Brain Candy

We all know that junk food isn't good for us. We know that we should eat our fruit and veggies and stay away from the processed foods and sugar, but that's no fun at all. We would be much healthier if we could all stick with eating what is good for us; is the same true for what we read? Would we be healthier in our minds and our spirits if we only read "healthy" books? Of course, the question then becomes, what is a healthy book? Is it good enough to simply be reading? Or should we choose the books we read with care?

At my last book club meeting, we somehow got onto the topic of Harlequin romance novels. It turns out we all went through a phase where we were reading those. Although we all enjoyed reading them, looking back, we were all struck by the messages in them. There are a number of plots where a woman is raped, and then ends up married to her rapist. What does that tell young women who are reading those books? Does it teach them to be strong and stand up for themselves? No. It tells them that they are incomplete without a man, and that since they have been raped, they are damaged goods. What a terrible message. Am I a better person for having read those books when I was a teenager? I don't think that they damaged me, but I don't think I've been improved by reading them.

I've also spent a lot of time in the past little while reading YA literature, and today I'll wade into the Twilight vs. Harry Potter debate. I come down firmly on the side of good old Harry. Bella, the heroine of the Twilight series is desperate to spend the rest of her life with her man. She is not concerned with furthering her education, or spreading her wings and developing as an independent woman. All she can think of is being with Edward. She gets married at 18 and immediately has a child. I'm not saying that this is automatically wrong, but the message that is given in Twilight is that a woman is not complete without a creepy, stalkerish man. Harry Potter is much more independent. He is not perfect, but he works with his friends to improve the world. I think that's a great message. He solves problems, is constantly learning, and he depends on his friends. I would much rather any children I may have read Rowling's books than Meyer's books.

I've just finished reading the last two Sookie Stackhouse novels, and I have to wonder if they are just Twilight for grown-ups. Is there something life-affirming and uplifting about them?

SPOILER ALERT!!!

In the second to last book, Sookie ends up married to Eric, but she didn't want to marry him. He tricked her. What kind of message is that? The man should get what he wants and what the woman wants doesn't matter. Eric claims that he's only doing what is in her best interest, but again, what kind of message is that? Women can't take responsibility for their own destinies? We need men to decide what is good for us? Grrrrrrr.

So, if these are the messages in the books, why am I still reading them? What does it say that I will continue to read the Sookie novels and enjoy them? Am I just letting down my hair and enjoying myself? Who knows. I guess it will require a little more thinking.

Educational Musings (4)

There have been many changes at work recently with regard to the choice of novels to teach and how to teach them, and they've made me think about what's important when it comes to teaching literature in high school. First, a few questions: what's the most important thing when teaching literature? is it interest on the part of the students? what about increasing breadth of reading? maybe a knowledge of the 'canon' of English literature? or it could be an increased knowledge of Canadian literature. As you can see, there are lots of things to try to figure out.

At the school where I work, we have had a pretty traditional set of novels for the students to read. In grade nine, they read The Chrysalids; in grade ten, Lord of the Flies; in grade eleven, it was always Catcher in the Rye, but when I started teaching it, I was teaching The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time because I couldn't stand the thought of reading about Holden any more. There was more choice in grade twelve: Fifth Business, Joy Luck Club, Handmaid's Tale, and most recently, The Kite Runner.

When I started teaching English at this school, I was a little horrified at how white washed and old the novels were. We were teaching nothing but DWEMs (Dead, White, European, Male) and that wasn't the population of the school at all. With a student population that was largely Asian and South Asian, why were were only reading about Europe and North American? Shouldn't the students see themselves reflected in the literature? I did work with with a couple of other teachers to add Kite Runner and Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time to the curriculum, but I think there is a long way to go.

