Agenda:
- Review of responses to readings
- Next three sessions of 1020
Assignments for 10/21:
- Post your response to today’s readings as a comment to this post w/in 48 hours of class end
- Read Save the World on Your Own Time
- Compose a one-page, single-spaced response to the latter essays and bring it to class with you on Wednesday
- Prepare questions for “Everything You Wanted to Know About 1020 But Were Afraid to Ask”
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October 21, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Andy Engel
–More Cowbell! I mean, Liberalism!–
Bérubé’s final chapter, More Liberalism, in which he finally climbs aboard the political soapbox he’s thus far resisted, creates an interesting wrap-up for the text that meanders for almost three hundred pages. His general assertion is that all opinions are equal, but some are more equal than others. In his conclusion, however, Bérubé tries to forestall reductionism such as mine: “Most important of all, we cannot and should not be held to a shallow, relativist conception of ‘intellectual diversity’ in which Holocaust deniers, al-Qaeda operatives, creationists, and people who believe in telepathy, astrology, and/or magic dolphins are given equal weight with people who have studied deeply in subjects for decades and know what constitutes the boundaries of ‘reasonable’ dispute in their fields” (291). Any yet, I can’t help struggling myself with how to make sense of keeping order in the classroom, providing a space for open discussion, and playing devil’s advocate to uncritical beliefs. From his opening example of the student “John,” Bérubé positions a liberal classroom/education as foundational to a democracy, one which is based on the professor being aware of her own politics and not letting them, or anyone else’s, take over the classroom (20). On this point, Bérubé did cause me to think critically, but it was about the role of educator as referee rather than my own “liberal” views in or out of the classroom. Maybe that’s the point.
By contrast, I found Berlin’s essay and theoretical perspective more useful in terms of approaching instruction in the classroom. We’ve talked previously about the conversation between composition and rhetoric. Being somewhat new to the broader discussion of rhetoric, Berlin’s text helped me to position myself in relation to a finer cutting of the rhetorical cloth, what Berlin categorizes as: “cognitive psychology, … expressionism, and … social-epistemic” (478). Berlin seems less apologetic about the biases of these three strands, noting that each has their own unique place and usefulness (492). The connections he establishes between the various rhetorics and the ideologies that inform them, and how they related to “truth,” quality and power (492), give me a basis for seeing the role of the educator as more of a conscious critic practicing a “reflection-in-action” methodology (see Schon).
Putting Bérubé’s discussion of and justification for a “liberal education” in conversation with Berlin’s fine-grained assertion that “a rhetoric can never be innocent,” raises questions for me about the overlaps between fostering a liberal (read democratic) classroom more broadly, and picking a rhetorical stance for a class or a semester that advances some finer, ideological point. I find myself struggling to make sense of larger rhetorical or educational outcomes that either author is working toward. For example, Bérubé forwards an “ideal of independent intellectual inquiry, the kind of inquiry whose outcomes cannot be known in advance and cannot be measured in terms of efficiency of productivity” (21). Berlin expresses similar sentiments and notes, “the liberated consciousness of students is the only educational objective worth considering, the only objective worth the risk of failure” (492). How, then, are we to measure intellectual, rhetorical, and democratic gains—or retreats—made by our students? Is measuring even a useful term in this context? Likely, it is not. I am hoping that it will become clearer when I begin classroom instruction myself, but as discussion of more concrete matters such as grade inflation, plagiarism, and ability are batted around, I can’t help wondering how “more liberalism” will respond to these concerns.
October 21, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Andrew Winckles
Having grown up in the culture of the anti-academic Christian fundamentalism which Berube describes and still, to some extent, personally acquainted with many people who share this view. Michael Berube’s What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts, relived many of the debates that I have on a regular basis. As a confessedly liberal academic who maintains ties with conservative Christians I often find myself defending the academe, the liberal arts, and “postmodernism” from attack. In my experience, which is born out by Berube’s book, the real problem here is one of worldview – opposing worldviews to be exact – both of which generally refuse to recognize the other’s concerns.
