LINK CORRECTED!
Over the past few weeks, Peter Greene has written several articles on the subject of “Why Teach Literature?”
He writes faster than I can post, so I am far behind.
Greene includes all of the articles in this series.
Now you can read them all in one sitting!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Through classic literature from all over the world, you get to learn deeply about human psychology and the human condition, plain and simple. You apply that knowledge to your life and to your politics. It’s like meeting people or eavesdropping on them who you would not otherwise have access to now, in the future, and in the past.
It’s as close to being omnipotent as you can get. It’s one of several very powerful things that distinguishes our species from the other animal kingdoms.
Diane, the link in the post is broken. I did not see a search feature on Peter’s page either.
I found it
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2020/04/why-teach-literature-whole-collection.html
An eccentric perspective.
One that I agree with.
I say “eccentric” because under Common Core we’ve turned literature into mere fodder for Common Core test practice. It has no other value in the eyes of many educators.
Common Core did worse than just use literature, it cut up the literature. It led to so-called close reading strategies with which, instead of reading a book, students read one small part of one single chapter of a book over and over again. And again. Good literature is like a flavorful, round, full, ripened fruit, freshly picked in your own back yard. With high stakes standardized testing, literature is sliced and diced, dumped in a pot and over-boiled until it loses all its fundamental flavor and texture, drained, stirred up with gelatin, and frozen in the shape of a small cube.
Oh, here’s the perfect analogy: testing is like throwing our the ripe tomatoes of literature, giving the kids ketchup, and telling them they’re eating fruits and vegetables. Reagan: I’m looking at you.
yes
Reading literature forces you into yourself. No one can read for you. You must sit with yourself and within yourself. You must concentrate. I’ve always tried to teach my students this. It’s not just about what the author means or what happens in the story or the themes, etc, but what do YOU think? How do you relate to this? What knowledge do you have of this in your own life and experience? How do you feel it in your body, mind and spirit? What can you connect it to in history, philosophy, etc? This is how reading transforms you – by questioning yourself and going deeper. In reading literature with my students, I would make them stop at certain places in the text and ask them what this means to them, how do they relate to this. It’s hard to impress this on students because they may not yet be courageous and comfortable with expressing their own ideas. They may not have the background experience to relate it to the big picture of life and experience. But they have to start somewhere. This is why literature is so subversive. It points the way for the individual person to question himself and his/her society and culture. It helps him/her to find the truth in him/herself which can be in complete opposition to the masses. What then does the individual do with this truth within? There are many answers. And many of those answers are powerful. Reading literature brings the individual to him or herself in relation to and then oftentimes in opposition to a system in which he or she must live. For me, if I don’t have this, there’s no point in reading literature.
Reading literature allows people to explore the human condition. As humans we are interested in the stories of others and how they relate to us and the world at large.
Greene is right, reading teaches you useful stuff: “It’s useful to know stuff because it makes you harder to gaslight. If you don’t know stuff, you’re at the mercy of people who just make [ ] up and try to pass it off as truth. If you know stuff, you are innoculated against that.” I’d say that’s on the important side, nowadays.
Diane, I know you’re a dog person — hi, Mitzi — but I am a cat person. There’s a cartoon that I love in a New Yorker magazine from a few months ago on my coffee table. It’s a house cat looking in the mirror, thinking, “What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry.”
Another good reason to read literature given by Mr Greene: You get people’s jokes.
Ah, William Blake.
We have a cat. His name is Dandelion. We call him Dandy. He comes when he is called. Very smart. But I’m basically a dog person.
An outstanding series. Thank you, Peter!
Our basic situation in this life is that your mind is over there and mine is over here. There’s this ontological gap between us. The universe verse I inhabit is not yours and vice versa. But everything good–mentoring, teaching, negotiating, nurturing children, conversing with friends, making art, making love and music and other art–is about bridging that gap. And literature is training in that. Let me get out of my world for a while and in habit another, seen through another’s eyes. That’s why literature is challenging for high-school kids. They are at that stage in which they are separating from their parents and forming their own identities and so are quite self-obsessed. However, this can be harnessed, for literature is a mine for possibilities of being. Walt Whitman writes, “There is that lot of me and all so luscious.” Hmmm. Yes. I should take more pride and pleasure in my physical being.
