A Walk in the Stacks
by Jack Farrell
Consultant Teacher
Conejo Valley Unified School District
[Editor's note: This is the 2nd article I wrote after I decided to couple my observations of beginning teachers' classrooms with cognitive research on what I was witnessing.]
"But what I have discovered, in countless hours of watching instruction, and my own recollection of 30 years in the English classroom as a teacher, is that, for the most part, teaching is talking, and learning is listening."
The news was worse than I expected. The survey itself was partly inspired by a chance conversation with a student in a class I was visiting. I am a consultant teacher and spend most of my day sitting in on the classes of beginning teachers. She approached me near the end of a Geography class:
“Are you from the District?”
“What’s the problem?”
“I just want to complain about the size of these textbooks? Take a look at them.” She showed me. “I can’t even get them all in my backpack, so I have to go back and forth to my locker every two periods.”
“Is that a serious problem for you?”
“It makes me late to class and then I get detentions.”
“It must be difficult to carry them all home.”
“Oh, I don’t take them home!”
“If you don’t take them home, why do you bother to bring them to class?”
“I get points off if I don’t bring them to class!”
This conversation contributed to the troubling suspicion I was forming about content area textbook reading. Students don’t do it. At least they don’t do it anywhere but the classroom, and in class it’s often an oral reading.
So I ran a survey of about a dozen freshmen English classes, college preparatory and honors, at two high schools in my district. I have found over the years that students will answer you honestly if you ask them directly. I queried them about their reading of content area textbooks in the classes taught in our curriculum. The frankness of their answers stunned me. If citizens knew of the profligate way tax money is wasted on the purchase of texts that remain virginal, at $60 a piece, they would run all of us responsible for this boondoggle right out of the state.
Here’s a sampling of what they wrote (each quote represents a different student):
SCIENCE
“We don’t read in science, but we take lots of notes. I will study the notes before a test.”
“We don’t read.”
“Every day. I skim. I have an ‘A’ in science.”
“We don’t really read.”
“In science we skim the chapter.”
“We do all the vocab. But I NEVER read.”
“I don’t read anything.”
“In science we alternate from taking notes to textbook work. When I do the work it usually doesn’t require we know anything besides the key terms so that is what I read.”
“I don’t really read in this class. I take notes because we’re able to use them on the tests and quizzes. I mostly skim the chapter and write down important things.”
“I never have reading to do outside of class.”
I used the survey to inquire about mathematics next. From my direct observations of scores of classes, I knew that there was little actual textbook reading ever assigned:
MATHEMATICS
“I don’t really read the math book. I just do problems out of it. Sometimes I copy busy work from someone else just to save time.”
“We don’t read.”
“Never have to read. Assignments are easy enough for me to figure out on my own.”
“Assignment every night. No reading. Often copy assignments.”
“No reading.”
“No reading. I do take notes though.”
“Never assigned reading.”
“All basically computer work.”
“We read in solving problems or definitions of a words like ‘what is equation.’” [sic]
“You cannot usually read in math. You usually just take notes and do worksheets or problems.”
In our district all freshmen take health one semester and then a combination of geography and career choices during the other semester. Here is a sample of what the students say about their reading habits in these classes:
HEALTH/GEOGRAPHY/CAREER CHOICES
“Most of the time if I am assigned homework where we have to answer questions after reading I read the question first, and go back to find only the answer.”
“None.”
“We just started Geography but on the one assignment we’ve had so far I read only the highlighted parts because we were supposed to get the definitions of them. I read about half of it.”
“I took health for about 2 weeks. We read about 7 pages a night. I didn’t really read it, because it was so easy. I just looked at the questions and found the answers in bold.”
“Skim – looking for bold-faced vocab words. Assigned homework at the end of chapter (sometimes). Usually do the book work in class with a partner.”
“Not normally assigned any reading or even much homework. Review over things in class & given study time in class for test. Just skim over on bold faced text for question.”
The next category was foreign language which many students take in their freshmen year. There is usually a main textbook and a paperback workbook. Here is what some students had to say about their use of textbooks in foreign language:
FOREIGN LANGUAGE
“We don’t really read in French, but we take notes. I will look at the notes before a test.”
“10 pages a week. I read none.”
“We read only in class.”
“We read in class in Spanish. I take notes on what we read.”
“No reading is assigned. Mostly just answering questions.”
“I am in French IICP and we don’t use our textbooks all that much if at all. So I can’t really say.”
“Spanish – I don’t read anything for Spanish.”
“We don’t usually read except for in class.”
“We don’t really have reading assignments. I only use the book to do homework assignments.”
Certainly students read in their English classes, don’t they? Here’s what these students had to say about English:
LANGUAGE ARTS
“We read novels. We are recommended to read 20 mins. A day. I do like twice a week. But not a lot.”
“Around 3 pages every day.”
“We read on an average of once a month from the textbook, and I read it.”
“Independent reading is assigned. I usually read once a week at home. A chapter or two is read. There is no homework on reading.”
“We read a lot in English.”
“We don’t read out of textbooks. We read about 10-15 pages a night out of a novel and read about 200 pages a month of a separate book.”
“In English, I usually get half of the reading done, which doesn’t do very much for my test scores. But it seems there is always something on my mind, so when I do read the whole portion, I go nowhere. It goes from one ear out the other.”
How can students avoid virtually all textbook reading and still achieve success in school? Part of their success is, ironically, directly related to the expertise of their teachers. The professional standards call on teachers to create an effective learning environment and engage all students, and so they do. Learning theory tells teachers that prior knowledge is crucial to learning and so they effectively provide it, and in impressive detail. Theory also extols the efficacy of scaffolding learning so that students are supported all the way through the difficult process. So expert teachers now combine prior knowledge with visual support, cooperative groups and graphic organizers to ensure that students connect to text, and learn from it, the first time through. In fact, teachers are so skilled at implementing these new theories, that students have learned something completely unintended, that the actual reading of the textbook is superfluous to their learning. And students are learning; there is no mistake about that. But what I have discovered, in countless hours of watching instruction, and my own recollection of 30 years in the English classroom as a teacher, is that, for the most part, teaching is talking, and learning is listening.
