Finding a Balance

I'm not going to lie: I am a firm advocate for teaching the classics in school. I am majoring in English, after all, and renowned authors like Jane Austen and Charles Dickens are my bread and butter. I won't nerd out with the complete genius that is Pride and Prejudice or the beautiful heroism of Syndey Carton. But you get the point- without the classics, literature would look very different from what it is today (even though it looks quite transformed from Shakespeare's time).

Unfortunately, many people my age don't agree that the classics are all that worthwhile. Shakespeare's a dead white dude. Dickens was a horrible role model. And even with Austen, some don't regard her as a legitimate advocate for women's rights because she always manages to create an unrealistically happy ending for her heroines. Not only do they disagree with the authors' personal lives, but they've started taking their frustration out on their works. There's been cries to "modernize" the canon, to teach other (albeit equally qualified) authors from early eras, and to outright ban their books from schools.

Kinda sounds familiar...

But let's not open that can of worms. I recognize the abundance of new literature hitting bookshelves and stores and highly highly encourage all avid readers to take any opportunity they can to read them. From John Green's An Abundance of Katherines to Jojo Moyne's' Me Before You, modern works contain loads of merit. 

source: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fncdl.overdrive.com%2Fmedia%2F4966034&psig=AOvVaw2CYhHAJdo-0nE4Ux-kTz2c&ust=1650940254558000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CA0QjhxqFwoTCID5mvCVrvcCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD

So, in the next few posts, I aim to not only pose a defense of the classics, but to help readers and educators determine how to pick out the right books. 

Ashley Sell writes, "[A] teacher’s job to not just 'drag students through a series of books but rather to show them how stories work'" (13). Teachers (and parents!) are the ones who introduce and expose children to classics. But one misstep- such as an excruciatingly boring discussion on characterization- is enough to give a kid a bad impression of a book. I remember in middle school we read Julius Cesear. It was by far one of the driest works by Shakespeare. Yet as we painstakingly navigated through the work act by act, my teacher implemented various activities to break up the monotony of the old English. We put on plays from certain scenes, dressing up as the characters and writing modified scripts with our own interpretations of the plot. I'm now in my second year of college and I can still recall my performance as Marc Antony, standing before my "senate" and reiterating the infamous "Friends, Romans, Countrymen!" speech. 

Those activities brought the book to life. It was no longer some dead guy's writing or, conversely, replaced by some contemporary work with an underlying agenda. 

Journalist Penelope Fritzer explains that the idea of replacing classics with modern takes is a possible way of getting kids interested in reading in school. But- and here's a crazy thought- there is an alternative way, as my 8th grade English teacher showed. It's all about finding works that are relatable to students. As she puts it: "If the classics got to be the classics through aesthetic literary treatment of subjects lasting and universal concern, then it should be possible to find appropriate and enjoyable classic literature for the classroom" (Fritzer 398).

There are many ways teachers can "modernize" the way they teach classics. These include (but aren't limited to):

• Creating assignments utilizing current trends (i.e., social media)
• Show the movie so that students can visualize it
• Supplement classics with modern renditions 
• Don't read the whole book- find chapters that focus on the skill you want to teach
• Keep a variety of books in your classroom, including classics rarely included in standard curricula (I'm looking at you, Tom Sawyer)

These are only a few suggestions. Of course, there are experts who have studied sure-fire ways of motivating young readers to take an interest in all sorts of books. In fact, a study by Ivey and Broaddus found that the students they interviewed noted that pop culture was a large motivator for them to read outside of school (368). If anyone is aware of the trending "BookTok," take a look at the uptick in sales of books mentioned on the site. It's no coincidence that kids want to read what everyone else is. Furthermore, the study found that students ranked classrooms as "the least likely place to find the materials they want to read" (Ibid). 

Sidenote: that doesn't mean these books are necessarily appropriate for an educational setting.

But it does mean teachers are big influencers in suggesting reading materials to their students. Why are we letting society pressure schools to force teachers to go against the canon? How can kids determine what they want to read if they're not exposed to every type of literature?

If the classics got to be the classics through aesthetic literary treatment of subjects lasting and universal concern, then it should be possible to find appropriate and enjoyable classic literature for the classroom

We'll go more into that in the next post. For now, teachers, take a note from my 8th grade English teacher. The classics aren't meant to be burdensome or irrelevant. Rather, they open us up to a wide variety of perspectives and cultures, embodying the different ideologies and ways of living that have influenced the way we live today. Austen may only be a first wave feminist and Dickens may not be the best example of how to live as a human being... but so what? Where do we cross the line in distinguishing the work from the author, and how do we leave our biases out of the classroom?