And then there is this, from James Mattis’s epistle to Trump and a theme that runs throughout Peter Green’s delightful essays: Your personal experience is extremely limited. If you don’t read, you will be ignorant, like the person who has lived his or her life in a dungeon, with a view of a narrow slit of courtyard. Here, see this narrow slit of courtyard? That’s the world. Consider, for example, Donald Trump. Here’s a guy who doesn’t read, whose world has consisted of bullying people to get building projects done cheaply, buying female companionship, and attending parties with other people with inherited but recent wealth. He never plowed a field or cultivated a garden. He never taught a class. He never made something–a work of art, a poem. He never worked in a shop. His narrow experience of the world has left him a provincial, a local yokel, a guy with a very, very limited perspective, an idiot. The only difference between Trump and the hillbilly who knew only the holler is that Trump’s holler had tacky gold fixtures in it. The word idiot comes from a Latin root meaning “one’s own”–not being able to see beyond one’s own nose, not being able to take on the perspective of the Other, of, for example, that migrant mother fleeing violence and hunger and traveling hundreds of miles to claim asylum so that her child might have a decent life. Reading literature, and reading widely, can rescue you from becoming part of the idiocracy.
In my opinion,literature is one of the best ways to bring human beings from Level 3 to Level 4 (Robert Kagen – developmental psychologist- see his book “In Over Our Heads”). Until a person can be “pulled out of himself,’ it is impossible to take the point of view of another.
Criticizing those at a lower psychological level is not efficacious. They cannot help being at the level they are at. That is why I am in education – as far as I know, it is the only means by which one can move from one level to another. Instead of criticizing Trump, like the Buddha, we need to have compassion for him.He did not have the chance to develop the life of the mind (we have discussed this before).Would you want to live without it?
I will try to feel some tiny bit of compassion for Donald Trump AFTER he and Stephen Miller are convicted in the International Court of Criminal Justice for crimes against humanity and sentenced to spend the rest of their sick lives in prison.
I think it is fair to criticize Trump for separating children from their parents, some of them less than a year old, never to see their parents again. I think it’s fair to criticize him for his cruelty and lack of empathy or compassion. I think it’s fair to criticize him for seeking to subvert the Constitution and the norms of a democratic society. I thh8nk it’s fair to criticize him for his racism, sexism, xenophobia, stupidity, narcissism, and arrogance. I will save my compassion for those who deserve it.
Being able to see or take on the point of view of another emphatically does not mean condoning it. All my life, I have, from time to time, acted in plays, and I very much adhere to the Method school of acting. It’s all about inhabiting that Other as completely as possible. But when that Other is vile (when he is, say, Trump), this is a difficult and onerous task, and afterwards, one feels the need for a shower.
You can criticize and demean Trump and his supporters all you want. Just be aware that that kind of contempt is the reason Trump won. Being referred to as a “basket of deplorables” is highly stimulating to the average Level 3 voter. Perhaps you should take some steps to find out what makes those voters tick. The jobs that Clinton, Bush and Obama sent overseas have devastated their communities. The death rate for middle-age rural whites (mostly from drug abuse and suicide) is skyrocketing. But no one cares about them. Their lives don’t matter.
Read Ken Wilber’s treatise “Trump and a Post-Truth World” if you really want to know why Hillary lost. Liberals (among whom I used to classify myself before they went insane and disregarded human nature) have lost their way and Evolution is taking corrective measures.
I absolutely agree with each of Mr. Green’s essays and all the wonderful comments especially Ms Allegretts. I taught at-risk and struggling first and second graders, not hs students! I always had my students READING real literature-fairytales, folk tales, fables and stories full of believable characters having amazing adventures. I refused to spend my limited time with them doing worksheets on discreet phonic skills. Of course I made sure, especially in the beginning of the year to find materials that they could read successfully so they had the opportunity to practice this new unfamiliar skill and hon their brain muscle to understand that reading was making sense of a text.-not just “word calling.” I was there to support their reading work by teaching letter sounds, vocabulary or story elements, in context, when they needed specific instruction to understand their reading better.
