I do not dispute that much of the time, in fact, however, books
are used in ways that are constricting and not liberating/nurturing.
Hi Brad,
I think you might enjoy this passage from Mary Rose O'Reilley's book "The Peaceable Classroom"
Brian McAndrews
ps: for Ray (REH)
The Robertson Davies quote imbedded in this passage is my thank you for your "For Dan George" poem
-----------------------
Silencing the Text
My friend and colleague, Jim Vopat, used to talk about facing the consequences of what we teach. Often we don�t face the texts, but rather, we do everything we can to silence them. Most great literature is so radical, it takes its knife so near the bone, that we sometimes don�t want to deal with it.
It is dangerous to stand in a classroom with literature in our hands. What do we do with those awful moments in Virginia Woolf when her meaning becomes unmistakable: there is no possibility of human beings understanding each other, no hope at all. When one discovers in the middle of The Bachae, that , yes, sometimes mothers want to tear their sons limb from limb. How many questions do we dare to ask about things like this? And will they be on The Test?
It�s no wonder that the more sensitive among us run screaming to graduate school for some kind of vaccination. And we get it. In graduate school a new formula takes hold: quadruple the number of texts you read, halve your time again because you are now a teaching assistant and probably trying to raise a family on the side. With luck, you can learn never to have time to think about what you are reading. In case you haven�t learned it already, this is your last chance to discover that it isn�t essential to read the damn books at all; what�s important is to know what the latest academic superstar had to say.
One of Robertson Davies�s characters, a musician, angrily rejects his student�s na�ve comment about how �educational� her lessons with him have been:
- What we are doing isn�t really educational. It�s enlightening, I suppose, and its purpose is to nurture the spirit. If formal education has any bearing on the arts at all, its purpose is to make critics, not artists. Its usual effect is to cage the spirit in other peoples� ideas the ideas of poets and philosophers, which were once splendid insights into the nature of life, but which people who have no insights of their own have hardened into dogmas. It is the spirit we must work with, and not the mind itself. For �the spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God� (593).
First of all, we must stop trying to cover so much material. What�s the matter with these teachers who are constantly agonizing in the lunchroom about how they have fallen behind their syllabus? They must have been cruelly toilet trained. How many novels do you have to read to establish the fact that there was, indeed, a Victorian period?
We need to keep in mind the process our students are going through as they desperately try to grasp the customs and mores of alien worlds. If we assign a hundred pages of reading in a night, they will do more than grasp the most superficial impression. They will come to class empty with no ideas of their own, ready for us to feed them a mash of the latest critic, like those birds who regurgitate for their young.
It is only a second or third reading, as we all know in our hearts, that we begin to get the point. Why do we make it well-nigh impossible for our students and often for ourselves to have this experience. Nothing else that needs to be done is as important as this is. But we often do not allow time; we try to keep up with the syllabus. No wonder so many freshmen leave their required course with the idea that literature is an arcane mystery they never could �get.�
Perhaps we silence the texts for our students because, in our pain, we have long ago silenced them for ourselves. While students are curling up with Cliff�s Notes, is the professor rereading Mrs. Dalloway? I fear not. With committee meetings to attend, advisees to counsel, papers to grade, and private lives to screw up at our leisure, it�s hard to find time to read. In any case, we do not trust our own readings. We learned that in graduate school, if not before.
'The Peaceable Classroom'
Mary Rose O�Reilley
