Teaching Critical Engagement
by Barbara Monroe
Engagement might be described as the gear-meshing combination of motivation and involvement.
Students and teachers alike can feel the traction of engagement whether it happens momentarily or for a
whole period or throughout the school year. Students are engaged when they come to class prepared,
having read the homework assignment, having their reading flagged with sticky notes, opening their
books without being told, writing questions to kick off class discussion, taking notes. Students are
engaged when they are the ones asking the questions, making their own connections to other books, films,
and other material that they know or have heard about, thereby creating and expanding the curriculum
themselves. Students are engaged when they are talking to each other, fleshing out each other's ideas,
listening openly and saying back what they have heard, extending the discussion into the halls when the
bell rings, maybe even starting a Facebook page to keep the discussion going outside of school. The
teacher might be sitting at the back of the class or just listening in, students self-monitoring their
discussion turns without raising hands. Engagement is evident even in students' physical posture. They
are poised on the edges of their seats, ready to jump in, biting their tongues to respectfully wait for their
turns. Engagement tends to have its own forward momentum, carrying forward to the next lesson and the
next, steady improvement evident by any number of performance measures. Students write better essays;
attendance increases; due dates are respected. And engagement is contagious: twenty-five students come
to class prepared, not just five. That's what engagement looks like, sounds like, feels like in the
classroom.
But that engagement is not necessarily critical engagement.
The word critical is more loaded, taking on slightly different meanings depending on context. As
simply the adjective form of the noun criticism, it usually carries negative connotations, as in "why are
you so critical of me?" Within the context of literary criticism, the word denotes analysis although it also
connotes evaluation, weighing both negative and positive attributes of a piece of literature. Even within
this context, students often complain that literary analysis just "tears up" a work of art and question "why
can't we just enjoy it?" This resistance, ironically, should tell us teachers that we are doing our jobs. For if
students can read and respond–and, yes, even demonstrate engagement, as described above–they don't
really need us. They do need us, however, to push them into their Zone of Proximal Development, that
cognitive space where novice learners can perform but only with guidance of an expert. Only within that
zone can real learning take place (Wilhelm, Baker, and Hackett 16). Critical, as in critical literary lenses
or simply critical lenses, captures this sense of the word.
But critical has other associations, as well. One such association is the critical literacy movement as
first theorized in The Pedagogy of the Oppressed and practiced by Paolo Freire in the 1960s in Brazil.
Freire's philosophy of critical pedagogy emphasized the importance of teaching literacy within the
contexts of students' lives, exposing how the status quo works against disempowered groups. In another
context, dropping the liberatory tone of Freirean thought, the critical thinking movement of the 1990s and
2000s focuses instead on the cognitive operations crucial to knowledge production. And finally, the term
is associated with poststructuralism and the many schools of literary criticism that it spawned in the
theory boom of the 1980s, as will be discussed shortly. All of these associations are also intended in what
I am calling critical engagement. Despite these associations, the term cannot be used as synonymous with
cynical, as some educators suggest. The ultimate aim of critical engagement is not despair and
hopelessness. Quite the contrary. Critical engagement expands and deepens students' understanding of
how texts work in the real world, how they circulate values and meanings, how they maintain or
challenge the status quo. Demystifying these processes is deeply empowering and inspiring, as students
see that change in attitudes and beliefs do happen, often and eventually bending toward justice.
Critical engagement differs from simply engagement in at least two regards. First, it requires, at least
initially, teacher guidance. And second, it requires that literary analysis involves more than just talking
about plot, characterization, symbols, style and more than just talking about readers' personal responses to
their reading. Rather, critical engagement entails a literary analysis that recontextualizes literature within
1 the world of texts, events and facts, meaning and values. Such connections motivate students, especially
reluctant readers who see literary analysis and affective response as "stupid" and "boring," which are
really just code words that question the relevance of these exercises to their lives. Teaching critical
engagement aims to redefine what relevance means, ushering them into the larger world outside of
school, where the stakes are both high and real.
At the end of this chapter, I offer my own integrated model for teaching critical engagement. Along
the way, I have included activities to make this theoretical grounding less abstract and more practicebased. What follows is a closer look at our goals for teaching literature; an examination of two critical
lenses typically used to teach literature in schools, but also a third lens, which I will argue should be used
in tandem with the other two; and the alignment of our goals and our critical lenses. This alignment may
require that we rethink not just our lenses but also our goals for teaching literature.
Part 1. Goals: Where are we going?
Let us begin, then, by taking stock of our goals, a self-assessment activity that we will return to at
the end of the chapter.
Activity 1: Goals
What do we hope to accomplish when we teach literature?
Read over the checklist below of possible goals for an English Language Arts (ELA) classroom. Then
evaluate the relative importance of these goals to your own teaching using a scale from 1 to 3, from least
(1) to most (3) important.
The items are grouped to make the questions easier to answer and easier to share and refer to in follow-up
discussion. For each group with only two or three choices, use a ranking only once; if a group has more
than three choices, try to use all of the rankings, showing your priorities.
1 I want students in my class to
____read the lines: decode words in order to comprehend the stated meaning
____read between the lines: understand the implied or inferred meaning
____read against the grain: resist automatically accepting the values underlying any meanings
2 I want students in my class to
____appreciate the author’s craft, being able to identify and analyze elements such as setting,
characterization, plot development, point-of-view, symbolism, style)
____develop taste in literature, discerning the difference between good and great literature
____understand that taste is culturally constructed
____appreciate originality
____appreciate that no text is strictly original
3 I want students in my class to
____relate to literature and discover their own personal meanings, no matter how individualistic
____understand that certain readings favor/disfavor certain groups of readers
____evaluate characters’ choices
4 I want students in my class to
____recognize the universal truths in literature that bring people together
____recognize that no truth universally applies to all human beings, regardless of culture, race, gender,
etc.
5 I want students in my class to
____appreciate our cultural literary heritage
____become critically literate
____develop an awareness of real-world issues
6 As an ELA teacher, I want to
____prepare my students for the next grade level
2 ____prepare my students for college
____prepare my students for the workplace
____prepare my students for life-long learning
7 As an ELA teacher, I want to
____instill in my students the importance of education in achieving upward mobility
____prepare my students to be critically aware consumers
____prepare my students to be critically active citizens
9 As an ELA teacher, I want to
____foster a lifelong love of literature
____foster a lifelong love of learning
____foster a lifelong love of reading [something] (e.g., novels, newspapers, scientific journals, nonfiction,
etc.)
