Tomorrow morning, I'll be flying to Nashville, to attend the NCTE conference in Nashville. I am traveling to Nashville with a colleague I still teach with, and meeting a former colleague (and department head) who has since moved on to St. Paul, and another former colleague who has since moved on to Costa Rica. We're speaking together, and this is the introduction that the St. Paul colleague wrote. I'm excited, and I need to get my s* tonight so my part goes well.
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“We could have been teaching this curriculum in 1970.” So said (Mr. Epiphanyinbaltimore), our first speaker today, in response to seeing every single literature selection that was being taught at that time at (our school) High School up on the board in his room, room 237, in the spring of 2003.
My own response was more political. I glanced at the list and said that it resembled the current political thinking with respect to Iraq – there was the U.S., Britain, and the rest of the world.
On that spring day, the seeds of this session: BEYOND DEAD WHITE MEN: HOW AND WHY YOU SHOULD CHANGE YOUR LITERATURE CURRICULUM were planted. Good afternoon, and thank you for coming.
So we began to throw out titles, ranging from the predictable, like A Raisin in the Sun, to the obscure, like The Collector. But a problem quickly emerged. Whenever anyone suggested anything outside of the traditional school room canon, not enough of us had read it to make a compelling case for its inclusion or exclusion. So we were stuck. Stuck teaching the same books we’d always taught and, in many cases, the same books that had been taught to us.
Mr. (Epiphanyinbaltimore), who had the audacity to get through high school without reading The Scarlet Letter, and I were frustrated. We spoke about ways we could make more informed choices about what to include. We came up with the idea of an English Department Book Club. Each month, a member of the English Department would select a book, encourage others to read it, and then we would meet, either during our allotted professional development time or on our own time to discuss the book and to consider whether to include it in our curriculum.
I chose first – a title that had always intrigued me by an author who was (and is) very much alive and is most definitely not white. I chose Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. But our informal rules did not require that we abandon the classics, only look for more neglected ones. This gave rise to later selections like Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men and The Tempest. (In the latter case, the group met in a Baltimore restaurant shaped like a boat.) This became what one colleague called as we discussed Angels in America, “real professional development.” These meetings brought us together as a department and gave us the courage to think about making changes.
Mr. Epiphanyinbaltimore, a long-suffering Detroit Tigers fan, will start us off with what he thinks of as a rather conventional choice to introduce the students to the works of Ernest J. Gaines, notably A Lesson Before Dying. But he will spend the majority of the time talking about his unconventional decision to link Mr. Gaines’ work with the work of James Baldwin – a risky choice for any age group, but especially for the age group that he was then teaching – 9th grade.
Ms. (Colleague) will speak next about her choice to dislodge one classic, The Scarlet Letter, in favor of another, Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Ms. (Colleague) was not able to join us today, so Ms. (Colleague) will speak about how and why both she and Ms. (Colleague) used Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spiderwoman.
After that, Ms. (Colleague), who brought to both her colleagues and her students a whole new world of poetry, will talk about some of the poets she has used in the classroom.
Now comes the second part of the question. Why did we do this? After all, aren’t there certain texts, perhaps even The Scarlet Letter that, to echo deliberately Mr. Hirsch, every high school student needs to know? I am a graduate of the University of Chicago. I was taught that the canon was sacred. (AB), our department head at the time of the meeting I’ve described, emphasized the idea of anchor texts – that every 11th grader should read Frankenstein, for example – but she stressed that we ought to focus our curriculum on skills. She supported the choice of any text that would allow us to teach those skills. So the book club gave us courage and our department head gave us support.
Why else did we do it? The group you see before you was, at that time, the vertical International Baccalaureate team of teachers. Even if our population and current affairs didn’t make it necessary to diversify our literature selections, the International Baccalaureate program required it. The book club gave us the courage, our department head gave us the support, and the IB program gave us the mandate.
As I mentioned, Mr. EpiphanyinBaltimore will speak first, then Ms. (Colleague), then Ms. (Colleague) will wear two different hats. After that, I will moderate a Q & A period with any time remaining. I now introduce Mr. EpiphanyinBaltimore will start us on our journey beyond dead white men.
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3 comments:
I hope you don't hold anything against them because they're dead - everyone dies at some point, we're all mortal. And I really hope you don't hold anything against them for being white and men - it's not their fault they were born that way, merely chromosomes and DNA doing their respective jobs. I definitely don't think you should discriminate against them because of the tons of truly great, insightful, universal literature they have produced that has both mirrored and influenced the history and culture of the civilization which we are now a part of. I don't have a problem with the inclusion of any great literature, no matter who has written it - no matter what race, no matter what sex, no matter what country the person was born in. The problem I have is that it sounds like some great works would be excluded because of the source, and that some mediocre works would be included because of the source.