Then I was introduced to a Mr. Coleman at a faculty meeting by way of a video where he told us professional teachers that 1. nobody gives a sh** what a reader thinks!!! 2. “Close reading” (which translated as reading over and over again short snippets of text until a reader “got” the author’s intent or message, 3. 50% of my daily instruction HAD to include non-fiction reading, and 4. these new Common Core Standards will help you!
We were told this was our new directive to follow! At subsequential meetings we were to “dissect” the standards one by one and align our teaching goals and instruction to each one. There was no discussion about WHY we were doing all this, no research on best practice, nor were we even asked what we, as professionals, thought about all this! (Remember, “nobody gives a sh**”)
Oh I aligned my curriculum to the NY State Standards in a 2 inch binder ; had the standard number and “skill” being “taught” on my white board for every lesson ; and made sure my students read non-fiction at every principal observation to to cover my bases, but at all other times, I closed my door, and like what any good teacher would do, taught the way I knew to be the most effective, engaging and joyful for my beginning readers! My God, it was my readers’ CONNECTIONS to characters and experiences in literature and our shared discussions that enabled them to grow as proficient readers! And, because they then became real readers, the majority of them tested out of my supplemental program and were able to succeed in their classes.
Thank you Dr. Ravitch, for sharing these important sites with us.
Literature develops OUR HUMANITY.
Yes, Coleman needs to GO AWAY.
Here’s another article written by Peter Greene. I AGREE.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2020/06/03/a-call-for-the-college-board-to-oust-david-coleman/#b691c7538b3f
A Call For The College Board To Oust David Coleman
Peter Greene
Peter GreeneSenior Contributor
Education
I
When David Coleman joined the College Board as CEO and president in 2012, it must have seemed like a natural step forward; he had overseen the redesign of K-12 education via the Common Core standards, and now he could use the leverage of College Board’s flagship programs—AP courses and the SAT—to extend his vision to college.
It has not worked out well.
Coleman’s tenure has been marked by a number of unforced errors, from a clunky too-fast-to-market SAT redesign right up through the recent fiasco of take-it-from-home AP tests, which has led to a lawsuit. In 2018, Coleman issued a response in the wake of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High shootings that seemed to treat the tragedy as a marketing opportunity; more recently, the College Board issued some information on SAT sign-ups that included a perfunctory response to the current headlines about racial unrest. In 2018, the tone-deaf statement was followed by calls for Coleman’s ouster, and early in 2019 Coleman handed the President position off to Jeremy Singer, staying on as CEO. Now, calls for his removal are once again surfacing.
Some calls have been in the quiet back country of social media, but in a May 29 open letter to College Board trustees, Jon Boeckenstedt, Vice Provost of Enrollment Management at Oregon State University, called for “a change at the top” for the company. Boeckenstedt includes a “partial list of the embarrassing or educationally unsound things that have happened on his watch.”
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In addition to the Parkland shooting reaction, Boeckenstedt also notes that the College Board took out a series of ads designed to look like actual news articles to try to blunt the effect of the growing test-optional movement. College Board staff also created the book “Measuring Success” that pretended to be serious research, but was simply more self-serving marketing that ignored some of the data included in the book.
Another marketing thrust has been the aggressive lobbying of state legislators. The idea, successful in many states, was to offset the loss in market by making the SAT a required test for all juniors. It’s a remarkably gutsy scheme, like getting the state to mandate that all school teachers must buy a particular make of automobile.
Many of Coleman’s issues have been related to the test itself. In 2015, as a new version of the test stumbled into the market at Coleman’s insistence, word was circulating in schools and test prep companies to simply avoid taking it. In 2016, Manuel Alfaro became a College Board whistle-blower with a series of LinkedIn posts that revealed test development that was sloppy, poorly managed, rushed, and in many cases simply wrong. A series from Reuters in 2016 further laid out just how poor the security surrounding the SAT actually was.