10 I want students in my class to
(other goals not already mentioned): __________________________________
Our goals as ELA teachers drive our pedagogy, defined as theory + methods. Our goals zoom in on a
destination point that we keep our sights on as we move through an assignment, a unit, a school year of
activities. But having a designation is not enough. We also have to ask if we can get there from here–that
is, can we achieve our goals using the critical lenses we are used to. At the close of this chapter, we will
revisit our answers on this activity to see which goals in this activity are encompassed in critical
engagement.
Part 2. Critical Lenses: Can we get there from here?
Activity 2: Critical Lenses
Read the story about Teddy below. How would you analyze this story
(a) as a work of art?
(b) as a reader describing your personal response to the story?
(c) as a piece implicitly commenting on what counts as success in the classroom and in life?
There is a story many years ago of an elementary teacher. Her name was Mrs. Thompson. And as
she stood in front of her 5th grade class on the very first day of school, she told the children a lie. Like
most teachers, she looked at her students and said that she loved them all the same. But that was
impossible, because there in the front row, slumped in his seat, was a little boy named Teddy Stoddard.
Mrs. Thompson had watched Teddy the year before and noticed that he didn't play well with the
other children, that his clothes were messy and that he constantly needed a bath. And Teddy could be
unpleasant.
It got to the point where Mrs. Thompson would actually take delight in marking his papers with a
broad red pen, making bold X's and then putting a big F at the top of his papers.
At the school where Mrs. Thompson taught, she was required to review each child's past records and
she put Teddy's off until last.
However, when she reviewed his file, she was in for a surprise.
Teddy's first grade teacher wrote, "Teddy is a bright child with a ready laugh. He does his work
neatly and has good manners . . . he is a joy to be around."
His second grade teacher wrote, "Teddy is an excellent student, well-liked by his classmates, but he
is troubled because his mother has a terminal illness and life at home must be a struggle."
His third grade teacher wrote, "His mother's death has been hard on him. He tries to do his best but
his father doesn't show much interest and his home life will soon affect him if some steps aren't taken."
Teddy's fourth grade teacher wrote, "Teddy is withdrawn and doesn't show much interest in school.
He doesn't have many friends and sometimes sleeps in class."
3 By now, Mrs. Thompson realized the problem and she was ashamed of herself. She felt even worse
when her students brought her Christmas presents, wrapped in beautiful ribbons and bright paper, except
for Teddy's.
His present was clumsily wrapped in the heavy, brown paper that he got from a grocery bag. Mrs.
Thompson took pains to open it in the middle of the other presents. Some of the children started to laugh
when she found a rhinestone bracelet with some of the stones missing and a bottle that was one quarter
full of perfume.
But she stifled the children's laughter when she exclaimed how pretty the bracelet was, putting it on,
and dabbing some of the perfume on her wrist.
Teddy Stoddard stayed after school that day just long enough to say, "Mrs. Thompson, today you
smelled just like my Mom used to."
After the children left she cried for at least an hour. On that very day, she quit teaching reading, and
writing, and arithmetic. Instead, she began to teach children. Mrs. Thompson paid particular attention to
Teddy.
As she worked with him, his mind seemed to come alive. The more she encouraged him, the faster
he responded. By the end of the year, Teddy had become one of the smartest children in the class and,
despite her lie that she would love all the children the same, Teddy became one of her "teacher's pets."
A year later, she found a note under her door, from Teddy, telling her that she was still the best
teacher he ever had in his whole life.
Six years went by before she got another note from Teddy. He then wrote that he had finished high
school, third in his class, and she was still the best teacher he ever had in his whole life.
Four years after that, she got another letter, saying that while things had been tough at times, he'd
stayed in school, had stuck with it, and would soon graduate from college with the highest of honors. He
assured Mrs. Thompson that she was still the best and favorite teacher he ever had in his whole life.
Then four more years passed and yet another letter came. This time he explained that after he got his
bachelor's degree, he decided to go a little further. The letter explained that she was still the best and
favorite teacher he ever had. But now his name was a little longer. The letter was signed, Theodore F.
Stoddard, M.D.
The story doesn't end there. You see, there was yet another letter that spring. Teddy said he'd met
this girl and was going to be married. He explained that his father had died a couple of years ago and he
was wondering if Mrs. Thompson might agree to sit in the place at the wedding that was usually reserved
for the mother of the groom.
Of course, Mrs. Thompson did. And guess what? She wore that bracelet, the one with several
rhinestones missing. And she made sure she was wearing the perfume that Teddy remembered his mother
wearing on their last Christmas together.
They hugged each other, and Dr. Stoddard whispered in Mrs. Thompson's ear, "Thank you, Mrs.
Thompson, for believing in me. Thank you so much for making me feel important and showing me that I
could make a difference."
Mrs. Thompson, with tears in her eyes, whispered back. She said, "Teddy, you have it all wrong.
You were the one who taught me that I could make a difference. I didn't know how to teach until I met
you." (snopes.com)
To repeat the questions asked above, how would you analyze this story as a work of art, as a reader
with a personal response, and as a piece that comments on what counts as a successful life? Each
questions yields a very different reading of this text because each implicitly requires a different critical
lens, in this order: (a) New Criticism or formalism, (b) reader response, and (c) poststructuralism. Most
teachers will probably find that that they feel more comfortable with the first two lenses than the third
one, which is most often used in college literature courses. Although the three lenses can overlap in
practice (a position I will be advocating in this chapter), in theory they do not, each proceeding from very
different assumptions about the nature and purpose of art and thus holding in its sights a very different
4 focus when analyzing literature. And, most relevant to the discussion at hand, each helps ELA teachers to
reach very distinctively different goals.
I will now zoom in on each lens in more detail, briefly sketching its history and locating its family of
critical approaches that hold similar views of art and analysis. I will then show how that lens works in
practice with some examples, including a reading of “Teddy” that would result from using that lens.
New Criticism
Also known as formalism because of its emphasis on form, New Criticism dates back to the 1930s as
a reaction to what New Critics (always capitialized, as is the lens New Criticism) saw as the erosion of
religion and the moral and cultural collapse of the Western world (Latrobe and Drury 120). For New
Critics, the answer was not a return to but a replacement for religion: literature, or more precisely, great
literature. They believed that great literature gave expression to universal truths and values that transcend
national and cultural boundaries, and recognition of this common ground would bring humankind
together (Moon 106-107). New Criticism peaked in the 1950s and 1960s. Reports of its death, however,
are greatly exaggerated, for this lens continues to dominate English studies at both high school and
college levels. In college classrooms, its legacy lives on in the common practice of close reading (Latrobe
and Drury 121), a technique characterized by its attention to details within the text–and the text alone,
regardless of the author’s intention or background, regardless of the milieu in which the author wrote,
regardless of readers’ relationships to, and transactions with, the text (Latrobe and Drury 119).
