Separation Anxiety?

Response to Missus W's Deliberation, a research blog dedicated to debating the merit of teaching the literary canon

My dear friend Missus W (I call her Caitlin) is tackling a heavy topic in English education. I will admit that I am intrigued by her topic. Basically, she wants to know if there is merit in teaching the canon. 

What are your thoughts? 

Want to hear mine?

You kept reading, so I guess that means you are interested. First of all, if you think we are talking about this kind of cannon (notice the spelling difference):

you will be sorely disappointed (and probably confused). Second of all, if you don't know what the literary canon is, you might want to check out this link before you continue. If you still don't know what the canon is, think of the stuff you hated to read in school, but it was required anyway. (If you ever read Shakespeare, then you read from the canon.)

Okay, so my OPINION is this: We still teach the canon because it is familiar and everyone should learn what their parents learned just like their parents before them. I think it is a silly idea. There is merit to the canon, but not as the only texts in the classroom. If the times change, shouldn't the canon? But it doesn't really. I think those in favor of (solely) teaching the canon are suffering from separation anxiety.   Why do I claim such? It's like the woobie of English teachers--so hard to let go. 

My friend's blog as some cool information that you should check out for a more serious conversation. 

Basically, Missus W feels this way: 

Missus W buried (in my opinion) the greatest question at the end of this post, so I will share it here:

The bigger question for me, I’m finding as I struggle through the canon wars, is whether or not the canon is killing young readers?  Is stressing the importance of canonical works important enough to bore students to the level that they don’t care about reading at all anymore?  I’m envisioning Pavlov’s theory in play and seeing students not pick up a book because they have been taught texts that confuse and frustrate them.  Is there a happy medium?

Certainly, I think there is merit in the canon, but is it so out of touch with today's kids that it is alienating them? Let's face it, they all live in the era of SparkNotes, so we are lucky if they even read the "translated" version of a classic. I assert that most educators would be content to have their students reading regularly. If that means The Hunger Games instead of To Kill A Mockingbird, so be it. Katniss can become the next generation's Scout.

I offer you this blog to support my opinion. Basically, this post is claiming (and supporting with student input) that students can't relate to the canon. Maybe because of the complexity of the text, maybe because of the dependence on technology to guide them. Whatever. The idea presented it that a canonical text should only be taught with a modern companion or pairing. Here is a snippet:

I propose a classroom in which a “classic” novel is introduced not by themes, or historical context, but by a modern translation, so-to-speak. By simply comparing the first pages of two of these suggested texts, that which would result in a more enthusiastic response from a classroom becomes even more obvious. 

So why aren't we doing it? I don't know. Maybe something needs to be really old or outdated before we put it in schools.

Here is another option for the canon. Everybody likes comic books, right? A more scholarly approach to the comic book is a graphic novel (as in pictures, not content).  Check out the opening to their article:

The Western literary canon has long been debated and criticized by academics, and rightly so. Which books belong and which don't? Now The Graphic Canon: The World's Great Literature as Comics and Visuals, a three-volume series edited by Russ Kick (Seven Stories Press), which presents classic lit as comic strips, adds a bit more fuel to the intellectual fires.

Can students learn the canon from a graphic novel?

I don't know. But if the argument is that the text is too complicated, a graphic novel could be the solution. If the argument is that the text is too outdated, a graphic novel just puts lipstick on a pig.

I have observed one lesson in one high school for one class period where a student teacher was using The Odyssey in graphic novel format as a scaffold to the genuine text. (I don't think I am stealing the term "scaffold" here but if I am, sorry!) The students weren't anymore interested in the graphic novel as far as I could tell. They might have understood it better, but they weren't interested.

What's the bottom line here? I don't have an easy answer. The canon will exist whether we teach it or not. But is it worth teaching at the risk of killing off readers, one grade-level at a time?