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Archives For November 30, 1999

Shakespeare Sells; Selling Shakespeare

April 23, 2012 — Leave a comment

In the film Looking for Richard, his tribute to Shakespeare’s historical play Richard III, Al Pacino asks a tourist standing on a street in Manhattan, “What do you know about Shakespeare?”

“Shakespeare? He’s our greatest export!” replies the Brit reaching into his wallet for a credit card. On the credit card was the Flower portrait of  Shakespeare as a security hologram. Rotating the card allowed the camera to pick up the image of Shakespeare, who appeared to be winking at the viewer.

Choose your favorite portrait for a T-shirt, mug, or I-phone cover!

As an export, Shakespeare sells. His image, in any one of three possible portraits, is plastered on mugs, teapots, coasters, coins, rugs, and notebooks. His verses are truncated to fit the length of garden stones, pens, bracelets, Ipad cases, and T-shirts.  I personally own six scarves with images from his plays or verses from his poems.

There are some more unusual, and certainly less dignified, items available as well for those bard-idolators:

Shakespeare Insult Gum-each box contains two gum balls and a wonderful Shakespearean insult;

Rubber Duckie Shakespeare: Celebriduck

A Shakespeare Celebriduck-Yes, Shakespeare has been turning into a quacking bard;

Shakespeare Tissue Box cover

A Shakespeare Tissue box cover-Tissue fly from his nose as fast as verses from his pen.

As a product, Shakespeare appeals to a niche market, but given the amount of Shakespeare paraphernalia on the web, that niche market must be very profitable.

Today marks Shakespeare’s 448th birthday. This past month, I have been sell-a-brating Shakespeare in each of my English classes.

Selling Shakespeare is one of the pleasures of teaching English at the high school level. This year, I have “sold” Othello, King Lear, and Hamlet to the Advanced Placement English Literature class, and I am presently selling Macbeth to sophomores while at the same time selling Romeo and Juliet to freshmen.

Once students get past the Prologue; past witches meeting on a heath; past the Ghost’s appearance on the ramparts; past Act I, scene i;  I am on auto-pilot. English teachers accumulate Shakespeare materials in the form of lesson plans, essay prompts, quizzes, audio-tapes, film clips and activities that be pulled out at a moment’s notice. In addition, there are numerous clever resources or plans on the web to access. This past year, I added lesson plans from the websites that featured The Macbeth Tango, Romeo and Juliet on Facebook, and  Stick Figure Hamlet.

Of course, the best way to sell Shakespeare to students is to have them attend a well-acted live performance . If there is no performance in the area, a DVD or video streamed production, and they are readily available on Netflix, Amazon, and PBS,  of one of the many adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays helps engage students. There are websites that list over 400 feature length films or TV shows that bear his name, so there are many options as to which versions might be used.

However, nothing can replace having students reading  and acting out the play in class. Without equivocation, all  students are initially  terrible at reading Shakespeare cold. Nevertheless, almost every student eventually wants  a chance to “strut and fret their hour upon the stage.” Even the brilliant Kenneth Branaugh, now instantly recognizable to my students as “that guy who plays all those characters” in film productions of Hamlet,Othello,  and Much Ado About Nothing, recalls in an interview how his first exposure to Shakespeare came in a class where everyone read from The Merchant of Venice. Kenneth remembered being terrified doing it, and that he “didn’t understand the language.” But having survived that experience, he quickly developed the acting bug.

All this exposure to Shakespeare in high school  does have an effect on his “brand” or name recognition. Recent reports estimate that Shakespeare’s brand is worth over $600 million, twice the amount of Elvis and Marilyn combined. According to the website Campaign Brief, Shakespeare is the best-selling author of all time, with book sales estimated between two and four billion. In contrast, J.K. Rowling’s unit sales are estimated to be less than 450 million. The company Brand Finance was commissioned to determine the commercial value of Shakespeare’s name. Tim Heberden, managing director of Brand Finance in Australia reported: “Not only do these figures make the Shakespeare brand one of the strongest in the world, but it also shows the potential commercial value the Shakespeare name has garnered.” His firm awarded Shakespeare a triple AAA rating noting that the brand could potentionally rise to 1 billion.

I believe that high school English teachers have had a direct hand in this industry. Shakespeare sells very well, because we have sold him very well. For us, the reward is spreading the poetry and drama of the bard, but for those who are literally selling Shakespeare, we have most certainly “put money in thy purse!”

In Education, Shakespeare , , , , , ,
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A Tale of Two Marches-Civil War Historical Fiction Complements Informational Texts

April 17, 2012 — Leave a comment

A series of miscommunications left the eight members of the local Burnham Library Book Club wondering which book they should prepare to read for the next meeting. The month before, a decision was made to read a novel that shared the name of the next meeting; we would read a book titled  The March by E.L Doctorow for our March meeting date. How clever! Unfortunately, our plans went awry when the librarian posted the selection as March by Geraldine Brooks. Members arrived with copies of one or the other novel.

No matter. As it turned out, we could discuss both books easily, not only because of the similarity of each fictional story arc but because of the numerous historical references to people and the events in the Civil War.  What struck all members of the book club during the discussion was the amount of research that had gone into creating these works of historical fiction, since both contained a notable fidelity to events, customs, and manners of the Civil War era.

March-Geraldine Brooks

In March, Geraldine Brooks borrows her title character, Peter March, from Louisa May Alcott’s story Little Women. Her narrative is told from the alternating point of views of Marmee and the father of the March girls: Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy. In her explanation for his prolonged absence, the idealistic March enlists as a Union clergyman in 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War.

E. L. Doctorow’s The March is centered on real-life Union General William Tecumseh Sherman in his infamous “march to the sea”, as he burns Atlanta before pivoting north into the Carolinas. Multiple narrators are employed in this novel including a Union regimental surgeon, Colonel Sartorius; Emily Thompson, a daughter of a Southern judge; and Arly and Will, two soldiers who care little about loyalty and more about staying alive.  The scope of  this novel is epic as Sherman’s sixty thousand troops burn, pillage, and choke to death the final throes of the Civil War in 1864.

The similarity of major characters from each novel was uncanny: the mixed-race beautiful protagonist Pearl in The March and the strikingly attractive, educated slave Grace who captivates the title character in March. There were historical figures to people each novel: John Brown, the famous abolitionist; Henry David Thoreau; and Ralph Waldo Emerson make appearances in March. General Sherman, General Joseph E. Johnson, and Abraham Lincoln are present in The March. Both novels also extensively featured field hospitals as settings. March is a a Union chaplain who is wounded and ends up in a Civil War hospital; The March features a Union regimental surgeon, Colonel Sartorius  who curiously employs a number gruesome surgical procedures.

