Tools and Trouble Spots: A Final Reflection

My wife teaches English to refugees, and the other day we had a conversation about what it's like to teach a new language to students who are completely illiterate even in their old language. Some of them don't even know how to hold a pencil. I like to look at their artwork; it's like a child drew it. Makes you smile even more when you know it's drawn by a 40-year-old man.

One of the things she's noticed is that students who do not have experience with reading and writing lack the skills and strategies to tackle Gallagher's "trouble-spots," the places where confusion tends to arise. They have difficulty looking for context clues. They don't think to sound words out. Often when they get stuck, they stay stuck, because they lack the tools to solve their problems.

The trouble is that we very rarely recognize that we're missing out on strategies for doing our work. Rather, it's easier for a student to internalize failure and believe that it's about a lack of ability rather than a lack of knowledge. My wife tells me stories about students who fake knowing, who memorize what others are reading, who get put in the wrong classes because they can cheat the placement exams. She also tells me about students who despair, who say they just can't read, though she knows better. 

I think many of our students will get stuck in the same way––lots of them smart kids who simply lack the tools to become effective readers and thinkers. I think one of the things theory does so well is to bring strategies for reading, for overcoming trouble-spots and arriving at understanding meaning, out into the open. Imagine how daunting it would be to learn construction, for example, if your boss never showed you he was using tools! With the right tools, it's something almost anyone could learn. If students know about the tools we use to arrive at meaning, I think they will be much less likely to feel alienated from the text or to blame their lack of understanding on inability. Learning theory is so different from learning many of the things I learned in English class. There's really no way to fake it. The application of these critical tools is a skill; either you've learned it or you haven't. I think learning theory begins to put the value back into ELA classrooms, which have the potential to become little more than glorified book clubs with lessons in Eurocentrism. The time spent musing on theories and strategies for teaching English this semester has been enlightening and beneficial. I, for one, am thankful for it.

Stefan Luchian - At Nami (wood cutter)

Not Just Reading the World as It Used To Be

No one would argue against the idea that the internet has changed the way we communicate. Just today, the course of my procrastination took me to two articles about the role of social media in defining America. One article told the story of how the Obama campaign made use of its tumblr to rally its young supporters to go out and vote. The other posted examples of the way a "twitter bot" has become an advocate for both good grammar and the respect of speakers of other languages. Both articles used innovative forms of communication, the first posting links in just about every sentence, and the second combining twitter posts with a traditional news story.

We don't need stories like these to let us know that new, more flashy and lighthearted ways of communicating are changing the way we look at the world. The Obama campaign may not have been won through tumblr and memes, but if the students at my school were voting, it certainly would have been. Students who knew nothing about policies were quite well informed about Mitt Romney's latest blunders. The Obama campaign shows what effective internet communication can look like, leading me to wonder, what would effective internet communication look like in schools?

I have to admit, I was not won over by the iLit series' take on microfiction and twitter novels. Somehow putting memes into a print book and sterilizing them according to copyright law seems to suck the life out of them––kids get that. At the same time, if proponents for ELA are going to make a claim for teaching students to "read the world," as both authors we studied this term do, teachers need to be engaging students in relevant forms of communication. The ability to do so will be one of the benefits teachers reap with the advent of technology in the classroom. This blog itself has allowed us to explore the benefits of alternative forms of communication in context, and I for one have found its informal style liberating and comfortable. Of course, as with anything new, there will be concerns to mirror the benefits, but the fact is that students already are engaged in this form of communication. Like it or not, we're going to have to find a way to catch up.

"Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either."

-Marshal McLuhan

Hypothesis, Observations, Confusion: The Science of Reading Literature

My I-search was not unlike some English papers I've written for other classes–although maybe a little less coherent and a fair bit more me-focused. My writing process has developed into something quite routine, though still painful, over my university career. First, I look through books, jotting down observations on a scrap piece of paper until parallels and contrasts begin to surface. After this, I wrack my brain until a conclusion is produced to explain those observations. Sometimes I'm amazed at my ability to make bricks without straw, so long as the whip is at my back. More usually, I have to confess that my summative theses are at least a little bit contrived, somewhat like the confessions of a tortured criminal.

