Like Ginny, I noticed that Scholes recommends that smart English teachers suppress their natural inclination to show off for their students.  Too bad he couldn’t resist.  He sounded like he agreed in principle with Blau, that an English teacher’s role was to enable students to read and interpret a text themselves, but in practice, he gave me the feeling that interpreting texts is a mysterious power held by genius English teachers.  Of interpreting texts, he says “there is an element of intuition . . . that cannot be reduced to formulas”31).  That said, he presents the formula for interpreting a text:  Step 1.  Look for repetitions and oppositions in the text.  Sounds simple enough, but the cultural and geographic information he supplies, as well as some not-so-obvious oppositions he points out, put him in the position of telling the students the correct interpretation of the text.  He says, “In leading a class from reading to interpretation, I would try to uncover the implications of the opposition by exploring all the relationships and differences that link the story’s two main places and episodes” (33).  He asks questions and answers them himself.  His text gives no indication that his students were coming up with the conclusions he makes. Step 2. Determine what these oppositions represent.  About this step he says students must be able to make connection between text and culture based on knowledge, and then teaches the class the cultural knowledge they will need to correctly interpret the text.  Sounds like a show off to me.  I do not question his brilliance.  I just don’t think being in one of his classes would make me feel empowered.