Here’s what I mean by this. Conservative activists of course claim that the academy is brainwashing young people, forcing them to question everything they have learned, and become atheists and Democrats. The bogeyman here is of course postmodernism, very loosely conceived and manipulated. Contrasted to this is conservatism, usually rooted in a fundamentalist ideology of some kind, which holds out a very clearly defined view of the world which does not admit much questioning, only adherence to doctrine. This clash becomes most evident when a student raised in such an environment enters a college Philosophy or English class and is asked to consider the important questions of who we are and why we are here from different perspectives. This has the potential to create tensions between student and professor that, if not addressed correctly, can have negative consequences. However, we must also keep in mind that it should not be our goal to get students to think the same way we do, but simply to think critically about issues they may not have considered before and learn how to support their ideas with evidence
On the other hand, what Berube does not acknowledge is that liberal academics also come from a very defined worldview which, if we are not careful, can become as rigidly entrenched as conservative fundamentalism. It is all well and good to insist that students ask the important questions about belief, etc. – that is our job – it is quite another thing to insist that students come to accept our worldview in the end. If we do this we are no better than the conservatives we claim to be fighting. As I know firsthand, not all conservative Christians are crazy or unreasonable, many have important points to raise, have thought deeply about what they believe, and can back it up. Furthermore, not all conservatives are averse to discussion of important issues in a neutral academic setting. Once again, the focus must always be on reasoned discussion and critical thinking – as long as students are willing to abide by these rules, we need not worry about instilling specific ideologies in our students.
I guess the overall message of all of this is that we need to recognize that our students come from different backgrounds and hold different worldviews. We need to learn to value this difference, even if we might personally disagree with it. This does not mean that we cannot challenge our students to think critically about important issues, but it does mean that we need to create a space where students feel comfortable expressing their ideas. I think that the problem with both sides of this debate is that each views the other as a monolithic threat and thus are not willing to enter into open dialogue with the other side. Conservatives have made post-modernism and the academy the bogeyman, but liberals have made religion and conservative values theirs. Conservatives may refuse to ask questions, but liberals have refused to admit many possible answers. In reality, there needs to be room in the academy for reasoned discussion and questions about both perspectives and it seems to me that the classroom is the ideal place to start.
October 21, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Amy Metcalf
Growing up in various educational districts, levels and settings there was always one dominant phrase (with any number of slight modifications depending on the environment) told to me whenever I expressed interest in becoming a teacher: “Being a teacher takes guts, Amy. You have to be fearless.” I had any number of reactions to this lesson through the years. Sometimes the advice inspired me, sometimes I welcomed the challenge, and other times I simply rolled my eyes. I believe I finally have an idea of what all those past instructors were preparing me for; the very thing that Berlin addresses in his article Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class – the struggle against the guilt for embracing ideology and the strength required to uphold writing as an expression so close to the very essence of who we are.
Berlin makes an important distinction that is far clearer within his text than in others that have tackled the argument of rhetoric vs. ideology. This distinction involves exploring how some view rhetoric as somehow naturally infused with an ideology instead of rhetoric “acting as the transcendental recorder or arbiter of competing ideological claims.” (Berlin) In this way, it is important to think about the Aristotelian rhetoric – that is, the rhetoric that is a tool in which to participate in an argument. This distinction can serve to further validate the use of rhetorical templates in composition instruction. Templates reinforce rhetoric as the “arbiter” of the ideological claim a student wishes to represent.
However, according to Berlin, once the rhetoric is infused with the ideology it no longer retains the element of “innocence.” The use of the term innocence suggests that with ideology comes the presence of guilt. If rhetoric is already an ideology in and of itself, what vehicle do we have to communicate ideologies? If we aren’t communicating an ideology (be it our own or one divorced from what we would personally argue) what do we argue through the vehicle of rhetorical forms? If our rhetoric is already an ideology and we are using it to communicate a separate ideology – at what point can we escape confusing these seemingly simultaneous ideological expressions?
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether or not the rhetoric is full of ideology, an ideology itself, or simply the vehicle for the ideology. What matters, rather, is the very presence of an ideology (or multiple ideologies) within teaching. Berlin reminds the reader that ideology is “inscribed in language practices.” (Berlin 4) When we communicate, we do so in order to further a point, to give life to words by injecting into them the passion of a belief structure. As instructors we have a set of goals that can only be realized by believing in the end result of teaching said goals. Guiding our students on the path to achieving our objectives is subjecting the students to our ideologies about the writing process. The quicker we accept the fact that, as Berlin says, “teaching is never innocent” (492) the easier it will be for us to embrace the many ways students can benefit by learning rhetorical devices.