I was surprised by you, my classmates, to find that many of your presentations focused much more on observations than conclusions. After some thought, I supposed that this was not so bad. After all, meta-narratives and explanations are rarely (if ever) so true as what is observed itself. At the same time, explanations, though they are generally misleading, are always more illuminating.

Since I'm currently feeling disillusioned with conclusions, I won't make one here. However, I will say that it is a useful exercise to learn to catalogue our observations in their own right–to wait and not feel the need to understand right away. I think this goes back to "learning to embrace confusion" and approaching the truth with humility, allowing texts and ideas to be present on their own terms and to assert their own value. Of course, we will always be drawing conclusions and assigning value according to some form of authority, but at least we can be patient with that process and take some time to smell the roses (or the dung, as it may be).

Jackson Pollock - Convergence

"No one looks at a flower garden and tears their hair out trying to figure out what it means."

-Jackson Pollock

Doing What We're Already Doing, But Doing It Openly

"Every English teacher acts on the basis of theory. Unless teaching is a random series of lessons, drills, and readings, chosen willy-nilly, the English class is guided by theories of language, literature, and pedagogy."

- W. Ross Winterowd (Appleman, 133)

I mentioned in my post on deconstructionism that students are already engaged in applying theory, but let me extend that assertion here in two directions: 1) not only are students applying theory to texts, they are applying it to their world daily; and 2) teachers, as the quote explains above, are also engaged in applying theory through their pedagogy, whether they are open about it or not. These are both points Deborah Appleman makes in her chapter on "Reading the World." If considered true, these statements about our classrooms and our students make a claim for responsible teachers to apply theory openly. When I began constructing my own lessons I found that I was continually applying theories, asking "who is at the centre of this text? who is at the periphery?" To fail to alert students to the method I was using to extract meaning from a text seemed to me like the unjustified withholding of information. How could I teach students to understand this text without showing them the tools that I was using to understand it? When we teach without theory, we infer that the "right" way to extract meaning from a text is mysterious and accessible only through the instructor. Teaching theory is an expression of academic honesty and the endowment of students with the tools to discover textual meaning for themselves. Likewise, it allows students to approach understanding the world systematically instead of limiting them to the more common emotionally-charged, reactionary approach I've observed in High School students over the course of my placement. If students understand the tools they are already using to make judgments, they will be able to more easily evaluate and defend their positions when challenged. Is teaching these skills not the mandate of any English-Language Arts class?

Instead of putting a piece of literature on a pedestal, as if it is some pristine work of art, so perfectly formed that it is capable of communicating truth with a clear voice in a universally comprehensible way, I am advocating something more like Baroque history painting. Take for example the painting below, Saint Jerome Reading by Georges de La Tour (1622). The centuries-old saint is anachronistically depicted in cardinal's costume, lowering his spectacles to examine a manuscript. The title of this painting could as easily be "Reading Saint Jerome," for La Tour unabashedly places the ancient teacher in his own time period, inferring his place and the claim of his writings on contemporary life. Unlike Classical painting, which typically bounds its action entirely within the canvas, Baroque art suggests that there is a life outside the work of art, of which the image is only a snapshot. I suggest that we take the same level of openness and continuity with the world found in Baroque history painting and apply it to teaching English. Teaching English responsibly and effectively requires instructors to be open about the ways they are infusing texts with contemporary significance and to give students the opportunity to see how the meaning in those texts is not bounded to the classroom, but informative for understanding the world.

Georges de La Tour - Saint Jerome Reading

"[H]istorical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence"

- T. S. Eliot

Preparing to Answer Why

We, as student-teachers, are continually preparing to answer the question, "why are we reading this book?" While the question appears straight forward enough, I do not suspect that we will be checking back to our EDUC 498 notebooks for the answer when the time comes for it to be asked of us; nor, as we might be tempted to presume, will the answer be found in Gallagher or Appleman. No, like usual, it seems that instead of learning something straightforward or pragmatic, we are learning the only thing one seems ever to learn in the humanities, i.e. that we will need to keep learning.

