Vol. 2 5 No. 3 ADULT LEARNINGRefereed ArticlesTeachin.docx

Vol. 2 5 No. 3 ADULT LEARNING
Refereed Articles
Teaching O u r O w n Racism
Incorporating Personal Narratives of Whiteness Into Anti-Racist
Practice
Stephen Brookfield, PhD1
Abstract: Anti-racist pedagogy typically focuses
on helping learners identify and counter racist
ideas and actions they detect in themselves and
others. Sympathetically and skillfully, the leader
of this activity is charged with helping people
detect subtle racism as evident in racial micro-
aggressions and aversive racism. This pedagogic
process is crucial and valuable, but risks avoiding
a powerful dynamic of how
educators can use their own
personal, autobiographical
experience to model how
they themselves struggle to
detect and immobilize (as
much as that is possible)
racist instincts in themselves.
If racism is understood as a
learned ideology, then it is
reasonable to expect that even
adult educators committed
to dismantling racism have
internalized aspects of this

ideology. Instead of trying to purge themselves
of these, conceal, or damp them down, an
alternative educational approach is to make these
racist inclinations public and to engage learners
in a consideration of how to recognize and
challenge these.
Keywords: teaching, racism, narrative, pedagogy,
self-disclosure
s a participant in diversity and anti-racist
professional development workshops over the
.years, I noticed a particular dynamic at play.
The workshop is designed to
help participants learn about
cultural and racial difference and
to help them be more alert to
ways they fall into reproducing
racist behaviors by perpetuating
cultural stereotypes and holding
inaccurate assumptions about
different racial groups. The
underlying assumption is
through education and self-
reflection people can learn to
work in ways free of racist
undertones. Anti-racist and
diversity education is something done to you, by
those who have cracked the code of cultural
misunderstandings and who have come out the other
side of struggling with racism to a point where they
can now teach others how to think and work in non-
racist ways.

U E v e n t h e m o s tEXPERIENCED
W h i t e a n t i - r a c i s t
EDUCATORS ARE LIKELY
TO HAVE ELEMENTS OF
THE LEARNED IDEOLOGY
OF RACISM LIVING
W ITH IN T H E M .”
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is it SAG E’s W e b s ite a t h ttp ://w w w .s a g e p u b .c o m
/jo u r n a ls P e rm is s io n s .n a v .
C o p y rig h t © 2 0 1 4 T h e A u th o r(s )
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ADULT LEARNING August 2014
Teaching Our Own Racism
The European-American Collaborative Challenging
Whiteness (ECCW, 2010) in San Francisco challenges
this paradigm. The Collaborative has met monthly for

the last 16 years to examine how Whites can educate
each other, and themselves, about White supremacy.
The members note how the desire to be seen as good
White people, “who act as effective allies to people of
color by challenging the injustices of white hegemony
and privilege” (ECCW, 2010, p. 146), permeates so much
of anti-racist education. Paradoxically, as the ECCW
(2010) notes, “this desire to be and be seen as a good
white person often leads each of us to behaviors that
have the opposite effect of what we intend” (p. 147).
From examining their own personal experiences, the
ECCW (2010) members note two common mistakes
committed when Whites try to teach each other about
race and racism. The first is proselytizing, “exhorting in
an officious and tiresome way” (ECCW, 2010, p. 146) to
other Whites the need for anti-racism which results in
those on the receiving end become defensive or shut
down entirely. In the zeal to educate people about
racism, proselytizers end up bringing anti-racist
endeavors into disrepute. The second error is
disdaining, treating less racially enlightened colleagues
as objects of scorn to be pitied or condemned.
Disdaining is rarely overt in my experience, but rather
the sending of a subtle message you are one of the
many who just do not get it in contrast to the racially
cognizant elite few who have cracked the code of how
to be non-racist.
As soon as I read the ECCW’s (2010) analyses of
these errors, I recognized my own commission of these
exact same behaviors. A full disclosure of how the
ideology of White supremacy was alive and well within
me was missing from my practice. Instead of educating
people from a supposed position of racial cognizance,
I really needed to talk openly about my struggle with

