How is it wrong "to ask a thirteen-year-old boy who is plenty smart but also plenty male and plenty reluctant to spend time with books to devote himself to the onerous task of imbibing hundreds of pages of Bronte's lovesick heroine's inner musings" but not wrong to ask a thirteen-year-old girl to read traditional classic literature that almost exclusively focuses on men and strictly male issues?

I ask this question as a male, as a lover of classic literature (especially the much maligned Western canon), as someone who thinks the feminist movement has gone too far at times. But seriously, look at the Odyssey: half the book concerns Odysseus' sexual exploits. Or Hamlet, that pinnacle of Western literature? Completely male oriented. Isn't a little balance a good thing? Those books are worth reading, but so is Jane Eyre.

A good compare/contrast is Catcher in the Rye/The Bell Jar. Both are great works of literature worth reading, but one is very male-oriented and the other very female-oriented. To be complete and well rounded individuals, students should read both.

Not in chronological order, here is what I can recall.

1. Shakespeare: Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Nights Dream, Hamlet, and Twelfth Night.

2. Edgar Lee Masters: Spoon River Anthology

3. Great American Short Stories: a collection with Nathaniel Hawthorne, O. Henry, Ambrose Bierce, Katherine Ann Porter, &c.

4. Tennessee Williams: The Glass Menagerie

5. Eugene O'Neill: Long Day's Journey into Night.

6. Robert Louis Stevenson: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

7. Beowulf

8. Charles Dickens: Great Expectations

9. Man in the Fictional Mode, another short story collection.

10. Thornton Wilder: Our Town

11. On City Streets, a book of (uninspiring) poetry.

12. My Side of the Mountain. I do not remember the author. Ted Eccles starred in the film version.

13. Jack London: The Call of the Wild.

14. E.L. Doctorow: Ragtime.

You will never make a poetry reader out of your's truly. Aside from that and the Masters book (a social tract, really), I do not regret one minute reading any of these. You know, I never took another English class after finishing high school.

I was in school a while back, and seven of the nine English teachers I had over the years were male. It never occurred to me at the time that there might be a benefit to me incorporated into the last.

Touche, AndrewN. At least Erin isn't one of those conservatives who insists upon the universality of the appeal of great literature. I'm assuming she never sneered when feminists insisted upon assigning literature that would "work for everyone in the room."

Makes me smile to see the shoe on the other foot.

I disliked "The Awakening" and "The Bell Jar," which I read in college. I wanted the heroines to stop moping and do something useful.

I love "Jane Eyre," but wouldn't recommend it to a boy. "Wuthering Heights" is the teenage girls' book par excellence. I found it somewhat annoying: Why do characters marry so stupidly in a society in which divorce is impossible?

When I was in high school, we didn't spend as much time on each book as students do now so the beat-it-to-death syndrome wasn't as severe. If you didn't like a book, you knew the class would move on to something else.

None of us liked "The Scarlet Letter," but I was known for my ability to do a "nuptial smile."

AndrewN: It's not a question of right or wrong (or, despite what David Mazel suggests, one of politics). It's a question of simple pragmatics -- of knowing what is likely to work and what won't. A lot of that, too, is idiosyncratic: if, as a teacher, you know you can make Jane Eyre accessible to adolescent boys, then go ahead and teach it. If you can't, don't. My problem is with the teachers who don't seem to ask the question.

Is it possible that the reason so many "teachers...don't ask the question" is because, like their thoughtless patriarchal predecessors, they falsely universalize their own experience ("I loved Jane Eyre as a teenager, therefore all teenagers will"), their own perspective, and their own values? Do they mistake values that are highly gendered for values that are universal? Behind the "simple pragmatics" there lurks a theory, at least when one stops to ask "Why?"--which can be of help in figuring out what to do, and in any event is kind of what academics are supposed to do. (Here are a couple of possible answers: Maybe the false universalization of one's own values is itself a universal human trait. Maybe teachers who remember their own exclusion under the previous regime are unconsciously exacting revenge. Who knows? Seems to be a question worth studying, in addition to a problem calling for a pragmatic solution.)

And what exactly do you propose as a solution to this problem? That we ask the local school board or state K-12 office to hold workshops designed to raise teachers' gender consciousness and make them more sensitive about reading assignments? When people strive to change the way governments do things, we call it "politics."

FWIW, I also see some parallels between your argument and arguments for bilingual education.

like their thoughtless patriarchal predecessors

Who did you have in mind?

An anecdote isn't data, but my own love of reading was ignited as a 13-year-old boy by discovering Jane Eyre. (I caught the beginning of a TV adaptation, then couldn't wait for the rest and just read it.)