There are many other mis-steps that Boeckenstedt could have added to his list. Coleman has repeatedly tried to sell his SAT as a tool for fixing inequity, and part of that has been to team up with Khan Academy to make a battery of test prep videos available for free. But this amounts to a public admission that the SAT primarily measures test prep, and not actual scholastic aptitude. Last year, the College Board came up with an “adversity score,” a factor by which SAT scores would be tweaked based on the student’s background—another public admission that the SAT does not actually offer a level playing field.
Coleman has never come across as a particularly humble man, and it takes a fair amount of guts to imagine that you are called to redesign US education from K-16. Boeckenstedt looks at his list and concludes that the items “suggest a narcissistic organization that thinks of its own needs first, and the purported goals of access and educational quality last.”
Boeckenstedt’s letter to the trustees was posted just last week, just before the College Board changed direction yet again and scrapped its plans for a take-at-home SAT; it remains to be seen if it will gather steam or if the College Board will continue to stand by Coleman no matter what.
Diane,
Someday it would be nice to have discussion on “Why Teach History?” I know you care about the subject. As with literature and science, it is being warped beyond recognition in many places. Increasingly it’s all about practicing skills, not learning actual history.
Great idea!
I’ve always thought that history and literature should be taught together. And, in fact, I know of private schools where history and literature are taught together. My husband and I love go to Concord, Massachusetts because we’re both crazy for the Transcendentalists and I’m a Revolutionary War NUT. I’ve always thought how great it would be to live there and teach about it all. In some ways I think public school teaching certification is too narrow and small of a box. There must be teachers out there like me who would love to teach things they’ve studied for years but aren’t “certified” in. I tried to get my old district to see the value of interdisciplinary work by doing a project with the history department. I taught De Tocqueville to my class and they presented in history class. It’s a great way to teach but we are still so confined in the old way of doing things in most schools.
I call Coleman’s “close reading” New Criticism Lite. A little background for those who don’t follow these things: In the nineteenth century, there were basically four common scholarly approaches to literary works. Some scholars delved into the biographies and historical times of authors. Others compared editions and manuscripts to prepare definitive or variorum texts. Others studied took a philological approach, looking closely at the historical meanings and etymologies of the words used. Still others produced what came to be called “appreciations.” The New Criticism was a reaction against literary criticism as mere appreciations, histories, or biographies. The New Critics called upon people to consider the work in and of itself, in detail, and a New Critical piece would be a close explication of a work that did not lean on material outside the work itself. For excellent examples of this, see Cleanth Brooks’s superb The Well-Wrought Urn.
Well, there is value in studying works carefully. And there is value in considering them as “little worlds,” as Randall Jarrell, heavily influenced by the New Critics, put it. But there’s a problem with the theory. Texts exist in context. It makes a difference whether “we need to tie up the loose ends here” is spoken by Tony Soprano or a macrame instructor. And if you are reading Plato on virtue, it will be illuminating for you to know that the Greek word for virtue, arete, meant something like “excellence” or “efficiency.” So, you could have a virtuous person or state or SHOE, the latter being one that was comfortable, didn’t wear out easily, etc. This fact predisposed Plato to thinking of virtue as a pre-existing, given quality to be discovered by careful examination. Wealthy courtiers in Renaissance England idealized simple life in the country, away from courtly intrigue and so created a literature of pastoral poetry about shepherds and shepherd lasses and the piping of love songs and so on, and knowing this stuff outside the poems helps one to understand them. So, close reading, great. The be-all and end-all of literary study? Uh, no.
The problem with the Coleman version is that kids end up doing these isolated exercises that look at one or two items in a literary work, in the name of “close reading,” and what gets lost are THE REASONS WE READ LITERATURE and THE REASONS THAT IT MATTERS TO US. We read to have vicarious experiences. We enter the world of a work. We have an experience there. And that experience is significant to us in some way. It is “meaningful” in that sense, in addition to being “meaningful” in the sense of conveying an author’s intentions. The latter is another reason why we read. To find out what others think or thought. Colemanesque New Criticism Lite leaves all that out. It’s like, as Richard Brautigan once put it, reading Ecclesiastes to see how many commas are in it or, as I’ve often said, like having a unit on The Civil War that dealt only with the relative sizes of Rebel and Union cannonballs.