my racism. Slowly, I came to understand education
about racism was often best done through narrative
disclosure, rather than sharing tips and techniques of
what did or did not work.
Pedagogically, I now think of anti-racist education as
being as much about teaching our own racism as it is
about scrutinizing curricula, institutional policies, and
organizational practices for evidence of structural
disenfranchisement. If racism is understood as a
learned ideology, something that pervades everyday
speech, media images, peer group learning, and family
dynamics, then it is surely reasonable to expect even
adult educators committed to dismantling racism have
internalized aspects of this ideology.
In this article, I argue even the most experienced
White anti-racist educators are likely to have elements
of the learned ideology of racism living within them.
Instead of trying to purge themselves of these, conceal
them, or damp them down, an alternative educational
approach is to make these racist inclinations public and
engage learners in a consideration of how to recognize
and challenge these. This approach uses adult
educators’ own attempts to model a critical analysis of
their learned racism. It asks questions such as (a) How
have we learned racism from dominant ideology?
(b) How do our racist impulses continue to manifest
themselves in our actions? (c) What are ways we can
identify these? (d) How are our racist leanings
interrupted by disruptive experience? and (e) How do
we challenge and push back against them?
Learning Racism
As with all Whites in Britain, I grew up in a world in

which Whiteness, and all things White, was taken as
the natural order of things. I have six decades of
ideological conditioning into White Supremacy and, as
a result, I do not expect it ever to leave me. Attitudes
and beliefs I picked up in my childhood, adolescence,
and young adulthood included Blacks were
alternatively lazy, happy, or violent; Pakistanis and
Indians were sexually irresponsible having large
families; and Gypsies were thieves out to mark your
house as an easy target. White supremacy was not
without complications. For example, the White Irish
were portrayed as lazy, drunken brawlers, with a
markedly inferior IQ.
These stereotypes were earned through jokes with
peers, family conversations, and media images. They
flourished in the vacuum of no contact with anyone
other than Whites like me. I do not think I had a
conversation with a Black person until I was 18 years
old. Furthermore, this ideology of White supremacy
rarely named itself as such. Overt declarations of White
racial superiority were rare and, while learning racist
attitudes, I engaged in apparently anti-racist acts. For
example, as an undergraduate, I participated in
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Vol. 2 5 No. 3 ADULT LEARNING
demonstrations against the South African Rugby team
representing the then South African apartheid regime.
But external behavior often masks learned instincts,
and so it was with me.

External events sometimes challenged the power of
this ideology. At the age of 17, in Banbury High Street
one Friday night, I was beaten up by a gang of White
youths (they were rockers-, I was a mod). A Black
American GI serviceman, from Upper Heyford Air
Force base, crossed the street and broke up the fight
telling us, “everybody’s got to be cool now.” This
pivotal event disrupted the White Supremacist script
forming in my head that said, “Black people are violent
and start fights and White people are peacemakers
who sometimes have to use force to reign in Black
instigators of violence.” Here was a stunning role
reversal that made a big impression on me and
represented what Critical Race Theory (CRT) calls a
counter-story.
But, despite disruptive moments and events such as
these, White Supremacy moves in me as it does in all
Whites. First, my skin color means, for my whole
career, I am not only used to seeing people who look
like me as gatekeepers in adult education, but I
suppose I am also one of those gatekeepers,
continuing the unproblematized White Supremacy
norm. For example, I question my right to publish
something. White epistemology is something bred into
my neural synapses. Racism—the ugly
operationalization of the ideology of White
supremacy—moves in me in ways that constantly catch
me by surprise. I see a Black pilot enter the cockpit of
the plane and catch myself thinking, “Will this flight be
safe?” Interestingly, Nelson Mandela (1994) writes about
having the same reaction.
In classes, I catch myself not challenging students of
color and realize my so-called empathy, desire to be an

ally, masks an embedded racist consciousness, which
says, “They can’t take a strong challenge from a White
person.” The ECCW (2010) notes how Whites often
withhold their contributions in multi-racial dialogues,
so as not to be seen as enacting White supremacy. This
implies the White voice is so powerful that it will
eclipse all others, but withholding leaves colleagues of
color wondering what Whites are thinking.
Clearly, racism moves in me. I find myself quickly
granting paper extensions to Black students. I assume
it springs from a White Supremacist judgment that,
because Black students are not as intelligent as White
students, of course, they will need more time to
complete their work. I keep silent in a presentation
given by a scholar of color because (so my internal
calculus goes) my voice is so powerful it will diminish
the presenter’s voice. It is deeply sobering to realize the
ideological conditioning of White supremacy is so
strong and enduring.
T h e U se o f N arrative M o d elin g
I grew up suspicious of the use of narrative,
storytelling, as I would have described it. Storytelling
was something that was entertaining, but essentially
fictional. It was not academic, chiefly because it was
clearly subjective and a-theoreticaL It took me a long
time to realize narrative as one of the most compelling
pedagogic approaches I can use. Nothing draws people
more quickly into considering challenging information
and perspectives than a personal story. Dissertations
that are scholarly personal narratives (Nash & Bradley,
2011) are often far more likely to influence practice
than third person research reports.