For New Critics, meaning–however ambiguous–always resides within the words themselves; the
reader’s job is simply to explore that meaning in all its rich complexity. Each element of the author’s craft
should cohere to create thematic unity, the theme expressing a universal truth. For prose fiction, those
elements might include
o plot (structure, conflict, techniques such as flashback and foreshadowing);
o characterization (roles such as protagonist and antagonist; development)
o techniques such as dialogue and appearance; types such as round and flat characters)
o setting and its role (symbol, mood, historical backdrop)
o tone and style (diction, imagery, figurative language)
o symbols
o point-of-view (first-, second-, third person; degree of omniscience; narrator(s) and relative reliability)
o genre (novel, poetry, romance, tragedy, satire, comedy). (list adapted from Latrobe and Drury 122-125)
After identifying these elements, readers then explore and appreciate how each contributes to the
work’s theme to create a coherent whole, one that expresses an essential Truth or captures the essence of
Beauty. Art ultimately exists to instruct, delight, and uplift readers, reminding them of their common
humanity. Evaluation of a work of art, however, depends on the author’s craft. The degree to which every
element in that piece contributes to its coherence determines how great a work of art is. According to
New Criticism, our job as English teachers is to help students appreciate that artistry, thereby cultivating
taste: the ability to discern the difference between bad and good, and between good and great, literature.
Besides the close reading to unearth the artistry of the author’s craft, other rhetorical moves typically
mark a New Critical or formal (the adjective of form) reading. Formalists will often set up and examine
oppositional binaries, such as light and dark imagery, or oppositional themes, such as good versus evil.
These binaries are then flipped on their heads, as it were, revealing their implicit hierarchical value, such
as masculine is better than feminine (or vice versa). More commonly, the binary is left unresolved, left in
play or in tension, to better appreciate the rich ambiguity of language itself. This tension often finds
thematic expressions such as “good and evil are sometimes interconnected.” The underlying assumptions
about what art is, what its purposes are, where meaning resides, what elements to examine, what moves to
make—all these features mark the formalist family of literary critical lenses including archetypal or
structuralist criticism and deconstruction.
In brief, deconstruction takes close reading to its ultimate extreme, getting in so close that language
becomes not just ambiguous but indeterminate of meaning altogether. For example, take this excerpt from
Heart of Darkness: “When all is said and done, Marlow was a real character. Funny, direct, sly. There
5 was something about him that drew folks in, made them want to get to know him. He was one of those
people you wanted to have for a friend” (qtd. In Moon 42). These words might be taken at face value,
relying on the common understanding of “character” in real life. But a deconstruction reading will see the
inherent contradiction in the phrase “real character,” where character could mean (a) a personality; (b) a
fictional person; (c) a cipher or alphabetic letter; (d) a personal, moral quality; (e) an actor’s role. The
multiple possible meanings of character make the passage’s meaning unstable, indeterminate, or even
contradictory, since a character in a novel is clearly a construction that could not be, in fact, real as a real
person is (Moon 42). Although deconstruction is always classified within the poststructuralist family of
literary critical theory (and it did in fact emerge after structuralism, dating it as a “post” structuralist
theory), we are re-classifying it here with formalism and structuralism because of its decontextualized
examination of language for its own sake and its singular and signature universal theme found in all
literature: language is a sign that defers, rather than confers, meaning.
Fig. 1 Harry Potter and Star Wars
Archetypal criticism, too, looks for commonalities across texts and contexts, specifically common
storylines, characterizations, and themes that undergird all stories of the world. This critical approach
enjoyed its brief but bright heyday in the 1970s as a literary extension of structuralist grammar and
6 structural linguistics. As theorized by Noam Chomsky and others, structural linguistics holds that human
beings are uniquely, innately, neurologically capable of grammatical structure, which allows us to acquire
language automatically; in like manner, structuralist literary criticism maintains that deep, common
structures undergird all stories. Structuralist, or archetypal, criticism lives on today most typically in
critical analysis of fairy tales and folklore, usually interpreted in terms of common plot structures and
binary characterizations and themes. Another perfect example of structuralist criticism is Joseph
Campbell’s idea of the hero's journey, a model almost as popular today in schools as it was in the 1970s.
In The Hero of a Thousand Faces (1949), Campbell argues that all heroes are the same across time and
culture. The power of this interpretative model is that it can be applied to multiple examples–and often is,
and not just in the classroom but also in Hollywood. For example, after reading Campbell's The Hero of a
Thousand Faces, George Lucas purposefully structured his Star Wars screenplay to follow the same
pattern. Countless others have followed suit, as one screenwriting school points out the common Hero's
Journey plotlines of Harry Potter and Star Wars (see Fig. 1 Harry Potter and Star Wars, above). (Bashir)
Activity 3: New Criticism Lens
Read this piece of criticism on "Teddy," below. What makes this reading a New Critical reading? Point
out the analytical focus, rhetorical moves, questions, and themes in this reading that typify New Criticism
approach to reading literature.
"Teddy" is an inspirational tale, or what now might be called "glurge," a term coined by snopes.com,
a website that researches urban myths. Glurge is an inspirational, chicken-soup-for the-soul tale, but with
even more sugar added (snopes.com). These tales would include "cloyingly sentimental stories,
testimonials and object lessons frequently sent as email or chain letters. Glurge can also be experienced at
the end of religious services or motivational speeches, usually in the form of a 'true' example of
perseverance against seemingly impossible odds" (wisegeek.com).
Like most glurge, "Teddy" has actually been passed along in several media since 1976 when it was
first published as a story clearly marked as fiction in Home Life magazine. In 1999, Paul Harvey read the
story on his radio show; in 2000, Barbara Monroe received the story via email, sent by a student to the
whole class. This durability validates the story's lasting appeal and the universal truth of its message:
teachers can make a difference in students' lives.
The protagonist is Mrs. Thompson, a 5th-grade teacher, and the antagonist is Teddy Stoddard, her
student. Both are flat characters, as in fairy tales, but they are also dynamic characters: both change in the
course of the story. Their mutual transformations support the story's theme about the transformative
power of teachers. The story is told from third-person, limited-omniscient point-of-view of Mrs.
Thompson; this point-of-view adds to the suspense of the rising action because readers know what she
knows and feels, but not what is going to happen in advance.
At Christmas, Teddy gives Mrs. Thompson a bracelet, missing some of its rhinestones, and a 1/4
bottle of perfume that his mother wore on her last Christmas with him. Several years later, Mrs.
Thompson wears both to Teddy's wedding. The gifts symbolize Teddy's mother and his most poignant
associations with her. By giving these presents to Mrs. Thompson, he is revealing that he sees her as his
surrogate mother. The only other imagery in the story is the possible visual of Mrs. Thompson gleefully
marking big red Fs on Teddy's papers. This paucity of detail helps give the story its fairy-tale feel.
