Aron Rivas

Professor Lasley

English 1A: CTW

13 October 2019

Rhetorical Analysis of ​It’s Time for Class: Toward a More Complex Pedagogy of Narrative

In ​It’s Time for Class: Toward a More Complex Pedagogy of Narrative​, Amy E.

Robillard argues how a person's socio-economic class can affect their academics, positively or

negatively, based on the foundation institutions use to teach composition. She also asserts how

narrative writing can help the working class, who are at a disadvantage, reflect and accept their

upbringing to further uplift themselves in their academics and their lives. Robillard successfully

proves her argument by using the fact that she was once apart of the working class herself, and

uses it to connect and empathize with the realities that working-class students go through in

higher education. Furthermore, she uses a plethora of credible sources to further add and prove to

her argument.

Robillard begins her essay with a personal narrative of her own. The story revolves

around her mother always putting a priority on being on time no matter the situation. This

narrative effectively transitions to one of the main points that Robillard is trying to make “that

there are different ways of conceiving of time and that these different ways of conceiving of time

are class-based” (75). The notion that there are different perceptions of time is successfully

shown in the short beginning narrative and how it affected Robillard’s upbringing. She, later on,
acknowledges that her family is apart of the working class and it becomes apparent to the reader

why her mother has a strict relationship with being on time. This perception of time among the

working class is then connected to how “students from the working class ‘dip into and out of

college, pulling from it what they [see] as current needs’ (233)” (75). In essence, Robillard

connects the reality of her upbringing in her working-class environment and how that upbringing

can negatively affect working-class students in college. This connection solidifies her argument

by making it clear how the problem among working-class students arises and it allows her to

transition to why narrative writing is an important factor in the success of working-class

students.

Early in the essay, Robillard establishes how many scholars begin their essay with a

personal narrative, and how it's accepted, but there is a stigma when students try to implement

their personal stories into their essays. This stigma correlates to the institutional power structures

that benefit the upper-class students while setting up the working-class students for failure. The

acknowledgment of these problems in our society allows Robillard to enlighten readers from the

upper class to become aware of these hidden problems to them, that affect many others from the

working class. Robillard furthers her point by using “Bloom’s argument that the first-year

composition is a middle-class enterprise, ... , helps us understand why the discourse surrounding

autobiography and the personal narrative in the field is driven by defense” (75). Using Lynn Z.

Bloom's idea allows Robillard's argument to be more credible due to the fact that Bloom is a

well-respected scholar. Furthermore, Bloom’s idea adds to the issues of institutional power

structures being unfair towards working-class students.

 Now having established the issues that working-class students face, Robillard goes into

how narrative writing can help them cope with their problems. Robillard uses an idea from

Richard Sennett “that narrative provides shape, order, coherence to events beyond our control”

(76). Robillard continues by using Sennett's idea that “as long as we continue to devalue the

possibilities of narrative in the composition classroom, we will continue to marginalize the

possibilities for working-class students to develop an understanding of why things happen, their

consequences, and their material results in the present” (76). With this in mind, Robillard is

justifying the use of narrative to successfully help working-class students reflect and understand

events in their lives to better their relationship with time: past, present, and future. Robillard

continues her argument by subsequently adding how a key aspect of time, the past, is important

because “students rely on their past experiences to understand new knowledge” (76). With this

idea and many others like it throughout her essay, Robillard is strengthening her argument by

stacking the many benefits and solutions that narrative writing can have on working-class

students.

Continuing, Robillard expands on the benefits of narrative writing. She does this by

introducing a personal problem she faced with her mother. Robillard expresses how her mother

would not talk about her past experiences with her. With this experience, Robillard uses Carolyn

Kay Steedman's’ idea that “the point of telling stories,... lies in interpretation” (84). With this in

mind, Robillard connects it to “ why my mother won't tell us the stories about her childhood,

about my father, about her parents. She knows that then we’ll be able to draw conclusions” (84).

This part of Robillards argument is more personal than other parts of her argument, but it adds to

her argument as it provides a sense of empathy and relatability for working-class students that
faced a similar situation with their family members. Furthermore, it points to the idea that

narrative leads to interpretation which is one of the factors that helps working-class students

uplift themselves.

Robillard concludes her essay by stating from her experience in her personal life and as a

writing teacher that she “call[s] for a more complex pedagogy of narrative” (91). This statement

is justified by the many anecdotes she uses from her personal life and how she connects them to

the ideas from the credible sources she uses from the likes of Carolyn Kay Steedman, Richard

Sennett, and many others. With this in mind, Robillard successfully proves her argument by

connecting with her audience and bringing awareness to the hidden but prominent problems

working-class students face in higher education while providing the solutions narrative writing

can have for the problem.