Not A Good Time For The Classics
A required text is 100 Best Loved Poems – Classical poetry that costs less than five bucks
– who could ask for anything more?!
But with the first reading assignment an alarm went off inside of me, screaming,
“This is not a good TIME for the Classics!”
Thesis:
Three reasons secondary education is no longer a good time to include poetry classics are:
Junior and senior high school teachers of the 21st century cannot teach the way they have and meet the extraordinary challenges of students today.
The time spent on the classics could be better utilized on poetry talent of today.
First, consider the extraordinary challenges of students living and working in the 21st century. Change is so fast and furious than teachers can hardly imagine what their pupils will need in their futures, yet are expected to be educating them for it. Education crisis includes high dropout rates, low test scores, deficits in reading, math, and history, and inarticulate young people who do not read books let alone care to know poetry classics.
Sir Ken Robinson, a scholar, referred to as a 'creativity expert' suggests "a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity. Skipping the poetry classics constitutes radical thinking"(Ted). Robinson says, "Creativity, now, is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status" (Ted). How better to cultivate creativity than by inspiring secondary education students. Having digested primary school basics, the final stage of compulsory education is the perfect place to stimulate growth radically. Once students are excited with all the creative possibilities available, they will be more likely to continue their educations. Picasso’s mother had the right idea:
My mother said to me, "If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope." Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso. Pablo Picasso
Picasso’s mother would not be educat[ing her] children out of creativity” as Robinson sees teachers doing today. Robinson asks us to understand, “There was no public system education before the 19th century . . . they all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism. . . Most useful subjects for work were at top. So you would probably steered benignly away from things you liked . . . [because you will] never get a job doing that (music, art. . .) (Ted). To be kept from ones passion seemed benign then, but today it is obvious that to “squander them ruthlessly. . . [is a] profound mistake” (Ted).
What is a classic after all? “Something noteworthy of its kind and worth remembering, a work that is honored as definitive in its field, an artist or artistic production considered a standard, according to the dictionary they’re all those things” (Random House). But in 2010 classics are going to have to be more; they’re going to have to be patient. Before students care to see what Longfellow, Poe, Browning and Byron have to say, they will first need to fall in love poetry, and not vice versa as has been the case in the past. As students attention spans with shorter and shorter and technology offering more and more, poetry will have to be a pleasure to read immediately, not after they’ve worked translate verse to words they can understand.
A marvelous example of how the precious time normally spent on poetry classics would be better utilized on poetry talent of today is Jeffrey McDaniel’s work. Delightful imagery begins on the cover of Forgiveness Parade. Words seem to dance on the page before you’ve even opened the book, and that picture is merely a tiny taste of the word pictures he painted inside. Survivor’s Glee is the first poem in this book.
Survivor's Glee
I strapped on an oxygen tank and dove
into the past, paddling back through the years,
emerging from a manhole on memory lane.
The boondocks were doing just fine without me.
The car dealerships. The trash heaps. The stream
of consciousness where I learned how to skinny-dip
had slowed down to a trickle of amnesia.
All the houses had been gutted, except mine,
Where my family was still eating dinner. My parents
welcomed me with open elbows. My brother
looked up to me like a cave drawing on the ceiling.
The night hobbled by, rattling its beggar’s cup.
A pipe burst behind my eyes, which brought out
the plumber in everyone. At a loss for words,
I placed a seashell on my tongue, and my relatives
wore bathing suits when they spoke to me.
Students will waste no time getting excited about the psychic state of a character who “straps on an oxygen tank and dives into the past, paddling back through the years.” As surreal humor heightens their emotional state a student will inevitably want to analyze the work, investigating why it’s grabbed their attention.
Imagine the sounds, smells and feelings evoked in young readers’ as they delight in thoughts “emerging from a manhole on memory lane.” Students in 2010 are much more likely fall in love with creativity without the effort of translation. “Students with restless minds and bodies -- far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity -- are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. . .We are educating people out of their creativity," Robinson says (Ted). Instead of educating young adults to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers.