It would, mind you, probably have been different if I'd been assigned it in class. But almost any book can be ruined by being a grade school assignment.

JSU -- Thanks for this. I'm fascinated and delighted by your story. And I agree about how assigning books can ruin them. It's one of the most awful, defining paradoxes of teaching English. So much of what makes reading literature worthwhile is the feeling of discovery involved--as well as the opportunity for an essentially private communion with a given author's work. Classroom settings are poor, if necessary, proxies for both. I did not read Jane Eyre until college -- but I had an experience perhaps parallel to yours at nine, when I read a copy of Roots that I found lying around the house.

Who did I have in mind? A couple of my undergrad profs would definitely qualify, although the one with whom I've kept in touch has gradually come around as a result of thinking things through a bit. More generally, anyone who dismissed feminist arguments of the same form of Erin's by asserting the universality of masculine values.

More generally, anyone who dismissed feminist arguments of the same form of Erin's by asserting the universality of masculine values.

I would not have coded her specific argument here as 'feminist'.

What is entailed in 'asserting the universality of masculine values'?

You mean, what is entailed in asserting the universality of masculine values in addition to asserting the universality of masculine values? Got me! Plenty of places online to brush up on Feminism 101, Art Deco--you don't need me for that.

I've thought about this. Girls, and I include myself here, seem much more likely to enjoy action-adventure than boys to enjoy chick books. I wouldn't assume that a boy wouldn't enjoy Jane Eyre but I remember my daughter telling me about the misery the boys in her 9th grade class expressed when they had to read it. Her own 2-year-old copy was dogeared and broken-spined by then.

I suppose that girls are just more eclectic in their tastes than boys are.

Pride and Prejudice is another one like Jane Eyre. Around 9th grade I kept telling my girl that she would really like it. She resisted reading it until one day when I was lying down, resting, and she came and lay down on the bed with me. (Have I told this story here before? It's a happy memory for me.) I picked up P & P without saying what it was, and started reading aloud. After a couple of chapters I put it aside and said I was ready for a nap.

"What is that book?" she asked. "I must read it." I gave it to her, she took it away to finish, and it quickly became a favorite. She bought her own copy to take to college with her.

Anyway, I bought her the DVD of the BBC thing with Colin Firth. My husband happened to be walking through at some point while we were watching it together. He kept walking back through and looking at the TV and finally the story sucked him in and he sat down. Then he started arguing with the characters - "You're her daddy! You need to get some control!" and then when Lydia ran off "Well what did you think was going to happen?" He's a voracious reader but I don't think he would ever read P & P ... but whenever my daughter and I pop some corn and sit down to watch it together he watches it too.

Eveningsun, the operations in question are called 'definition', 'elaboration', and 'the giving of examples'.

Art Deco, what is entailed in coding an argument as feminist? Please define, elaborate, and give examples. Either that, or stop trying to cast me so insultingly in the role of Thrasymachus.

In thinking about what literature should be assigned to high school students, it might be useful to first think about what objectives we are trying to achieve by teaching literature in the schools in the first place. My first thoughts:

1)Develop deep literacy--the ability to read and understand stuff that is fairly lengthy & complex.
2)Develop an aesthetic appreciation for the written word.
3)Develop empathy for people who are unlike oneself.
4)Develop some ability to imagine what life was like for people in earlier time periods.
5)Become acquainted with recognized great works, for two reasons: (a)the inherent goodness of these works, and (b)the ability to follow & participate in disussions in which these works are referenced.

Other objectives? Disagreement with any of the above?

Maybe, in addition to developing "some ability to imagine what life was like for people in earlier time periods," developing an ability to imagine what life might be like in the future? This would license the teaching of sci fi works that might appeal to kids otherwise alienated from literature. I also think the ability to imagine alternative futures is valuable in itself, as is the way good sci fi defamiliarizes the present.

5(b) is basically cultural literacy, which is important as a form of cultural capital (though maybe not as important as Hirsch made it out to be). But I don't think you can make it the primary goal of instruction without sucking the lifeblood out of the literature. It has to be a sort of secondary effect.

Thinking off the top of my head, it seems to me that if you don't accomplish 2, you won't get very far with any of the other goals. My guess is that two things work best to ensnare the alienated and reluctant reader and enable all the other good things: aesthetic appreciation, and identification with a character who is in some way like oneself.

Students can hone their ability to read the lengthy and the complex without necessarily reading literature. Plenty of expository works could do that. So I would amend 1) to make specifically literary reading ability a goal.

Eveningsun...agree with the SF addition--there are certainly SF works of high literary quality, such as Walter Miller's "A Canticle for Leibowitz."

1) should be achieved as early as possible in a person's education, and is probably best done by giving them a fairly wide choice of things to read, so that they can pick whatever they want as long as it's not too easy.

