Question

Relate how the reading of literature has enriched and refined you.

Answer 1

The decade of the 1980s has been marked by calls for increased attention to students' thinking and reasoning about what they are reading in all of their subjects, across the curriculum (Applebee, Langer, & Mullis, 1987, 1989, 1990; Boyer, 1983; Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983; National Governors' Conference, 1990). For English teachers, this has meant a focus on the reading of literature - calling it back to the center of concern after several decades of benign neglect. Yet there is considerable disagreement about the role that literature should play in the K-12 curriculum. For many, the teaching of literature is often treated only as a way to introduce students to the cultural knowl- edge, the great thoughts, and the high culture of our society (Bloom 1987; Cheyney, 1987; Hirsch, 1987; Ravitch & Finn, 1987); its role in the development of the sharp and critical mind is often ignored. However, there is evidence from a number of sources that narrative thought is part of the well-developed intellect. Generalizing across fields of inquiry, Bruner (1986) argues that there are two modes of cognition - narrative and paradigmatic - each with its own way of viewing reality. Full under- standing, he suggests, is better achieved by using both the ordered thought of the scientist and the humanely inquisitive thought of the story- teller. The paradigmatic mode offers facts, objectivity, logical proofs, and reasoned hypotheses, while from the study of literature we come to un- derstand the "vicissitudes of human intention. Reading is sense-making, an act of becoming - where new questions, in- sights, and understandings develop as the reading progresses, while un- derstandings that were once held are subject to modification, reinterpretation, and even dismissal.sarily) text-based. The final envisionment, then, is never the sum of previous traces, but is instead an evolving whole, which itself is subject to change well after the pages have been removed from sight. In this view, reading is interpretation (Sontag, 1956), and if one wishes to understand this act of interpretation it is necessary to exam- ine the reading experience across time, as the reader traverses the course of meaning-making.