October 21, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Amy Metcalf
The paragraphs in my essay seem to have been lost in the copy/paste translation, if you will.
Apologies!
October 21, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Joe Paszek
A story: This week, one of my writing center tutee’s came into session asking if I could help him find some sources pertaining to sex education in the school systems. I admit I was excited. I was ready to help this student tackle a major issue that I was actually passionate about, rather than the standard rhetorical analysis essay that had flooded the writing center over the last month and a half. As I began to start talking about the variety of ways in which the student could obtain the wealth of information in support of revising “abstinence only” sex education policies in the United States, he stopped me. He wasn’t looking for any information on liberal argumentation and policy making in regards to reform. Rather, he was struggling to find a balanced, objective perspective on why abstinence only sex education should be maintained. Information regarding the “conservative” stance on the issue was much more difficult to come by, and moreover, tended to be much more inflammatory than clearly thought out and presented. Despite the fact that the student was writing a paper on the reasons for policy change, he was still curious where all of this against information was hiding. It had to be out there, right?
Reflecting on this particular session in regards to Michael Berube’s What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? I began to think about the mass of courses I had taken during undergrad and graduate studies. Being a self-identified liberal, at times even a surface level socialist, I take a certain amount of satisfaction from the inability to find logical, well formed, and rhetorically convincing arguments in the conservative repertoire involving matters of social policy and education. This is not to say that no logical, objective conservative rhetoric exists somewhere, or that the information, which is available, is unconvincing to the masses (I fear that much of the time it is), but that perhaps this information is not made readily available, especially to the college student. Throughout my four years as an undergraduate at the University of Detroit-Mercy, a school that perhaps fills out academia’s conservative quota, I knew of professors that assigned material slathered with conservativism, but these courses were generally held in economics, engineering, chemistry (and one very obstinate philosophy professor). In the English department, despite – though perhaps because of –its small size, I encountered little “conservative” thought. Echoing the thoughts of Berube, this experience may have been from the sheer fact that few conservative thinkers actually opt for a life in the humanities. Even in my graduate work, most notably in the current semester discussing financial crisis, the conservative side is underrepresented, if non-existent. While I do not think that professors should ever be forced to present certain kinds of material in order to offer students a nominally balanced perspective, it might be interesting to encounter this information, especially in an economics class in order to better understand why the liberals are discussing present topics, and also to see how each of them are arguing their points.
In thinking about my future as an instructor, I often wonder how I will present my own material and interests. On one hand, I do find it useful to read and understand the ways in which the “opposition” expresses their arguments, but also realize the polemic ways in which this might lead me to present material. I find it just as problematic to bring in materials that I know are filled with sentiments that are not only in opposition to my own being-ness, especially if they are composed with less than sound rhetorical devices and argumentation. How am I to handle students with right-leaning opinions and specific desires to hear their views represented in my proposed course material? Is it my job to search for an extended period of time just to satisfy this lack?
October 21, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Aaron Pellerin
Aaron Pellerin
Dr. Jeff Pruchnic
ENG 6001
21 October 2009
Nothing and Everything: In Response to What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts?
In his book What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts?, Michael Berube works through the question of supposed political bias in the university, asking “to what extent should my own beliefs be an explicit part of my teaching?” (11). This is an important question, and one for which, taken at face value, I propose a simple answer: not at all. I think that educators should not, in the classroom setting at least, make their own beliefs and opinions explicit. That is not to say that political, social, cultural, and other such issues are to be avoided, nor is it to suggest that professors should retreat into a solipsistic shell of opinionlessness; however, instructors should, in my view, refrain from openly promoting their own viewpoints as such. As a student, I had at least one professor who was openly political; in practically every class, he felt the need to share his opinions of various politicians and policies and to critique the biases he saw in various media outlets. Unfortunately, this was a political science class, so his punditry was not a mere annoyance; it dominated the class and effectively quashed any opposing viewpoints or real discussion of political issues. On the other hand, I have had several teachers and professors (in English and in History) who openly stated that yes, they had political opinions, but no, those opinions were not relevant to the course. I found that the latter approach made for a much more open environment as a student, and it is the approach I have taken in my own practice. Particularly in courses such as composition where we encourage students to take stances in controversial debates, should we not try to make students as comfortable as we can when it comes to voicing their opinions?