2)might be best accomplished with poetry.

In general, it ought to be possible to find stuff that is similar enough to a person's existing interests to catch their attention and yet still stretch them. The romance-novel reader can read Austin or maybe Eliot. The guy who likes war stories can read Remarque (especially his shattering "The Road Back," which is IMNSHO a deeper novel than "All Quiet.) The reader of shallow SF can read Leibowitz. And so on.

To "catch their attention and yet still stretch them"--that's the tricky part. Ditto for the need to provide kids with a point of identification, on one the hand, and on the other hand the desire to develop empathy for those who are different.

I've never read "The Road Back," but will try to do so soon. AQOTWF has the advantage that the kids could watch the two films afterward.

One of the problems with the "cultural literacy" criterion for selecting texts is that sometimes the better-known work, the one more likely to be referenced (say, AQOTWF), is not as good as other, lesser-known works by the same author (say, if your NSHO is accurate, "The Road Back").

Here's a question: Do you see any value in teaching a graphic novel like Maus in high school?

Art Deco, what is entailed in coding an argument as feminist? Please define, elaborate, and give examples.

Eveningsun, the following was uttered by you

"More generally, anyone who dismissed feminist arguments of the same form of Erin's by asserting the universality of masculine values."

Your characterization, not mine. It is not my job to explain what you mean. I merely note that I cannot see why you would make use of the term 'feminist' to characterize Dr. O'Connor's argument. She neither denies differences in literary taste between male and female nor denigrates modal male preferences. Neither does she suggest that literature should necessarily be examined through the prism of some posited political struggle between men and women.

There are people who have made it their task to meditate on comprehensive principles of justice. I am perplexed as to the circumstances in which you would refer to the norms encoded therein as 'masculine' or 'feminine'. There are people who have made it their task to meditate on the proper roles, aspirations, behavioral norms, &c. of men and women respectively. By elaborating on distinct sets of standards, they are not asserting the universality of masculine values.

"The Road Back" happens after the end of WWI, and involves the characters trying to readjust to life back home. It is more about the internal thoughts and emotions of the characters than about any particular action or events, although there are some vivid combat flashbacks. In the context of this discussion, it's interesting because it's something that I imagine could be given to somebody whose previous reading interests had been in blood & thunder adventure books, and draw them into something much deeper.

Art Deco, allow me to clarify "feminist arguments of the same form of Erin's" by rephrasing as follows:

"feminist arguments of the same form as Erin's non-feminist argument."

My intended meaning was that, even though Erin's argument (for gender-sensitive book selection that avoids alienating boys) was not feminist, it had the same form as earlier feminist arguments (for gender-sensitive book selection that avoids alienating girls). I certainly didn't mean to "use...the term 'feminist' to characterize Dr. O'Connor's argument," among other reasons because, as you so eloquently point out, there is nothing feminist about her argument. (Which is not the same as saying there is nothing political in her argument.)

My apologies for the ambiguity in my earlier reply. Hope this dispels any remaining perplexity.

I grew up surrounded by books and was reading at a level much beyond my years and peers. Most of the assigned readings I had read long before high school and I am always reading something. But so few households in America emphasize reading at young ages that it is a wonder that half of our students can read...PERIOD, let alone comprehend such works as Jane Eyre or The Scarlet Letter. Factor in the archaic english that appears in so many great works, and it is a miracle that most students even completely read the text. Cliff Notes are a life saver for passing the tests...why read yourself when someone has already given you the standard analysis?

In an era of sound bites and 10 minutes of substance between 5 minutes of advertisements, is it any wonder that it is difficult for a student to read a book such as Moby Dick or Tale of Two Cities or even The Great Gatsby? Of mice and men might be short enough that to be considered a quick read. Our culture today disdains intelligent works, and frowns upon exceptional talent.

"No child left behind" has lowered the bar so low that yes, we might not be leaving any children behind, but we are destroying those that have the highest potential by not providing them with sufficient challenges.

"RIF" should be revived...Access to books at all ages should be granted to all children and PARENTS SHOULD BE INVOLVED!!!!!! Our future as a nation is at stake when so many of our children are left behind or abandoned. Our literacy rate needs to reach into the 95-99th percentiles rather than the miserable 75th that it is today. We don't teach a hatred of reading...we just don't teach a love of it...or have forgotten to teach it at all.

