I cannot imagine Atwell and Bloom in the same room. Atwell proposes the crazy idea of choice in reading and writing while Bloom is an pompous ass who gives even good literature a bad name (plus, their ideas are diametrically opposite). don’t think Atwell even knows what cultural literacy is. Please don’t lump them together. I offered her up in that dramatically offers an alternative to the march through the required texts, but you clearly have it all under control. I thought it might offer support to the next hag attack you suffer from.

Based on a blog post? You do have a comment section. You are putting your ideas out there. What else is there to go on? What do you expect when you put yourself out there, call people Hags and rally against the machine? That anger is going to kill you or you’ll burn out and be unable to help more kids.

“Daaaaamn.”

The overall goals, it seems, are two fold. First, to simply get students to become lifelong readers. Yes, a forced march through classical literature is not the way. Second, to become intellectually curious about themes, styles, experiences, etc. so that students tackle the canon because it is just better and more thought provoking than the drivel publishing companies push out for the most part. Also, so that students can recognize additions to the canon and why new authors deserve their place next to good old Hester.

Much of the reply of the “hags” is the idea of cultural currency. Having a canon gives us a common language. Now, perhaps “The Scarlet Letter” is not the best common word we could use, but the canon has value beyond mere “do as I say”. Talk to someone who teaches nothing but drivel and you are talking to someone who does not think.

This reply is coming from a former high school teacher, now long time middle school teacher. What makes me sad is seeing the future of my students; taking AP English when they do not even like to read. Many of the ideas you write about come about because of the path that lead them to your class, but I don’t think you are helping it much. You are doing your job, and it makes me sad (the “hags” make me sad, too). AP English (and, from the other comments, many high school courses) is not being about the elevation of art and a curiosity to see how the clock works, but a grind of giving students tools and corpses to practice on. I see it at our local high school, and in the high school my wife teaches in. It is why I moved to the middle.

I suspect the reply to this will be that I am naive, don’t understand, or some similar thing. Please do not lump me in with the “hags” or dismiss this because my grammar is a bit loose. I am new to this blog, and context is everything.

I would recommend Nancie Atwell as a solution, or at least some good ideas. She has many books, most geared towards middle school, but “The Reading Zone” addresses the issue of high school, fostering reading, and teaching the skills you talk about in the later chapters. Her basic premise is workshops, independent choice reading, and in-class SSR. Atwell deals with the “required text” issue by assigning them at the start of the year, with dates, and simply letting them read. Take a look; its good.

Otto Phanstiel had our AP/IB chem class start out by reading *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance*. If you’ve never read it, you should. Unfortunately, it undermined pretty much the rest of the year’s curriculum. But if more high school science teachers could teach in a way that really aimed to impart an appreciation of the rigorously uncertain joy of the scientific method–just as your de-canonized approach imparts an appreciation of real reading–maybe we wouldn’t have the scientifically illiterate population we have today.

Similarly, I’ve been reading Ball’s *A Short Account Of The History Of Mathematics*, and it presents the evolution of mathematics in a personal way that really would have made math class a lot more interesting.

And so on. What are your thoughts on the implications of ‘de-canonizing’ education in all disciplines?

I just can’t help remembering that some of my best book memories ever came from AP English classes in high school. We read Baldwin and Camus and some of Dostoyevsky’s short stories as well as the standard canonical clunkers. Even though you’re right that teachers guide us through a number of books (I reread Gatsby a few weeks ago for the first time since high school and thought that my teacher never really pointed out just how much disdain Fitzgerald had for the moneyed classes, and then I realized just how much more I understand the workings of the world now), the rewards that come from struggling through one big text and coming out the other end able to argue with other people about it are innumerable.

I think that you’re right, klept, about introducing kids to fun, welcoming books. I’m sure you could dedicate a whole bunch of words in a new post to the exclusion from the canon of great mystery, sci-fi, travel, and horror writers.

Just wondering: do you think you’d teach the same material (skewing toward excerpts and reports rather than feature-length novels) if your students were from privileged/pampered/middle-class backgrounds? My guess is no. Perhaps the other teachers at your workshop never had to “resort” to such creative solutions to keep their students engaged and reading.

And yes, I’m talking about you, Dr. Renfroe.

*sniff