Dead White Guys

Blog Post # 5. “This is going to be a good one” I promised myself after our class with Jason today. I felt like I finally had a firm hold on what my blog post should contain. After two hours of reading journal articles/laying the sun, foraging for and eventually eating dinner, reading more articles which ended up transforming into a 30 minute cat nap, and desperately trying to revive my dying iPod, I began luck #5…and then my phone rang. I put off the blog until now, which actually worked out for me because now I have solid material to post. This material comes from my inquiry project. I read a plethora of articles and found some really interesting points, which I included in my project. My topic was adjusting required reading in schools, specifically grades 9-12, to incorporate texts that are culturally relevant.

I had been interested in this topic since I was in high school, but a fellow blogger’s post convinced me that it should be the focus of my inquiry project. There is no dispute that the traditional literary canon contains phenomenal texts, but getting students to embrace these pieces of work is an issue. Books already have multi-media stacked against their favor, which makes is worse when canonical readings can seem dry and confusing. Many students are just going to sparknotes or cliffnotes as a means of passing the test or writing the essay without actually having to read the book. These tools are valuable, but when they are the only things being utilized, we have to ask ourselves: What benefits are the students gaining from this?

In addition to student interest, I took into account the nation’s student demographics. Twenty years ago, the U.S. Census Bureau predicted that by 2000 one-third of our schools’ student population will be comprised of ethnic minorities, which means today, in 2010, at least one-third of school students are minorities. This, within itself, is not all that surprising. What is, though, is that the top ten titles taught in American high schools are all written by white authors. What’s more, 9 of them are men and all of them are either American or British. Now, if you look at the titles, you see that they are fantastic works of fiction, but they are just not culturally relevant to the kids in our schools. If our students are required to read a book, we should be providing authors who reflect the students required to read them.

In order to maintain a balance between the conventional canon and more contemporary pieces, the happy medium between the two seems to be pairing. The idea is, teachers would pair classic texts with more contemporary work based on just about any similarity (theme, characterization, writing style, etc.) and once students feel success with reading the more relatable text, they will be more willing to put a greater effort into the classic. The texts don’t have to be paired book to book, either. You can pair novels with plays, graphic novels with poems, or any other combination. I could go on for pages on this topic (actually, I already did with the inquiry project itself), but instead of explaining all of my sources, I’ll post them here to browse at your own leisure:

Comic Books in the Classroom, “Quilting” Classic with Contemporary, How Teachers are Guilty of Killing the Joys of Reading, Different Genres for Our Different Students

All of these articles are intriguing and offer a different view of a common issue. Any feedback is welcome!