social justice praxis – linking the principles of democracy and equity in provocative ways so that social justice agenda becomes a vibrant part of everyday work of school leaders
·         Critical engagement Westheimer and Kahne (2004)
·         Education – production and reproduction of particular identities and social positioning
·         Bales argues (2006) teacher ed programs need to be vigilant in relation to international trends, research, and developing a relationship between teachers and learners – not discrete and finite set of teacher skills – examine how we might alter the accountability trajectory in the policy  spectacle that surrounds us; how far can democratic ed be effectively purused within tightly regimented and highly prescriptive teacher ed programs weary of not meeting standards
·         Collaborative inquiry – messy and demanding but aligns with democratic and social justice oriented values

·         Productive pedagogy – Ladwig (2004)
1. The overemphasis on classroom environments and processes rather than on
substance and purposes.
2. The relationships between foundational studies, curriculum studies and field
experiences which are currently insufficiently connected.
3. The purpose and structure of field experiences which centre too often on practicing
teaching techniques with relatively little concern for what is being taught
and the quality of learning produced.
4. The focus on student management relative to student learning, which mistakenly
assumes that management should be addressed first and separately.
5. The emphasis on syllabus content and constraints of the formal curriculum
relative to identifying central concepts and producing depth of understanding.
·         I would argue teaching morally.
·         Teaching about controversial issues – democracy and social justice – must take into account the starting-point for students; effective resources that outline the impetus, conceptual framework and application needs to be highlighted
·        Refuse to take a neutral position
·         Moral imperative of providing ethical and inclusive leadership (Ryan (2006) – curriculum in a socially just way
·         Dangers of being too focused on standards Wilson cooper (2006)