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I asked a colleague, David Jolliffe, about where the use of "authentic" in
phrases such as "authentic intellectual achievement" come from and he
pointed me to Fred M. Newman and Associates, *Authentic Achievement:
Restructuring Schools for Intellectual Quality* (San Francisco: Josey-Bass,
1996). Authentic as used in this context "stands for intellectual
accomplishments that are worthwhile, significant, and meaningful, such as
those undertaken by successful adults: scientists, musicians, business
entrepreneurs, politicians . . . For students, we define authentic
achievement through three criteria critical to significant accomplishment:
construction of knowledge, disciplined inquiry, and the value of achievement
beyond school." (23-24) The issue is salient here because in Russ' review of
*Worlds Apart* he argues that "writing which isn't done in the workplace
*can* serve such *authentic* [my emphasis] functions as creating community,
influencing others, establishing a record, furthering mutual tasks, and so
forth, and can do so even in classrooms." (3rd last paragraph, web text) The
point is that there is a group of people who are working to restructure
American k-12 schools using "authentic achievement" as a key phrase. This
work asserts, similarly to Russ, that "authentic" learning and writing can
occur in schools. Russ was responding to the assertion on page 226 of
*Worlds Apart* that "[students'] texts do not have performativity, in the
sense of realizing speech acts such as orders or requests." The point under
debate here is "can student texts be authentic in the sense that their texts
either have or can potentially have consequences?". Russ says yes, and in my
presentation at Inkshed I also argued that student texts can have
consequences, such as obtaining funding for workshops for prostituted girls
and women. The challenge, it seems to me, is to define what it means for a
text to have consequences and then to design curricula that provoke these
texts and engage students in meaningful action.

Roger Graves, DePaul University, Chicago

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