The novels reflected the tumult of a civil war, the hair-raising escapes from danger and the chaos and brutality that ensued from bitter and divided rivalries. Both novels highlighted the technological advancements that made each side more efficient killing machines, and Doctorow in particular noted the historical progress of mechanized warfare:

 “This in America was to be seen with one’s own eye’s. And as bloody and brutal were the contests of the Lancasters and York, they were hand to hand- battle-aves, pikes, maces. These chaps were industrial age killers: they had repeating rifles that could kill at a thousand yards, grape that could decimate an advancing line, cannon, field-pieces, munitions that could bring down entire cities. Their war was so impersonally murderous as to make quaint anything that had gone on before. (214)

Another element of comparison was the reflection in both novels on ancient wars that had preceded the Civil War. Brooks has her narrator, the cerebral Peter March, contemplate the historical continuum, from the Ancient World to the present, noting the how painful is the loss of loved one due to war:

“The waste of it. I sit here, and I look at him, and it is as if a hundred women sit beside me: the revolutionary farm wife, the English peasant woman, the Spartan mother-‘Come back with your shield or on it,’ she cried, because that was what she was expected to cry. And then she leaned across the broken body of her son and the words turned to dust in her throat.” (211)

In contrast, Doctorow uses a visiting English journalist in order to comment on how the echoes of  ancient conflicts are heard in the progression of battles he sees:

“Yet some of the ancient military culture endured. The brutal romance of war was still possible in the taking of spoils. Each town the army overran was a prize. In this village was an amazing store of wine, in that granary brimming to the rafters, a herd of beef here, an armory there, homes to loot, slaves to incorporate. There was something undeniably classic about it, for how else did the armies of Greece and Rome supply themselves? How else had Alexander’s soldiers made an empire? The invading army, when it camped, sat on the land as its owners, with all the elements of domesticity, including women, enlarging the purely martial function of their social order” (215)

The reasons for the Civil War are addressed more clearly in Brook’s tale. She incorporates the arguments offered by the real-life American Transcendentalist Branson Alcott in her creation of the  character of the naive March who is just beginning to doubt his involvement with the conflict he little understands:

“If war can ever be said to be just, then this war is so; it is action for a moral cause, with the most rigorous of intellectual underpinnings. And yet everywhere I turn, I see injustice done in the waging of it…”(65).

In contrast , Doctorow’s characterization of the West Point educated General Sherman suggests his weary recognition that while the physical act of war will run to its exhausted conclusion, the battlefield will move to another plane where the dispute will continue:

“And so the war had come down to words. It was fought now in terminology across a table. It was contested in sentences. Entrenchments and assaults, drum taps and bugle calls, marches, ambushes, burnings and pitched battles were transmogrified into nouns and verbs.  It is all turned very quiet, Sherman said to Johnson, who, not understanding, lifted his head to listen.

No cannonball or canister but has becomes the language here spoke, the words written down, Sherman thought. Language is war by other means” (348).

Ultimately, the members of book group determined that both books provided a fascinating blend of historical fact with fiction. As an educator, I was impressed about how much more effective both novels were in communicating the experiences of living through the Civil War from its beginning (1861) to its inevitable end concluding with Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. A textbook would have covered the information, but not provided the visceral quality a reader gains through a story….both novels succeeded in recreating history using a “his story” model. Both novels complement the study of the Civil War by blending each author’s thematic development and literary technique with historical fact. As a result, both novels will be placed on the 11th grade classroom shelves along with two other wonderful Civil War novels The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (Gettysburg) and Cold Mountain by Charle Frazier.

All these books appeal to the imagination in recreating the  particulars in the  time and places of the Civil War. As a bonus,  how serendipitous that despite the near duplication of titles, both novels were so similar in subject matter as to allow for a great discussion? How surprising that the story of two “Marches” would ultimately be so similar?

In 11th grade, Advanced Placement Literature, Education, War and Conflict , , , , , , , , ,
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Dear ELA Common Core: English Teachers Should Have More than a Footnote

April 13, 2012 — 7 Comments

The English Language Arts Common Core State Standards (CCSS) wants students to read in every discipline from elementary school through grade 12. The standards demand an increase in the reading of informational texts, the genre formally known as non-fiction. So where is the passage that concludes that English/Language Arts teachers will continue to teach fiction and literary non-fiction while other disciplines increase reading in informational texts? Where is the passage that dispels the notion that English/Language Arts teachers are not required to meet the 70%  required reading of informational texts in their classrooms?  Where is the passage that clarifies where students will read more informational texts across the curriculum by senior year?

Well, the passage is a footnote on page 5:

Footnote: 1 The percentages on the table reflect the sum of student reading, not just reading in ELA settings. Teachers of senior English classes, for example, are not required to devote 70 percent of reading to informational texts. Rather, 70 percent of student reading across the grade should be informational.

Why is an explanation of this magnitude only a footnote? By definition, a footnote is:
1. A note placed at the bottom of a page of a book or manuscript that comments on or cites a reference for a designated part of the text;
2. Something related to but of lesser importance than a larger work or occurrence.

This  footnote on page 5 of the CCSS functions to clarify that English/Language Arts teachers are not responsible for the increase in reading informational texts. Is this footnote, according to the definition,  “Something related to but of lesser importance than a larger work or occurrence”?  Why is this statement not given more importance in an English/Language Arts document? Why is this statement not written in bold? Why is this statement not a separate bullet point in Key Designs Considerations? Why is this statement relegated to be a footnote?

The specific ratio of how much reading students should do in in fiction and informational texts can be found in a chart in the ELA CCSS  taken from the 2009 reading framework of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This chart sets up the progression from an even split between fiction and informational texts in grade 4 to the 30% fiction and 70% informational text ratio expected by grade 12.

Chart with 30% fiction, 70% informational Text ratio

The chart is on the Key Designs Considerations page and addresses the demands to include informational texts because “a great deal of informational reading in grades 6–12 must take place in other classes if the NAEP assessment framework is to be matched instructionally.”

Really?  If the NAEP assessment framework is to be matched? Why “if”? The only way the ratio for 70% informational texts will meet the NAEP assessment framework is “WHEN” there is an increase of informational texts in classes other than English. Additonally, it is highly unlikely that English teachers will teach a reduced percentage of  fiction or literary non-fiction as students move from elementary (Grade 4) to middle (Grade 8) to high school (Grade 12), and there is nothing in the standards that specifies the ratio of fiction to other texts in an English classroom.

So, heads up History/Social Studies, Science and the Technical Areas teachers, the CCSS English/Language Arts Framework is looking at you!

While English/Language Arts teachers are developing curriculum to align with the CCSS, how many of the History/Social Studies, Science and the Technical Areas teachers are informed and cooperating in the incorporation of informational texts?  Are teachers in History/Social Studies, Science and the Technical Areas developing additional reading to their specific curriculum? Hopefully they are, but my sense is that these resources will take time to develop and integrate.