Gallagher hints as much with a slight reformulation of the question that might typically inform our response to the why-are-we-reading-this question. He suggests that instead of teachers asking themselves "Why am I teaching this book?" they should instead be asking, "What do I want my students to take from this book?" (154). This subtle change requires educators to pursue a pedagogy informed by its goal instead of its means. In a grade 9 English class I've overheard two teachers comment on their material saying, ". . . well it's not the best piece of literature, but it's in the curriculum." In contrast, an enthusiastic intern began teaching last Wednesday on Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven," hoping to ignite the students' passions for literature based on aesthetic value alone. They didn't get it. While it is good to appreciate a work of literature for itself (these things do have value on their own), we must be well versed in its practical value for our students as well. I'm not advocating merely for the pragmatic value of literature via reader-response but for its role in the development of the kind of social and cognitive competencies that are most coveted in the job world (for more on that, check out a short article by one of my former professors). If we are to adequately understand the goal of our teaching so that we can explain to students why read it, we need to keep learning for two reasons: 1) we will be choosing new texts, each of which has a value all its own, waiting to be discovered, and 2) we will be applying these texts to a new body of students under new circumstances in each and every semester. If we really believe that the study of literature, or of the humanities in general for that matter, has both practical and aesthetic value for our students, we will be all the more eager to seek out wherein that treasure lies. Even teaching the same text over and over requires life-long learning, reading deeper, and deeper still as our world, our students, and our identities continue to change. 

Claude Lefebvre - A Teacher and His Pupil

Two Deconstructionists: The Critic and the Fool

Please correct me or feel free to nuance my definition, but I'm going to take a shot at defining literary deconstruction: Deconstruction is a process whereby the reader points out a text's internal oppositions for the purpose of showing how slippery meaning can be. Texts can often be used to argue seemingly opposing truths, and the deconstructionist's task is to show how this is so.

Unfortunately, I think that most of us have become too apt at deconstruction, or at least at this part of deconstruction. Students in particular like to pick an author apart and show why we should not bother hearing what he or she has to say. We have become specialists in aloofness, not postmodernists but ultramodernists, seeking pure, factual, accessible truth instead of working hard to understand the text on its own terms, slipperiness and all.

Shakespeare's comedy As You Like It particularly expresses the aloofness and loneliness of the critic. We are all likely familiar with the "Seven Ages Speech," or at least its first line: "All the world's a stage / and all the men and women merely players . . ." These words launch the critic, Jaques, into a melancholic deconstruction of human folly as acted out during life's seven stages. In his speech we are introduced to the reluctant schoolboy, the self-seeking judge, and the child-likeness of old-age. The trouble with Jaques' speech, though his analysis is spot-on, is that his criticism leaves him without any companion in the world. By judging the folly of humankind from above, the critic refuses to participate in humanity, and is forced into a solitary existence, as is Jaques at the end of the play.

Shakespeare offers an alternative to criticism in the "fool," a stock character in many of his plays. The fool is not blind to the incongruences of human activity, or for our purposes, human language; however, unlike his hyper-critical counterpart, the fool recognizes his place in the story of human folly. He uses his own folly as a tool to teach others instead of resorting to criticism. He suffers the consequences too, but, by choosing to participate in the folly of others instead of condemning it, the fool does not suffer alone.

Maybe it's time to add a little bit to my definition: Deconstruction is a process whereby the reader points out a text's internal oppositions for the purpose of showing how slippery meaning can be. However, the reader does not disregard the text for its incongruences; rather he or she seeks to incorporate this multiplicity into a paradoxical understanding of the text at a deeper level.

Maybe that's a little long for a definition; maybe it's a little wordy, but I think you catch my drift. Deeper reading requires us to approach texts with humility, giving the author the benefit of the doubt. It requires us to try to learn from authors who are wrong just like we are sometimes, and to assume that we are probably the ones who are wrong this time. It also requires us to laugh a bit, to relax, and to realize, like the students Appleman describes, that we might not know quite so much about the world as we think we do. We're all in this together.

Ship of Fools - Peter van der Heyden

"Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception, and ignorance, but it isn't–it's human."

-Erasmus

"Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless."

-Ecclesiastes

Whatever You Do, Don't Think About Black Cats.