All that said, the question is not quite so simple. Berube’s real argument has to do with the difference between what he calls procedural and substantive liberalism. Whereas substantive liberalism refers to specific politically “liberal” views such as tolerance, procedural liberalism refers to the Enlightenment-inspired ideal of open debate and the critical examination of ideas and beliefs (23-4). I do agree with Berube that academic inquiry is based on procedural liberalism, and that this form of liberalism is indispensable. But here the issue gets complicated: what happens when procedural liberalism challenges or even refutes a particular view? For instance, if a student makes a religious argument against gay marriage, not only would the student’s conclusion be challenged, but so would his/her underlying assumptions – that is, his/her religious views. Similarly, what happens when an idea is criticized by some as being a political view when it is actually the empirically-support result of critical inquiry? The obvious example that comes to mind is the theory of evolution. In cases such as these, procedural and substantive liberalism can overlap, and to an observer, it probably looks very much as though professors are pushing liberal ideas when in reality, they are promoting liberal debate that just happens to lead to conclusions that are, rightly or wrongly, considered to be politically “liberal.” In other words, to quote Stephen Colbert, sometimes “reality has a well-known liberal bias.” The question, then – and I am not convinced that Berube gives a compelling answer – is how to deal with the conflation of the two kinds of liberalism and with the inaccurate perception that certain critically justified positions are politically biased.
October 21, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Danny Sain
In “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class,” James Berlin lays out for us the three models of rhetoric that have been historically dominant in writing classrooms over the past century: the rhetoric of cognitive psychology, expressionist rhetoric, and social-epistemic rhetoric. Berlin discusses each of these models according to their respective stances within ideological frameworks and in terms of each model’s response to what three ideological questions taken from the work of Goran Therborn: “What exists? What is good? What is possible?” Over the course of his discussion, Berlin dismisses (or at least attempts to put on a shelf) the models of rhetoric stemming from cognitive psychology, stating that it attempts to refuse these ideological questions while encouraging “discursive practices that are compatible with dominant economic, social, and political formations (478),” and expressionist rhetoric which, though it admits and owns its ideological foundations, nevertheless leaves itself “open to appropriation by the very forces it opposes in contradiction to its best intentions” (478). In the wake of these dismissals, Berlin forwards the model of social-epistemic rhetoric which espouses the ideological notion of rhetoric “as a political act involving a dialectical interaction engaging the material, the social, and the individual writer, with language as the agency of mediation” (488). This model follows social-constructivist thinking wherein reality is created through the “interaction of the observer, the discourse community (social group) in which the observer is functioning, and the material conditions of existence” (488).
This rough summary is meant to provide a backdrop that I might stand in front of for a moment and say that, while I know what Berlin is saying in his piece, I struggle to understand why he is saying it. To be fair, I am not speaking directly to Berlin when I say this, but rather to anyone who strictly delineates cognitive, expressionist, and socially-based models of rhetoric. To be even fairer, I understand how the three models stand, more or less, in theoretical opposition to one another, or at least in tension with one another, but don’t understand how such a demarcation is useful in an actual writing classroom. Even if we accept, as I think we must, that the interactions of any social group, and the writing classroom is certainly no exception to this, have the effect of creating reality (to some degree or other) according to the specific time in which that group is fixed, and according to the cultures that the members of the group represent and bring with them—and certainly such a social-constructionist understanding has very specific repercussions on the ideological framework of that group—why should we assume that such takes place at the expense of expressionism and cognitive psychology? Certainly, as Berlin notes, deliberately fixing writing classrooms within a social-epistemic framework (and by fixing I mean both acknowledging that social-epistemic conceptions of interaction are the way in which classrooms do and should work, and as well teaching social-epistemic rhetoric to students as such) will work to address some of the problems encountered by classrooms that operated strictly under the purview of either expressionist or cognitive understandings of rhetoric, such as failing to teach students to “identify the ways in which control over their own lives has been denied them (490),” and putting forth, intentionally or not, forms of “false consciousness” including “reification, pre-scientific thought, acceleration, [and] mystification” (490). Yet, I want to ask whether or not we lose something by seeking to banish from the classroom expressionist rhetoric which, carefully used, may still be a valuable tool in getting FY writing students to discover their own voice and thereby access and handle those ideological frameworks in meaningful ways, and rhetoric of cognitive psychology, whose understanding of mental processes relating to composing can also be potentially very useful in developing the writing of all-too-often underdeveloped students.