Already, I have heard the argument from teachers in disciplines other than English/Language Arts moaning, “what do I drop out of my course to include reading?” -which could be read as the reason why the authors of the ELA CCSS felt the need to develop reading and writing standards for History, Social Studies, Science and the Technical Areas teachers. A sidebar column in the document explains the need for other disciplines to increase reading:

“Reading is critical to building knowledge in history/social studies as well as in science and technical subjects. College and career ready reading in these fields requires an appreciation of the norms and conventions of each discipline, such as the kinds of evidence used in history and science; an understanding of domain-specific words and phrases; an attention to precise details; and the capacity to evaluate intricate arguments, synthesize complex information, and follow detailed descriptions of events and concepts…Students must be able to read complex informational texts in these fields with independence and confidence because the vast majority of reading in college and workforce training programs will be sophisticated nonfiction (60).”

The last sentence of this section should be in bold: “It is important to note that these Reading standards are meant to complement the specific content demands of the disciplines, not replace them.” 

While the teachers of History, Social Studies, Science and the Technical Areas are on notice to include more informational texts, these standards still fall under the English Language Arts Framework which begs the question, who will be responsible for enforcing these standards? Will the testing of a student’s comprehension of informational texts be assigned to a discipline other than English/Language Arts? Will overall reading scores reflect on an entire school, as it should, or will reading scores reflect on the English/Language Arts departments since the CCSS frameworks are designed under the heading English Language Arts frameworks?

Of course, many English teachers, fearing the removal of fiction and literary non-fiction (essays, memoir, etc), raised their concerns about the demand for informational texts. Responding to these concerns (among others), the  CCSS developed a page on their website titled Myths vs. Facts.
Here, the CCSS attempts to clear the confusion as to what reading will be done in English/Language Arts:

Myth: English teachers will be asked to teach science and social studies reading materials.

Fact: With the Common Core ELA Standards, English teachers will still teach their students literature as well as literary non‐fiction. However, because college and career readiness overwhelmingly focuses on complex texts outside of literature, these standards also ensure students are being prepared to read, write, and research across the curriculum, including in history and science. These goals can be achieved by ensuring that teachers in other disciplines are also focusing on reading and writing to build knowledge within their subject areas.

Unfortunately, the CCSS’s use of footnotes and charts to define the percentages in the increases in informational text reading leaves questions as to which exactly how each discipline will be held responsible.  The CCSS makes the assumption that other disciplines will  incorporate more reading under a English/Language Arts framework. The CCSS states that the English/Language Arts classrooms will not be required to replace their fiction and literary non-fiction with informational texts, but infers that there will be a mechanism “to ensure that teachers in other disciplines are also focusing on reading and writing to build knowledge within their subject areas.” The method of measuring the increase and the results of this increase is yet to be determined.  The process of how reading will be incorporated across the curriculum needs more than an assumption and an inference. For English/Language Arts teachers there is a footnote is where the “devil is in the details”, but only if all other stakeholders in this shift to a Common Core curriculum read that footnote.

In Common Core, Curriculum, Education , , , , , , , , ,
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Justice Scalia, Set a Good Example and Do Your Homework

April 9, 2012 — 8 Comments

Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler was before the Supreme Court arguing on behalf of the Health Care Bill when he stated that the  Supreme Court Justices would need to look at “the structure and the text” of the 2,700-page law. Justice Antonin Scalia cut into his argument asking, “Mr. Kneedler, what happened to the Eighth Amendment?” Scalia asked. “You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages?” (audio-video link).

Artist rendering of Supreme Court listening to arguments about the Health Care Bill- from the Politico Website

Well, yes. Speaking as a citizen of the United States of America, yes, I do. Speaking as a high school English teacher, I want you, Justice Antonin Scalia, to do your homework. I expect no less from my 17-19 year old students enrolled in my Advanced Placement English Literature class. I want them to read at least 2,700 pages of the world’s great literature because I am trying to prepare them for the rigors of college. I know that reading  great literature is also critical to help prepare my student’s brains for real-life social interaction. Similarly, I want you, Justice Scalia, to read 2,700 pages to make a determination about the real-life Health Care Bill that will effect every citizen.

As I listened to the radio broadcast report of the court session, it was the number of pages, 2,700, that caught my attention.  2,700 pages sounded intimidating at first, but I began to mentally check off the number of books I require my Advanced Placement English Literature high school students to read. I decided to check, and determined that this school year, my students have read:

Hamlet, King Lear, Othello (roughly 80 pages each)=320 pages; The Handmaid’s Tale-312 pages; Beloved-275 pages; Paradise Lost (roughly) 200 pages; The Story of Edgar Sawtell-576 pages; The Grapes of Wrath-464 pages; Frankenstein-256 pages; Medea-50 pages; Antigone-46 pages; A Thousand Acres-384. Total? 2803 pages. A full 103 more pages than the legislation for the Health Care Act! My students will have read more pages than the bill that Justice Scalia or the other Supreme Court Justices would have to read, and that does not count the numerous poems, essays, and short stories they have also read in class. They have read more than 2803 pages for only one of their high school classes.

According to the transcripts, Scalia’s interrogation of Kneedler was interrupted several times by laughter from the gallery. “You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages?” Scalia interjected, “And do you really expect the court to do that? (*laughter*)  Or do you expect us to — to give this function to our law clerks? (*laughter*) Is this not totally unrealistic? That we are going to go through this enormous bill item by item and decide each one?”(*laughter*)

His rhetorical questions were met by comments by Supreme Court Jutice Elana Kagan, who chimed in, “For some people, we look only at the text,” she said. “It should be easy for Justice Scalia’s clerks.”

“I don’t care whether it’s easy for my clerks,” Scalia retorted,  channeling the spirit of the demanding Justice William O. Douglas, “I care whether it’s easy for me.”

The use of the law clerks-the youngest, best and the brightest lawyers-to do the bulk of the reading and preparation for each case is widely understood. In many ways, law clerks are to the Supreme Court Justices what Sparknotes are to students.

Sparknotes are written by top students or recent graduates who specialize in the subjects they cover. According to the SparkNotes website, their “writers approach literature with a passion and an enthusiasm that inspires students and has won over parents and teachers worldwide”,  which means they read the novels, poems, and plays they analyze- every single word. What is interesting about the Scalia-Keegan exchange is that many of the writers for Sparknotes have graduated from Harvard, as has Justice Scalia who received his LL.B. from Harvard Law School where he was a Sheldon Fellow of Harvard University from 1960–1961. Justice Elena Kagan is also a Harvard graduate; she earned  a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1986, and was appointed the 11th dean of Harvard Law School in 2003.