Whenever I have a pedagogic aim of teaching about
the pervasive nature of racism, I work from the
position that, before I can ask others to explore how it
lives within them, I need to engage in self-disclosure of
how it lives within me. I begin by defining some
constituent ideological elements of White supremacy
and proceed to show how each flourishes within me.
Let me describe three of these.
W hites are Natural Gatekeepers
This first idea seeps its way insidiously into our
consciousness. It does not assert itself as an overt
injunction, as in you must be white to be editor o f this
journal, winner o f this award, compiler o f this
handbook. Rather, a chief indicator of the White
gatekeeper role’s power is revealed in the instinctive
surprise we experience when we come across a
gatekeeper who is not White.
When uncovering this ideology, I usually start by
talking about those who, in a four-decade career, have
been my boss. Not one person of color has been in a
position of direct authority over me. Every dean,
department head, principal, president, and book editor
I have worked with has been White like me. I have no
91
model of a person of color who has exercised
gatekeeper power or influence over me.

I then talk about my own gatekeeper role. I now
find myself in the role of mentor to junior faculty,
several of whom are colleagues of color, who are
trying to publish. As Endowed Chair, the top of the
professorial hierarchy, I am in the position of the White
power broker and ally while still being in thrall to
learned racist ideology in an overwhelmingly White
field. I talk about how I try to deal with this
contradiction. I try not to set any agenda with my
mentee, instead asking mentees what their agendas
and goals are and how they feel I could be of help. I
never agree to a mentoring role unless asked to do so
by the mentee, even though superiors have sometimes
wanted to foist me on colleagues they see as
underperforming.
At the outset, I try to acknowledge my own identity
as a White, European American, and how the rules of
the game have been set up to help me. If a junior
colleague wishes to play this game of publish or
perish, I am more than willing to help them. I do not
try to pretend I can, in any way, draw on my struggles
to get to my position as a way of understanding theirs.
I do not insist they call me Stephen, which is what I
am most comfortable with and would much prefer.
The Dr Brookfield or Professor Brookfield I am usually
called is always a reminder of the power differential
between us.
Colleagues o f Color N eed Special
H elp and Assistance— They Cannot
Make It W ithout a W hite Ally
One of the dynamics the ECCW (2010) describes is
the need for good Whites to be seen as an ally.

Whenever I hear White colleagues declare themselves
as allies, I cringe; though I try to keep the cringe
internal. Displaying it openly is a clear act of disdaining
in the way the ECCW identifies this. I would like to be
considered an ally, but the designation of ally is not
ever ours to make. I understand the naming of me in
that way is not in my hands. Instead, I often begin any
discussion of being an ally by declaring my core
assumptions that a person of color will never trust me,
and this should have no bearing on my readiness to
work in ways that seem anti-racist. I also own up to my
belief that I should never expect to be acknowledged
or thanked for this kind of work.
One of the things I talk about is my own practice of
interacting with colleagues and students of color. I talk
about my withholding behaviors, of not speaking for
fear of seeming authoritarian or racist. I remember the
first time I worked with a group in which African
American students were present. Whenever one
woman spoke, I would remain studiously silent,
congratulating myself on my empathic support. One
day, this student pulled me aside and asked why I
never responded to her comments in classroom
discussion. She was visibly upset with what she saw as
my disinterest in her views. This supposed act of an
ally actually increased her perception of the power I
held over her.
I also describe my experiences working in multi-
racial teaching teams. I am known as something of a
soft touch for any tale of woe, but particular for tales
told by students of color. For years, I would
unhesitatingly grant extensions and push back
deadlines for any such student who asked. My rationale