There is now a move to stop teaching core novels and to only use literature circles. Literature circles are when students read different groups of novels at the same time. The books can be chosen for interest, or for reading level, or for a mixture. I'm intrigued with the idea of these circles, because I'm tired of hearing that the core novel is "boring" or "gay". I would love the students to want to read what we're reading. I'm nervous though, because I'm not sure that a group of 5 14 year olds will be able to draw the themes of the novel out the same way with much less guidance from me. A whole class working together to figure out what an author is trying to say can be more effective than a small group. I'm willing to give it a try, but I do have concerns.

To be honest, I'm spending tomorrow working with two other teachers to create a unit that incorporates "differentiated instruction" and we're planning to look at literature circles and see how we can build effective ones. Differentiated instruction basically means that we understand that students learn differently and our teaching methods should take this into consideration. Sounds fairly self-evident, doesn't it? I wish it were that simple. I really want my students to do the best they can, and I do want school to be enjoyable for the students, but I do think that teachers have expertise in their subjects, and that we do know what we're doing (well, most of us and most of the time). I worry that all this administrative meddling will ultimately do more harm than good.

Having all this written down, unfortunately, hasn't cleared up my thinking any. I'm just confused as I was before. I'll just keep on being the best teacher that I can be. I'll incorporate new techniques into my teaching if I really believe that they are going to help my students, but I'm wary of all the jargon and will think long and hard about how new thought is brought into my classroom.

If you had to pick books to teach to high school students, what would you pick and why? I'd love suggestions.

A Second Look (3)

To make a long story short, based on an earlier blog about book clubs, my book club decided to read Emily's Quest by L.M. Montgomery. Now, although I have always been a major fan of the Anne of Green Gables series, I have never read the Emily books. Since Emily's Quest is the third book in the series, I decided to take this opportunity to read the first two Emily books as well. Boy, was it ever an eye opener. Now I want to re-read all the Anne books to see if my impressions of those will be different as well.

I've read the first two Emily books so far, and I am finding them almost unbearably sad. As I'm reading them now, I keep wondering how much of herself L.M. Montgomery put into them. Emily's story is painful to me now. Her family seems so unloving and non-understanding. I find it so hard to empathize with Aunt Elizabeth. I get indignant just reading about her. How dare she read Emily's letters to her father? How dare she open the mail that is sent to Emily? How dare she decree that Emily can't go to high school unless she gives up writing? These things seem so unfair. I just want to reach through the pages and shake her. And don't even get me started on Emily's other aunts and uncles. They are horrible, horrible people.

I feel so sorry for Emily, because her life seems so unfair. I can see that she doesn't shrink from her own shortcomings, which I like; I'm not a fan of perfect characters because they irritate me. Emily doesn't irritate me because she admits her flaws. Characters like Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Ruth do irritate me because they are highly flawed but won't admit that they have any flaws. I'm not too sure why these fictional characters have struck me so deeply. On the one hand, it is definitely a sign of a great writer that the characters seem so real; on the other, I wonder just how real they are. How much of Lucy is in Emily? How many of the incidents related by Emily were experienced by Lucy?

I want to cry when I read about Emily's need to write and how her family mocks her efforts and her achievements. Her life seems unfairly difficult, and in some ways unnecessarily difficult. Yes, it's terrible that her beloved father dies when she is 11 and she becomes an orphan, but it is unnecessary that none of her family want to take her in. Her mother's relatives do nothing but tell her how difficult and unruly she is. Sly is the word most often used to describe her, and it's simply not true. She is an imaginative child who needs love and support. All she gets is disappointment and disapproval.

I have to wonder what I would have thought about Emily if I had read the books when I was 11. Would I have seen her life the same way I'm seeing it now? Would I be as upset by her circumstances as I am now? I'm also wondering how I'll feel if I re-read the Anne series. Anne was another orphan who had a fairly difficult life. Will I find the same things in the Anne books that I'm finding in the Emily books? Maybe L.M. Montgomery wrote herself into Emily the way things really were and wrote herself into Anne the way she wished things had been. Maybe Anne is the ideal and Emily is the reality. I don't know enough about L.M. Montgomery to be sure.

