Ong, in turn, showed one of my papers to another fellow at the Center who was the editor of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. Ong called me to tell me that the editor wanted to publish my essay. Naturally I revised my essay to conform it to the documentation styles used in the journal. Thus, my article "Open Admissions, Orality and Literacy" was published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, volume 3 (1974): pp. 247-260. Mina Shaughnessy and others at City College read it.
In the spring semester of 1975, Mina Shaughnessy came to St. Louis for the national meeting of the professional association known as the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), a subset of the much larger National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). The CCCC published the professional journal College Composition and Communication (CCC), and NCTE also published the professional journal College English (CE). Subsequently, I published numerous articles in those two journals, some of which I mention in the present essay.
In any event, at Mina Shaughnessy's request, I met with her at the CCCC convention hotel, which was not far from the campus of Forest Park Community College. She asked me if I would be interested in coming to teach at City College. I said that I would. Subsequently, Mina Shaughnessy single-handedly arranged for me to be invited to teach at City College in 1975-1976.
Now, the other two papers that I sent Ong were also eventually published - one substantially revised and expanded: (1) "Reading in the Community College" in College English, volume 37 (1975-1976): pp. 40-46; and (2) "IQ and Standard English" in College Composition and Communication, volume 34 (1983): pp. 470-484.
In my 1983 article "IQ and Standard English," my primary adversary was Arthur R. Jensen, who held out for a genetic or biological explanation of the differences in black and white IQ scores. In contrast, I proposed an environmental explanation. Drawing on Ong's work and related work, I proposed that the differences in black and white IQ scores can be attributed to cultural differences - cultural differences that could be ameliorated through better literacy instruction for black inner-city children. As a matter of fact, I deliberately framed my argument as presenting a hypothesis of those IQ-score differences that could be tested.
In my controversial 1983 article "IQ and Standard English," I also target the position paper known as "The Students' Right to Their Own Language" published as a Special Issue of the College Composition and Communication in 1974.
In any event, the hypothesis-to-be-tested that I proposed in my 1983 article "IQ and Standard English" offended the reigning political correctness of the day - making my 1983 article "IQ and Standard English" very controversial.
Subsequently, I responded to my critics in my article "A Defense for Requiring Standard English" in the journal Pre/Text: A Journal of Rhetorical Theory, volume 7 (1986): pp. 165-180.
My article "A Defense for Requiring Standard English" was reprinted in the textbook Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions, and Boundaries, edited by William A. Covino and David Jolliffe (Allyn and Bacon, 1995, pp. 667-678).
Now, In Donald Lazere's notably comprehensive book Political Literacy in Composition and Rhetoric: Defending Academic Discourse Against Postmodern Pluralism (Southern Illinois University Press, 2015), he says, "I grew up in the 1940s and 1950s" (p. 25), but he does not tell us the year of his birth. He also says, "I was a scholarship student in college at Brown and Northwestern and in graduate school at Columbia and Berkeley" (p. 28). In addition, he says, "For five years after college in the early 1960s, I studied for an MA part time at Columbia while working in a succession of jobs on Madison Avenue in advertising, public relations, and celebrity journalism" (p. 28). However, he does not tell us the year in which he completed his undergraduate degree. (I completed my undergraduate degree from Saint Louis University in 1966, so I figure that Lazere is a bit older than I am.)
But Lazere does say, "I completed my doctorate in 1974" (p. 32). In addition, he says, "I wrote my dissertation, published by Yale University Press in 1973 as The Unique Creation of Albert Camus, . . . " (p. 29). Elsewhere, Lazere tells us that the "iconoclastic literary and political critic Frederick Crews" served as the director of his dissertation (p. 31).
In Lazere's Chapter 2: "My Teaching Story" in his notably comprehensive 2015 book (pp. 25-45), he also says, "In 1972, I was a TA for a section of English 1A, the first-year writing course emphasizing critical writing from sources, in which the teacher was a full professor in classical and medieval literature and the central reading Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. (Yes, each section of about twenty students was staffed by both a regular faculty member and a TA in that golden age, which has gone with the wind)" (pp. 29-30). But this English 1A course at Berkeley does not sound like the Berkeley remedial writing course known as Subject A, discussed below.
In Lazere's notably comprehensive 2015 book, he revisits (1) my work (pp. 197-201 and 223) and (2) the 1974 CCCC position paper titled "The Students' Right to Their Own Language" (pp. 23, 116-117, 168, 198, 201-205, 207, and 243), and (3) Mina Shaughnessy work (pp. 9, 12, 14, 43, 53, 77-85, 90, 92, 96-97. 115, 130, 133, 186, 186, 189, 197, 208, and 249-250).
The "Index" in Lazere's notably comprehensive 2015 book (pp. 317-332) also reveals that he discusses Ong's work (pp. 19, 189, 196, and 197), with special reference to Ong's 1982 book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (Methuen) - Ong's most widely read and most widely translated book.
However, in connection with Lazere's discussion of agonism in his notably comprehensive 2015 book (pp. 212-213), I wish that Lazere had also mentioned that Ong discusses "Agonistically toned" orally based thought and expression in his 1981 book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (pp. 43-45) and that Ong thematizes male agonism or contesting behavior in his 1981 book Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality [Gender], and Consciousness (Cornell University Press), the published version of Ong's 1979 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University.
In Ong's 1981 book (pp. 75-76), he discusses my article "The Female and Male Modes of Rhetoric" in College English, volume 40 (1978-1979): pp. 909-921. In my article, I quote Sarah D'Eloi's observations in a letter she wrote me after I had left City College and returned to Forest Park Community College in St. Louis.
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