was White institutions needed to bend over backward
to make allowances for students who had not had the
privilege of a rigorous academic training. Although I
always tried to grade in a color-blind way, I felt much
more pressure to round up a score for a student of
color compared with a White student.
But when working in multi-racial teams, it quickly
became apparent my teammates of color behaved very
differently. They were much less ready to grant
extensions and would ask me why I graded a student
of color so generously. I began to realize behaviors I
imagined were in some way contributing to anti-racist
pedagogy could actually indicate a deeply ingrained
racism. I assumed, without stopping to question,
students of color were incapable of handling the same
full-blown critique I would make of White students’
work. Furthermore, I assumed students of color could
not reach the same standards of excellence as White
students; so, I should go easy on them, bumping up
their mark whenever I was in doubt about the merits of
a piece of work. In essence, I was giving marks for
showing up and for the sheer fact of handing
something in, irrespective of the quality of the work, in
a way I would never do for White students.
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Vol. 2 5 N o. 3 ADULT LEARNING
Uncovering Racial Micro-Aggressions
One of the most useful concepts I have stumbled
across in the last few years has been that of racial

micro-aggressions. Popularized by Deraid Wing Sue
(2010), micro-aggressions are the small acts of
exclusion and marginalization committed by a
dominant group toward a minority. They are never
overt or explicit, nothing as obvious as using a racist
epithet or telling a person of color to shut up. The two
constituent defining elements of a micro-aggression
underscore this subtlety. First, receivers of micro-
aggressions are usually left wondering, “Did that really
happen?” “Should we be offended by that?” or “Did he/
she mean to be insulting?” Second, when enactors of
micro-aggressions are confronted with their actions,
they typically, and in a sense quite honestly, deny there
was any aggressive intent. They explain, with full
sincerity, no exclusion or diminution was planned and
the receiver is indeed imagining things. They will
explain their action away by saying they had a
temporary moment of forgetfulness or they got their
words mixed up.
The key point is micro-aggressions are not ever
consciously intended to diminish a person of color.
Instead, they are so ingrained in the repertoire of daily
behaviors we use to manage interpersonal
interactions—the tone of voice we use, the gestures we
make, where we direct eye contact, the analogies that
unconsciously suggest themselves, the jokes we use,
the shorthand terms we use—that we never experience
them as deliberately focused on insulting someone. In
this sense, they are truly ideological, so fully
assimilated as to be unnoticeable until someone brings
them to our attention.
I see racial and gender micro-aggressions
everywhere and always try to use my own commission
of these as the starting point for examining this

concept. I begin a class or workshop by sharing my
most recent micro-aggressions. Let me give two
examples. During a discussion, I asked all the students
in an academic class on leadership to give their
preliminary take on an issue the course was examining.
After hearing from each student, I summarized what I
felt were the main themes and differences revealed in
the discussion. On finishing my summary, a student
raised her hand and said I had missed one member of
the group, a young Asian American woman. I was
momentarily flustered, apologized, and invited the
overlooked student to speak.
During the coffee break, I thought the incident over
and realized it was a classic example of a micro-
aggression. I certainly had no plans to exclude this
student. I had not come to class thinking, “I must make
certain student A doesn’t have the chance to speak.”
And, had I been confronted with my behavior in the
moment, I would have denied any exclusionary intent.
When I returned to class, I began the session by
apologizing again and saying what the students had
just witnessed was a classic example of a racial micro-
aggression. A representative of the dominant culture
had unknowingly and unwittingly marginalized
someone from a community of color.
One of the White students told me not to be so hard
on myself and said I was reading far too much into a
momentary lapse of forgetfulness. I explained micro-
aggressions are never intended. Instead, they are
ingrained, seemingly instinctive behaviors that
represent years of unconscious assimilation and
socialization. They are ideological in the sense that
they become part of our daily repertoire, behavioral

minutiae that actually represent a socially ordered
system of structural inequality. At this point, the student
I had overlooked spoke up and said the same thing
had happened to her in every class she had taken at
the university. Her experience had been that of being
repeatedly ignored.
The second example occurred in a professional
development workshop I was running. The participants
were leaders within their own organization. We
convened for a day to examine, among other things,
ways in which the organization could provide more
inclusive services. At one point in the day, we talked
about the influence of machismo in sport and how this
connected to homophobic attitudes. I volunteered there
was only one openly Gay athlete in U.S. professional
sports, Robbie Rogers of the LA Galaxy soccer team.
A woman at the training immediately spoke up
saying, “you mean the first gay male athlete” and
pointed out the presence of openly gay female
basketball players, including the lucrative Nike
sponsorship deal signed by Brittney Griner, the top
pick in the 2013 basketball draft. We then mentioned
top tennis players of the past, such as Billie Jean King
and Martina Navratilova. This was a wonderful example
93
of a micro-aggression reflecting gender and patriarchy.
Here I was, the paid outside expert leading a workshop
on inclusivity, supposedly aware of a whole range of