How proud Harvard University must be to have six out of the nine current Justices as graduates. What must Harvard University think, however, when a graduate complains that he does not want to read the very legislation that he will rule on because it is too long.  To heap humiliation onto the the graduates of this prestigious university, Chief Justice Roberts, who also received his A.B. from Harvard College in 1976 and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1979,  acknowledged during the proceedings that he had not read the legislation either, “Where is this line?” he asked Kneedler, “I looked through the whole Act, I didn’t read …”Perhaps the graduates of Harvard who have successfully written for Sparknotes, and helped thousands of high school students in their hours of need,  could be called on to help these jurists in their hour of need.

Frankly, the idea that members of the Supreme Court have come to decide the fate of the Health Care bill  without doing the reading is as frustrating to me as when students arrive unprepared for a reading comprehension quiz. School is their job, their grades are how they are paid, so  students are paid for their lack of preparation with a bad grade. What will be the result of Justice Scalia and Justice Roberts’s lack of preparation, and moreover, what examples are they setting?

Students often complain about the reading they have been assigned. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is “hard to read”; John Milton’s Paradise Lost  has “too many footnotes in the poem”; Toni Morrison’s Beloved  is “confusing”. I push on despite the numerous complaints I hear everytime I bring out a text  forcing students to engage in difficult texts because I know each text will eventually hook the reader-Shakespeare has 400 plus years of success for a reason.  Unfortunately, this is the age of education where a literary work is too often judged by a student by its length, not by its content. How sad to have that thinking reinforced by some of the top minds in our judiciary.

The Health Care Act is certainly drier than Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, but there will be sections that require an expert eye in order to make a fair judicial ruling. The Health Care Act will probably drive a reader into King Lear’s madness, but the fact that the document is too long should not be used as an excuse for completing the assignment.

So, Justice Scalia, and all other justices of the Supreme Court, show students everywhere that doing the assigned work is important before you write the paper. Do not whine or make jokes in public about the length of the assignment in the hopes of gaining sympathy. My students have already read 103 more pages than the 2,700 pages of the Health Care Bill for only one of their classes. Show them that you can read all 2,700 pages because that is your job.

In Advanced Placement Literature, Education , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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“They Bow…Just Like Us”-The High School Musical as Project Based Learning

April 3, 2012 — Leave a comment

It is high school musical season-the best of

It’s the final act; the final musical number. It is 9:30 PM Eastern Standard Time and Reno Sweeney leads the chorus in the rousing reprise “Anything Goes”. It is  9:30 PM Central Standard Time, and Mother Superior exhorts the Von Trapps to “Climb Every Mountain”. It is  9:30 PM Mountain Standard Time, and the Pink Ladies and the Greasers be-bopp their rendition of “We Go Together”. It is at 9:30 Pacific Standard Time, and the fiddler plays the final wistful strains of “Anatevka” as the villagers sadly leave their homes as part of a great migration.

Across America, it is spring; it is high school musical season.

Just as the snowpack melts in some communities, or the holiday decorations are finally removed from front doors or trees, the lawn signs advertising the upcoming show at the local high school pop up like spring flowers.  The Pajama Game, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolored Dreamcoat, West Side Story, and Hello, Dolly! all have their turns gracing the stage in some auditorium, or maybe a cafe-a-torium. Students who have read The Wizard of Oz, Cinderella, Peter Pan or Beauty and the Beast take on the roles they once imagined. So popular is the idea of a high school musical that Disney created its own successful franchise based on the common high school experience of the High School Musical. 

Each winter, students go through the painful process of auditions. A select few will be thrilled, others will accept those thankless roles in the chorus or the nominal speaking parts. By the time ticket sales start, students will have had eight to twelve weeks in rehearsal, usually in the evenings, often after sports or other school activities. The lead roles will have rehearsed several days a week more than those with those cast in thankless chorus roles. Those with thankless chorus roles will have been working almost exclusively with the choreographer and rehearsal pianist. The set designers and construction crew will have drilled, nailed, and painted the sets; the technical crew will have laid out the miles of cables for sound systems and C-clamped the par-cans in place to highlight sections of the stage. The costume crew will have organized a wardrobe for easy backstage changes, while the stage manager(s) will have clearly labeled set pieces with “do NOT touch” signs. The musicians will have learned their individual parts with the ability to play softly under the spoken lines of dialogue.

Two weeks after those lawn signs advertising the show appear, the technical (lighting and sound) and dress rehearsals begin, and everyone associated with the production will be spending many more hours than anticipated rehearsing scene changes, re-blocked exits and entrances, and correcting dropped lighting or musical cues. The work is collaborative, the responsibility is shared-adult and student alike- and those thankless chorus roles are now critically important.

If authentic experiences are what educators want for students, then the high school musical, an extra-curricular activity for most school districts, is the ultimate project based learning experience. Everything a student does in a high school musical, from the start to the finish, is as authentic as a professional production-from audition through rehearsal to performance, from design to construction to set strike. Long after the set is struck, the pictures from the local paper fade on the bulletin boards, or the advertising lawn signs are removed, students remember their turn upon the stage in ways that defy the best classroom instruction. Everything about the high school musical- a wonderful blend of drama, music and dance- is “hands-on”.

A March 2012 study by the National Endowment of the Arts titled  The Arts and Achievement in At-Risk Youth: Findings from Four Longitudinal Studies finds disadvantaged students do better academically if they are intensely involved in the arts; music, dance, and drama are specifically targeted in the charts and data.  The report states that for low socio-economic status students,”Both 8th-grade and high school students who had  high levels of arts engagement were more likely to aspire to college than were students with less arts engagement.” But even students from high socio-economic status groups benefit:

“Arts-engaged high school students enrolled in competitive colleges —and in four-year colleges in general—at higher rates than did low arts-engaged students. Even among high-socio-economic status individuals, college-going rates were higher if students had engaged in arts-rich experiences in high school, according to a separate database. Ninety-four percent of the high-arts group went on to a four-year college, versus 76 percent of the low-arts, high-socio-economic status group.”

Years ago, I took a group of my 8th grade students who had recently completed three sold-out performances of The Apple Tree at their junior high school to Broadway to see How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying. At the conclusion, as Matthew Brodrick and the cast  lined up for curtain call, a student grabbed my arm in excitement, “They bow!” she stage-whispered to me, “just like us!” To her, there was no difference between their musical and the one they had seen, and in truth, outside of the quality of their performance and the quality of the Broadway set, costumes, lighting, and ticket price; there was no difference. The high school musical memorably combines learning with performance; the high school musical is an American tradition.

