There's currently an MCI commercial about the Internet that many of you might have seen. It contains people of different ages, genders, races, abilities, voicing a litany of assertions: "There is no race; there are no genders; there is no age; there are no infirmities." Then someone says, "There are only minds," which also flashes across the screen in electronic script; after which, an African American man says, "Utopia?" and another African American man answers, "No." A white man answers him with, "The Internet." I could go on--there's much more to the commercial--and would love to because there is much here to unpack in terms of cultural implications, but for the purposes of this presentation I'll stop myself. What I'm interested in here is the Internet as utopia, and even more importantly, utopia formed through the erasure of cultural differences. If gender, age, race, and infirmities are the differences that not only divide us but mark some as inferior, these markings become invisible in the world of the internet, where we are free of bodies and material issues. It is as close to the bodiless, spiritual world as technology might offer us.
I bring this utopian vision up not only because it is popular in the TV and entertainment world, but also because I think it's popular in the academic world, and more specifically in composition. It's easy to get caught up in "newness" in this culture, and in composition circles, the Internet and all that goes with it is still relatively new. In 1993, Gail E. Hawisher and Charles Moran proclaimed that, for instance, "Electronic mail has received scant attention from the field of composition theory, despite the fact that at many work-sites and within some academic communities it is fast becoming our principal form of organized communication" (627). Although more research is being done, we are still at a stage where, with some caution, this new technology is being heralded as offering what Vitaly Dubrovsky, et al have called, "the equalization phenomenon," in their study of email use among first year college students. They found that "lower status" students asserted themselves more frequently over email than in face-to-face interactions. Daniel Goodman, a composition teacher, argues the internet is egalitarian because it
screens out the contextual cues signifying physical bearing and status. Once people log on, their status and prestige are communicated neither contextually nor dynamically, the way gaze, touch, and facial behavior communicate. Networking thus fosters more equal participation by obscuring the distinctions that give high-profile people the advantage. (29)Richard Lanham, Thomas Barker and Fred Kemp, and Marilyn Cooper and Cynthia Selfe all see the internet as potentially a democratic space generating community, challenging the hegemony of the teacher, and advancing literacy.
While I don't want to completely discredit these claims--I too am excited about the possibilities of the Internet, especially email and teaching writing--I am concerned that a sense of utopian glee might obscure some important issues related to cultural politics and technology as they apply to the academic writing class. I first want to present these issues as they exist in a broader cultural context than the academic world, then as they apply to private universities and colleges and working class students in writing courses. Laurie Nisonoff et al claim that
Issues of class difference and bias in education are no more sharply drawn than in small privileged, private colleges. Not only are differences in income of greater range, but implicit assumptions about background, lifestyle, and daily living place a special strain on students of working-class origins. (15)And in private universities and colleges, these class differences tend to remain out of sight, overshadowed by the dominant ideologies of privilege.
I am suggesting the kind of caution Hawisher and Moran advocate: "Although we believe that on-line communication has the potential to bring in voices from the margin and might, therefore, be more egalitarian than face-to-face discussion, we do not understand fully the dynamics of email discussion as it relates to issues of privilege" (635). I'm disinclined to believe that matters of class, race, gender, sexuality, and age suddenly and completely disappear in the world of cyberspace-- especially if we view computer literacy as part of an elite socio-economic hierarchy based on technology more easily available to relatively privileged people. Not only is access to the Internet unaffordable for many, but computers, running in a price range anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000, are well beyond the economic incomes of many.
The cost of personal computers and the Internet not only affects individuals, but also institutions and communities-- public libraries, for instance. Economic disparities affect what libraries can offer their patrons. The more poorly funded in lower income communities are likely to be incapable of offering new technological means of gathering information. In Brooklyn, only "the Central Library at Grand Army Plaza and the Business Library in Brooklyn Heights have computers with Internet access, but they are only for librarians. In contrast, every public library in Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island offers free Internet access to patrons" (Sengupta 13:10). But the problems extend beyond the availability of funds for computers. The majority of the 60 public libraries in Brooklyn, most with only one or two telephone lines and in many cases rotary phones, are ill-prepared to establish the communications technology needed for Internet use (13:10).
These same economic disparities apply to public schools and the Internet. According to a recent U.S. Department of Education Survey, only 4.5 percent of all public schools have access to the Internet in all classrooms. Some classes, like those at Roosevelt High School in D.C., have to travel off campus to a computer center so that students can use the Internet (Beyers B:1). In Fairfax County at Bailey's Elementary School in Virginia, there are many computers, but only one telephone line that allows Internet use which prevents email or Web activities involving an entire class. Although fourth grade students at Rock View Elementary in Montgomery County, Maryland were allowed to tag along electronically through the Internet on a classmate's four week tour of South America, the teacher had to use a borrowed laptop computer, a cellular phone and MCI email service to follow the student on his trip. The school only has one computer with Internet capabilities, and it is used primarily for administrative purposes.