race, class, and gender inequities, and I had never
thought about women as I was discussing professional
sports. In effect, I had dismissed half the human race
without ever thinking about it!
M odeling Push Back Through Team Teaching
One of the problems trying to work in anti-racist
ways is the lack of examples of what an honest
conversation across racial differences looks like.
Exhortations to conduct dialog across difference are
frequent, but actual instances of this are rare. In my
own work, I rarely get the chance to talk publicly with
colleagues from different racial and cultural
backgrounds about how our racial identities enter our
exchanges and work practices. However, for several
years, I was an adjunct faculty member in the adult
education doctoral program at National Louis
University in Chicago, where I regularly team-taught
courses with Scipio A.J. Colin Jr. Ill, an Africentric
theorist, and the late Elizabeth Peterson, both African
American faculty members.
In our team teaching, we would often talk about
how our own racial identities framed the ways we
negotiated decisions, used different teaching
approaches, and influenced how we responded to
students’ requests. Dr. C (as Scipio was called) would
use a call and response model of communication,
regularly asking the group, “Are you with me now?”
and “Are you running with me?” Elizabeth would work
from a CRT perspective, providing the White students
with illustrations of how that differed from an
Africentric perspective. This was a striking
counterbalance to the idea that there was a unified
Black or African American perspective on adult

education.
Elizabeth and I then delivered an article, “Race and
Racism: A Critical Dialogue” (Peterson & Brookfield,
2007), at an Adult Education Research Conference. We
modeled a candid exchange about race in which we
wove some very specific examples of how race played
out in our interpersonal relations. One example was an
incident involving the Harvard Educational Review
(HER). In 2002, while a Visiting Professor at Harvard
University, I was asked to contribute an article to the
HER. I suggested, to the editorial board, a journal issue
that would take the form of a symposium on racializing
the discourse of adult education. I wanted to invite Dr.
C, Elizabeth Peterson, Ian Baptiste, Juanita Johnson-
Bailey, and Vanessa Sheared to contribute articles along
with me on this theme.
The HER editorial board agreed, and we all began to
write our separate pieces. A few months later, when the
editorial board changed, the new board told us the
symposium would now take the form of a main article
written by me with commentaries on my piece
submitted by my colleagues. So now, we were faced
with Stephen Brookfield’s piece being the central
academic sun around which the contributions from the
scholars of color would revolve. Not surprisingly, my
colleagues all dropped out from the project. As Elizabeth
said, “I can remember feeling like I’d been slapped in
the face when it was suggested that your article would
be featured and we, as African American scholars, would
be invited to respond to it” (Peterson & Brookfield, 2007,
p. 5). I published my own article reasoning, at a
minimum, it would be good to have a piece on
racializing the discourse of adult education in the HER. I

still do not know whether that was the right thing to do.
C onclusion
In terms of the five questions raised earlier in this
article, I have argued racism is learned through family,
media, school, and friendships as the ideology of White
supremacy seeps into our consciousness. Even Whites
like me, who like to think of themselves as anti-racist,
frequently commit micro-aggressions that remain
unacknowledged until a colleague brings them to our
attention. Disruptive classroom events can heighten our
awareness of these and can be challenged through
narrative disclosure, particularly in team teaching.
While it is undoubtedly important to teach tips and
techniques to combat racism, it is just as important for
White adult educators to insert their own narratives
into our pedagogy. Not only is the use of narrative
inherently engaging as a pedagogic approach, but it
also illustrates the complicated nature of anti-racist
practice. In my case, people look at me as if I know
something valuable about teaching in anti-racist ways.
After all, the University of St. Thomas gave me the
Diversity Leadership Teaching and Research Award in
2008 because of the workshops on teaching about race
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Vol. 2 5 N o. 3 ADULT LEARNING
I run at the university. Yet, between declaring a
readiness to work in anti-racist ways and actually being
able to do this lies an ocean of experiential