Like enduring literature before it, "Teddy" uses many time-honored literary devices to develop its
plot. Unlike glurge, which often purports to have actually happened to a "friend of a friend " to boost its
verisimilitude, "Teddy" opens almost like a fairy tale, the setting long ago, told with simple sentences:
"There is a story many years ago of an elementary teacher. Her name was Mrs. Thompson." This
childlike, stylistic simplicity gives the story a timeless quality.
The plot of the story is advanced through epistles, or letters and files, like epistolary novels of the
19th century, e.g., Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. The rising action of the
7 plot starts when Mrs. Thompson belatedly reads Teddy's file with reports from his previous teachers. His
first grade teacher praises Teddy; the second grade teacher notes that his mother has a terminal illness; the
third grade teacher reports that his mother is dead; and the fourth grade teacher worries that Teddy is
withdrawn and friendless. After reading Teddy's file, Mrs. Thompson experiences an epiphany that
transforms her teaching. She focuses on reaching Teddy, who responds and opens up. This is a turning
point of the first movement of the plot.
But the story doesn't end there. The next major plot movement is also told through letters, this time
from Teddy to Mrs. Thompson. The timing of each letter is significant: each marks a major phase of his
educational career. Slipping a note under Mrs. Thompson's door one year later is a foreshadowing of
things to come: more letters, one after graduating high school third in his class (6 years later), one after
graduating college with highest honors (4 years later), and one after finishing medical school (4 years
later)–a fact that is not revealed until this signature at the bottom of the letter: "Theodore F. Stoddard,
M.D." The letters structure the plot and account for the original title of the piece: "Three Letters from
Teddy." The episodic repetitions–four teachers' notes in Teddy's file; one note and three letters from
Teddy–also contribute to its fairy-tale quality (e.g., think of "Three Little Pigs").
They also build up the climax of the story: the follow-up letter that same spring, inviting Mrs.
Thompson to sit in as his mother at his wedding. The falling action, or denouement, is short but
powerful: "Thank you, Mrs. Thompson, for believing in me. Thank you so much for making me feel
important and showing me that I could make a difference." She whispered back, "Teddy, you have it all
wrong. You were the one who taught me that I could make a difference. I didn't know how to teach until I
met you." That resolution also makes explicit the story's theme: that teachers can make a difference in
students' lives.
Reader Response
Although reader response criticism was first theorized by Louise Rosenblatt in 1938, it was
overshadowed by New Criticism until the 1970s when it re-emerged to challenge, at the deepest level, one
of the key premises on which New Criticism rests: where does meaning reside? For the New Critic,
meaning resides solely within the text, the product of the inspired genius of the author. For the reader
response critic, however, meaning is a complex negotiation between author's text and reader's actual
experience of that text. As Rosenblatt argued, the reader actively transacts with the text–not just passively
interacts with it to discover the intended and hidden meanings already built into it (Latrobe and Drury
257-258). Thus, reader response criticism reinstated the role of the reader in making meaning–a
controversial idea in the 1970s, but one that has become so commonly held today that the reader response
lens is almost an automatic in any discussion of literature, in or out of the classroom: "How did you like
the novel/story/poem?"
Unfortunately, reader response's near-universally accepted and practiced status has obscured its
complexity. Most readers recognize that their meanings are constrained by evidence in the text itself. But
few are fully aware that their meanings are also constrained by social conventions of reading, by their
own subject positions within identity groups, by culture and history. Sure, a reader may have a personal
response to a text, a response shaped by that person's own unique, past experiences, psychology, etc. –
factors that constitute personal identity. But personal identity itself is shaped by larger, group
identifications that are recognizable to other readers as well as to authors. Even in the act of composing,
authors imagine–or construct–specific groups of readers. For example, Playboy clearly targets one
demographic, while an anatomy textbook imagines another. Of course, women can read Playboy, but their
experience will most certainly differ from that of heterosexual male readers and even from each other
based on their socio-economic class, ethnicity, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, and so on. Notably,
the personal response version of reader response–asking students to "relate" to what they read on a
personal level–is commonly practiced in schools; the identity-group version, in college courses.
Let us examine an extended example of this latter version in more detail, an example taken from
Brian Moon's Literary Terms (134): "Each of these four puzzles represents a common word, phrase, or
popular saying. Can you work them out?"
8 (Moon 134)
How do readers work out each puzzle's meaning and agree on those meanings? What "rules" for making
meaning in this context seem to be operative? For one, the spatial arrangement of letters, words, and
images usually suggests a preposition (i.e., between, under). And letters can represent homophones (i.e., I
= eye). Most readers will arrive at the same answers because reading practices are actually social
conventions arrived at by consensus over time; thus, "the rules which readers apply to a text are not
personal and unique. They are normally shared by members of a community" (Moon 135).
By the same token, probably most American readers had trouble deciphering the second puzzle: zebra
crossing. Applying the same rules for all four puzzles, American readers can figure out the phrase, but not
its meaning, its significance. Looking for ways to make sense, readers might contextualize the puzzle in
terms of the book itself, which was written by Brian Moon, an Australian. Or if readers have visited or
lived in Australia, they will probably get the culture-specific reference. Such reading strategies for
making meaning–i.e., comparing to other texts and re-contextualizing in terms of background knowledge
and making connections with the "real" world–are typical of the poststructuralist lens, as will be discussed
in the next subsection. (By the way, a zebra crossing is a crosswalk in Australia, so-called because of the
broad white stripes on black pavement.)
Activity 4: Reader Response Lens - 1 & 2
Read these two critical readings of "Teddy." Which is the personal reader response and which is the
poststructuralist reader response? Point out the analytical focus, rhetorical moves, questions, and themes
in each reading that typify these two versions of reader response criticism.
Version 1:
Most readers probably find the story touching and inspirational and agree with its theme. Others
appreciate that the movie version takes the narrative a step further, generalizing the theme to everyone,
not just teachers. For teachers, the narrative may remind them of why they chose this profession in the
first place, recalling them to their original purpose; for others, it validates the importance of teaching
generally. Just about everyone can relate to the narrative because it reminds readers of their own favorite
teachers whom they still love and appreciate probably even more later in life.
Readers may also have quibbles with the narrative. Some details don't seem realistic: e.g., why
doesn't Teddy get in touch with Mrs. Thompson more often? Some artistic choices are over-the-top: e.g.,
the cheesy musical score to the movie version online.
Version 2:
While most readers respond positively to "Teddy" and find it inspirational, female in-service and
pre-service teachers seem to be especially moved by its story line. Even a post-service teacher might find
her eyes welling up with tears, as she recalls the many students in her own long career. Male teachers also
respond positively, but rarely with tears. This generally positive response shows the story still works for
its changing audience in the 2000s.