I suppose the issue here is that, reading Berlin’s article, I find myself bothered by the fact that we have, in our treatment of FY writing classes, so emphatically taken on the task and mantle of producing not only good students but good citizens, and yet seek to push to the margins models of rhetoric that, again, if used well might prove beneficial to the development of our students as citizens by providing them means of accessing those ideological frameworks that guide what we do and how we operate in the university.
October 21, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Derek Risse
In essence, Berube’s text addresses three distinct though fundamentally related audiences: members of the lay community that live and work outside the university, professors of the liberal arts and sciences, and, relevant to our work in this course, newly recruited graduate students. With this diverse audience in mind, the text works to satisfy three crucial aims. First, in an effort to address increasing community concern about the inherent liberal bias of higher education, Berube renders a sometimes critical though generally redemptive portrayal of liberalism in the classroom and on the university campus. Second, the text challenges more conventional understandings of what university scholarship means and how it should function. Finally, in a similar vein, the text provides graduate students access to a number of helpful classroom strategies. Here, Berube references his own efforts teaching African American Literature and various courses in Postmodernism. Though the aforementioned issues are all relevant to a longer and more thorough evaluation of this text, this response focuses on the type of pedagogy that Berube advocates.
I’m especially interested in this moment at the beginning of chapter six where Berube begins describing some of the postmodernism courses that he’s taught. Here, he outlines typical class protocol, detailing his efforts to explain a “legitimate debate” to undergraduate students. His interest in each student’s experience of the course is pretty illuminating: “Then we debate what counts as legitimate debate, and what happens when debaters disagree so fundamentally and violently that they can’t even find the words in which to disagree. For the most part, students find it to be confusing, stimulating, and fun, and they tend to leave with the impression that they’ve engaged some of the most important intellectual issues of our day” (207). In this passage, Berube’s interest in that which confuses students seems as relevant to his work more generally, as that which entertains them. If Berube’s point, widely drawn, is to highlight the potential benefits of challenging “liberal” coursework, this moment is crucial to our understanding of his objective overall. As Berube reads it, those moments that confuse or, for that matter, confront students, help them develop intellectually. This is not simply an issue of providing students with challenging and thought-provoking material, though that helps. Rather, returning to Berube’s description of what constitutes a “bad student”, this involves working with difficult subjects, ideas, and philosophies that conservatives automatically designate “liberal.” For Berube, bad students, “reject from the outset most of what ‘learning’ is supposed to entail” (61), namely difficult or controversial ideas. In his reading, conservatives interpret that this difficulty derives from the liberal bias of college professors.
Ironically enough, though conservative media pundits often criticize the university system for propagating liberal bias–essentially, for exerting political influence on young and impressionable minds–Berube suggests that this environment actually strengthens both the resolve and intellectual capacities of conservative students, while simultaneously debilitating many progressives. As he argues in chapter four, conservative students often actually exhibit a greater degree of intellectual capability, as the system continually challenges their political beliefs: “…being a vocal conservative on campus is so hard…that the kids who choose to do it are necessarily better, more informed, and more committed than most of their liberal counterparts” (124). On the other hand, the general air of liberalism on college campuses seems, actually, to be a detriment to the liberal cause more generally, as progressive students become overly comfortable in the liberal college environment: “…the campus culture can envelop young progressives in a liberal mist that leaves them complacent and thoroughly unprepared for the moral mist wafting through the rest of American culture” (125). Simply put, it is not that liberalism breeds liberalism like many think, in as much as liberalism breeds lazy anti-intellectual liberals that will likely fail to contribute outside of the university. The university, as Berube argues, actually contributes to conservative success.