"I concluded . . . that the best way to rescue poems like 'Dover Beach' was not to try to protect them from the critical controversies about their value, but to use those controversies to give them new life"

-Gerry Graff, quoted in Appleman

I think Mr. Graff makes a good point with his paradoxical embrace of the challenges brought on by Marxist and Feminist Theories. Good literature was never really in danger, nor was the study of good literature, he claims. Sometimes controversy and condemnation can revive an old classic, or even bring out new layers of richness and complexity–actually highlighting the author's skill. In other cases, controversy can be part of the democratically-driven re-envisioning of the literary canon, pointing out the failings of works that may have been too highly praised. 

Of course, it is the tyranny of that democracy which we all fear when it challenges one of our beloved classics, one of the books that has shaped us, challenged us, simply entertained us. Even more, it is the tyranny of the present that we must fear, as notions of progress validate the judgment and condemnation of the voices of the past according to the criteria of political correctness. In some Feminist circles, for example, or so I've heard, Shakespeare and Plato, among others, have been ignored or exiled, while self-censorship has gained a power that the inquisition never had. At least when books are banned, the result is often a heightened curiosity. Sometimes, for better or worse, the banning of books even leads to an increased readership. In this way, I think that Graff is mostly right. If someone tells you not to think about black cats, their bad luck is that one is guaranteed at least to cross your mind. Oftentimes, the Marxist and Feminist controversy around particular titles piques our interest in a similar way. And as concerns literary theory, we may even be lead to appreciate those texts in new ways. However, when theory gives way to dogmatism, and classics are left to lie in the dust, we lose a chance to learn from the past. Controversy is good, but its benefits require a delicate balance of power.

At the same time, I'm not entirely opposed to the idea of a thought-police; I mean we are supposed to be challenging students, are we not? Socrates wasn't opposed to the idea either, though I think he might drink the hemlock all over again if he knew which side of it he was coming out on.

Jaques-Louis David - The Death of Socrates

"And if the student finds that [the reading] is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed."

-Flannery O'Connor

"Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about."

-G. K. Chesterton

Are My Students Willing and Able to Embrace Confusion?

Gallagher raises a key question for teaching literature. I believe that the answer in most classrooms will be "no". Despite the persistent claims of some that times have changed, our world is as much as ever the product of a scientific enlightenment. The need for scientific fact undergirds our acceptance of anything as truth. This problem is compounded by the incessant stream of information that young people are required to sort through every day. From necessity, "fact" is reduced to whatever can answer this simple question in the affirmative: "does it make sense to me now?"

In response to this question it is all too easy for a teacher to attempt to remove confusion altogether. Is this not the nature of academic writing? I know that I myself am guilty of stretching patchwork theories over a much more difficult reality. Well-structured theories may present our subject matter to students in a more accessible, sensible way, but does it do justice to the truth we wish to portray?

The introduction of confusion into the classroom goes against the grain of the way we understand our world. Complex texts ask the reader to confront the world as it is, without dismissing it or even simplifying it. Often this confusion is not resolved; instead it is compounded by the further discovery of confusion in what once appeared clear. However, the reward for embracing confusion is great. When we are taught to embrace confusion (an embrace that includes both acceptance and struggle), we are brought into greater communion with the truth. Instead of reducing what is seen so that it fits within the constraints of ideology, or worse, dismissing it altogether because it is hard, good readers will embrace confusion for what it is on its own terms. 

Of necessity, as Gallagher points out, is that we embrace confusion along with our students. More is at stake than helping our students get through a hard book. To embrace confusion is to reject the notion that a teacher has sole access to the truth and instead to model a posture of humility and wonder that puts us in right relationship with a world that is not so easy to explain. Confusion allows us to find beauty in the things that once appeared both dry and simple, to feel worlds away in a world that is truly our own and to discover why we were attached to this place to begin with. 

Otherwise, we might as well read chemistry textbooks.

Van Gogh - Field of Spring Wheat at Sunrise

"Truths of all others the most awful and mysterious, yet being at the same time of universal interest, are too often considered as so true, that they lose all life and efficiency of truth, and lie bedridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors."

