Reading and Power: Response to Chapter 4 of Readicide

“Those classics you and I hated in high school actually contain greatness. Every one of them. If we were unable to discover this greatness, if we didn’t recognize the value found in these books, it’s because our teachers did not help us recognize this value.”

In my notebook I have a sketch depicting Gallagher’s understanding of the reader-text relationship; it features the teacher as a pope-like pipeline to understanding the classics. In his view, then, the student is essentially the receptor of information/relevancy as gleaned from the text and the teacher; the students seems to have a passive role in all of this. Any understanding of the experiences and expertise that students might bring to the table, even in a discussion of a classic work, seems lost. By contrast, the teacher is the active party, relayer of the Meaning of the Text, and the person from whom students will be able to develop a sense of said work’s “greatness.” The text itself is figured as unchanging, its location in our historical place and setting rendered irrelevant (unless, I assume, the teacher finds relevancies that he or she is willing to share).

This view of teachers and texts can, I’m sure, be quite empowering for teachers. Teachers are defined as the lynchpin of text appreciation and understanding. It doesn’t say much for the student, though, whose situation, motivation, and personality apparently play no part in meaning-making. I would propound a view of reading that figures the student-text relationship as primary and one that values a collaborative effort at meaning-making rather than an approach that values the teacher’s response more than the students’ responses.

Even the canon itself is the logical extension of Gallagher’s teacher-centric view of reading. Who chooses “classics”? Why are they classics? What about the notable exclusion of diverse writers (until relatively recently)? To argue that all classics are worth reading because, well, because they are classic is circular logic that sounds like bureaucrat-talk that serves to further entrench the status quo.

The Metaphorical Downside: Response to “The Dentist”

“The Dentist” is one of the chapters from Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.

Me: So I just read that chapter from The Things They Carried about the guy getting his tooth pulled.

My Dentist: Oh, yeah? (He sounds vaguely disinterested–by this I mean, not even interested enough to bother sounding interested.)

Me: Uh-huh. And the guy gets a perfectly good tooth pulled out because he was embarrassed about fainting in the dentist’s tent the day before. (I chatter on determinedly.)

Dentist: I see. (I don’t even have the sense that he’s even listening.)

Me: So, I was thinking, could you go ahead and locate my tooth that represents shame, embarrassment, and cowardice, and just yank that sucker out?

Dentist: (Staring at me like I’ve lost my mind.) I’m sorry?

Me: Yeah, let’s just forget the cleaning. Try out some metaphorical dentistry on me.

Dentist: (He giggles nervously, which, it turns out, is not something you want your dentist to do.) So just yank one out?

Me: Er-

Dentist: (With growing enthusiasm) Let’s do it!

Me: …(I’m running out the door.)

Know Way: Response to “Questions, Not Answers, Make Science the Ultimate Adventure”

This is a response to an article by Brian Greene in Wired. Go read it now (it’s short), then come back.

“To be a scientist is to commit to a life of confusion punctuated by rare moments of clarity,” Greene notes poetically. Of course, I could easily substitute “scientist” with “writer” or perhaps “philosopher” and keep the same sense of truth. The process of searching he describes is how I feel as a thinker and researcher too. There is something human about the search for patterns, I think. I saw it in my son when he was very little, when he’d arrange blocks in complex but particular patterns of shape and color. When I teach literature, it’s half of what I do, showing students how certain motifs resonate with certain meanings. And if those literary patterns seem to connect with patterns you’ve noticed in your non-literary life (I hear that some people have those), then you’ve got something special. Even in mundane life, in our relationships, we seek and fall into patterns and rhythms, sometimes to our benefit and sometimes to our detriment. Saying “I love you” at the end of each phone conversation, picking up dirty socks, screwing the toothpaste cap back on because you know he prefers it neat, reading together: these are the rhythms of love.

I find such momentous truth, too, in the idea that inquiry forms identity. It’s that pithy line from The Matrix: “It’s the question that drives us.” It’s Socrates. It’s why I, as a citizen, believe that a culture of questions is better than a society secure in its absolute knowledge. It’s why I, as a teacher, believe that questions should drive education, not the testing endgame comprised of right and wrong answers.

What kind of world do we want to live in? One in which curiosity killed the cat or one in which we constantly press against physical, virtual, and abstract frontiers?

deathbed: a short play

Mother lies in a bed and Son sits at her side holding her hand. They should appear to be roughly the same age.

Son: Mom?

Mother: Yes?

Son: I’ve heard that at the, well, you know, when people are-er. I know that as the end, well…

Mother: You’ve heard that when someone is dying…what?

Son: I’ve heard that sometimes– at the end– people experience a moment of perfect clarity and understand everything. The way the whole world works. The theory of everything seems simple…

Mother: I love you.

Son: I love you, too, mom, but, I wonder, what are you experiencing? What do you know now? Tell me about it? (He pulls out a notepad.)

(Pause.)

Son: Mom? Please– what have you come to understand about life, about the world?

Mother: I’ve already told you.

(She dies.)

(Curtain.)

“Established truths are comforting, but it is the mysteries that make the soul ache and render a life of exploration worth living.” –Brian Greene