In conclusion, for students in the 21st century, it is not a good time for classic poetry. However, given the opportunity to fall in love with poetry, students will care to see what Longfellow, Poe, Browning and Byron have to say. . . or not. As the needs of industrialism changed education, the view of academic ability that dominates our view of intelligence must change. Robinson says, “Many highly talented, brilliant creative people think they are not, because the thing they’re good at at school [isn’t] valued. [We] can’t afford to go on that way” (Ted). It’s time for change.
Sheridan says, “Under [Muriel Spark’s] charm was a will of iron: Spark was determined not to be manipulated by the old guard. Echoing the title of one of her best-known novels, she wrote in her memoir of this chapter in her life: ‘I took up the position that if you are in the driver's seat, you drive’”(qtd. in Sheridan 133). Teachers are in the driver’s seat. Like Robinson noticed, “Our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology one in which we . . . Instead of min[ing] our minds in the way we’ve strip mined the earth for a particular commodity, and for the future it won’t service. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we’re educating our children.” For junior and senior high school students it is not a good time for the classics.
Works Cited
Brandon, James R. Kabuki and Shakespeare: Balancing Yin and Yang. Justor: TDR 1998. Vol. 43. No 2. 1999. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1146752?&Search=yes&term=today&term=poetry&term=Shakespeare&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoAdvancedSearch%3Fq0%3DShakespeare%26f0%3Dall%26c1%3DAND%26q1%3Dpoetry%2Btoday%26f1%3Dall%26acc%3Don%26wc%3Don%26Search%3DSearch%26sd%3D%26ed%3D%26la%3D%26jo%3D&item=6&ttl=17299&returnArticleService=showFullText
“Classic.” Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 14 Sep. 2010. <Dictionary.com http://dictioanry.reference.com/browse;classic>.
McDaniel, Jeffrey. The Forgiveness Parade. Manic D. Press. San Francisco. 1967.
Robinson, Ken. “Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity.” TED conference, recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
Sheridan, Susan. “In the Driver's Seat: Muriel Spark's Editorship of the Poetry Review.” Journal of Modern Literature. 32.2 (Winter 2009): p133.
TED conference, recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Ken Robinson /Profile on TED.com. September 16, 2010. http://www.ted.com/speakers/sir_ken_robinson.html
The assignment for this poetry analysis was to pick a poem and explicate it. We were supposed to analyze its formal and literal elements. What you have here is a poem that you picked and made general statements about how it should be used in a classroom setting.
ReplyDeleteHowever, what you have here I will comment on. I do agree that it is a teacher’s job to try and motivate students to learn. There is no exception to poetry. I think a teacher should start off with accessible poetry at first, as a way to introduce it. Subject matter that is blatantly about student lives in the 21st century is always a great way to start. It’s like the saying, “You have to crawl before you walk, walk before you run.” I would not expect students to “fall in love,” as you say, with poetry by jumping into Poe or Byron from the start. Actually, it is nearly impossible. Teachers themselves need to be creative, active, and full of passion when teaching poetry. I personally would not teach a poem by Poe or Byron if I myself was not in love with it. This being said, I don’t agree with you that classic poetry is not effective for the 21st century student.
Yes, there is some poetry that may seem very difficult or extremely irrelevant for a high school student, but I don’t think we should limit them. With technology growing so rapidly, students patience and attention spans are becoming more and more difficult to work with. Limiting classic poetry seems like we are making up excuses for students to just “skip” the hard stuff, or the stuff they cannot understand. This is just adding to their indolence. Also, there is no guarantee that students will “get excited” about McDaniel’s “Survivor’s Glee.” There are still difficult ambiguities, elusiveness, and diction that students will have to confront just as in a classic poem. However, this poem could be used in conjunction with a classic poem, as a compare and contrast lesson.
Lastly, I think creativity can be diminished when teachers do not give room for students to interpret. From personal experience, as a high school student reading poetry , I would always be turned off by it once I was in a classroom where the instructor constantly played “Guess what I’m thinking.” Instead of being given freedom and a comfortable atmosphere to elaborate, we were always told that there was a definite right answer. This should be avoided.