Teachers Must do Detective Work to Select Texts

Who should choose the books for the class to read, teachers or students? I support the decision to let students pick the reading for next school year. The first reason is that students will be more focused on the book because they like it. Next, students will get good grades because they have actually read it. Lastly, they understand it more because they picked their level.

In Francine Prose’s essay “I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Sing” Prose tends to evoke her unsureness on why schools use certain books to teach students their moral values. Prose argues that certain books should be taught in English classes, that in fact, teach students their values. Prose uses several literary examples, such as Frankenstein, How To a Kill A Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, etc. She also provides several controversial opinions, such as using different books to try and teach students, like The Diary of a Young Girl, Teaching The Novel, and many more that she has personally read in her lifetime. She also claims that teacher should start teaching curriculum that has meaning and that will provide skills that a student would

Richard E. Miller, the author of The Dark Night of the Soul, is an English professor/executive director of the Plan-genre Writing Center at Rutgers University. He studies the English curriculum in the U.S and questions if it is successful or a dying art. This is evident in The Dark night of the Soul,

Reading lists that were given to the speaker’s sons in school were unrealistic in reading level and modern day relevancy

This essay proves that graduating students in Ontario should only study literature in a Grade 12 English course. While good writers exist in all cultures, Ontario students should only study literature written by Canadian writers. This is because all Ontario students should become familiar with literature from our province. Three reasons for this are; the need to focus on our own Canadian culture and despite being surrounded by many other cultures, the need to promote and establish our own writers is there, as well as the need to encourage younger Canadian authors.

She does not understand why the older and well-known authors are not being read in high school. Prose uses a personal experience from her son’s sophomore English class. He had to read a “weeper and former bestseller by Judith Guest” (424), about a dysfunctional family dealing with a teenage son’s suicide attempt. “No instructor has ever asked my sons to read Alice Munro, who writes so lucidly and beautifully about the hypersensitivity that makes adolescence a hell,”(424). She again mentions books she approves of that should be read in English classes.

“To appear in the Norton or Oxford anthology is to have achieved, not exactly greatness but what is more important, certainly-status and accessibility to a reading public. And that is why, of course, it matters that so few women writers have managed to gain entrance to such anthologies” (Landow). If our nation were to follow the Norton or Oxford anthology, we would be mainly limited to the point of views of males, and we would only see the issues and themes that they try to portray through their writing. We would become oblivious to other issues that different genders and races have to go through. There are plenty of books which discuss these issues, but they were banned due to many different reasons. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is banned due to racist slurs that make the majority of the public uncomfortable. The book is banned even though the many themes in the novel can still be applied to today. If a national curriculum were to be put in place, would our nation choose these banned books to be required text or would they steer clear of these texts to avoid

According to “The Demise of Disciplinary Authority” by Louis Menand academic literary studies is more important than one may think. Menand claims that there is two background categories condition for the academic. The first one is “that knowledge accumulates brick by brick.” The second is the discipline of literary studies. The author goes on to say that the literacy studies have existed since 1960. There was a time in society when literature was not known as its own genre. The author wants the readers to learn and understand that literature is itself genre. Literature studies can be understood as an independent discipline. An author named Levine argues in this article that the future does lie in interdisciplinary work. There was a research done that showed that academic literacy studies became disconnected from the institutional structure it inhabited. The American university was covering up and enjoying a pergola of rapid expansion. The challenge of literacy studies was that it could have simply been put in the existing system.

Over the past month, we have been studying the concept of reading and writing in different communities. To assess this, we have read two different texts. Richard Rodriguez’s the achievement of desire”, from his autobiography “Hunger of Memory”; and Lucille McCarthy’s “A Stranger in Strange Lands: A College Student Writing across the Curriculum” from “Research in the Teaching of English”. Both answer key questions regarding what it takes to become a great reader and writer, however, from the reading that I have done, each one only answers one part of the question. Rodriguez’s main focus is in the aspect of reading, whereas McCarthy mainly focuses on the writing portion. Both do a decent job of analyzing and putting forth a view of how they believe a person can best perform in these environments. This then allows us to use their concepts and create our own version, based on their points of view. But why should we care? Most people at this level of academia will have developed a system of writing that works for them, and will have a difficult time breaking from it if they’re process doesn’t meet the criteria that Rodriguez, and McCarthy put forth. The reason it’s so important is because of implications these ideas have. Both authors put forth concepts that are indirectly related to one another and that are highly beneficial to all who will apply them. They will force you to conform to new environments in order to succeed, this in turn will make you more