That's a nice summary of the cultural forces working against reading, Tekbob. I would add one more, namely, the current feeling among so many boys that reading itself, rather than particular texts, is feminine. A bit of googling turns up the following:

"reading is for girls" -- 1,230 hits
"reading is for sissies" -- 891
"reading is for fags" -- 840

By comparison, "reading is for boys" yields only 3 hits. (Not exactly rigorous, I know, but still suggestive.) It may be, as Erin suggests, that so many boys hate reading itself because they associate it with the primarily feminine texts they've been assigned. But maybe it runs deeper than that. Maybe a lot of parents have themselves internalized this gendered view of reading and are subtly teaching it to their children. Presumably there's some kind of complicated dialectic involved. I know there's been a lot of research about how reading came to be gendered in the past (e.g., the development of a large female readership for the novel in the 19th century), and I assume there's been some research about such matters today--just don't have time to get into it. But I plan to talk to my dept's adolescent lit teacher when I see her.

There are simple solutions for these issues. One is to institute Reading Circles in the English classroom. Here, groups of four to six students choose a book, set a schedule, set an agenda, and read and discuss the work together. A classroom might have five different circles going on at once, with one group reading *Jane Eyre*, another reading *Treasure Island*, another *The Red Badge of Courage*, another *A Lesson Before Dying*, and another *Little Women*. Literature circles can be as structured or inquiry-based as a teacher wants.

Similar to this solution is the Nancy Atwell solution: individual reading. Each student reads, writes regularly about the reading, constructs vocabulary lists, share their findings, etc., but each is free to pursue a line of reading based on her interests. If she starts the year with *The Hobbit* and finds it dreadful, then she can move to *The Metamorphosis* next, follow it with *Cat's Cradle*, maybe some Borges stories, backwards to *The 1001 Nights*, etc.

In each case, teachers can set some time for whole class instruction. Mini-lessons of ten minutes on literary elements or composition ideas can be incorporates into literature circles or an Atwell situation. Or the teacher can begin each marking period with a whole class reading, while dedicating the second 8 or so weeks to circles or individual reading projects.

[Personally speaking, *The Good Earth* in eighth grade nearly killed my own desire to read. Luckily, I found Camus via The Cure, and that got me to Hemingway and Chandler, and The Police got me to Nabokov, Scritti Politti got me to Derrida by 11th grade, Gang of Four to Greil Marcus and then Lester Bangs, Kate Bush to *Wuthering Heights*, Tom Waits to Kerouac and Burroughs and Kurt Weill and Coltrane . . . which is to say, without the devil's music, I might not have been an English major, male or female.]

Has anybody noticed how quickly girls are closing the gap with boys in SAT reading scores? Assigned readigns may have something to do with it.

This is an interesting posting because I have been spending this year making ammends to my previous English teachers by reading all of the books they assigned but that I didn't read. "Jane Eyre" wasn't one of them (I read that one on my own and liked it), but "Wuthering Heights" was. After reading it one BA, one MA, and one Ph.D. after it was assigned in my sophomore English lit class--at an all-boys private high school--I still maintain that there is very little in that novel that is at all substantial--not to mention relevant--to most readers. "JE" is much, much better.

"The Scarlet Letter" does get better with time, and I do think that it's an important text for general readers--high school students--to know. I think it just comes down to good teaching in order to get students through it.

This semester, I'm teaching the early part of the undergraduate American lit survey (the part that goes from Early American writing to 1865), and I assigned "Moby Dick." I've read the book before, but I've never taught it, so I'm challenging myself this semester. We'll see how it goes. Worst case, I'll show some clips of "Deadliest Catch" to pass the time ;-)

Murray Jay Siskind
www.carburetordungtoo.blogspot.com

Murray -- I too avoided *Wuthering Heights*; it was never assigned to me, and I always figured it was for girls.

When I finally read it for my graduate school oral exam, I was stunned at the degree to which Faulkner rips it off for *Absalom, Absalom*, one of the great male authors and one of the great heroic, male novels. I was simply blown away by Bronte's prose, by her navigation of multiple narrative frames, by her intensity of atmosphere and character. I felt stupid for not knowing the novel sooner.

I think that, aside from any social and personal issues a teacher must be aware of, s/he must find an adequate balance between reaching as many students as possible and not allowing the class to turn into little more than a library or book club. It's important for students to be exposed to a wide variety of literature; so I don't think that a teacher should exclude a book like Jane Eyre from his/her curriculum just because it appears to be a "chick book" on the surface. It's the teacher's job to make that book accessible to as many students as possible while acknowledging that, yes, there will be some students who just won't like it. Both students and teachers must realize that teaching literature isn't about pleasing your students by taking pains to choose only books they'll like; it's about teaching them to think seriously about and find ways to relate to many different pieces of literature, including those the student(s) may not choose to pick up at the library. If a teacher just lets students read the sorts of books they want all the time, the students will be far less likely to really experience new books in new ways as they should in a lit. class.