{"id":60,"date":"2008-02-09T12:28:09","date_gmt":"2008-02-09T17:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/02\/09\/cultivating-curiosity-applying-crosman-in-the-literature-classroom\/"},"modified":"2008-02-09T12:28:09","modified_gmt":"2008-02-09T17:28:09","slug":"cultivating-curiosity-applying-crosman-in-the-literature-classroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/02\/09\/cultivating-curiosity-applying-crosman-in-the-literature-classroom\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultivating Curiosity: Applying Crosman in the Literature Classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reading through Crosman\u2019s essay, I found myself in complete agreement with his thesis.\u00a0 Readers do make meaning, but there are multiple meanings within a text.\u00a0 Individual \u201ctranslation\u201d can only be viewed as wrong if the interpretation does not logically fit within a wider context.\u00a0 As Crosman points out in discussing In a Station<\/em>, the average reader does not look for meaning beyond the literal level.\u00a0 It is only within critical circles, universities, and classrooms that readers seek a deeper meaning.\u00a0 The case with most students, though, is that they are average readers.\u00a0 They typically do not look for meaning beyond the literal level.\u00a0 It is up to as teachers, then, to revive that natural sense of curiosity.<\/p>\n

If I may take a step back for a moment, reading is indeed translation; we take what the author writes and make it our own.\u00a0 There have been numerous times that while reading a novel I have created specific images of characters in my mind \u2013 only to be disappointed by someone else\u2019s interpretation when the work is translated into film.\u00a0 The Think-Aloud groups demonstrated this act: they gave meaning to the poem by connecting various words to images.\u00a0 Like Crosman indicates, the group members filled in information where it was lacking and provided a context for the images in the poem.\u00a0 For example, Naomi connected the green bottle to a medicinal flask.\u00a0 It follows logically, then, that multiple meanings can, and do, exist when individual readers translate the text in different ways.<\/p>\n

The danger here is that students might take this \u201cthere is no one right answer\u201d theory and run with it.\u00a0 I can clearly envision a ninth grader sitting down to plow through a text, shouting \u201cI\u2019m done!\u201d and writing \u201cThis means X, and I\u2019m right because you said there is no one correct answer\u201d, then tearing off into the next assignment scribbled into their homework pad.\u00a0 The trick is to teach our students to think critically, in opposition to Hirsch\u2019s antiquated view.\u00a0 Hirsch views teachers and professor as supreme knowledge-givers, ready to fill up empty minds with as much institutionally approved information as possible before it begins leaking out of their students\u2019 ears.\u00a0 The question thus presents itself \u2013 why bother teaching students to think critically when traditional higher education seems to eschew such skill?\u00a0 Fortunately not all lit professors are like this (and I think they are becoming the exception rather than the norm), nor are high school English teachers.\u00a0 I used to tell my students the story of a paper I wrote in undergrad for my Contemporary American Novel course.\u00a0 I took a position completely contrary to that of my professor, one upon which she had actually written her doctoral dissertation.\u00a0 But because I placed my translation of Glasgow\u2019s Barren Ground<\/em> within a logical context, I received an A on the paper.\u00a0 The message to my students was clear \u2013 no answer is wrong as long as it is provable within a valid framework.\u00a0 Then, to help avoid assertions that A Tale of Two Cities<\/em> was really about the American Civil War (shades of Professor Sample\u2019s anecdote regarding The Flea<\/em>), we practiced making statements of meaning and supporting them with text.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

I found, though, that the concept of ambiguous meaning was difficult for some of my students to grasp.\u00a0 As Karen revealed, they want an answer and generally dislike uncertainty.\u00a0 Their beliefs are dictated by traditional schooling mores \u2013 in their minds, the teacher is (like Hirsch\u2019s view) the supreme knowledge-giver.\u00a0 The student\u2019s goal is to find what the teacher wants and present it accordingly.\u00a0 The \u201cschoolish behavior\u201d lens causes them to do what Crosman says; they create the truths of their academic universe in concert with their \u201cethical, social, or political needs or wants\u201d (163). In other words, years of fetching brings about academic misconceptions clung to as though they were the absolute truth.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

And so we are left to ponder – how do we open up our students\u2019 minds?\u00a0 The answer is simple: by opening our own, first.\u00a0 We must accept multiple readings of a text and understand that all of us \u2013 writers and readers alike \u2013 make meaning.\u00a0 We must also accept the responsibility of cultivating deeper thinkers and helping our students learn to ask good questions.\u00a0 Because from good questions come good answers, and at the end of the day, isn\u2019t that we really want?<\/p>\n

Ginny<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading through Crosman\u2019s essay, I found myself in complete agreement with his thesis.\u00a0 Readers do make meaning, but there are multiple meanings within a text.\u00a0 Individual \u201ctranslation\u201d can only be viewed as wrong if the interpretation does not logically fit within a wider context.\u00a0 As Crosman points out in discussing In a Station, the average […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}