contradictions. By sharing my regular commission of
racial and gender micro-aggressions and talking about
my racist impulses and instincts, I hope to teach doing
this work is incredibly complex. I hope to
communicate to White colleagues the deep-seated
nature of learned racism and the message, as soon as
you think you are making progress in combating this,
you will say or do something that will reveal how racist
ideology has its hooks into you. So, a caicial element
of White adult educators’ pedagogy about race is to
teach our own racism.
Conflict of Interest
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest
with respect to the authorship and/or publication of
this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the
research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
References
European-American Collaborative Challenging Whiteness.
(2010). White on white: Developing capacity to
communicate about race with critical humility. In In V.
Sheared, J. Johnson-Bailey, S. A. J. Colin, III, E. Peterson,
& S. Brookfield (Eds.), The handbook o f race a n d adult
education: A resource fo r dialogue on racism (pp. 145-157).
San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Mandela, N. (1994). Long walk to freedom: The autobiography
o f Nelson Mandela. Boston, MA: Little Brown.
Nash, R. J., & Bradley, D. L. (2011). Me-search a n d re-

search:
A guide fo r writing scholarly personal narratives. Charlotte,
NC: Information Age.
Peterson, E., & Brookfield, S. (2007). Race a n d racism: A
critical dialogue. Proceedings of the 454th Adult Education
Research Conference, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Retrieved from http://www.adulterc.org/applications/
ClassifiedListingsManager/inc_classifiedlistingsmanager.asp?It
emID=l 139&CategoryID=l47
Sue, D. R. (2010). Microaggressions in everyday life: Race,
gender a n d sexual orientation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-
Bass.
Author Biography
Stephen Brookfield is the John Ireland Endowed Chair
at the University o f St. Thomas in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
He has written, co-written, or edited 1 7 books on adult
learning, six o f which have won the Cyril O. Houle
World Award fo r Literature in Adult Education.
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MLA In-Text Citations, Works Cited, and Other Random

Examples
Typical In-Text Citation
In his own attempt to classify the novel, Thomas Keymer, in his
study Sterne, the Moderns, and the Novel, writes, “Although I
dispute identifications of Tristram Shandy as a solitary
postmodern anticipation or a Renaissance/Scriblerian
throwback, I do indeed see it as heavily conditioned by satirical
traditions that culminate in Swift, and I also see it as a self-
conscious exercise in metafiction” (7).
In-Text without an Author Introduction
Though some may debate the identification of Tristram Shandy
“as a solitary postmodern anticipation or a
Renaissance/Scriblerian throwback,” this essay should make
this point clear (Keymer 7).
Shortening a Longer In-Text Citation Using Ellipses
However, Wallace continues, “All of this is true. The book is
really true […] That The Pale King is, in point of fact, more
like a memoir than any kind of made-up story” (66).
However, Wallace continues, “All of this is true. The book is
really true. In other words, this Foreword is defined by the
disclaimer as itself fictional, meaning that it lies within the area
of special legal protection established by that disclaimer. I need
this legal protection in order to inform you that what follows is,
in reality, not fiction at all, but substantially true and accurate”
That The Pale King is, in point of fact, more like a memoir than
any kind of made-up story” (66).
A Long In-Text Citation (Block Quotes)
However, the race itself takes on a much more important
meaning to Smith. For Smith, each run is “a little life” (19) and
during the race he thinks:
And the winning post was no end to it…because on you had to
go before you got your breath back, and the only time you
stopped really was when you tripped over a tree trunk and broke

your neck of fell into a disused well and stayed dead in the
darkness forever. So I thought: they aren’t going to get me on
this racing lark…because it’s not the way to go on at all, though
they swear blind that it is. You should think about nobody and
go your own way, not on a course marked out for you by people.
(44)
Quote inside a Quote
Smith states, “The solution is not that pragmatic, or as Thomas
believes, ‘It’s not a band-aid’ and that challenges any proposed
solutions” (67).
Example Works Cited Page
Works Cited
Keymer, Thomas. Sterne, the Moderns, and the Novel. New
York: Oxford UP, 2002. Print.
Piper, William Bowman. “Tristram Shandy’s Digressive
Artistry.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 1.3.
(Summer 1961): 65-76. Print.
Preston, John. “Tristram Shandy (i): The Reader as Author.”
The Created Self. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1970. 134-164.
Print.
Sterne, Laurence. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy,
Gentleman. London: Penguin, 2003. Print.
Thomas, Christopher. “Infinite Jests: David Foster Wallace and
Laurence Sterne.” Consider David Foster Wallace: Critical
Essays. Los Angeles: Sideshow Media. 2010. Print.
Tristram Shandy. dir. Michael Winterbottom. Perf. Steve
Coogan, Jeremy Northam, Rob Brydon. BBC Films, 2005. DVD.
Wallace, David Foster. Interview with Larry McCaffrey. “An
Interview with David Foster Wallace.” The Review of
Contemporary Fiction 31.2 (Summer 1993): 127-150. Print.
--- The Pale King. Ed. Michael Pietsch. New York: Little,
Brown. 2011. Print.
Wright, Andrew. “The Artifice of Failure in Tristram Shandy.”
NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 2.3 (Spring 1969): 212-220. Print.

