Sandra Dueck raises an important issue, I think. She begins by
saying that she's
> Speaking as someone who neither reads literature nor writes lit
> crit when she can avoid it.
As a literature teacher, my main interest is in creating situations
which make it more likely that ten years from now my students _will_
be reading literature even when they could avoid it (though I surely
_wouldn't_ want them going around voluntarily writing lit crit). I
think one of the central reasons why so many people have had
literature made unpleasant for them (dislike of it, I think, is
mostly an artificial creation) is "the classroom essay" as practiced
in every classroom I was ever in, the good ones as well as the bad
ones. It may or may not be a good way to acquire skills fundamental
to other work, but it seems to me it's as effective a way as I know
to turn people off of literature. It isn't sure-fire; it doesn't
turn off the people whose interest is unquenchable, and there _are_
those whose interest in literature was pretty well doused but who
still find writing extended analytic or academic prose bearable.
But in my experience the practice of "writing lit crit" is pretty
effective at producing people who detest writing, as well.
It's usually difficult, though, to convince people who are involved
in postsecondary language education that that's the case, since it
doesn't match their (our) experience. I have a theory about that. I
think _we're_ people who came to those lit crit essays with an
already pretty fully developed sense of what it's like for a piece of
writing to have an engaged reader. But most of my students aren't
like that. Writing is, for them, a test, not an opportunity to
connect. They don't acquire many skills from writing those lit crit
essays, and they mostly learn to detest doing that kind of thing, and
doing it to literature. Yes, I know there are exceptions; the
exceptions, in my view, are people who don't much need English
classes.
So while I certainly agree that the things Sandra says she learned
from writing those essays are good things to learn, I'm still
convinced that there's only a small subset of my students who are
going to learn them that way -- and they're precisely the people that
I need to worry about least.
She also says,
> I learned these skills by trial and error, and because I wanted to
> know them.
And I would buy that absolutely, and argue further that trial and
error and wanting to know is the best -- even, perhaps, the only --
way to learn this kind of thing, and our job as teachers is to
create situations in which it's possible for students to come to
want to know this kind of thing. I don't think we do it by having
them write lit crit, and I don't think we do it by telling them
about it, either.
-- Russ
__|~_
Russell A. Hunt __|~_)_ __)_|~_ Aquinas Chair
St. Thomas University )_ __)_|_)__ __) PHONE: (506) 452-0424
Fredericton, New Brunswick | )____) | FAX: (506) 450-9615
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