- S. T. Coleridge

"The world shall perish not for lack of wonders, but for lack of wonder."

- G. K. Chesterton

If You'll Forgive a Slight Romanticization...

In Deeper Reading Gallagher points out the merit of tying a text to personal experience. Framing the text for students does more than make literature relatable; in Gallagher's words, "Literature enables students to experience a safe 'practice run' through the great issues confronting us, and having students reflect on their reading by connecting it to a contemporary point of view is essential" (20). Louise Rosenblatt's transactional theory of reader response (as outlined in Appleman 2009) fills out Gallagher's assertion by emphasizing an interplay between the reader and the text. It is both the text and the individual who contribute to the meaning that is discovered.

While I am aware of the fact of this event when I read, I am rarely conscious either of my contribution to the text or of a "practice run" through anything in particular. So, reminded of these concepts by today's reading, I decided to take a second look at my bookshelf. Leafing through the pages of particularly meaningful, even life-altering books failed to produce any epiphanies. I put an anthology back on the shelf and sat back for a broader view. At once, as a series of impressions came Odysseus, Achilles, Oroonoko, and Lady Macbeth; King Lear, Marlow, Milton's Satan, all the Karamazovs; Othello, Lord Jim, The Underground Man, and J. Alfred Prufrock: a crowd diverse as any. Yet in each I found something relatable, whether negative or positive– maybe something I brought, maybe something they brought too. As a young man coming of age, these are the characters, the stories, the texts that have provided me with a dry run through what it means to be a man. Through these characters I have confronted and participated in death, sin, forgiveness, love, strength, weakness, and humility. There is no one to one correlation between experience and the text, but I at least cannot deny their mingling as I search out what it means to live according to wisdom, as the man God created me to be.

Henry Fuseli - Tiresias appears to Ulysses

                                                  ". . .The blow smashed 

            the nape cord, and his ghost fled to the dark. 

      But I was outside, walking with the rest, 

                                                     saying:           

                                               'Homeward you think we must be sailing

             to our own land; no, elsewhere is the voyage

Kirkê has laid upon me. We must go 

                  to the cold homes of Death and pale Perséphonê

  to hear Teirêsias tell of time to come.'"

-Odysseus, The Odyssey, transalted by Robert Fitzgerald

The Elephant in the Classroom

"How can we deconstruct the singular vision that is represented by one story? And how can we extrapolate from that single tile of vision to the mosaic of other human experiences and perspectives?"

-Deborah Appleman, Critical Encounters in High School English, 21

These questions clearly articulate the central task of critical reading. It is a two twofold task: First, critical reading requires the reader to take off her own glasses, to deconstruct the singular lens through which she views the text. Second, critical reading is a process of moving from this limited vision to postulate the perspectives of others in order to better understand the human experience.

However, Appleman's description stops short of what it looks like to "deconstruct the singular vision." What happens afterward? Does the reader arrive at an understanding of the true ideas behind the text? If so, then critical reading is like the old story of the blind monks and the elephant. Each one feels a different part of the elephant and comes to a conclusion about what the object is, a spear (the tusk), a pillar (the leg), a brush (the tail), yet each perspective falls short of truly identifying the thing itself. Everyone else knows that the monks are touching an elephant, but blindness makes the monks' perspectives very limiting. If an authoritative meaning does exist, if there is an elephant in the room, then any other lens is invalidated and a philosophical deconstruction of the text, including a careful consideration of each more limited perspective, becomes the lone pathway to the truth. 

On the other hand, maybe reading literature critically is more like chemistry than it is like feeling elephants. Maybe each perspective mingles with the text to make something entirely new. If this is the case, then literature is meant to teach us more about each other than it is meant to acquaint us with universal meaning.

In either case, an openness and awareness of other people's views is essential to reading, and I am glad for the chance to discover a means of teaching these concepts to adolescents  through Appleman's book.

Itcho Hanabusa - Blind Monks Examining an Elephant

"O how they cling and wrangle, some who claim

For preacher and monk the honoured name!

For, quarrelling, each to his view they cling.

Such folk see only one side of a thing."

                                           -Siddhartha Gautama