I've been really taken by the idea of creating "underground places" where our students can practice/enact discourses that subvert our course, our course discourses, the university discourses, etc. Part of me wants to agree with him wholeheartedly and argue that we need such spaces, but another part of me, perhaps the part that used to teach high school, feels somewhat uncomfortable about it.

The sticking point is what Banks means by an "underground space for discourse." If he really does mean a space where students can question, problematize, and counter the official narratives that go on in the areas I mention above, then I question whether real underground discourses can happen within our composition courses. In one instance, we set up a message board, monitor it closely, but let students discuss whatever they want. We then have to decide which topics are appropriate, when language gets out of hand, whether or not to step into such a situation, whether or not to mediate, passively observe, or not observe, and whether or not we articulate our understanding of such a space for our students. On some level, I think the idea that we can expect students to develop an underground discourse in our courses is contrived, if only because because the space is already within the space of our classroom, it won't truly be "underground." Our acknowledgment and approval of such a space makes it something less than truly "underground." Why can't the best policy toward underground spaces be open and official? Why can't we acknowledge the constructions that our courses operate within and make those constructions/cultures clear to our students? Does counter-discourse have to appear in underground spaces? Can the course be our way of "providing students with underground spaces?"

I guess this issue comes back to those that concern critical cultural studies and the classroom. Instead of pretending we have created a space for students to use their voices, why not make that the object of the course? The next step would be to examine the locations and formations of our students' reactions, right? I get Banks' point in chapter 5, but at the same time, I wonder whether or not the types of spaces he describes are really possible within our courses. I think they are, but only in different forms: either explicitly addressed or something that happens without our consent or knowledge.

And... I think this issue is different than using "academic essays" in class. I might offer one of them for our students to read, but I think we have to remember that our (English) version of a critical essay is not the same as other humanities departments' version AND that while we can provide the opportunity for students to engage with some difficult texts, they will more likely than not rarely have to face those kinds of texts in their college career, and even then, only within their fields and in their junior and senior years.