Interestingly, the author did not target teachers as her first readers. The story was first published in
1976 in Home Life magazine, whose main readership was probably stay-at-home moms. The narrative
validates the importance of not just teaching, but also nurturing--both "jobs" traditionally assigned as
feminine roles. Conceivably, stay-at-home mothers continue to respond positively to this story.
9 Teachers and mothers aside, the narrative also resonates for most middle-class readers, regardless of
gender, because it underscores the general belief that education leads to upper-mobility, at least for the
working class. As another genre (not just glurge), "Teddy" is a "rags-to-riches" story, one of America's
master narratives. One has to wonder, though, if Teddy had announced that he was having a sex change
operation if the readers would find this "self-made man" (as it were) a success story. However, such a plot
twist might then prove inspirational to transgendered or even gay and lesbian readers, who must get tired
of reading about weddings, a legal rite still denied them in most states.
This latter hypothetical was almost unthinkable in 1976, compared to now. Now the story will give
at least a few readers (including heterosexuals) pause, with the intensity of the cultural conversation about
marriage equality and gay rights today, both in real-life and in movies and television (e.g., Milk and
Modern Family).
Poststructuralism
As the name implies, poststructuralism came after structuralism both historically and theoretically as
a direct reaction against structuralism's apolitical universality. While structuralism's heyday was the
1970s, poststructuralism arrived in American universities in the early 1980s, its foundational theories
first generated largely by French intellectuals in the 1960s while others built on earlier work in the
century by European intellectuals, such as Karl Marx. Although any number of theorists reshaped English
studies in the 1980s, no one was more influential than Foucault, whose work explores how cultural
dominance (or hegemony) works at the deepest levels of meaning-making to maintain itself, to the point
that the cultural seems natural, beyond questioning and even beyond notice. It is difficult to overstate the
impact of the theory boom sounded by poststructuralist thought in the 1980s on all areas of English
studies. A major paradigm shift, it seeded a multitude of new critical approaches, including feminist
criticism, Marxist criticism, cultural studies, New Historicism, etc; in the 1990s and 2000s, these
approaches have continued to intersect and develop evermore well-specialized fields, such as
ecofeminism, neoMarxism, and queer theory. While the poststructuralist critical lens, in its various
configurations,, is widely deployed in English courses in college, it is rarely practiced in the high school.
If the key word of New Criticism is "universal," then the key word of poststructuralism is
"difference." For structuralists in particular, all stories are really just one story (as we saw in Fig. 1 where
the plot of Harry Potter maps onto the plot of Star Wars). For poststructuralism, one story is many
stories, potentially speaking to multiple versions of the world, but also silencing other versions.
Poststructuralist readings typically particularize–rather than universalize–themes, asking how difference
(i.e., race/ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, age, etc.) might inflect the text's meaning. For
poststructuralists, there is no such thing as a neutral text for all texts are embedded with values, beliefs,
assumptions. Put another way, all texts are partial, meaning both incomplete and biased. That is, every
text is incomplete (no text could represent the whole world in its multitudinous entirety) and, therefore,
every text is biased. Not transcendent at all (as New Critics would argue), texts circulate meaning and
value in a very real world and thereby have very real consequences. Breaking from formalist notions of
where meaning resides, poststructuralism posits that meaning happens not just within the text, but across
multiple intersections: among other texts, among readers, among events and ideas and values in
circulation in the world at large at the time of the text's production and afterwards, as new readers take up
and make meaning with it in a new world at a future time. The focus of analysis then is those multiple
intersections. Poststructuralist readings rely heavily on close reading, the lasting legacy of New Criticism.
Their major move is contextualization; always historicize is the mantra of poststructuralism, locating in
history the publication, the setting, the textual and social conventions, the intended readers, and so on.
This intensive contextualization and particularization aim to excavate, ultimately, the underlying values
silently animating the text, by making those beliefs visible and available for examination.
Poststructuralism also rewrote the language of literary criticism. It had to. Reconceptualizing what
constituted textuality–and therefore the object of study–required new terms imbued with new and
10 refreshed meaning: most notably, text, context, intertextuality, and subtext. Since these terms are crucial
to a working understanding of poststructuralism, let us take a closer look at each one.
Text
Activity 5: Text
Which of these texts are worthy of study in an English LA classroom? Why?
A novel by Charles Dickens
A poem in Playboy magazine
A joke you have been told
A new comic book
The first Superman comic
A telephone book
A Harlequin romance
A poem in a poetry book
A funny anecdote told by a professional storyteller
The Bible
A newspaper article
A graph from USA Today
A wedding
A Youtube clip
A Mexican restaurant menu
A sociological study on why middle school girls are so cruel to one another
A study evaluating the existence of Big Foot
A political cartoon
A music video
A dance
The interior design of a room in someone’s house
Clothes
A Wikipedia entry
A recipe
The Koran
A television advertisement
A government document
(adapted from Moon 96)
For poststructuralists, everything is a text because every action, every thought, every emotion holds
culturally constructed meaning. For example, the text of a wedding can be "read" in many ways. Does it
follow the conventions of a traditional wedding? If so, is it traditional in terms of whose culture? Does the
wedding "say" that the participants are wealthy? family-oriented? religious? heterosexual? Does it say
that the participants are rich or poor–or perhaps that one participant's side of the family is richer or poor
than the other's? And what are the signs that demonstrate the answers to these questions, to these
meanings? Among the signs are the way people act and speak, the way events unfold, the way the
physical room is set. Of course, these same questions might be asked of a literary description of a
wedding within a novel; for poststructuralists, they can also be asked of a wedding outside a novel.
Reading the word is reading the world, to paraphrase Paolo Freire, or as the phrase is often visually
represented: reading the wor(l)d. For poststructuralists, then, all the items on the list above are texts—
each conveying a world of meanings in its own way—and are therefore worthy of reading and studying in
the ELA classroom. New Critics–and many English teachers–would not agree.
11 Intertextuality
The word "text" comes from Latin, meaning "woven fabric" (Moon 93). No text contains or holds
meaning on its own; no text can be completely original. If a text were truly original, it would be
unreadable because readers would not know the rules by which to make sense of it. Rather, texts rely on
other texts to derive their meaning, all woven together in the fabric of cultural practices, including reading
and writing practices (Moon 93). This rich weave is called intertextuality, which occurs on several levels:
national language, genre, in/direct allusions to other texts, etc. Also, texts may implicitly comment on
important issues of their days. They can also partake of or react against a particular discourse: a particular
use of language associated with a particular community, such as doctors or teachers or gang members, or
genre, such as romance novels or instruction manuals or the Bible. To recognize a particular discourse at
work, readers can ask themselves: "Who talks like that?" Since discourse is crucial for fully
understanding how intertextuality can work, let us pause to practice with the term a bit further.
