Sunday 03/04 Appleman

I wish that I had Deborah Appleman’s Critical Encounters in High School English before I started teaching. Not being greatly exposed to critical theory, certainly not in high school, I flirted with including feminist theory, but I was teaching a heavy dose of formalism and reader response. This book, especially with its appendices and chapter eight – reminding me that this is not just for “advanced” students or future English majors, guides a teacher mucking through purposes and their own insecurities a great deal of help and insight, offering a springboard into the kinds of classes I would think most teachers would hope for: room for thinking to happen, interaction, and growing awareness of all involved. Then again, like much of what I’ve been learning this year, I don’t know if I would have been ready for this out of the gate. Could I have really anchored myself to teaching literature this way? Would I have the impetus to creating some of my own learning experiences, or would I simply be throwing out handouts of other, more enlightened teachers?

Not only do I appreciate the possibilities and anecdotal evidence provided, but I also admire that Appleman would provide warnings and cautions. I would not be ethical to sing the praises of this orientation of teaching only to let teachers figure out, through trial and error, all of the problems associated with introducing theory in the high school setting. In reading the book, I was busy thinking critically about my own students, and although I began to consider some ways in which they might have lashed back, I was not deterred from this approach all together for the students’ sake. Her book provides a better version of the praises of an approach during a teacher inservice and pointing out its flaws for the student population during lunch and in the halls as teachers make their ways back to their rooms.

I have trouble with the deconstructivist point of view anyway, but the treatment of Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud” seemed unjust. I credit this with my own lack of understanding of the theory (and I think this might be a turn-off to many teachers) and my affinity for Donne. To deconstruct without the context of who Donne is and who he is writing to, out of grave purpose, doesn’t sit well with me. Perhaps that was covered, but in the student responses, it appeared that the reading of the text was a misreading due to the focus of deconstructionalist criticism.

On page 11, Appleman brought a point from James Baldwin that drew out a verbal agreement from me in the midst of reading: that students would be “able to critique their own society intelligently and without fear”! This whole premise set the book up for me with great expectations. I did however continue to wonder about the texts I would use and what that time spent looks like. My fear is not that students are incapable of thinking through theoretical lenses, but that they are likely to resist reading. If a student comes to class when we are to work through one of these literary criticism theories, they have to have read the text. If there is no common text, then what am I interpreting? I would be giving my own, uninformed opinion. And although I appreciate the view that through this, we are teaching ways of reading, how does this work alongside teaching students to read. Simply giving a lens with which to interpret will not make reading for understanding increase. However, I do take the transformation of student reading very seriously, and the class and gender criticisms (I agree with the removal of the labels, similar to the title of a poem, that can lead to instant resistance) got me happy as I read. On page 69, Appleman lists these effects in how students’ reading transforms through gendered reading: “How students view female characters and appraise the author’s stance toward those characters; how students evaluate the significance of the gender of the author in terms of its influence on a particular literary work; how students interpret whole texts within a feminist framework; and finally, and perhaps most important, how students read the gendered patterns in the world.” These transformations work on the levels I want to see student’s affected: they can recognize the situation of the text (author, historical context, fictional context) and their situation within/without the text.

Oh, to be alert and interactive with something to say and do in this world and hardly spend so much energy focused on self. You may get there before I do, but please try not to bother me while I am looking in the mirror – that man is such a captive audience.