The Love of Reading versus Studying: A Continuum

                           

            It used to be flashlights under the covers with comic books—now it’s phones, tablets, E-readers—there is something delicious about wanting to read so much that we sneak it.  I’m not talking about social media, compulsive scrolling, online shopping, gaming, or texting—that doesn’t count as reading—but being eager to return to a book does.

            It would seem that school should inspire the love of learning, as libraries do with clubs and book fairs—but, unfortunately, school ruins reading for most of us.  In this blog post, I want to address this problem and to offer a model to help us recapture our passion for reading, so much so, that we abandon our Netflix, YouTube, and whatever new distractions and addictions have emerged since I posted this essay—because we can’t wait to indulge our love of books.

            On one end of the continuum is self-motivated, indulgent, glorious wanna reading—the kind we talk about with your friends and never seem to see in a class; the kind where we fall in love with an author and scramble to find everything she or he has written. On the other end of the continuum is studying boring gotta textbooks in anticipation of quizzes for get-it-over-with courses and grades.

            But there are some truly fascinating works presented in classes that belong on the love side of the continuum—that are ruined by how they are “taught.”  So, it’s not even so much what is included in classes as how we are harassed into, literally, confronting them.  It is truly tragic to me that, when I ask my students in their senior capstone courses what they love to read, they look at me like deer stunned by high beams in the middle of the night.  It has been so long that anyone cared about their experience of reading—since they felt any passion for reading themselves—that they don’t know how to answer.  Teachers placed themselves between them and books, co-opting, mediating, and grade-quantifying their experience.

First, it’s such a ridiculous expression: “I’m teaching Shakespeare.”  Under one interpretation of the expression, that’s ludicrous.  Can’t teach Shakespeare anything—he’s totally gone.  And teaching conjures in all of us the fear of metaphorically being the dunce shamed in a corner, having our knuckles rapped with a ruler, or having to suffering detention.  I reject the prevailing pedagogical model that favors learning standard information over learning how to appreciate, that favors assessment models over learning. Teaching should be about inspiring, modeling for, and empowering students to create meaningful, and intellectually and emotionally satisfying lives.

Reading was ruined for me, too.  That’s why I can write this. It has taken me years to actually read through a book without taking notes, highlighting, annotating the margins, and memorizing “key” ideas.  It has taken me years to question whether a book is worth reading through, just because it is a published work that someone else required me to read.  It has taken me years to think of books as treasured friends to turn to for relaxation, adventure, illumination. It’s only now that I’ve stopped, as a teacher, thinking of the works I assign to classes as reading chores for myself.

To rehabilitate us all, I don’t give quizzes to police whether students have read our texts.  We develop an atmosphere of commitment and engagement early on and most students come prepared—that is not negotiable. And I certainly don’t give multiple choice tests.  Horrendously, there are some teachers who actually administer quizzes and multiple-choice tests in Creative Writing courses.  Really?!  I have discoursed on this in other posts, but my focus in our classes is not what I want, but what students actually get from their readings. 

I ask first, a show of hands, of those who have read the portions of texts we will be considering that meeting.  Most students are honest, and they know the rest of us will know—given the nature of our discussions—whether they showed up that week.  That’s usually enough embarrassment for them to come prepared. After that, it’s all about making the reading belong to THEM not to me as the arbiter of grades. And my hope is that they will be able to recover from studying and learn how to enjoy the readings.

One of the following questions will often catapult us into our discussions: Did you like reading this?  Why or why not? What caught your attention?  What did it mean to you?  Is this good, engaging writing?  Why or why not?  What questions arose for you? 

Just as a docent will show visitors how to view new, experimental art in a museum, our class is a place where I can model different doorways by which to enter a piece of writing, such as imagery, theme, characterization, structure—but not everyone thinks alike, and not all strategies will resonate with all students.  I don’t require all students to equally engage with all our strategies. 

Even more than discussion with the whole class, my students discuss readings in small groups—that’s nothing new.  But I don’t micromanage the direction these discussions will take with checklists of questions tending toward “approved” responses. We come together after group readings to benefit from the often unique and inspiring insights that emerge from the reading pods.

Here are strategies to remember if we are to pull our readings away from the study end of the continuum back to the love-of-reading end:

Less is more.  Good books deserve rereading and rereading.  What’s my take away this time from these pages?

Don’t be thorough—be deep.  If I try to memorize and retain everything I read in that limited corridor which is my left brain—I’ll drop it all. Best to carry away one idea that matters, and to integrate it.  Otherwise I’ll drop it all after the test and it won’t be available to me after.

Take what you like, and leave the rest. Most teachers would balk at this. My devotion is to inspire—not terrify.

Consider the continuum.  Are you reading or are you studying?  Ask yourself these questions as antidotes: Do I love this reading?  Why or why not?  How is this reading about me, and not about the teacher or the test?  How can I use this reading to find deeper and more satisfying meaning in my life?  How can I integrate this reading into what I already know?  What else could I read along these lines that might be more inspiring?