Imagine the synchnonicity -a sort of live streaming-  of one musical as performed by high schools across the United States…imagine South Pacific. While one East Coast high school male chorus is stomping and singing, “There is Nothing Like a Dame”, a West Coast high school cast is just opening their production with two of the smallest cast members singing “Dites Moi”.  While the Mid-west actress Nellie Forbush is “Gonna Wash that Man Right Out of My Hair”, the East Coast Cast actor  Lt. Cable is singing, “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught.” Each production will have some variation of  dance numbers featuring Sailors, Seabees, and Marines. There will be a backdrop for Bali Ha’i . And, in the final scene of each performance, sometime around 9:30 PM, the student playing Emile will reach for the student playing Nellie Forbush’s hand, under the table, while the band swells with the strains of “Some Enchanted Evening”…. the enchanted evening of the ultimate “project based learning” …the high school musical.

In Education , , , , , , ,
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Dear Common Core: Science Supports Reading Fiction

March 21, 2012 — 9 Comments

English teachers are seduced by literature. We fell in love with an author’s language, a fascinating plot turn, or a well-developed character, and we are bold in our love. While students may roll their eyes when we proclaim The Great Gatsby  or Great Expectations as  a favorite book, or snicker when we dramatically recite lines from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, we hardly pause in our attempts to introduce 1984 into 2012 brains. They may groan while we happily distribute Lord of the Flies and assure them they will “love” the book; they may find us positively deranged when we weep at the death of Lenny (Of Mice and Men), or the Man (The Road) or Willie Loman (Death of a Salesman). However, nothing makes an English teacher happier than the conversion of our reluctant readers into admirers of an author’s work. The teaching of literature as a record of man’s humanity sums up our purpose, our raison d’etre. For writing and grammar, we will roll up our sleeves and revise, and conference, and edit, edit, edit. For the newer standards in listening and speaking, we support presentations in class and incorporate technology when necessary, but the joy of teaching English is in the literature, in the wealth of stories told by others.

Now, the adoption of Common Core Standards has many English Language Arts teachers concerned. Why? According to one of a number of  Common Core websites, (NOT the Common Core State Standards website) the standards are designed around the “basic idea” of a “utilitarian education.” David Coleman, one of the architects of the Common Core, supports the expansion of informational texts, a genre formally known as non-fiction, into all disciplines, “For example, students are asked to read a variety of texts. In 4th grade, they must read 50% literary text and 50% informational texts; by high school, they read only 30% literary texts and 70% informational texts.” Of course, English teachers have always included exceptionally well written pieces of non-fiction into their teaching. For example, Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal illustrates power of satire, Elie Wiesel’s Night is a haunting memoir, and Roger Rosenblatt’s The Man in the Water is a memorable personal essay, and all have found homes in English curriculums. But the disproportionate ratio of 30% fiction to 70% informational text? That ratio for lovers of literature is alarming.

In order to achieve the inclusion of informational texts, The Common Core of Standards for English/Language Arts includes a separate set of standards that address reading and writing in history, science, math and the technical areas. While these standards were developed to expand reading and writing in these disciplines in order to advance core knowledge, these standards still fall under the umbrella of the English/Language Arts Standards. Note that these standards have not been developed by the respective disciplines of history, science, math and the technical areas. Moreover, there is no mechanism for enforcing these standards through history, science, math and the technical areas except through the English/Language Arts Standards. English teachers are understandably concerned that they will ultimately be responsible for the increase in the reading of informational texts at the expense of the literature they so dearly love.

So, it is with great delight that I read in an informational text (aka news article) that science supports the reading of fiction.

According to an article in the New York Times, Your Brain on Fiction (3/17/12) by Annie Murphy Paul, neuroscience is riding to the English teacher’s rescue! The article is centered on research that demonstrates “Brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed description, an evocative metaphor or an emotional exchange between characters. Stories, this research is showing, stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life.” Apparently, our brains cannot differentiate between the fictional experience and the real life experience, “in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated.” Furthermore, the simulation of social experience in fiction through a character’s point of view  helps prepare our brains for real-life social interactions.

Researchers Dr. Oatley (University of Toronto)  and Dr. Mar (York University-Canada), in collaboration with several other scientists, reported in two studies, published in 2006 and 2009, that because of these fictional experiences, readers were more empathetic.

Fiction, Dr. Oatley notes, ‘is a particularly useful simulation because negotiating the social world effectively is extremely tricky, requiring us to weigh up myriad interacting instances of cause and effect. Just as computer simulations can help us get to grips with complex problems such as flying a plane or forecasting the weather, so novels, stories and dramas can help us understand the complexities of social life.’

Dear Common Core, take note. Science has the research to prove that the reading of fiction is equally critical to the development of our social life skills; fiction is not limited to a ratio of 30% importance. The usefulness of fiction in social development is not an arbitrary argument from the heart, but a means by which our brains experience our world.  Yes, informational texts can deliver content and support core knowledge, but fiction is what develops our humanity. Which is why we English teachers fell in love with stories in the first place.

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"To audiotext or not to audiotext?"

Written Text or Audiotext in the Classroom? We Should Have Both

March 12, 2012 — 2 Comments

I am passing out Brave New World to the 10th graders.
“Is there an audiobook for this?” a student asks.
“Why not just read the book?” I respond.
“I can’t read this without help,” explains the student.
“I’ll see,” I sigh.

I admit that in the past I had been a little frustrated at these requests. I felt as though the students were sometimes “cheating” at reading. I felt they were not technically “reading”, the complex cognitive process of decoding symbols in order to construct or derive meaning. They were “listening”, where they  make an effort to hear  or to heed something. However, I have become slowly converted in the use of audiotexts for difficult texts because I have seen how effective they are as a resources in my classrooms.

"To audiotext or not to audiotext?"

The reason for considering the use of an audiotext  is what I call the problem of “voice”. What students may be telling me when they say they need help is that they do not hear the voice of an author (narrator) or the voice of a character while reading a text. A good reader can hear voice as he or she reads, but the struggling reader may need an audiotext to provide that voice.

The use of audiotexts in our English/language arts classrooms has been gradual as we build up our resources. There are a limited number hard copies of required texts in the school  library, so we look for resources available on the web. The use of the audiotext in whole class reads has been particularly effective with short passages, poems or plays.  For example, there is an excellent audio version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn available for free on the site Loud Lit.org. The narrator is particularly good with the voices of Jim and Huck, (hear Ch. 2)  and the site provides the page by page text as a “read-along”. The problems of Twain’s use of dialect are minimized once the students can hear the language. Equally good on this site is the audio-text for Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” which we have used in a 9th grade short story unit.

Additionally, YouTube provides a multitude of poetry readings from T.S. Eliot reading his The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock to animated versions of Billy Collin’s poems “The Dead” and “Forgetfulness”.