"Frankenstein" I could personally do without. Perhaps the only redeeming aspect of that book is the Monster's tale - he is the only character who truly has any character, as Dr. Frankenstein is nothing more than a limp-wristed, dim-witted poof. But there are tons of books of redeeming literary merit whose only fault are that they are written by dead white men (Frankenstein was written by a dead white woman - do we keep it because the author was a woman, albeit a white one, even though most of the book is crap?) Do we go on a crusade to eliminate those books merely because they had the misfortune to spring from the minds and souls of white men who are now dead?
I had a colleague once who suggested that the youth of Baltimore City should not be forced to read Shakespeare. His position was that it was not nearly accessible enough, and that it was not relevant to their lives. From personal teaching experience, I can tell you that despite the language challenges, they found it accessible, and extremely relevant and realistic. I'm not saying that Shakespeare is the end all and be all, and that nothing else should be read, but my former colleague's sentiment is exactly the sentiment I fear - that an author can not possibly read out and touch a reader across generations, across color lines, across gender lines. Ridiculous! How else could I, a white man (still alive) enjoy so thoroughly a book like "The Color Purple" (although Mrs. Walker is still alive.) It is a two way street.
I think it is a great idea to do what you are doing, but here is something to consider: Cream rises to the top. (And don't take that the wrong way because cream happens to be white - it's an idiomatic expression left over from our agrarian past) I truly believe that the great books written by authors of all races and sexes and religions and nationalities and everything else will eventually make it in to even the high school English classroom. Maybe you're doing your part to expedite the process, and for that I think you deserve credit and respect. But my hope is that you will still have a place in your heart (and in your curriculum) for some of those books written by some of those dead white men upon whose shoulders so many of those newer, less dead, less white, non-men stand.
One great advantage to using the literature of alive, non-white, non-men is that students will be less likely to watch the movie instead of reading the book or finding Cliff Notes for the books since there are no movies or Cliff Notes (with the exception of such books as "The Color Purple" and "Beloved" - sorry, even though they are alive, non-white and non-men, Alice Walker and Toni Morrison are already part of the canon. As evidence, there are movies and Cliff Notes for their books. And there's a movie for "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven." Here's an idea - how about building a curriculum around books for which no movies exist? Oh, damn, wait a minute, Hollywood usually tries to make movies out of really great books, so that would mean that you'd be stuck with more or less mediocre literature that couldn't make the cut to merit the Hollywood treatment. I guess that's not a very good option either.
I'm sorry, but as a white man who will someday be dead, I am concerned that you will discriminate against any future literature that I will produce because of my maleness, my whiteness, and my future deadness. Maybe your title should be "Bringing New Literature Into the Classroom - Helping Cream Rise to the Top Faster." Just a suggestion - do with it what you will.
I know there's not time for everything - it's just impossible to squeeze in every great book ever written. But consider this - would you be willing to give up Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" because the author is dead, and white, and a man? Even knowing how your predominantly non-dead, non-white, both non-male and male students enjoy reading it? Even knowing that if you poll them as seniors, many of them will report that it was their favorite book from their four years at your school? If you don't care anymore about Sophocles and Shakespeare, at least do it for Steinbeck, and for Lenny and George.
One more question - what would you do about the interracial problem? Would you be able to include partially white dead men, or would you only be able to read half of their literature, and how would you decide which part was the non-white part that was acceptable for reading? And what about dead white hermaphrodites? Do they still have a chance of being included? I'm not 100% sure, but I think Leo Tolstoy may have been a hermaphrodite. And of course, there is the nagging question of zombie literature - although they may be white and male, they are the undead, and they have something to say - their voices must be heard!
I have a dream that one day a book will be judged not by the color of the skin of the author, but by the content of its pages. As long as your students are reading good quality literature, and gaining important insights into the human condition, what does it really matter who wrote it? Black, white, yellow, red, male, female, alive or dead - good books are good books.
Have fun in Nashville!
The last Anonymous said quite a bit, most of which I agree with. I only have one more point to contribute. For many of your students, high school literature is the only literature they will ever be asked to read. Even if they attend college, they will not major in English, so they'll take one or at most two other English courses, which could be speech or expository writing. So high school gives them the only exposure to literature that they will ever have.
While I don't object to broadening the syllabus, I do think it should be done carefully. Literature is more than the study of how good writing works and affects the reader. It is a core element of cultural understanding. It enriches, and sometimes explains, history. It provides a window into those other times that have directly shaped our own times. We close that window, even partially, at our peril.
Those who do not study the past may or may not be doomed to repeat it. But those who've never heard of the past are in much worse shape. They don't know what they don't know, and so they skip into adulthood confident that nothing of value happened before their parents were born. After all, even their teachers didn't deem it--whatever "it" was--of sufficient value to study. And that is so dangerous.
I hope your presentation was well-received and let to thoughtful discussion, both pro and con.
Have fun...be sure to try some good southern BBQ at Jack's on Trinity Lane. Nashville is a fun town and one of my favorites - good thing I live close enough to enjoy it!
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