Loving Louise...

I just finished Literature as Exploration...and, not unlike licking frosting from a bowl, I read the Coda, her Reaffirmations, and her suggested books for the gentle reader who wishes to expand her vision. What a work of beauty. There's so much I want to respond to...where to begin? It is of course, what she said -- and the way she said it. I felt like the magnetic center of the book was her notion of the transactional nature of the text and reader as exchanging reciprocity. Then, she spiraled out, quite organically, each concept underscoring her original premise.

One of my favorite quotes: "The whole personality tends to become involved in the literary experience. That a literary work may bring into play and be related to profoundly personal needs and preoccupations makes it a powerful potential educational force. For it is out of these basic needs and attitudes that behavior springs. Hence, literature can foster the linkage between intlellectual perception and emotional drive that is essential to any vital learning process" (174).
this book foreshadowed much of what we take for granted today in education: that emotions are key to learning (Goleman's Emotional Intelligence), that "whole personality involvment" is the difference between caring and not (flow, Csikszentmihaly) to name but two.

I feel like I'm looking up, and squinting hard in the sunlight at that. So, in the spirit of letting this sink in a bit.....

Favorite words: "scientific spirit" (15 +) as in the spirit of inquiry; "precious" as in "(t)he capacity to sympathize" (37) Thank you, Ann!;and last but far from least, "congenial" as in "Boynton/Cook-Heinemann has published a number of congenial books" (299); ["trashy"; "hussy" (p. 112) my grandmother used words like this, especially when she warned me against smoking cigarettes] and, I almost forgot... "orthodox" which may, IMHO, be a more descriptive and accurate word for what is often referred to as "traditional" education.

This will take you to The Poem as Event (except I just realized I don't know how to make it a live link, drat! Well, I jsut looked it up and I don't have the link button -- Safari, oh well.)
Louise M. Rosenblatt
College English Vol. 26, No. 2 (Nov., 1964), pp. 123-12
Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0010-0994%28196411%2926%3A2%3C123%3ATPAE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-H

This link will take you to NYU's press release about her passing: http://www.nyu.edu/public.affairs/releases/detail/193

Applebee "Curriculum as Conversation"

I love Applebee’s reclaiming of the notion of tradition as being knowledge-in-action and as both ancient and living. Too bad that what we’ve come to associate with “traditional” education (even Dewey refers to the either/or mentality as controlling “traditional education” in ch. 1, "Experience in Education") is so knowledge-out-of-context intensive. In fact, when I think about it, the latter isn’t really traditional at all but, in terms of human history, a relatively modern twist. The notion of curriculum as conversation makes me think of the discussions concerning teaching our kids to think like a mathematician/scientist/historian/writer. It fits right in – when we treat students like they are novices in our discipline – versus telling them about the discipline – it shapes how we think about conveying that information. We treat them like baby writers/historians etc – and give them real tools to begin their work – to DO science, or to DO history. It seems to me that is where the doing comes in. Applebee says, “knowledge of a tradition involves both knowing and doing” (30). In an argument lain out so convincingly as Applebee does, this might seem to be a no-brainer, but it’s deceptively simple. When other than business-as-usual ways of schooling are suggested critics say that all this “learning by doing” just leads to chaos-- “how do schools avoid allowing them to wallow in their own ignorance?” (36)…which is the point….they don’t…not with a curriculum… or a plan that proposes to induct the novice into the society of writers/historians/scientists.

Genre(!) and the New Curriculum

I'm close to finishing Myers' book. I too have found it challenging -- like a dense article that just keeps on going. But, once I get over being annoyed, it IS fascinating, and well-written. What breadth.
He strikes me as someone who really wants to give some direction to practitioners...in a way, he's responding to the,"but what can we DO?" question that we all ask. In the chapter about Self-Fashioning and Agency, he suggests another genre (!) -- the portfolio. Perhaps that might be the collective genre of such endeavors as the Multi-Genre paper and/or project -- large or small as these are often multi-modal expressions on a topic or theme. I found his prescriptions at first, well, prescriptive in the bad-old-days sense of the word. Then, when I thought more about each component --- the after-school program (networking, peer collegiality; mixing it up with experts and novices); the complete orientation (explicit instruction of what one needs to know); the real-world scaffolded practice of teaching, administrative, and tutoring duties (social empowerment and apprenticeship); teacher modeling on everything (good pedagogy and good meta-modeling on how to be an adult); the self-fashioning autobiography (! writing one's life); the family literacy history narrative (together with the autobiography, a student can make all sorts of decisions about where he/she wants to go upon that kind "examined life"; and, the portfolio system incorporated into classroom life as assessment -- it's apparent that his is a balanced approach for the creation of translationally/critically literate people.

Myers, chpt.5, Analytic/Decoding Literacy

Since coming to UT, I've found myself wondering about the how and why of the separation between teachers of reading and teachers of writing....and....why they/we're not all English Language ArtS (plural) teachers, period. Myers (pp. 90-93) explicates the historic context out of which the leadership or the field of the study of literature sought to insulate itself from any input from anyone outside its ranks. He notes that the profession -- like so many others -- sought to become more "modern" -- more "efficient" and as he notes "more Cubberly-like, more Taylorized". Then, on p. 93, he connects that tension with the eventual splintering of language arts professionals as manifested in the creation of the International Reading Association -- apart from NCTE. Interestingly, the IRA was founded by William S. Gray, mega-author of the Dick and Jane series and many more series and who is the Scott in Scott Foresman Publishing, and who Myers asserts (p. 96) that he developed "teacher manuals to turn teachers into routine workers". I wonder what those NCTE meetings were like in those days.