Guidelines for Summary Writing
1. Read the article carefully - twice!
Remember this: a summary is mostly a reading exercise. It is
impossible to write an accurate summary after reading an article
quickly or just one time. Most problems in summary writing
have more to do with understanding the text than writing the
summary.
2. Begin your summary by mentioning the author and title. The
publication and date may also be mentioned.
Dr. Perri Klass’ essay "Seeing Social Media More as Portal
Than as Pitfall" (New York Times, January 2012) examines the
positive and negative influence social media may have on teens.
3. At least once more in your summary, remind the reader that
you are summarizing by mentioning the author again - by last
name, or full name (never refer to the author by first name only)
Talbot finds strong support for women's colleges from many of
their graduates.
4. Avoid unnecessary details and direct quotes
Summaries are supposed to give general information only; if the
reader needs details, he needs to read the original piece. Direct
quotes are almost always unnecessary details.
5. Don't give your own opinion
The form and expression of a summary makes it clear to the
reader that you are accurately presenting the ideas of another
author. If you add your own opinion to an otherwise well-
formed summary, your opinion will appear to be that of the
author's.
6. Keep it short - one paragraph is best for many people
There's no strict law about how long a summary can be, but
since part of its purpose is to save time, it needs to be short.

ENG 102 NAME:
GRADE: /25
Writing Exercise 3 Rubric
Swain
Paper Evaluation:
Evaluation Criteria
Excellent
5 points
Above Average
4 points
Average
3 points
Below Average
2 points
Needs Vast Improvement
1-0 point(s)
Essay introduces the source and clearly establishes a purpose.
Essay’s introduction is engaging and contains a thesis (focus
and development).
Essay’s information is effectively paced. That is, it includes at
least 2 direct quotes (development; organization; tone and
style). Incorporation of quotes from the source is effective
(development).

The essay’s summary is thorough, yet succinct. The details
included are pertinent and continue to develop a direction for
further research (focus and purpose; development).
Arrangement of information and ideas is logical and easy to
follow; writer uses transitions between parts of sentences and
paragraphs (organization). Essay concludes effectively (focus
and purpose; development).
Tone and style are appropriate to the audience; essay displays
control, variety, and complexity of prose. Essay is generally
free of distracting surface errors (editing and proofreading).
Source is cited correctly in MLA style (parenthetically and
Works Cited).
GRADE:

Comments:
ENG 102 NAME:
GRADE: /25
Writing Exercise 3 Rubric
Swain
Paper Evaluation:
Evaluation Criteria
Excellent
5 points
Above Average
4 points
Average
3 points
Below Average
2 points
Needs Vast Improvement
1-0 point(s)
Essay introduces the source and clearly establishes a purpose.
Essay’s introduction is engaging and contains a thesis (focus
and development).
Essay’s information is effectively paced. That is, it includes at
least 2 direct quotes (development; organization; tone and
style). Incorporation of quotes from the source is effective
(development).

The essay’s summary is thorough, yet succinct. The details
included are pertinent and continue to develop a direction for
further research (focus and purpose; development).
Arrangement of information and ideas is logical and easy to
follow; writer uses transitions between parts of sentences and
paragraphs (organization). Essay concludes effectively (focus
and purpose; development).
Tone and style are appropriate to the audience; essay displays
control, variety, and complexity of prose. Essay is generally
free of distracting surface errors (editing and proofreading).
Source is cited correctly in MLA style (parenthetically and
Works Cited).

Vol. 2 5 No. 3 ADULT LEARNINGRefereed ArticlesTeachin.docx

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