Why Heather Can Write Response

I’m about 2/3 the way through. Got kind of bogged down with the domain and copyright wars. So, I’ll focus on the first part of the article which focused on Harry Potter and fan-fiction sites.

Once again, I find an old dog learning new tricks. While the fan fiction sites don’t surprise me, I didn’t know they were there. What Jenkins describes I find quite positive and encouraging. Once again, I find that the computer and the internet has awakened all kinds of writing urges out there and has opened up the floodgates to writers of every type, age, and genre. I say yay to that.

Writing communities are old school made new school through fan-fiction writing communities. I think it is amazing that so much writing goes on without teacher or classroom motivation behind it, as Jenkins notes as well. These “affinity spaces” as Gee termed them, are invaluable communities of learning that exist because of a common passion motivated only by an individual desire, not through any social mandate—ie, school. As a teacher, I think it is important to keep in mind that the learning a student accumulates will be mostly self-accumulated. A person will learn I think according to what that person has a deep interest to pursue. I try to remind myself that the learning that goes on in school is but one fraction of the learning that person will gather throughout life.

School is in itself, I think, an affinity space, or a learning community, much like a fan fiction or a book club or a writer’s group. The difference is that school is the one that is the “official” affinity group, and due to the fact that it is mandated, that the curriculum is limited and may not fit with individual passions, learning in school is met with much resistance. Funny how what we do in school, teaching reading, writing, math, science, exploration, problem solving, exercising, are things that students will balk at until 3:45 when they can go home and continue doing the same things, only this time, by their own choice. At home, it’s fun; in school, it’s a task.

Here’s an interesting quotation: “Schools are still locked into a model of autonomous learning that contrasts sharply with the kinds of learning that are needed as students are entering the new knowledge cultures. Gee and other educators worry that students who are comfortable participating in and exchanging knowledge through affinity spaces are being deskilled as they enter the classroom.” Yeow! “Deskilled.” I cringe at the suggestion and am provoked to self defense! En garde!

Perhaps it takes looking at schools as not the paradigm of all learning but only a slice of the pie. When one thinks of all the different kinds of learning that goes on in a school on any given day, one should be impressed. I am. I see creativity all over the place. I see teachers appropriating all the time from the “real world.” I see collaboration, exploration, discovery, synthesis, debate, dialogue, simulation, reasoning, prediction and problem solving happening multiple times a day. Schools do do what affinity spaces do, only we are the mandated institution for it which takes some of the romance of the self motivation away. Strip away the “institution,” the “mandate,” the “testing measurements,” and you will see organic learning happening.

But, I think it is very important to see schools as only a part of much vaster whole. Schools are collaborators in the effort to learn. Schools should be careful not to break the learning spirit, and, rather than hinder those engaged in “affinity spaces” as described in the article, we should be promoting them and collaborating with them. Harry Potter Fan Fic groups probably wouldn’t exist if these children had not been given literacy skills from the moment they began school. I do fear school indoctrination, which is why I choose to see schools as a learning community. It is important to get beyond the constructs of the institution and see the organic learning that goes on all the time. We play the school game, and it has its problems and its control-freak elements and its entrapped-within-the-system-shortcomings, but there is also an organic part to the school game that has in its core the same kind of motivations and passions and potentials as affinity spaces that lie beyond the classroom walls.