In this week’s selection of Dublin’s Weekly Find from 3quarksdaily, Jeff Hudson uses his experience teaching English to discuss how to revamp the literature classroom. Click the link at the end of the excerpt (article originally posted on March 27, 2012) below to read the entire article at Full Stop.
Here is something I know: I feel better when I read — not just good, but better. Anxieties are assuaged, burdens lightened, relationships enriched. I feel part of something hopeful, a connection to the writer, the characters, other readers. I feel smart, if it is okay to say that. I am moved to act after reading — to write, to talk. I have new questions and fresh answers. And I am hardly alone. Anne Lamott knows that “when writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with the absurdity of life instead of being squashed by it over and over again.” After sharing stories, writer Barry Lopez feels exhilarated: “The mundane tasks which awaited me, I anticipated now with pleasure. The stories had renewed in me a sense of the purpose of my life.”
Here is something else I know: the power of literature to “renew a sense of purpose in our lives” gets killed in literature classrooms — unintentionally, no doubt, but killed nonetheless.
More from Full Stop here.
Posted by Robin Varghese of 3quarksdaily at 4:53 PM on March 28, 2012.
Dublin's Reading Room 