I am sure that I'll be reading Montgomery's journals in the not too distant future. I would like to see what her life really was like; I know it wasn't a bed of roses, but I don't know the details. I'm always interested in how real life affects fiction, and I think in L.M. Montgomery's case there will be a lot of overlap.

Has anyone else had an experience of re-reading a favourite from childhood and seeing it in a completely different way? I'm feeling very unsettled by reading the Emily books. It's not a comfortable feeling.

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here ... (2)

.... or not, depending on how you're feeling. For those of you who recognize the quotation, well done. It is, obviously, Dante Alighieri and this post will discuss Dante and a book that references Dante heavily, The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl. I have a sneaking suspicion that this post could be slightly disjointed since my mind is running in two directions at once, and I'm going to try to deal with both thoughts in one post. One one hand, reading The Dante Club made me think about Dante and his role in our literary canon; on the other, I have a number of thoughts about the novel itself.

First, Dante. I must confess that I have never read anything by Dante, including The Divine Comedy. I am certainly familiar with the concept behind the story, and know some famous quotations (such as the title of this post); I've even seen it performed by Theatre in the Mud. If you ever go to Theatre in the Mud, be sure to stay out of the splash zone. I wonder if that says something about me. Should I be more familiar with Dante? His is certainly one of the biggest names in world literature, and I feel somewhat less than fully cultured for not having read at least The Divine Comedy. Am I being too hard on myself? I'm familiar with Chaucer and Shakespeare, Hugo and Stendahl, but not Dante. I'm always looking for new works to share with my students, but Dante has never crossed my mind.

Is my lack of familiarity with Dante due to him writing in classical Italian? I'm not sure. I have never thought of myself as being a snob about only wanting to read English speaking authors, but that seems to be the case. My familiarity with translated works is definitely lacking. Reading The Dante Club, and the passion with which men like Longfellow and Wendell Holmes worked on translating Dante's work into English has made me want to read The Divine Comedy. Maybe that will be my summer reading.

Now, onto the novel that inspired this post. The Dante Club is a murder mystery set in 1865 Boston. It is the story of how "The Dante Club" solves the mystery of who is killing men using punishments from Dante's Inferno. The premise is really interesting. The main characters are well-known figures from literature and publishing. "The Dante Club" is made up of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, author Oliver Wendell Holmes, historian George Washington Greene, poet James Lowell and publisher James Fields. This is historical fact. These men came together after the American Civil War to translate Dante's Divine Comedy into English. What happens as a result of this collaboration though, is purely a work of the author's imagination.

In the novel, a mysterious murderer stalks the streets of Cambridge, Mass. killing prominent men in horribly painful ways. The members of the Dante Club come to the horrific realization that the murders are being taken from Dante's travels through Hell in The Divine Comedy. As is so often the case in murder mysteries, the police are horribly incompetent, and it falls on these literary powerhouses to solve the murder. I found this to be a great idea for a novel, and I for the most part, I really enjoyed it.

As someone who is passionate about history, I loved the description of life in Boston and Cambridge in the post-Civil War era. It really struck me as realistic. Matthew Pearl really did his research when writing this novel. The differences in the university system really struck me. The idea that the Harvard Corporation would work to prevent Dante from being studied in English was just fascinating. The underlying racism and anti-Catholicism also rings very true. The fear of immigrants from Ireland and Italy was true to life. Another realistic feature was the treatment of the soldiers coming home from war, and the internal terrors they faced. All in all, it was a well done novel.

There was only one aspect of the book that I didn't particularly enjoy. The author kept hinting that there was actually an evil force at work, and that by translating Dante, the authors may have actually released evil into the world. I found this to be a stretch. Pearl had a great novel already; there is enough evil in the human characters; why hint that there was anything supernatural? I felt that it was an unnecessary complication in the book. That's only a mild criticism; overall, I enjoyed the novel and recommend it to others.