Activity 6: Discourse
Consider these three explanations of football by a sociologist, a psychologist, and a literary critic. Which
explanation is whose? Why?
BONUS QUESTION: What critical lens is the literary critic using?
"1. Football is a competition in which players strive to achieve certain goals within a set of limits
established by the rules. It is a ritual which reminds the audience of social values such as individual effort
and the importance of success.
2. Football is a kind of dramatic narrative which aims to entertain the audience. It has heroes and villains,
a story, and lots of action. Sport of this kind is a modern form of theatre.
3. Football is an acting-out of certain male anxieties. It is a socially acceptable way for grown men to play
together and keep company without having their masculinity questioned. It also provides an outlet for
repressed homosexual impulses." (Moon 138)
Any and all of these intersections are forms of intertextuality. As James Gee explains at length,
When we speak or write, our words often allude to or relate to, in some fashion, other "texts" or
certain types of "texts," where by "texts" I mean words that other people have said or written. For
example, Wired magazine once printed a story with the title: "The New Face of the Silicon Age:
Tech jobs are fleeing to India faster than ever. You got a problem with that?" (February 2004). The
sentence "You got a problem with that?" reminds us of "tough guy" talk we have heard in many
movies or read in books. It intrigues us that such talk occurs written in a magazine devoted to
technology. This sort of cross-reference . . . [is] "intertextuality." (21)
Activity 7: Intertextuality
Compare the version of "Little Red Riding Hood" that you know (which may vary according to your own
background and experience) with this excerpt from Angela Carter's "The Company of Wolves":
"... What big teeth you have! She saw how his jaw began to slaver and the room was full of the forest's
Liebestod but the wise child never flinched, even when he answered: All the better to eat you with. The
girl burst out laughing: she knew she was nobody's meat. She laughed at him full in the face, she ripped
off his shirt for him and flung it into the fire. . .
The blizzard died down, leaving the mountains as randomly covered in snow as if a blind woman had
thrown a sheet over them . . . See! sweet and sound she sleeps in granny's bed between the paws of the
tender wolf" (qtd. in Moon 94).
In this excerpt, we see the rich play of intertextuality at work. First and foremost, the excerpt relies
on background knowledge of the traditional fairy tale. Further, the language moves between that of fairy
tale and romantic discourse. The plot reverses readers' expectations on several counts. The story also
constructs a different readership, aiming for adults rather than children. And it participates in several
12 important issues in today's world regarding women's assertiveness and sexuality. Intertextuality makes
these meanings—and conversations about these meanings–possible.
Context (or Conversations)
For poststructuralists, context is never just about social or historical background of the text or of the text's
setting. Certainly, factors concerning the production and reception of a text in its day are important
considerations, as is the setting. But they cannot stabilize a text's meaning. Twenty-first century readers
can never fully understand, for example, what Hamlet may have meant to its original Elizabethan
audience. Always historicize, poststructuralists famously say, but they also ask for whom this historicizing
might have been true–or not so true. In fact, this is the project of New Historicism, commonly
misunderstood as simply looking at different kinds of history, such as political history, economic history,
military history, etc. Rather, New Historicists would ask what were the competing beliefs and material
conditions, for example, in the days of Hamlet that could have shaped its meaning for its contemporary
viewers. Thus, any reading has to take into account multiple contexts, while persistently asking which
context and whose context—not just in the days of a text's production but also today. Thus, readings of
Hamlet might attempt to understand the play in terms of domestic violence, constructions of masculinity
and femininity, the evolving institution of marriage–all hot topics today but probably not in Shakespeare's
England (Moon 29-31). Such topics constitute what James Gee calls "Conversations," with a capital C.
Here is Gee's lengthy explanation of this specialized term:
Sometimes when we talk or write, our words don't just allude or relate to someone else's words (as
in the case of intertextuality), but to themes, debates, or motifs that have been the focus of much
talk and writing in some social group with which we are familiar or in our society as a whole. These
themes, debates, or motifs play a role in how language is interpreted. For example, how do you
know that when I tell you "Smoking is associated with health problems" I mean to say that smoking
leads to health problems and not that health problems lead people to smoke because, say, their
health problems are making them nervous and they are smoking in order to calm down (the most
probable meaning for a sentence like "Writing a will is associated with health problems")? You
know this because you are well aware of the long-running discussion in our society over the illeffects of smoking. I refer to all the talk and writing that has gone on in a specific social group or in
society at large around a major theme, debate, or motif as a "Conversation" with a capital "C,"
using the term metaphorically, of course. Most of us today are aware of the societal Conversations
going on around us about things like abortion, creationism, global warming, terrorism, and so and
so forth through many other issues. To know about these Conversations is to know about the
various sides one can take in debates about these issues and what sorts of people are usually on
each side. As members of various social groups and of our society as a whole, we are privy (know
something about) to a great many such Conversations. People interpret our language–and we
interpret theirs–partly through such knowledge. Thinking about the different Conversations a piece
of language impinges on or relates to is another tool for engaging in discourse analysis. (21- 22)
The Conversations of a day certainly affect how readers respond and interpret texts. For another
example, in the 1960s and 1970s, Theodore Roethke’s poem, “My Papa’s Waltz” was commonly read as
a retelling of a particular evening of a drunk father and son horse-playing at bedtime, a bonding
experience for the two. Starting in the 1980s, however, as child abuse and alcoholism was becoming
readily reported in the media, students began to read the poem as an account of physical abuse of the son.
The details in the poem that used to support innocent rough-housing now reinforced readings where the
drunk, working class father comes home to beat his son into bed.
Activity 8: Conversation
Solve this riddle: A father and son are involved in a car accident while out driving. The father is killed,
but the boy survives and is rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery. The surgeon looks briefly at the
boy, and then calls for another doctor, saying, "I cannot operate on this boy, because he is my son."
13 Who is the surgeon? (Moon 57)
The answer to the riddle may be obvious today, but not in the early 1970s, when son-in-law Meathead
first posed it to Archie Bunker on All in the Family on national television. The stumper became the watercooler topic the next day around the country, the conversation largely revolving around why so few
people could even imagine a female surgeon. The Conversation on gender and job expectations, so hot in
the early feminist movement of the 1970s, has cooled now, and most readers would probably figure out
the riddle without much trouble today: the surgeon is the mother of the son. But another meaning might
emerge today that could not have been imagined in the 1970s: the surgeon is the gay father of a surrogate
or adopted son.
