By Bruce Weigl

This course is intended for those students pursuing an MA in English, whose specific goal is to teach at the high school or junior high school level. The course is also open to undergraduates who are thinking about the same kind of career. Such undergraduates are encouraged to sign up. The aim of the course: provide grounding in theory and practice of teaching high school students to achieve an advanced literacy. To me, the term "advanced literacy" suggests a well-developed ability to read critically, to analyze and interpret texts in a range of media, including literature (items in the traditional canon, as well as items "outside,") newspapers, journals of opinion, film and television narrative drama, advertising, and communications/ information as disseminated in the medium of the internet.

But advanced literacy also requires a developing self-awareness, an understanding of the social, political, cultural matrix inevitably interweaving the student with the work under study. It is the job of the teacher to develop a critical self-consciousness, to develop the student’s awareness of his or her standpoint vis-à-vis the matter under study. We will try to map all this by means by means of topical survey and case study.

Some topics:

1). The development of a ‘60s-‘70s strain of idealistic, even Utopian pedagogy with a particular focus on the figures of Kenneth Koch, Wishes, Lies and Dreams (1970) and Rose, Where Did you Get That Red? (1973) Jonathan Kozol, Death at an Early Age (1967), H. R. Kohl, The Open Classroom (1969)

An enlightening example of the pedagogy put into practice can be found on the website http://www.middlebury.edu/~publish/middmag/features/swope/swope.html Here Mr. Swope gives an extensive account of teaching Wallace Stevens’ "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" to a class of public middle school children, many of them recent immigrants, in a poor neighborhood in Queens, N.Y.

2). The impact of the "culture wars" of the last 20 years on high school pedagogy, including a critical study of E. D. Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy (1987).

3). A critical study of the Educational Testing Service AP (Advanced Placement) English Literature program. AP courses are intended to promote the highest standard of a well- developed literacy among high school students. Past tests are widely distributed and make for valuable, interesting, challenging case study material. There is no doubt that most high school AP English teachers "teach to the test." Last year, an astonishing number (189,000) of American High School seniors took the AP Literature exam and between 10 and 20% of these students scored high enough to be given Sophomore standing in English courses at most American Universities The critical questions are: Is this a good thing? If so, why so? If not, why not?

4). Casebook study of an "easy" Shakespeare play (Julius Caesar or Macbeth) and a "hard" play (Hamlet) frequently taught in high schools.

5). A case study of structuralism/ semiotics, with a particular focus on excerpts from Claude Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques (The Writing Lesson) and Roland Barthes, Mythologies.

The point of case study # 5 would be to see how such theoretical texts have applications in high school classes and in such assignments as watching specific television programs and reading specific magazine advertisements. Recent issues of "Jane" magazine, for example provide rich resource material.

Requirements: a seminar presentation and an end of term paper. Frequent impromptus on the readings.

Most readings will be on reserve or on-line at "Blackboard."

To be purchased: Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory (2nd edition), Minnesota, 1996.

Readings and assignments are due on the date stated, or before. Never after.

Aug. 30 – Introduction: What we’re going to do. Film clip from "Not as a Stranger." The old pedagogy

Sept. 6- Screening and analysis: Wiseman, "High School" (1968)

Assignment: A first person journalistic account of a high school moment (relying on your experience.) Make it about the typical, the everyday; but also make it a dramatic narrative (something happens, even if it’s only boredom), make it real. 2-3 pages.

Sept. 13—Guest Lecture: Austin Booth—Univ. Libraries— Making the most of Bison/ Internet resources. Screening:"14 Up In America"

Sept. 20--- A brief clip from "The Last Picture Show." Assignment: Make a hard copy of Keats, "Ode: Grecian Urn" from "Blackboard."

Swope on Stevens- This is a key topic (# 1 above) and we’ll be returning to it frequently. Here’s the Internet site for Swope’s essay: http://www.middlebury.edu/~publish/middmag/features/swope/swope.html

Assignment: Please print out a hard copy and bring to the seminar.

Assignment: A 1-2 page response to Swope’s essay.

Sept. 27--- No class—Yom Kippur

Oct. 4—Poetry—Some theoretical reading in Eagleton pp. 15-46. But especially see p. 43.

Workshop on Richard Wilbur, "The Writer." Other poems. Review Swope essay on Stevens

Oct. 11—More poetry—Workshop on Sandra Cisneros’ short story, "Eleven."

Assignment: 2-3 page analytical response to Wilbur workshop.

Oct. 18—Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Oct. 25—Shakespeare, Hamlet

Nov. 1—Readings: Eagleton on "Structuralism and Semiotics." Also Handouts: excerpts from Barthes, Mythologies; Levi-Strauss, "The Writing Lesson." Begin case studies of AP Literature essay questions. See topic 3 above.

Nov. 8—David Bartels reading of Jane magazine. Analysis of Target ad and Christopher Buckley’s satirical "interpretation" in Talk magazine. Case studies of AP Literature essay questions. See topic 3 above. Assignment: Proposal, 1^st drafts of end-of-term project.

Nov. 15—E. D. Hirsch: Readings from Cultural Literacy. The whole can of worms: literacy, pluralism, "canonicity," Multiple canons. Cultural competence: what is it? How do adolescents achieve it? What can teachers do to foster it?

Nov. 22—Turkey Daze

Nov. 29—"What is to be done?" Better phrased for our purposes: Each must ask "What must I do?

Workshop: Teaching Engels, Origins of the Family

Dec. 6—Summing up, catching up.