I invite you, as well, to read the blog post on TRUST—learn to trust yourself, as a reader, despite the environment of distrust that standard education fosters. Will it be on the Test?: Trust and Joy in the Classroom. The love of reading and your passion for literature will return if you make it your own.

I look forward to hearing about your experience of how studying can ruin reading for you. How can and do you nourish your love of reading?

            

                          

Works Cited

Cover Art: https://www.theodysseyonline.com/30-thoughts-college-students-have-while-studying

End Art: https://www.naeyc.org/our-work/families/read-together-support-early-literacy

Left Brain/Right Brain

  

In 1976, Julian Jaynes coined the term “bicameral mind” in his eponymous book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.  According to this model, the brain is divided into two rooms—“bi” meaning ‘two,’ and “camera” meaning ‘room.’  (We call our cameras “cameras” because the first camera was a large room, much reduced now to the thin room which is an iPhone connected to the doorless room which is the digital ether.) According to this early research, the left brain was in charge of language and the right of imagery. In his landmark, 2009 book, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Wester World, author Ian McGilchrist offers a much refined theory, informed by extensive research since 1976, to show that both sides of the brain coordinate in the creation of experience.  With that proviso, we can consider how the predominant aspects of our divided brains function in the learning process.

In general, someone who functions predominantly from the left brain, as illustrated above, tends to construct experience as

Linear—one thing following the other in order

             Analytical and Mental

             Product oriented
             Closed
             Staid

Digital—favoring polar binary opposites, as, for example right or wrong, good or bad.

Numerical—clear, quantifiable order, favoring monetary and business systems

Conventional—according to tradition and popularly accepted values

Rule-bound and Prescriptive

Proscriptive—experience and action outside the parameter of accepted rules prohibited

Limiting—at best, the left brain can work four things in consciousness at a time

Rigid and strict

Dividing and Selective

External

Exclusive

“No”

Denotative—words mean discretely, without nuance

Ego and Superego—a will to power

Conscious

Prose

Boxed in

Guarantees
Fear based and inspired

We cannot live socially or in civilized cultures without these functions.  Some of the benefits of the Left Brain include a sense of security and constancy; organization and focus; and social and familial foundations.  The Left Brain identifies goals and marshals them to completion. Language, itself, functions because of Left Brain tendencies.

The problem comes when it presumes to take control of all the brains functions.  McGilchrist argues that, historically, the Left Brain was the emissary from the larger, the contrasting functions of the Right Brain, whose qualities include these:

Global

Contextual

Intuitive and epiphanic

Body and image based

Process oriented
      Open
      Fluid

Analog—favoring paradox and interweaving

Experimental and creative

Evolutionary and revolutionary

Descriptive

Expansive

Patient and flexible

Coordinating

Internal

Inclusive

“Yes”

Connotative

Id

Subconscious incubation

Dreams

Poetry

Out of the box

Possibility
Love based and inspired

The Right Brain is the repository of all of our history as a species—spatially and temporally.  It connects us in what sometimes feels magical ways. It offers us insight, joy, warning, possibility.

            Here’s an example of the difference between Left-Braining and Right-Braining.  I am an international folkdancer.  Every Wednesday night and on long vacations devoted to this art, we get together—women and men ranging in age from 20 to 100, and sometimes with children, to join hands and enjoy the dances from countries around the world and through time, to music that can be soft and prayerlike, or bawdy and rollicking.  After almost 40 years, I know most of the old dances and need only to hear the first few notes and my body knows the rest.  But there is always a leader, whom the rest of us watch.  If I were to put on the music at home, I would know neither the name of the dance nor which step comes next.  That’s because I have mostly Right-Brained these dances.  And, although I am known for being a “good dancer,” expressive, joyful, knowing how to style—and seem to know all the steps—I don’t.

            On the other hand, I have learned dances to teach others, and these I analyze into their component parts, memorize them, practice them, make and correct my mistakes while replaying videos.  I, in other words, take a Left-Brain approach, to “get it right,” correct others.  We have some master teachers in our folkdance group, who always know the steps, and whom the rest of us use as guides.  Too often, though, they devolve into a Left-Brainy make-wrong mode—conventionalizing, criticizing, scolding. What makes my teaching different from that of most other folkdance teachers, is that I also incorporate images in my teaching: “make believe you’re the Statue of Liberty, raising one hand and tucking in the other”; “make believe you are moving through water.”  This helps others to be expressive, joyful, stylized.  And I don’t scold.

            For me, when I’m at my best, this is an example of optimal coordination between the Left and Right brain.  Unfortunately, as Gilchrist argues so cogently in his book, the Left Brain functions have usurped control to assert the will to power. 

