Blog 4: What is Stern's methodology? what skills does she use? How do the limitations of autobiography identified by Evans apply to Stern's essay?

A positivist methodology shapes Stern's work. My basis for this claim is her use of the condition of PTSD as a type of rule; in essence, Stern is applying her understanding of this external rule to explain the phenomena of both denial and violence. However, as we discussed in class, she also wields her conception of the condition of denial pragmatically as well--it serves her purposes, towards a conceptualized end that she has already foreseen. I was too myopic in my initial reading of Stern's work to see this approach.

Stern gathers "historic" police transcripts from the event of her rape. She retells the event through the voice of a narrative. The events and actions of external entities-- the town, the police, her parents-- are relayed to us. It is left up to the reader to decide a judgement upon these persons and places, or perhaps to decide that none is necessary.

The quandary of judgement results from a limitation outlined by Evans: it is impossible to establish the categorical imperative-- a logical absolute whereby an action is necessary -- when the impetus for that action is hearsay-- which, unfortunately is what an autobiography is.

Now the limitations of the Kantian basis of moral judgements I have outlined is purely logical, however one would be quick to note that it is the basis for our legal system, and the reason why hearsay evidence is inadmissible in court cases, except as a plea to pathos.

I think that is my issue with Stern's work: it is an emotional appeal masquerading as an academic, reasoned argument on violence and denial.

It is important to try and understand our own assumptions and biases, and perhaps I do not value emotional appeals; nevertheless, to discount them as somehow inferior would be rubbish as well.

I think then, perhaps, that I agree with my original hypothesis that I asserted in class: that this work was Stern exercising an asymmetrical form --the autobiographical method-- in order to increase her own understanding; that her academic background was a wall of sorts. I would even venture to say that Stern had to suspend her intuition in order to complete this piece.

Ideas for Research Project/ Week 2 & 3

*Combination of 2 and 3*
Idea

Have the systemic changes in traditional grammar instruction in New Jersey secondary schools affected student preparedness for their university writing?

Questions

How is traditional grammar currently being taught in New Jersey high schools?

How does this current method deviate from previous models/methods of instruction?

What was the impetus for this change? I.e what was the cause for the paradigm shift? 

Is there empirical evidence that can be offered as a proof of the validity of each new model of instruction-- what makes this model true, either objectively or subjectively?

What are the effects of a system that quantitatively tests students on a basis of both linguistic prescriptivism and Essentialist construction of language, but that teaches students the rules of grammar within a conceptual model married to linguistic descriptivism and post-modern methodologies?    

Can the tools currently used by the New Jersey Department of Education be used to accurately gauge high school students language and literacy proficiency if there is a schism that exists between these methodologies of instruction, examination and the understanding of language itself?

Test what entity the model of traditional grammar curriculum serves: if it is not adequately preparing the students for college prep, as that is the mission statement outlined on the Common Core Standards website, what or who are the parties winning and losing within the confines of the current paradigm?


Week 2- Playing with Ideas

I see this paper as part historical survey of traditional grammar instruction and part illustration of the paradigm shifts that grammar instruction has undergone in New Jersey high schools in the past thirty years. I will first outline the current standardized 9^th-12^th grammar curriculum, and then proceed to articulate where the current curriculum deviates from models of grammar instruction of the past thirty years. This will demonstrate not only what each individual curriculum is composed of but will also leave the reader with the question of why is it being instructed and why was it changed? Once I have accomplished this historical examination, I will then illuminate the epistemological differences in the various curricula for my reader to analyse. I will undertake my own analysis of who is actually benefiting from the changes in these curricula using a philosophical approach that borrows heavily from the ideas of Wittgenstein and Chomsky. I also plan on attacking the question from the avenue of an educator, by actually interviewing high school English teachers who have a particular fondness for a certain method of grammar instruction, and thus they form a certain cohort that can be quantitatively measured. Finally, I plan on interviewing freshman college composition professors to ask them—if they could design a high school grammar course, what would it include?

Write a definition of methods, methodologies + skills

Research skills consist of the tradecraft and other technical proficiencies that are necessary to both handle and gather material about a subject or idea. Examples include: Understanding Boolean search logic (library skills); foreign or archaic language proficiency (period-specific skills); organizing volumes of disparate information (bibliographic skills); understanding the complexities of DCMA and Fair Use (intellectual property knowledge and IT skills).

Research methods are the individual approaches a person takes towards research subject. Griffin points out that our choice of method is dependent on exactly how we wish to conduct our research: do I want to use textual analysis? am I going to use statistical models? will I be conducting interviews with people? At this point it would be important to mark the place where method and methodology deviate from one another: a method is a orderly arrangement of ideas; whereas a methodology is a body - a grouping - of previously established methods, used for a purpose (OED).

Once we have established our method(s) for collecting material, a person applies a methodology to group the data, or ideas for a purpose-- a focus; this focus is elucidating a truth, but not necessarily the truth about the researched sbuject. Examples of different methodologies and their impacts on a  researched subject can be seen in this example: A positivist would only value knowledge that could be verified through experience and empirical evidence; this philosophy of knowledge would be diametrically opposed to someone from the school of Critical Theory, which views knowledge as constructed and thus prone to both perspective and error. The truth the positivist arrives at and the methods he used concerning a subject would be challenged by the Critical Theorist. It is important to note though, that both constructions of what a subject is are valid-- I avoid Griffin's use of the word "good" because I think it adds a dimension of unnecessary morality to a possible truth. The plurality of truths within an idea, or at least its possibility to be subject-dependent and subject-independent within the same point of time seems to be one of the paradoxes of research.