Subtext
The "who is the surgeon?" riddle also exemplfies the way hegemony, or cultural dominance,
maintains its power. Dominant ideas, such as "surgeons are male" in the 1970s, are ideas that are so
commonplace that they are taken for granted, they (literally) go without saying. These commonplaces are
"beliefs [that] appeal to a visceral level" (Crowley 88), almost without thinking. Unconsciously, culture is
passed off as nature at this deepest level of meaning, often called the subtext in poststructuralist readings.
It is this level that hegemonic assumptions about the way the world works reside. Imagine, for example,
that one driver waits patiently for another driver to back out of a parking spot, and then just as the spot
opens up, a third driver suddenly appears and whips into the space before the waiting driver. The
unspoken rule about parking etiquette has been violated, but that rule doesn't surface until it is violated.
For another example, in the 2010 movie Date Night, Tina Fey and Steve Carrell try to get into a trendy
restaurant without a reservation. After hearing another couple's name called out repeatedly without
response, they steal the reservation, claiming to be the absent couple. Throughout the movie thereafter,
they are reprimanded by all kinds of characters for stealing that reservation. "Who does that?!" even a
mobster protests. The running joke in the movie, of course, hinges on the notion that an unspoken cultural
code has been violated. Not until that code has been broken, however, does it become noticed.
Typically, to excavate the subtext, readers have to watch for gaps and silences in the text; such
absences are signs that something is going unsaid, is being taken for granted, is being posited as simply
natural and as just the way the world works.
Activity 9: Subtext and gaps/silences
List the unstated, underlying assumptions in the following news report excerpt:
"Miss Smith is the second girl to be reported missing this week. She was last seen hitchhiking along a city
street late on Monday afternoon. Police have issued a warning to young girls not to go out alone at night."
(Moon 71)
Notice that the excerpt does not explicitly link Miss Smith's hitchhiking and her disappearance, but
readers make that link automatically; if they didn't, the text wouldn't make sense. Readers have to fill in
such gaps, unconsciously reproducing dominant assumptions as simply "natural": that's just the way the
world works. In this case, readers probably assume that Miss Smith was kidnapped by a male, that she
would not have been kidnapped if she was accompanied by a male or by several women, that she put
herself at risk for hitchhiking alone, that Miss Smith, a "young girl," was not just kidnapped but probably
raped and possibly murdered. Unlike gaps, silences are other information that might have been included
or issues that might have been raised, but are not. In this news excerpt on Miss Smith, there is no mention
of male culpability in women's public safety, making this a women's problem solely. As Moon points out,
"The text could have said: Police have issued a warning for men not to go out at night. This would
certainly make the streets safer" (72). Also silent is the fact that not all men are complicit in the behavior
of a few; therefore, the news excerpt implicitly over-generalizes criminal behavior to all men and to only
men. Typically, poststructuralists will make what-if moves to reveal such gaps and silences, i.e., reversing
14 genders of characters or hypothesizing alternative plot lines or filling in other details, in order to expose
the implicit cultural values embedded in the subtext. Such hypothetical questions often expose how texts
implicitly operate to serve the interests of some groups at the expense of others.
Text, context, intertextuality, subtext–these are signature concepts marking poststructuralist
readings.
Activity 10: Poststructuralist Lens
Read the following piece on "Teddy."
1. What makes this reading a poststructuralist reading? Point out the analytical focus, rhetorical moves,
questions, and themes in this reading that typify the poststructuralist approach to reading literature.
2. Where do you also see New Criticism and reader response (both versions) lenses incorporated in this
reading?
"Teddy" is glurge, but its common-sense, uplifting sentiments aren't necessarily true, universal–or
harmless. Despite its fairy-tale qualities, "Teddy" could have taken place in the U.S. in the 1950s-1970s.
In fact, it is based on the author's own experiences in elementary school probably in the 50s and first
published in 1976 in Home Life magazine, whose main readership was probably housewives.
Since then, it has remained in circulation in many media, including a Paul Harvey radio broadcast in
1999, as email spam in the early 2000s, and as a movie by MakeADifference.com in 2006. With multiple
reiterations, the story has undergone several small but significant changes, adjusting to different
audiences and purposes.
The movie version, produced by a commercial motivational company that sells training services to
schools for both teachers and students, adds this paragraph to the original ending: "You can never tell
what type of impact you may have on another's life by your actions ... or lack of action. Please consider
this fact in your venture through life, and just try to make a difference in someone else's life today." The
added ending generalizes the theme to everyone, not just teachers. A solo piano score lilts at the
momentous parts, and the male narrator's voice reading the text that appears on-screen by still images of
the teacher and Teddy is soothing and sweetly inflected, as if reading a story to a child. The movie
version revises the word "lie" to "untruth" (but inexplicably uses "lie" at the end) to make the teacher's
behavior at first a little less reprehensible. The teacher's marital status also changes from "Mrs." in the
original story to "Miss" in the movie, again probably to appeal to a commercial audience of young
teachers.
The email spam version sent by a student to Barbara Monroe’s college methods class in 2000 added
one word to initially describe Teddy: from "a little boy" to "a little black boy." That change then inflects
other details in the story to reinforce stereotypes of black families: Teddy's messy clothes, his constant
need of a bath, his antisocial behavior, his emotionally absent father. It also reinforces the master
narrative of whites "saving" black people (as pro-slavery advocates maintained and still do even to this
day). A subset of this master narrative is the white female teacher working in the inner-city schools
amidst sexually threatening male students of color. Think Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds.
Although the story's overt message–that teachers can make a difference–is inspirational and true to a
degree, what kind of "difference" is the text implicitly advancing? Teddy does not become a store clerk or
a carpenter, but a medical doctor. Of course, doctors do serve the public good by providing health care.
Teddy suggests as much when he whispers in Mrs. Thompson's ear at the wedding: "Thank you . . . for
showing me I could make a difference." But that public service is rewarded with tremendous social
prestige and earning power. (Too bad the same cannot be said for the teaching profession.) Arguably,
"making a difference" seems to be equated with "becoming successful," with success defined in terms of
money and status–and not with (just) serving the public good.
Heterosexual bias also enhances the sense that Mrs. Thompson has made the right kind of difference
in Teddy's life. A wedding is always a joyous way to end a story "happily ever after." Would the narrative
have the same feel if Teddy has written to say he was homosexual or transgendered? If he had, a wedding
would not have been legally possible anyway in most states.
15 The narrative also implicitly argues for "the literacy myth": get a good education, get a good job, and
move up the social ladder into the middle class. The timing of the letters–at every educational juncture–
reinforces the importance of education to social mobility. The damaged bracelet, the grocery-bag
Christmas wrapping, Teddy's appearance and personal hygiene–all these details suggest his working-class
status–and the narrative's negative evaluation of that status, exposing the narrative's own middle class
values about appearance and "good manners," which the first-grade teacher credited Teddy with in her
report. Ironically, "difference" in this story seems to mean changing people to join the majority: the white,
middle class.