Prose starts off with very strong language in her essay “I know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read”. Prose’s opening paragraph includes words such as “appalled”, “dismal”, and “dreariness”, which establishes negative connotation, a central feature of the essay(Prose 176). These words signify the lack of confidence that Prose has in the trends of American education. By beginning her essay with judgemental and cogent language, Francine Prose develops a clear and concise argument. She intends to hook her readers by immediately stressing the importance of the subject and conveying her justifiably strong perspectives. Prose claims that she is “ appalled by the dismal lists of texts that her sons are doomed to waste a school year reading” (Prose 176). Prose’s use of negative connotation allows her to clearly and effectively convey her message regarding the negative influence that American education has had on literature.

In the minds of many, if a book is widely read in the public education system it’s a classic. But it takes more than mandatory reading for a book to be a classic. A classic must have moments of difficulty where right and wrong aren’t clearly defined, thus the reader is forced to make a decision on what constitutes as morality. When a book contains such moments it forces the reader to think deeply. We want a book that can be analyzed many times, each time revealing new insights for the reader. Yet, this cannot be achieved unless the book is relevant and relatable not just for the generation for which it was written but many generations afterwards. When reader is analyzing relatable and relevant text, it cannot be dismissed as just another book

A canon is a collection or list of sacred books accepted as genuine (“Canon”). There are many different canons depending merely on the teacher or the institution the teacher is at. There will always be a canon of some sort because all teachers must have a book they get their criteria from. This class had a wonderful canon because it was all stuff we needed to know, from Mary Rowlandson to Johnathan Edwards. In a Tempest: An Ode to the Hurricane by Jose Maria Heredia is one text I think Mr. Higginbotham should include in his class because it speaks of a different country, shows how they wanted to control America and covers things that are common to today in America all through the symbol of a Hurricane.

There has recently been a renewed interest and passion in the issue of censorship. In the realm of the censorship of books in schools alone, several hundred cases have surfaced each year for nearly the past decade. Controversies over which books to include in the high school English curriculum present a clash of values between teachers, school systems, and parents over what is appropriate for and meaningful to students. It is important to strike a balance between English that is meaningful to students by relating to their lives and representing diversity and satisfying worries about the appropriateness of what is read. This burden often falls on teachers. The purpose of this research paper is to discuss

The contrary side may infer that all students of high school English must read particular texts, such as literary canon books because they are most genuine, preeminent and beneficial. This is quite erroneous, though. According to George P. Landow’s article, “The Literary Canon,” “To enter the canon, or more properly, to be entered into the canon is to gain certain obvious privileges” (Source A). Landow, in essence, states that to become part of a “canon,” a literary work must transcend certain criteria. For example, dramatic works, such as “To Kill Mockingbird” and “Romeo and Juliet,” have been inaugurated into a canon, known as the “literary canon,” due to their profound, cohesive and well-accepted form of writing. Consequently, the opposition desires for all students of

Classic literature is something that is seen as a work of art, a piece that is valued and a text of highest quality. They are outstanding and recognised for years, centuries and decades as they resonate through time. These books or texts are influential and hold importance throughout times. These texts should be taught in the school curricula as the views that are represented are similar to those that are important in todays society, therefore they should be an important part within with school curricula. One classic text, ‘The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn’, written by Mark Twain in 1884 and one classic movie, ‘Breakfast At Tiffany’s’, produced by Blake Edwards in 1961 are great examples of Classic literature that have similar themes and views as those that we face today. Their relevance keeps these books seeming new and fresh as the audience connects to their characters and their idealisations.