Either way we pursue this thread, the issue becomes more confusing. Whereas conservatives might read that reducing liberal bias will contribute greatly to their cause, we might argue the opposite: Attacking the liberal comfort zone–mainly by playing devil’s advocate, and challenging students in the classroom–might actually strengthen liberal political intellectualism. Simply put, we better serve students by, as was suggested in chapter six, creating “stimulating” or productively “confusing” classroom situations. It is for this reason that I am dissatisfied with Berube’s justification of the liberal arts at the end of the text. Although I agree with Berube that our practice should facilitate conversation, giving “students a chance to try out ideas and gut reactions on each other in a relatively safe space” (295-296), I’m not sure that I completely understand his eventual dismissal of the important political component of conflict to classroom experience. Specifically, Berube argues that we should be concerned with facilitating democracy not with creating Democrats. Either way one situates this argument, it seems to conflict with some of the observations that he made earlier in the text. Specifically, how are we to interpret that a student’s political position as a citizen is “irrelevant” in the classroom or to course design more generally if, as Berube argues in other sections of the text, either way we situate knowledge we are still impacting students politically? At the end of the text not only do we lose sight of the way that the political is intimately entwined with the pedagogical, but of how we might purposefully confuse or confront students. What we have instead, at least at the end, is a distilled strangely kumbaya-ish version of the type of classroom experience that Berube highlights in other parts of the text. How might we reconcile these two points?
October 23, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Katrina Newsom
Ideology, Rhetoric, and Me
Midway through reading the article “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class” I asked myself, “Why do I have to consider politics and economics in a writing class? How do the ways we understand ourselves in the “real” world impact pedagogy in the introductory writing class?” Then I begin to think about ideology as something that always already exists. Whether or not I want to address the issues of the power, capitalism and the self in my assignments, the students bring those issues to the classroom with them. Also, these issues reside in the materials I use to teach writing and the materials the students choose to write about. Even in the silences, ideology exists. For this reason, I agree with James Berlin when he states, “It should now be apparent that a way of teaching is never innocent. Every pedagogy is imbricated in ideology, in a set of tacit assumptions about what is real, what is good, what is possible, and how power ought to be distributed” (492).
Berlin successfully articulates his general argument by looking at three types of rhetoric encoded with a particular form of ideology. He lists them as psychological-epistemic, social-epistemic, and expressionistic. The psychological or cognitive approach to rhetoric, according to Berlin is seeped in a belief that it is scientific. Its objective is to approach writing through techniques of problem-solving. Cognitive rhetoric also is situated in the rational or real. Expressionistic rhetoric, on the other hand, focuses on freeing students from the hegemonic structures of government and university policies that seeps into pedagogy. Kugelmass discussed this in the essay we read last week when he talked about rhetoric in composition classes that initiated dialogue of political issues. However, his take is that such approaches are detrimental to the practice of teaching composition. Yet what he seems to not take into account and what Berlin seems to stress is that Expressionist as a form of rhetoric seeks to give students control over their own voice which align much the “postmodern spirit” of this current age. My own concern when thinking about expressionism as pedagogy is the degree to which it conflicts with the use of templates. Can templates be considered a teaching technique that impinges upon the student’s voice?
The last form Berlin discusses is social-epistemic rhetoric. This form of rhetoric, for Berlin, is the most effective because of the dialectics grounded in its language. Social-epistemic rhetoric recognizes the language is socially constructed. It also recognizes that the self is a socially constructed entity. For these reasons, I agree with Berlin’s argument that social-epistemic rhetoric may be the most productive form to use when teaching because it allows the instructors to demonstrate the continuity of language, discourses, and arguments that frame our thinking of the world.
I guess where I am struggling most with engaging in conversations about rhetoric is that besides the most basic definitions of it, I do not feel that I am know enough about it to formulate a stylistic approach to the classroom nor adequately engage in conversations about it. What I am trying to understand is to what degree am I not prepared to teaching have only rudimentary knowledge of rhetoric? Are there some texts that can give me some fundamentals on terms and definitions that will anchor my class? Should I just rely on the Wiki that was created by Dr. Pruchnic and use that as both a learning and teaching tool? Arguably, I know more than I am giving myself credit for, but I think I would feel better if I had some solid information to rely on.