While motherhood is lionized, fatherhood gets short shrift: "His third grade teacher wrote: 'His
mother's death has been hard on him. He tries to do his best, but his father doesn't show much interest,
and his home life will soon affect him if some steps aren't taken.'" For sure, the father could have made a
difference in Teddy's life. But by making the father such a flat character, the narrative fails to
acknowledge that he was probably grieving, too. Even though his own grieving process does not excuse
the father, his emotional absence might also speak to the traditional role of fathers as breadwinners rather
than hands-on caregivers. The father is mentioned just one other time in the story: he is not at the wedding
because he died a few years before. Once again, the father is missing in action. Why did the author "kill
off" the character of the father? Why could not he have been at the wedding, too? Or why even mention
the father at all? By mentioning the absent father, Mrs. Thompson as the surrogate mother gains even
greater importance in accomplishing the story's theme.
Good teaching is equated with mothering and caring, but not with being a college-degreed
professional with pedagogical and content knowledge. Although Mrs. Thompson's nurturing clearly made
a difference in Teddy's life, how good a teacher is she? In the beginning of the narrative, she told her
students that she loved them all the same, but she did not; at the end of the narrative, she told them the
same lie, for she was still playing favorites.
So what? What is at stake in believing that teachers are mothers rather than professionals? Mothers,
like social workers, do their jobs selflessly, without expectations of monetary rewards or social status or
even decent working conditions. Further, after Mrs. Thompson targets Teddy as her personal project, she
neglects her other students. Remember: this story has been in circulation for over three decades, thereby
participating in each decade's debate on teacher performance, public schooling, and test scores–a
Conversation that largely faulted teachers for failing schools. At best, the story would seem to achieve its
purpose: to inspire young teachers to care about their calling, while it leaves unsaid that professional
expertise is important to good teaching, too.
Part 3. Critical Engagement
How can we align our goals and critical lenses to teach critical engagement?
Activity 11: Goals/Lens
Go back to the Goals activity at the beginning of this chapter.
(a) Which lens is typified in each goal?
(b) With which lens do most of your goals fall now?
If critical engagement is our overarching goal, then we need to teach the 3R's: respect the text, relate
to the text, resist the text. The 3R's map onto the three critical lenses. Our integrated critical approach
aims to teach students to "respect" the conventions and codes of the text (using a New Critical lens),
"relate" it to their own background knowledge and sense of the world (using a more amplified version of
the reader response lens, one that recognizes the importance of group identity, not just individual
identity), and "resist" the text (using a poststructuralist lens). The cognitive operations inherent in these
lenses are not discrete or linear in practice; rather, they work together in rich and complex ways. This
kaleidoscopic approach not only illuminates the text, it also makes visible multiple contexts (or
Conversations), intertextuality, and subtexts.
16 How then do we teach this integrated critical approach to secondary school students? (See "Teaching
the 3R's," chart attached). Our approach to any text might begin with this general question: What does this
text want us to believe about ____ (i.e., success, good teaching, heroism, gender roles, patriotism,
animals, coming-of-age, love, friendships, etc. etc.)... and do we believe it? The first part of the question
requires that we respect the text, allowing it to deliver its message and make its meaning on its own terms.
We show this respect by asking questions like how are the characters developed, what is the conflict, how
do style, symbols, setting, etc., help convey the theme, etc. The words us and we in the initial question
invite students as a collective group recognizing differences among us, if not consensus. Thus, we relate
to the text, sharing not only our personal responses but also listening to others' responses. We also need to
take into consideration how still others might relate to the text, hypothesizing the intended audience's
responses as well as an unintended audience's responses. The last part of the question–and do we believe
it? –requires us then to resist the text at least momentarily, historicizing the setting within the text,
contextualizing it in its own times and ours, asking questions about gaps and silences, comparing it to
other texts and our own or others' experiences of the world, unearthing the unspoken cultural logic
animating its subtext. After this thoroughgoing analysis, the discussion always includes the question So
what?, which asks students to explore the conclusions and consequences that text points us to.
In teaching critical engagement with the 3R's, we are not pushing a particular politics on students.
Rather, we are teaching the critical thinking process itself, applicable to academic inquiry in all fields, not
just literature. In fact, our own line of questioning, as detailed in Fig. 4, was based, in part, on
Washington State University's Critical Thinking Rubric, which includes posing a question, identifying
one's own and others' perspectives, considering the text without other contexts, digging out key
assumptions, and assessing implications and supporting logic (WSU's Critical and Integrative Thinking
Rubric). If we avoid talking about politics (or religion, or sexuality, or anything else for that matter), we
are actually decontextualizing the classroom from the world, and we are implicitly teaching passivity and
disengagement, traits that signal the death knell for a democracy.
All-inclusive–and yes, free-wheeling–critical conversations are not just academic exercises. For we
are modeling and students are experiencing civil discourse, where actively listening and carefully
considering all viewpoints are more important than winning an argument. Students shape what literature
means as much as it shapes them when they participate in authentic conversations not simply as learners,
as apprentices, but as makers of meaning. Ultimately, students may or may not change their positions
about the Conversation under discussion. But they will leave the classroom with a more nuanced
understanding of the issues, with a greater recognition of multiple perspectives, with more empathy and
respect for others than they did when they entered. The very process of critical classroom conversation
itself prepares students to become literate, active citizens in a participatory democracy, insofar as these
conversations about larger Conversations model civil, civic discourse: open dialogues conducted by
inquiring minds.
Works Cited
Bashir, Kal. "How to Structure a Successful Story." http://www.clickok.co.uk/index4.html
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With a Thousand Faces. New York: Pantheon, 1949.
Crowley, Sharon. Toward a Civil Discourse: Rhetoric and Fundamentalism. Pittsburgh, PA: U Pittsburgh
Press, 2006.
Freire, Paolo. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York, NY:
Continuum International Publishing Group, 2000.
Gee, James. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Latrobe, Kathy and Judy Drury. Critical Approaches to Young Adult Literature. New York: NealSchuman, 2009.
snopes.com "Teddy" http://www.snopes.com/glurge/teddy.asp
wisegeek.com "What is glurge?" http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-glurge.htm
17 Wilhelm, Jeffrey, Tanya N. Baker, and Julie Dube Hackett. Strategic Reading: Guiding Students to
Lifelong Literacy, 6-12. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2001.
"WSU's Critical and Integrative Thinking Rubric." Washington State University.
http://wsuctproject.wsu.edu/ctr.htm
18