In politics, Left Brain leaders manipulate the voting public and constituencies with fear and rigid values. The traditional classroom, too, favors a Left Brain model. The posts on this blog serve as reminders that we are far larger and have greater capacities than the Left Brain would allow, by itself.  We invite the Right Brain into the mix, and favor

Imagery over plot

Experimentation over right/wrong

Community over leaders

Creativity over tests

Original over linear thinking

Learning over grades

Rainbow over black/white

Shapes over straight lines

Possibility over boredom

Spilling over the edges, like the picture above

Poetry over all

And more…

How are your learning experiences structured? Is there a generative balance of Left Brain/Right Brain in your classroom and in your learning process?

Works Cited:

Cover Art: Left Brain/ Right Brain Image

Text:

Jaynes, Julian. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. 
      Boston: Mariner Books, 2000.

McGilchrist, Ian.The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western
      World,  New Haven: Yale UP, 2009.

Intentional Fallacies: The Literary Seance

                        

“What does Poe mean?" 

                                                “What is Dickinson saying?”

                                                                        “What’s Shakespeare’s purpose?”

                         “Is that Plath’s intention?”

            You’ve heard it all your life in classrooms: questions that assume to speak for an author, that imply that we can somehow discern what she or he Really meant, that urge that there is some ultimate interpretation that will forever tie up the poem in a bow.  It’s an antique way of speaking about literature—patriarchal, limiting, and false.  It turns the class into a séance: “Put your hands on the table.  We call on you, Will Shakespeare.  Tell us what you want.” And the table trembles under the note-taking that the teacher, as medium, channels from the ghost of William Shakespeare, entering the room.

            Let’s step back a moment to appreciate how intricate the process of literary interpretation is, here analyzed into discrete, although non-definitive steps:

(1)   We identify an experience as coalescing into “object.”

(2)   We reach out to touch it.

(3)   We pick it up. It might be a doorstop.  It might be something to turn into a Christmas tree.  It might be a log for the fire. 

(4)   But we identify it as book.

(5)   We turn it this way and that. What shall we do with it?

(6)   We look at the ink marks.

(7)   We identify a language.  If it is Hebrew, we lay the book down with the ruffly

edges to…What shall we call it?  Our left.

            …

And so on.  All this happens intuitively, speedily for most 21-year-olds.  For a 2-month-old, there will be a preliminary process of gumming, ripping, crumpling, throwing, and growing into a 2-year old—who, by that time, might have learned to assume the culturally-correct book reading position.

            By the time we come to call those marks words on what we discern as page and start to interpret it as poem, an infinite series of sophisticated, enculturated, interpretive choices have been made.  So why is it that we suddenly turn the process into a supernatural mystery, a séance?

            True, we hope that by this time in the 21^st century teachers will acknowledge that interpretation is subjective. But they and their students continue to use the discourse of divination and fortune-telling—to the extent that teachers make-wrong any but their own “official version” of what, let’s say, Shakespeare is saying. Why continue to commit this intentional fallacy?

According to Britannica.com, “Intentional fallacy,” is a “term used in 20^th-century literary criticism to describe the problem inherent in trying to judge a work of art by assuming the intent or purpose of the artist who created it.” Shakespeare is dead, and his gravestone curses anyone who would exhume his bones.  We have found no personal records discoursing on his plays and poems. You’d have to believe in Shakespearean witches and ghosts to argue your teacher qua medium knows what he meant. Prolific novelist Vladimir Nabokov said never to ask what an author is trying to say—because (s)he already said it.  And poet Robert Frost said “I own the first reading. I’ll take a mortgage on the second.  The rest is up to you.”

             More often that not, when readers, critics, audiences voice an interpretation of my poetry, songs, essays, they offer interpretations that I did not consciously work into my writing.  I find them compelling. I am fascinated by the plasticity of literature, mine and others’, to inspire vastly different, and not infrequently contradictory readings.  And if there isn’t this plasticity, then the piece of work is not a piece of literature.  Creativity (discussed in other posts on this blog) is a process of dipping into that 99% part of our minds—intuitive, universal, visionary—which we share with all other human beings.  Memorable writing dips into the greater mind where we all exist—the better the author, the more intuitive her or his process. That’s why we look into the dictionary—a compendium of shared meanings.

A séance is always a group activity, often orchestrated by either a charlatan magician or an intuitively sensitive actor.  The pointer on the Ouija board does not move without the participants relaxing into their 99% minds, by believing that the process works.  But interpretation is just the Oui (French for yes) ja (German for yes) credulity of the participants—just as interpretation is a process by which we turn marks on an object into lived experience and ideas.

                            

And Shakespeare does not exist without us picking up that object and naming it a soliloquy or enacting it in a production.  We are Shakespeare, and it would be more appropriate to ask “How do I interpret these marks on a page?”  “What do I make of this?”  "What do these words mean to me?" When we read, we're looking into a crystal ball: we see ourselves.

                                                           

            Notice the language used in your classrooms and how the teacher becomes the medium at the séance. Report back here.