My point in writing about libraries and public school classrooms is to point out that our students come to us with diverse economic and socio-cultural histories "that have been shaped by the experiences of family roots, community setting, parental work, and neighborhood culture" (Nisonoff, et al 15); and further, that it's more likely in a private university like George Washington these histories might remain invisible in the underlife of the classroom. Typically, wherever, whenever there is the presence of economic privilege, it tends to set the established norms, and certainly there are a number of privileged students at GW. When I teach the freshman research writing course, I often have students do interviews as research, and it's not unusual for some of them to have connections to people in Hollywood, to corporate administrators, hospital administrators, lawyers, and so on. Also, it's likely that GW itself normalizes privilege. Nisonoff, et al assert that private colleges and universities"--through curricula, reward structures, work expectations, and the separation of 'academic life' from social life--subtly and usually unconsciously [accommodate and support] a framework of class-based differences" (15).
At GW, I suspect the majority of students who come to the University can afford their own computers. Certainly this is the case in the two writing courses I'm presently teaching, where approximately three-fourths of the students have their own pcs in their dorm rooms. Because I wanted to create a class list for students to exchange postings through email about the topic and readings of the course, I asked them to tell me in writing whether they had an email address, how familiar they were with email, and whether they had easy access. Many responses describe their extensive experience with email and the Web:
I have a Mac LC575 and it's mine. I use email about 10-20 times a day. I have used a computer all of my life, and I have access to almost everything. I have an account with GWIS and am very aware of the Internet and all it has to offer. I use my computer on a daily basis as it is located in my room with all the accessories needed.
I've had immediate access to a computer since I was in junior high. I am familiar with most word processing programs, spreadsheets, databases, etc. I have had email access for three-and-one-half years and am familiar with the internet, both in visiting specific websites and using search engines to find information....I feel comfortable using computers and assume I can use them in whatever capacity you require for the course.
I have a pc in my dorm room. I am very familiar w/computers, there are three of them in my house at home. I play on the internet to relax (i.e. procrastinate!). I have experience using AOL, Compuserve and Netscape.These are clearly students who come from families and backgrounds where access to computers is a given, and the internet plays a role in everyday life.
But there are those students--and they are in the minority-- whose backgrounds and present-day situations do not include their own computer in their dorm room--as I've already indicated, about a fourth of the 40 students in my two classes. And I fear that their situations may be obscured by the privileged computer- owning majority. Access for these students is certainly by no means impossible, but can be more complicated. Many of them live with roommates who are hooked up to the Internet:
In high school we had a family computer that I used mainly as a word processor, but also as an access for email. I do not have a personal computer here, but do have unlimited access to my roommate's MacII. We have access to email on it.
My family doesn't have a computer at home, and I don't have one at school. My three roommates each have their own, as do most of my friends, which they let me use. Also, I can use Thurston's computer lab (if forced).For these students, access to email and the Internet is not a difficult issue as long as their relationships with their computer-owning roommates remain affable. And as anyone who knows anything about life in the dorms, affability cannot be taken for granted, as this student suggests: "I do have access though to a computer through my roommate. Usually he is o.k. with me using it, but sometimes it can be a problem."
As has already been indicated by a student, if they have nowhere else to turn, there are, in the end, the computer labs, a number of which GW has located throughout its campus. As long as they can locate a lab that's not exceptionally busy all the time, most students without any other access to computers are able to meet their needs. My impression is that GW does a good job of familiarizing first-year students with the basics of computer lab use; there is no one in my two classes, who, for instance, is completely unknowledgeable about using email, and everyone already had an email address. There are, however, a very few students who live off campus, and for them access is more complicated, as this student indicates: "I have and use my email account. I am a little familiar with using the internet. The only problem is I commute and I don't have access to email at home, which means I can only check my email in between classes."
Because I was aware of my own inclination to take for granted students' access to email, I tried to encourage them at the start of the semester to talk to me if they thought they might have some difficulty making weekly postings to the class list, and we could work out an arrangement that might suit them. No one spoke to me at the time. But of course in the first week of posting, some students--only three out of forty--failed to send their messages by the deadline I set, and none of those four owned a computer. Only after there were problems posting did they talk to me. One simply forgot because he was so unused to checking his email on his roommate's computer; another, who had to use the computer lab, was unsure how to send an email message using the class list; and a third, who also had to use the computer lab, had trouble posting by the deadline because she lives off campus and doesn't have a computer at home.
I'm not suggesting that we avoid using email because some students do not have easy access or are unfamiliar with it. My two classes in general enjoy posting to the list, in part, I suspect, because it's a teacher-free space. While I receive all the messages they send each other, I don't send any myself unless there's a need to moderate. Some of them post two or three times a week, rather than the one they're required, and some of these postings have begun threads that have nothing to do with the course topic. I find all of this exciting--students writing to students. But I am suggesting that in all this excitement we not lose sight of issues related to economics and access and familiarity, that we make sure at the start of the semester to find out from our students how difficult it will be for them to use a computer with access to email and the Web by simply having them describe in writing their computer-situations. And if we find that some students have trouble gaining access on a regular basis, we find ways to make allowances, either by letting them post past the deadline, or allowing them to write a journal entry to turn into the teacher instead of an email message. If they are unfamiliar with the technology, it's our job to spend time familiarizing them. And it's also our job to make sure that the differences and the different needs among our students are not obscured.