However,  I still wondered, was I educationally sound in incorporating these audiotexts in the classroom? (pun intended)

The question of audio text vs. written text has been studied for the past 40 years as audiotexts have grown in accessibility and popularity. In 1977, Walter Kintsch and Ely Kozminsky conducted an experiment where “48 college students either listened to or read 3 tape-recorded stories, each about 2,000 words in length. Immediately after processing each story, students wrote a summary in 60–80 words. A comparison of the summaries written after reading with those written after listening revealed only minor differences” (Journal of Educational Psychology).

More recently, a study conducted in 2003 in six high schools in the Northeast posed the question, “Does the use of audio texts with and without a comprehension strategy enhance the content acquisition for high school students with mild cognitive disabilities enrolled in US government classes in self contained settings?” They used audio textbooks and a reading comprehension strategy (SLiCK) and concluded that “that audio text books can be an effective tool to for increasing content acquisition for secondary students with mild disabilities.”  The original hypothesis that the experimental group with the added intervention of SLiCK would out perform the audio book and control group, was not proved since there was no significant difference between the two experimental groups. Instead, the findings suggest “that the use of audio books for students with mild disabilities can improve content acquisition and increase understanding of content on students’ grade level and student independence with reading assignments.” The study was featured in an article (9/12/11) in Forbes by Olga Khazan titled, Is Listening to Audio Books Really the Same as Reading? Khazan suggested that the findings demonstrating the improvement in comprehension need not be limited to students with mild disabilities.

Apparently, how students receive information is not as different as one might think. University of Virginia psychology professor Dan Willingham, was also featured in the Forbes article saying, “There isn’t much individual variance in the way people absorb information.The way this is interpreted is that once you are good at decoding letters into sound, which most of us are by the time we’re in 5th or 6th grade, the comprehension is the same whether it’s spoken or written.”

While the physical text can be helpful for a student to re-read or annotate,  the audiotext can help with the prosody or musicality of words. With a good audiotext, “Someone who knows the meaning can convey a lot through prosody,” Willingham states, “if you’re listening to a poem, the prosody might help you.”  The same is true for reading a play. When we read the play Macbeth in class, I reach for the dramatized audio version (on cassette tape) by Caedmon featuring Anthony Quayle as Macbeth. The students do read the text aloud themselves, but then have an opportunity to hear the play’s lines spoken with the dramatic nuances and intonations that make Shakespeare’s language meaningful.

I am not the only one who weighs whether the written text or audiotext are the same experience. An informal survey (1950 total votes) that was recently organized on Goodreads.com asked:

If you’ve listened to an audiobook, can you say that you have “read” the book? Are they the same?

1.Both equally valid, but different.

915 votes (47%)
2.Yes, they’re essentially interchangeable.

749 votes (38%)
3.No, it’s not the same at all.

286 votes (15%)
While this informal survey indicates that I have the majority of Goodreads readers support the use of the audiotext as a valid way to “read” a text, I am very aware that not all materials are available in audio format. My students still need the ability to read many different types of writing-textbooks, informational texts, forms, etc. as well as the fiction, drama, and poetry taught in the English/language arts classroom. Therefore, in my classrooms, the audiotext is used as a support for a written text, not as a replacement.
My students enjoy hearing a story told to them, not unlike the stories told to them when they were younger, which is not unlike the way stories first began. The audio tradition is not such a technological marvel. The audiotext goes far back, way before written language, when the ancient storyteller was the audiotext. Today, our students are listeners around digital campfires.
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Ken and Barbie Do Not Write Unhappy Literature: Case in Point-Toni Morrison

March 8, 2012 — Leave a comment

Student: “Is this another unhappy book?”
Me:*sigh* “Yes.”

Toni Morrison is on my mind. The Advanced Placement English Literature Class (12th grade) has just finished reading her novel Beloved; the Advanced Placement English Language Class (11th grade) is currently offering The Bluest Eye. These are most certainly not written from a happy Ken and Barbie point of view. These novels are complex and difficult reads because the Nobel Prize winning Morrison makes the reader uncomfortable…yes, even unhappy.

In an interview on Oprah,  Morrison explained how she began her first novel, The Bluest Eye:

“Things were going very fast in 1965, so I decided I wanted to write a novel that was not a warning but was just literature, and I wanted to put at the center of that story the most helpless creature in the world—a little black girl who doesn’t know anything, who has never been center stage. I wanted it to be about a real girl, and how that girl hurts, and how we are all complicitous in that hurt. I didn’t care what white people thought, because they didn’t know anything about this. This was the age of ‘black is beautiful,’ and, well, yeah, that is certainly the case; however, let us not forget why that became a necessary statement.”

The Bluest Eye is set in Post-Depression America, 1941, in the author’s hometown of Lorain, Ohio.  Eleven year-old Pecola Breedlove, a black girl, longs to be a white child with blonde hair and blue eyes. In a particularly graphic scene, the reason the book is so controversial, she is raped and impregnated by her own father.  Much of the book centers on the ideal of beauty and Pecola’s inability to accept herself. She is exposed to the perfect life portrayed in the Dick and Jane series of reading primers at school which increases her conflict about her self-image as seen in an excerpt from The Bluest Eye:

 “I destroyed white baby dolls. But the dismembering of dolls was not the true horror. The truly horrifying thing was the transference of the same impulses to little white girls. The indifference with which I could have axed them was shaken only by my desire to do so. To discover what eluded me, the secret of the magic they weaved on others. What made people look at them and say, ‘Awwwww,’ but not for me.”

The other book, Beloved, is based on the true story of Margaret Garner, a runaway slave who crossed the frozen Ohio River to Cincinnati in January 1856 with her four children. Confronted by a slave catcher, Garner killed her daughter rather than have her returned to be a slave. In the novel, Sethe escapes with her newborn daughter, Denver, to meet up with her other three children, one of them the already-crawling? toddler who is known as Beloved. Sethe has 28 days of freedom where she is able to love her children for the first time:

“I was big, Paul D, and deep and wide and when I stretched out my arms all my children could get in between. I was that wide. Look like I loved em more after I got here. Or maybe I couldn’t love em proper in Kentucky because they wasn’t mine to love. But when I got here, when I jumped down off that wagon-there wasn’t nobody in the world I couldn’t love if I wanted to. You know what I mean?”

Soon after, the plantation owner School Teacher and a slave catcher arrive to claim their property, Sethe and her children. In an act of savage desperation taken in order to keep her children from a life of slavery, Sethe uses a saw to slice open the toddler’s neck , but she is prevented from killing her other children. In addition to this gruesome scene, the novel is also rife with rape, mutilations, and the supernatural. These elements  make its choice for a school curriculum as controversial as The Bluest Eye. However, both texts are often listed on the Advanced Placement Open Essay list, an indication that these books are exactly the kind of complex texts students should be reading. The demanding Advanced Placement prompts from past years are not answerable with less weighty books.

