The enthusiasm the students expressed regarding Sherry Linkon’s Inquiry Project was encouraging because getting students to slow down, reread, and reconsider first impressions are very difficult goals to achieve. Consider the words of one student, Mark: “I liked how I was able to discover MY answers instead of the answers that I thought Dr. Linkon wanted me to find.” The question I have regarding the project is what is done when “MY answers” are not supported by the text. I do not see allowance in the course for evaluating the merit of connections that they students make, just that they make them. However, when student, Rikki, wrote about reading No-No Boy, she said “there were some parts that were confusing the first time I read them, and I had to go back to make sure I was reading it right.” Rikki understands that there is a right way to read it, which means there must be wrong ways to read it that should be avoided. Rikki speculates on the connection between style and subject matter and makes a plausible and interesting conclusion, but ultimately, her ideas cannot be proven; not at all sure of her connections, she expresses them in terms of what “seems to” emphasize and what “could be” an extension. Randy Bass also offers examples of student work on his poster, and we see a similar lack of certainty by his advanced student: “It seems there is a spiritual connection,” he writes. I do not understand the value of forcing students to make such speculations for speculations’ sake.Linkon makes a link between literature and writing when she says that the value of critical thinking and inquiry is to formulate new ideas to be shared. “No researcher completes the entire study of any text,” she writes. “Rather, we build on . . . the work done by others,” so “you need to be able to communicate clearly what you’re thinking, and if you can make your work engaging and enjoyable to read, all the better.” But in addition to being engaging and clear, it should be logical and true. Due to the interactions of text, reader, and culture, Linkon identifies critical reading, in part, with shifting and contradictory meaning. I disagree that the meaning of a text changes, and contradictory meaning is non-sensical. Although my inquiry into the historical and cultural contexts may cause a shift in my understanding of the text, it does not change the meaning of it. Nor does it make any sense that a text should contradict itself. Scholarly inquiry should lead me to resolve apparent contradictions. Naomi
I really like this topic. I think it’s an important one.
Yes, as we discussed in class last week, there are times when the date of the writing clearly reveals that the author would not have been writing about a specific war or current issue. I enjoy that the Difficulty Papers and the Inquiry project are aimed at helping students (and their teachers) to see how students are coming up with their seemingly wacky ideas. A text from a couple centuries ago may not be about abortion, but there may be some legitimate connections that are worth exploring. Finding out where and how the student is connecting with the text (where what they know is hurting their interpretation, and where what they don’t know—say, about the historical context of the piece—is hurting their interpretation) and then getting them to hold off on making a conclusion, to ask a few more questions and dig a little deeper, can help us both validate and improve their thinking process. Instead of saying illogically that the author was writing about topic X, they could say, I see parallels between the author’s commentary on topic Z with current issues of topic X. It’s a subtle, yet important, shift that could make the difference between a paper with an illogical conclusion and a paper that explores an interesting idea.
I think part of what Bass is trying to do is to show students how easily their own biases DO prevent them from seeing what the author was intending.
As Rainer Rilke is quoted to have said, “even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist.” Bass seems to be saying that we need to acknowledge in the classroom that it could be impossible for us to truly know what the author was doing, and thus, he encourages writing that is willing to explore our ideas while reflecting that we understand there’s a (good?) chance we have it wrong. This approach seems much more grown up to me than asking kids to pretend they know what the author is talking about.
(Where did my very late lunch break go?)
Like you, I really like the idea of allowing students to form opinions of the text, but they do sometimes come up with some “wacky” ideas. Perhaps Bass’ use of oral exams will allow the students to explore their ideas in a more natural way than does the stricutures of creating a written response that must follow the correct formula to succeed.
As someone who often gets flustered when put on the spot, I also liked that the oral exams were followed with the chance to write a response about their answers and how they might answer differently on reflection. How often do you leave a test (or conversation), only to realize what you should have said?