| My Stance | Gee | Cuddy |
| Agree | “If you have no access to the social practice, you don’t get in the discourse, you don’t have it. You cannot overtly teach someone a Discourse, in a classroom or anywhere else.”
I agree with Gee here because I think that you cannot teach someone or yourself to become a member of a certain discourse. I think that to acquire a discourse it needs to occur naturally, a Discourse is how someone speaks, writes and acts it’s not something that you can change or pretend to be a part of. |
“I don’t have ego involved in this. Give it away. Share it with people, because the people who can use it the most are the ones with no resources and no technology and no status and no power. Give it to them because they can do it in private. They need their bodies, privacy and two minutes, and it can significantly change the outcomes of their life.”(Cuddy, 8)
I agree with Cuddy here because her technique of “fake it ‘til you make it” is something that requires nothing but yourself. This a way that people who have nothing, can give themselves the confidence that they need and put their best foot forward. |
| Disagree | ||
| Agree, with a Difference |
“For instance, the primary Discourse of many middle-class homes has been influenced by the secondary Discourses like those used in schools and business. This is much mess true of the primary Discourse in many lower socioeconomic black homes, though this primary Discourse have been influenced by the black church community” I agree with Gee’s statement here because there is evidence that backs this up but I do disagree with how he relates this to a statement later on in the paper where he says that your primary discourse will always show through even when you are engaged in a secondary discourse. This is saying that someone from a low socioeconomic black area will never be as successful as someone who is from a middle class white area, because of the nature of their primary discourse. I don’t think that this is true because if someone is willing to work hard enough to be successful in an area they will be able to not use the pieces of their primary discourse that would put them at a disadvantage. |
So at the end of my first year at Harvard, a student who had not talked in class the entire semester, who I had said, “Look, you’ve gotta participate or else you’re going to fail,” came into my office. I really didn’t know her at all. She came in totally defeated, and she said, “I’m not supposed to be here.” And that was the moment for me. Because two things happened. One was that I realized, oh my gosh, I don’t feel like that anymore. I don’t feel that anymore, but she does, and I get that feeling. And the second was, she is supposed to be here! Like, she can fake it, she can become it. I agree with Cuddy here but only in these types of situations. In this situation the student had already been accepted and in the class and obviously had all the necessary credentials to be where she was, but the thing that she lacked here was confidence. In a scenario where a person has all the necessary qualifications or credentials but lacks confidence faking it until you actually build that confidence is a realistic and reasonable approach. If someone who was completely in over their head and had no credentials or qualifications attempted to fake it until they made it, they would be discovered as a fraud, eventually someone would know they did not belong in the position in which they were in. |