Teachers themselves struggle with complex and demanding texts, and the English Companion Ning often features posts from teachers who are looking for information on a topic or lesson plans on a text. There are always several posts about the use of Toni Morrison books in the high school curriculum. Many of these posts discuss the controversy these books cause for teachers who want to teach Morrison’s complex and compelling literature while addressing the concerns of  parents about the appropriateness of each novel’s content.

One teacher posted:

“I think it’s funny how we sometimes find things more shocking as adults than as kids.  I read The Bluest Eye in 11th grade and never thought about it being objectionable or age-inappropriate.  I actually read quite a bit of Toni Morrisson in HS.  As an adult, I think The Bluest Eye should be taught.  That said, any book with sensitive subject matter does need to be introduced in a thoughtful, open, and contextualized manner.”

While another offered a very balanced approach:

“Just want to mention that it is the parents’ responsibility to train up their children. It is not the responsibility of the school or the state. I worry that we teachers tend to forget that, making our relations with parents far more adversarial than they ought to be. Why not let the parents choose the appropriate novel for their child? Focus the classwork on skills that can be used with any novel, on practicing the thinking that will help students get through tough texts more independently, rather than on specific-novel content.

That said, strong instruction and discussion on what distinguishes great literature from not-so-great literature — literary fiction from commercial fiction, will help students see the difference between the great novels we English teachers want them to read and the … um, lightweight? novels they want to read.”

Morrison novels are demanding. They do not depict happiness. Their settings depict a world in stark contrast to the world of Ken and Barbie. While Ken and Barbie as fictional characters are perfectly formed, coiffed representatives of all that is perfect in the world, they have have not been marginalized as the fictional characters who people Morrison’s work; they have not experienced rejection, brutality, pain or suffering.

In the Oprah interview, Morrison attempts to explain a human’s want for acceptance by others but more importantly, by the self:

“I think a lot has changed since the ’60s in terms of self-image. But there’s still a lot of pain young girls feel because the bar is always being raised. The stakes are always higher….We don’t have the vocabulary to tell children what to value. We do say, “Oh, you’re so beautiful. Oh, you’re so pretty. Oh—that’s not really what we really ought to be saying. What do you tell a child when you want to say, “You are good, and I like that. You are honest and I like that. [Y]ou are courageous. I really like that. I really like the way you behave. I like the way you do yourself. Now. The way you are.’ That’s the vocabulary we need.”

Morrison’s admits that when she first started writing, she was writing for a different audience:
 “I guess I was just that arrogant. Nobody was going to judge me, because they didn’t know what I knew. No African-American writer had ever done what I did—none of the writers I knew, even the ones I admired—which was to write without the White Gaze. My writing wasn’t about them.”
 Morrison’s  The Bluest Eye and Beloved unapologetically stand in stark contrast to the world of Dick and Jane or Ken and Barbie. Her writing has received national and international praise for exactly that reason.
In 11th grade, Advanced Placement Literature, Education , , , , ,
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Dear Common Core: Send Strategies, Not a Messenger

March 1, 2012 — 12 Comments

In order to familiarize English teachers with the Common Core Language Arts Standards, education policy expert David Coleman has been making the rounds with sample lessons and explanations. A video taken in NY , Close Reading of Text: Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr. from EngageNY on Vimeo, has been posted on the English Companion Ning with the caption, “David Coleman leads a sample exploration of a complex text utilizing strategies outlined within the six shifts in instruction.” The text he discusses is Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail; the video takes 15 1/2 minutes to watch. One point he makes about extended close reading is particularly alarming. But first, a quick bio on David Coleman (supplied for seminar):

David Coleman is a Founding Partner of Student Achievement Partners, a non-profit  organization that assembles leading thinkers and researchers to design actions to substantially improve student achievement. Most recently, Mr. Coleman and Jason Zimba of Student Achievement Partners played a lead role in developing the Common Core State Standards in math and literacy. Mr. Coleman and Jason Zimba also founded the Grow Network – acquired by McGr aw-Hill in 2005 – with the mission of making assessment results truly useful to teachers, school leaders, parents, and students. Mr. Coleman spent five years at McKinsey & Company, where his work focused on health care, financial institutions, and pro bono service to education. He is a Rhodes Scholar and a graduate of Yale University, Oxford University, and Cambridge University.

Coleman is also on the board of directors of The Equity Project Charter School (TEP), a 480-student middle school in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City that opened in September 2009. The school has received much attention because of the  $125,000 salaries paid to teachers. The 2010-2011 results of NY English-Language Arts Assessment given to 5th graders saw a passing rate of  31.3%, below average for comparable schools. The school, however, has moved up 127 ranking points from 2009-2010, and its current standing in ELA assessment is 1972 out of 2291 NY state schools.

I think it is important to note that Coleman is not a teacher. He has not taught in a classroom.
Back to Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

Coleman spends a great deal of time using a New Criticism approach, which is defined at the Bedford St. Martin VirtuaLit website as one that, “…stresses close textual analysis and viewing the text as a carefully crafted, orderly object containing formal, observable patterns…New Critics are more likely than certain other critics to believe and say that the meaning of a text can be known objectively.” This marks a shift from Reader Response Criticism, defined by proponent Stanley Fish as recognizing that the reader is active, and that “Literature exists and signifies when it is read,and its force is an affective one. Furthermore, reading is a temporal process, not a spatial one as formalists assume when they step back and survey the literary work as if it were an object spread out before them.”

Paragraph by paragraph, Coleman analyzes the language and structure of King’s letter, occasionally suggesting  that the letter can be a jumping off point for further study into historical injustice or to Socrates. Exactly how a teacher positions the students to make the intellectual jump to recognizing the strategies of King’s moral argument is not explained in Coleman’s video.  Instead, Coleman offers his possible interpretations of King’s letter. He models a lesson he would give, but he is not providing a strategy. Strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a vision; Coleman provides an example, not a plan of action. To be clear, critical thinking is a strategy and students need to have critical thinking skills. For example, at the Critical Thinking Community, there are eight elements of reasoning that could serve as strategy, a plan of action, for analyzing King’s letter:

  • What is the text’s purpose?
  • What questions does the text generate or try to answer?
  • What information is contained in this text to answer these questions?
  • What inferences are being made in the text?
  • What key concepts does the reader need to know when reading the text?
  • What assumptions can the reader make about the text (and its author, purpose)?
  • What are the consequences of having read this text?
  • Whose point of view is seen in the text? Whose point of view would be different?

