Last week we began looking at Francine Prose's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read."
I have been guilty of her charges made against teachers. I admit it and I regret it. But I want to fix it.
My ability to think for myself stems from the books that I read and have read. My worldview was not inspired by my immediate family, but from texts. The continuous desire to know more has been a fuse connected by one book to the next, and I sincerely hope the spark never extinguishes. This is the value of reading.
So I became an English teacher and I proceeded just as Prose suggests: wanting to inspire my students to read but not necessarily succeeding. I have taught books that are on the imaginary "Supposed to Read in High School" list-- as if this list created 50+ years ago is still relevant. I have created what Prose refers to as the "new-model English-class graduate." Her description of this student is eerily accurate: "...the one who has been force-fed the gross oversimplifications proffered by these lesson plans and teaching manuals-- values empathy and imagination less than the ability to make quick and irreversible judgments, to entertain and maintain simplistic immovable opinions about guilt and innocence, about the possibilities and limitations of human nature. Less comfortable with the gray areas than with the sharply delineated black and white, he or she can work in groups and operate by consensus, and has a resultant, residual distrust for the eccentric, the idiosyncratic, the annoyingly... individual."
And since I'm being honest, I don't know an English teacher who hasn't consistently produced these students. And that hurts a little to admit.
I want my students to think for themselves. I don't want to produce mindless and soulless robots who merely regurgitate what they're told without ever having the desire to find the truth themselves. This is my official apology and my promise to make every attempt to set them free.
