Jim’s Blog: A Place for Conversations about English Education

Many of us English teachers and future English teachers feel intimidated by technology in our field. It’s not only the challenges of incorporating technology into our classroom instruction–which include lack of equipment and unpredictability of equipment performance in the classroom–but it’s much more, and much larger than those particular headaches. The technological, or digital, or information (take your pick) revolution that we are currently in the midst of is changing the way we write, speak, and even think. For example, we have students who claim not to want to write in English class, yet they are “published” and eager writers in places like blogs, websites, and Myspace pages. Some of us gripe about using technology in our field, some of us are excited about it, and I think most of us are somewhere in between the two extremes. However we feel about it, technology is here to stay and will continue to change the ways we communicate. Our challenge is to keep up with the wave and remain capable of helping to mold capable and accomplished communicators in the new technological age.

A small group presented Feminist literary theory to our class on October 4.  Here are some of the key questions they presented:

1. How does the fictional portrayal of female characters reflect the reality of women’s lives?
2. How does the creation of female characters reinforce or resist certain social attitudes toward women?

What are some more key questions that Feminist Theory asks of texts?

A small group presented the Marxist theoretical perspective in our class on October 4. From that presentation, here are some of the key questions Marxist Theory asks of a text:

1. What social groups, cliques, or classes are represented in the text?
2. Name some of the power struggles highlighted in the text.  Who has the power?  Who does not?  Where would you place the characters on a visual representation of a social hierarchy?

What are some more key questions for a Marxist analysis of a text?

On September 27, our class explored Reader Response theory.  These are some of the key questions that Reader Response asks of a text:

1. What is your first reaction to the poem/text?  What feelings or emotions did you feel as you read?
2. What memory–of people, places, events, sights, smells, even feelings, attitudes–does the poem/text call to mind?
3. Does this poem/text call to mind any other literary work?  If so, what is the connection you see between the two?
4. What would you do if you were in the situation of a certain character in the poem/text?

The source of these key questions was the small group that presented Reader Response Theory to our class–you know who you are.

How about other key questions . . . 

My graduate class in Theory and Pedagogy of English Instruction has been exploring the possibilities for the introduction of various literary critical theories into the secondary classroom, as you can see from the previous posts.  I wrote in an earlier post, “Literary Theory in the High School English Classroom,” that I was particularly interested in teaching the questions that each theoretical perspective asks of texts.  Dr. M. suggested in a comment to that post that we start a list of those key questions.  I am interested about particular questions for each critical perspective, because I think that these are useful in inducing the kinds of questions each perspective asks.  Some of the theories can be pretty difficult to grasp, for teachers as well as students, so I think the inductive method might be helpful.  Learning about the key questions may help us understand the theories in general.  Toward this inquiry, I am starting sub-categories under this category for various theoretical perspectives.  I will start each perspective with a key question or two, and I’d love to hear your key questions.

Reading Chapter 3 of Deborah Appleman’s Critical Encounters in High School English–the chapter on Reader Response theory–I found myself wondering if Appleman is being completely fair to Reader Response theory and one of its primary architects, Louise Rosenblatt.  On the whole, I came away with the impression that she suggests that the theory itself is somehow deficient, resulting in “the doctrine of individualism” (Appleman quoting Bruce Pirie, p. 28), and that students come away with the idea that their personal connections and responses to texts are the only thing that matters.  She also writes that “If reader response is a transaction, at the very least we need to acknowledge that the text is an equal partner in that transaction” (28).  I think, having read Rosenblatt’s Literature as Exploration, that Rosenblatt makes clear that the personal connection with the literature is only one component in the self-text-world triad of reader response.  To be fair, Appleman does say that “[a]s English teachers we may have been guilty of overprivileging and romanticizing the individual at the expense of the context” (28), rightly acknowledging that the problem lies not with the theory but with the application, but it seems like only a passing acknowledgement.

Appleman continues to call Rosenblatt’s theory into question by presenting student responses to the novel Running Fiercely Toward a High Thin Sound. She cites Rosenblatt, who wrote that readers’ different personalities, memories, needs, physical conditions, preoccupations, “and many other elements in a never-to-be-duplicated combination determine his [or her] response to the peculiar contribution of the text” (qtd. in Appleman, 41), and then presents the responses of two students who have very different backgrounds. Their responses were similar, and Appleman writes: “The student response diagrams seem to call these assumptions into question. Although the text is not at all obviously theme-driven, many students seem to have similar transactions with the text, not at all like the never to be duplicated combination that Rosenblatt predicted” (41).  Of course they were similar: it was the same text!  This seems to be practicing what she preaches against in her own critical assertion that we need to acknowledge that the text is an equal partner in the transaction.

I found numerous other flaws in Appleman’s critique of Reader Response theory, but I will not cite them here in the interest of brevity.  Her appreciation for Reader Response theory definitely shone through throughout the chapter, but I felt she was building a “straw man” out of the theory so that she could attack it in the interest of supporting her larger purpose of encouraging the use of various critical theories in the classroom.  I agree with her in that respect (that the knowledge and practice of various critical perspectives is extremely valuable), but felt a little put off by what I felt to be fallacious critiques of this particular theory.

Did anybody else feel this way, or am I just being grumpy?

Like nearly all of you, I was not exposed to literary theory until early in my college literary studies. Considering that I’ve been out of high school for a long time, though, I thought that literary theory was something regularly taught in high school, since so many of my classmates, students who were of traditional college sophomore age, seemed to take to theory quite readily. 

The various literary theories were presented in my “Intro to Literary Studies” class as “lenses” through which to view texts (yes, the same metaphor used by Deborah Appleman in Critical Encounters in High School English) in order to make meaning(s) from the text: literal meaning, alternate meanings, and conflicting meanings.  My teacher in that class emphasized to us that it is not necessary to learn everything about the historical background of the various theoretical approaches (Marxism, Feminism, New Criticism, Structuralism, Psychoanalytic Criticism, Deconstruction, New Historicism, Postcolonialism, etc., etc., etc.), nor is it necessary to become indoctrinated into the various ideologies around which these theoretical approaches are formed.  What is important, my teacher told us, is to understand what questions and what kinds of questions each approach asks of a text.  I followed my teacher’s advice and developed a basic working knowledge about a good handful of these theories.  I’ve found that these “lenses” have colored and enlightened my readings of almost all the literary texts that I have encountered since.

Literary theories would be difficult to teach in the high school English classroom if they were taught in depth.  But I think that with some judicial decisions about breadth and scope, the payoff in students’ abilities to make multiple meanings of texts will make the effort worthwhile.  I think that the ability to view literary worlds through differing lenses will translate into critically thoughtful citizens who are able to see and appreciate diverse viewpoints.

I have started this blog as a requirement for a Theory and Pedagogy of English Instruction class, part of my M.Ed. program in English Education.  I am excited about the potential outcomes of weblogging, and I hope that this will become a platform for reflection on learning about teaching, particularly about English instruction, as well as an opportunity for the development of a professional learning community.  I expect this blog to be a place for the initiation of thoughtful, professional discourse in areas which might include (but are not limited to) the following:

• literacy
• writing
• literature studies
• professional issues in education
• education philosophy

My teaching philosophy is still in the formative stage.  Actually, I believe it will always be in a formative stage, so I suppose I should say that it is currently under development.  I look forward to many great insights from responders that will help me to make sense of it all.