I have not taught King’s letter, but I have taught challenging texts of similar length and complexity. I have taught Elie Wiesel’s 1999 speech to Congress The Perils of Indifference and George Orwell’s 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language. Both pieces were taught in conjunction with a work of fiction rather than “stand alone” pieces. Both texts took one or two periods to have students understand the purpose of the text and the information in the texts. I did not take students through all of the elements of reasoning; these were supplemental texts I chose to support fiction were we studying.

So when I heard Coleman’s position that a teacher should spend six to eight days on this letter, I was taken aback. Really? Six to eight days is two weeks in “school time”, the same amount of time I usually spend teaching the entire memoir Night by Elie Wiesel. Six to eight days represents the class time used for several grammar mini-lessons and two polished essays. Six to eight days represents a unit on (8) sonnets, or a unit on (5) short stories, or the in-class reading of three acts of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

Again, I must reiterate that Coleman is not a teacher. He has not taught in a classroom.

Back to Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

The genius of King’s letter is how he combines the political and moral argument in an emotional appeal that is, like all great literature, immediately evident. I see the protracted dissection of his letter as akin to tearing a delicious muffin apart in order to reduce the muffin to its ingredients, all that is left are the (still delicious) crumbs. Furthermore, focusing so much attention on this one letter  could be construed as a little insulting to King. I sense he, like any author, did not intend for his work to be parsed in classrooms for such extended periods of time. Close reading is important, but inspection is another. Students generally are not interested in the minutiae of rhetorical composition. I also envision a cadre of dead American authors similarly frustrated rolling in their graves as students are forced to slog through weeks upon weeks of literature study…”Once upon a  midnight dreary…” .

In my classrooms, Coleman’s suggested time of processing extended reading over six to eight days would be met with frustration by many of my students, regardless of reading level. I speak from experience in the classroom where three days (reading, responding, discussing, and writing) in a 9th grade classroom spent on Edgar Allen Poe’s Cask of the Amontillado is sufficient; a fourth day would make them as mad as Montresor. Furthermore, his blithe remark that extended time will better allow all students to participate and make contributions again places the emphasis on time rather than on the engaging strategies that need to be in place.Yes, close reading is a skill, but that skill must be practiced with a multitude of texts. The application of close reading skills from one selection to another is where many students falter.  Strategies that improve a student’s close reading skills from one selection to another, from one genre to another, from one discipline to another should be the focus of teachers implementing Common Core standards. The disproportioned allotment of time to one text reduces the amount of time practicing with other texts. While Coleman could argue that a close reading of six to eight days would be taught only once in order to model close reading skills, the likelihood that students would replicate that lengthy  process on their own is unlikely.

A student’s level of appreciation of a text is still often tied to personal experience. Deep engagement with a text for student is,  as with many adults, a personal experience that cannot be forced. Coleman’s six to eight day formula may make a student aware of elements in a text but not necessarily personally engage in the same manner he espouses. His personal engagement with King’s letter is obviously one of reverence; his video explaining King’s letter borders on proselytizing. In comparison, King did that better-and he didn’t take six days.

In Education , , , , , , , ,
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Ken and Barbie Do Not Write Great Literature: Case in Point-Tolstoy

February 25, 2012 — Leave a comment

“Why is every story we read in school so depressing?” lament my students, “Everyone dies!”

My response is usually a flip, “Because happy people don’t write great literature.”

I have always held the theory that great literature is born from discontent; that great literature finds its genesis in the mind of the outsider, that great literature is written from the margins. In other words, great literature reflects the real-life experiences of an author, and some of these life experiences can be miserable.

Generally, readers understand that they can slip into a narrative unbound by gender, age, or background. Literature is a way for readers to participate in an experience that may not otherwise be possible. Often, these experiences can be painful.

But is my theory correct?

There are many sites on the Internet that have compiled a “Top Ten” rating of literature, with many of the same titles included. One such list is posted on the TIME website. Occupying the #1 place with Anna Karenina AND the #3 place with War and Peace is Leo Tolstory. These titles certainly meet the criteria of “depression”; the first ends in suicide, the second ends in critiquing the nature of power in history. While it is unlikely that either of these titles would ever be taught in a high school, I have taught his novella The Death of Ivan Illyich with great success, and several of his short stories are included in world literature anthologies in our English classrooms.

So, was Tolstoy happy?

He was born in Russia, orphaned before the age of 12, and educated at home. He enrolled, but never graduated from the University of Kazan, and he served in the army during the  Crimean War. He wrote in his diaries, “I put men to death in war, I fought duels to slay others. I lost at cards, wasted the substance wrung from the sweat of peasants, punished the latter cruelly, rioted with loose women, and deceived men. Lying, robbery, adultery of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, and murder, all were committed by me, not one crime omitted, and yet I was not the less considered by my equals to be a comparatively moral man. Such was my life for ten years” ( Ch. VI)

He married Sofya (Sonya) Andreyevna Bers, and together they had 13 children, however, only 10 of them survived infancy. The year Anna Karenina was published, Tolstoy became depressed and suicidal. Six years later he wrote in his diary:

“I am now suffering the torments of hell: I am calling to mind all the infamies of my former life—these reminiscences do not pass away and they poison my existence. Generally people regret that the individuality does not retain memory after death. What a happiness that it does not! What an anguish it would be if I remembered in this life all the evil, all that is painful to the conscience, committed by me in a previous life….What a happiness that reminiscences disappear with death and that there only remains consciousness.”

His diaries were subject of great controversy; ownership was disputed until his death. The Online Literature website notes, “For as the last days of Tolstoy were playing out, he still at times agonised over his self-worth and regretted his actions from decades earlier. Having renounced his ancestral claim to his estate and all of his worldly goods, all in his family but his youngest daughter Alexandra scorned him.”

So, was Tolstoy’s state of happiness a factor in his writing? Do his life experiences support my theory that great literature come an author’s from painful life experiences? Given the evidence above, Tolstoy does meet the standard of having miserable moments in his life. Would he agree that that great literature comes from the pens of unhappy writers?

Perhaps the answer is one of empathy. A great writer demonstrates empathy in creating an experience for the reader. Which goes to my point made in the title; Ken and Barbie, or the Ken and Barbie “types”, do not write great literature because they lack empathy. Those perfectly formed, coiffed representatives of all that is perfect in the world have not been marginalized; they have not experienced rejection or have  been misunderstood. Instead, their very success depends on their unfamiliarity with loneliness, victimization, exploitation, pain and suffering. Ignorance is bliss, but ignorance on the part of a writer is also ignorance of the human condition, and great writers are not ignorant.

That is not to say that great writers are unhappy either, even Tolstoy.  He did understand the paradoxical nature of pain and sadness and reader enjoyment; he reveals an empathy born from experience for both. Consider his opening line for the magnificent, and tragic, Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Sounds like a family living nowhere near Barbie’s penthouse.

In World Literature , , ,
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