Writing in the University: Limiting and Exclusive?

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about college education, particularly writing instruction, and the implicit exclusivity that accompanies the rigid university standards. I keep coming back to a quote by Nancy Grimm, author and researcher on writing and literacy, who wrote Good Intentions: Writing Center Work for Postmodern Times. She notes, "To the student who grew up in a different literacy and with a different view of the social structure, the value of and the reasons for an assignment may seem anything but obvious. Teachers may have rarely taken his lived experience into account. His difficulty getting started may not have anything to do with a lack of understanding or a lack of desire to do well…but with the teacher’s failure (as well as previous teachers’ failures) to articulate the student’s representation of himself as a subject different from his teachers" (Grimm, 102). This quote seems to identify a growing conundrum in the university. Grimm’s hypothetical student comes from a traditionally underrepresented group. His unconventional cultural and literacy background ignored, his teachers expect him to assimilate into a dominant culture; yet this expectation is often unrealistic. Because higher education is derived from a set of values prescribed by the dominant mainstream culture, students from non-mainstream backgrounds are at a disadvantage and constrained by systemic limitations. This seems to be a pervasive and divisive problem in academia, one that has ignited in me many questions revolving around writing pedagogy and social justice in education .

As a writing center tutor at a large university, I meet with students from many diverse cultural backgrounds to discuss their writing and learning processes. Aware of the rigorous university expectations and standards, I have tried to help students find their voice in academia, while always acknowledging their cultural background and personal history. However, not every instructor holds this same value. I particularly remember sitting down with a young multi-lingual writer who did not understand her teacher’s comments and markups on her essay. As a non-native speaker, she struggled with transitioning her thoughts from her native language into English, especially onto paper. Her essay’s content had meaning and responded to the assignment, but because of her sentence structure and grammatical dissonance, she had failed—at least according to her instructor.

This event did not make any sense to me--the fact that the student received a C- due to grammar "errors." However, I do realize that this is a recurring theme in the university. Students struggle to find their voice in academia, while trying to hold true to their cultural background; yet they find that university standards do not take into account their personal experiences. Instead, the university has certain expectations, and if they are not met, one cannot succeed. Because of these limitations, I wonder how multilingual writers, students from lower-class families, and students with non-traditional literacy backgrounds will succeed in a postsecondary institution. Might higher education actually be limiting students, rather than aiding them in academic achievement?

I'd be interested to hear if anyone else if feeling confined by these restrictions. What do we do? How do we combat these formalities as "members" of the system?