You might argue that all ideas begin in that oral part of the brain where language is constructed. We have learned then in the last microsecond of our existence as a species to encode that language for others, not present, to decode at a later time. Since all language is, therefore, oral by nature, what truly is lost when the ideas go from teacher to learner orally, with a tacit understanding on both sides, that any actual reading in between is highly encouraged, but ultimately optional? The problem stems from the discovery of what a powerful cognitive tool writing is. It is not merely a convenient process for encoding oral language. For those who have devoted their professional lives to academic research, there is the realization that the act of writing creates thought and no thinker could ever delve as deeply into a subject by musing alone. The writing process marshals the higher order cognitive skills and couples them with academic language in the pursuit of understanding the complex relationships that exist between ideas. Libraries are filled with profound and eloquently crafted books students will never read because their highly skilled teachers have made that journey unnecessary. The reduction to teacher talk, however, seriously simplifies the complex ideas students will never have the chance to read.
Part of the problem is that the language arts curriculum, from the 4thgrade on, is built on the study of fiction. And part is the commitment on the part of secondary teachers of all disciplines to the concept that “content is king”. There is a prescribed curriculum that must go down on schedule and the oral rendering of it is efficient, reliable and easy to assess. A commitment to the “learning from text” design is slow, problematic and very difficult to assess. In answer to the question, “How do you know they’ve read it,” the most consistent comment from colleagues has been a reliance on the trusty pop-quiz. The students in the middle, what some have called dormant readers, have long ago learned that the price to pay for poor performance on pop quizzes is a small one and easily overcome by steady attendance, class participation and being an all-around nice kid in the teacher’s eyes. If the pop quiz is the only true inducement to reading assigned content textbook material, then most hibernating readers may safely continue their slumber.
Any change in direction by the society of educators must be guided by what Grant Wiggens calls a big idea. The big idea should grow out of what we want as an end-product of a typical American K-12 education. I would assert that what we want is a self-starter and an independent learner. As such, this student would be a life-long learner, whose motivation is intrinsic and whose skills would support any subsequent inquiry. He would know where and how to find what he desires. I submit that current pedagogy actively works against this end product, primarily by breeding dependency and passivity. Today’s graduate is trained to learn through a system of external pressure and reward and is so dependent on the oral model of teacher talk that, once stimulated to learn, will sign up for a class, or buy an audio cassette or a video tape, rather than take that first step into the stacks!
There is a pernicious premise that underlies the theoretical framework of the language arts curriculum. The unspoken premise is that reading is very difficult and hence boring. To slay the twin dragons of difficulty and boredom the language arts theorists have relied on their favorite weapon, the narrative power of the creative artist. Match student to highly involving fictional text and you can create not only a community of readers, but can inculcate a life-long devotion to reading. If students leave school with nothing other than a devotion to fiction, you have honored your compact with the gods of literacy. Any examination of language arts texts from the 4th through the 12th grades will reveal an almost exclusive reliance on fictional text, both classic and modern. But where is a student to learn how to read his health book, or his biology or history text, if not in his language arts class? Where will he acquire the academic language necessary to success at the university should he desire to further his education?
As a case in point, I examined the 9th grade Language Arts text in my district. The book is called The Language of Literature, published by McDougal Littell. I looked specifically at the non-fiction selections. In a text over 800 pages long, non-fiction totaled a paltry 19 selections, some considerably less than a page in length. Thirteen of the 19 were autobiographical; in other words, stories that are true instead of stories that are made up, continuing the narrative flavor of the book as a whole. Five were historical essays. The last selection consisted of just 3 quotes and was used in conjunction with an historical essay on the holocaust. The design of the book itself screams out the underlying premise that text is difficult and boring. The pages look not unlike web pages, with splashes of color, pictures, graphics and icons and a near blizzard of font sizes and styles and background fill. The text is often discontinuous, adding a serious impediment to narrative flow. I have the image of a textbook editor who has found completely irresistible the twin thrills of desktop publishing, drag and drop technology and an inexhaustible supply of copyright free clip-art, and has coupled that with a sad contempt for basic human curiosity, a vision of students as hopelessly disengaged unless assaulted, Dunkirk-style, by cable t.v.-like imagery. Somewhere along the line we have forgotten what textbooks are supposed to be: books of text.
Recently I interviewed the circulation manager at the local public library in my town. I asked her what the ratio was of fiction to non-fiction books. She researched that and got back to me. Fully ¾’s of the library is non-fiction. She also shared with me the most common question at the reference desk from students sent there by teachers, whether it be to research the Civil War, or Charlemagne, or Attila the Hun: “Do you have the video?”
If students only study fiction in language arts class, if they seldom read content area textbooks, if most of what they know is the result of teacher-talk, then what tremendously awful stuff must lie gathering dust in the ¾’s of the library students never visit? I decided to see for myself. The non-fiction section of traditional libraries is organized using the Dewey Decimal system. A brief description follows:
The Dewey Decimal System
000 Generalities - reference, encyclopedias, news, trivia.
100 Philosophy & Psychology - emotions, feelings, ethics, logic.
200 Religion - information about major religions.
300 Social Sciences - politics, government, law, education, folklore, folktales, and customs.
400 Language - foreign language, sign language, linguistics.
500 Natural Science & Mathematics - animals, astronomy, botany, dinosaurs, physics.
600 Technology & Applied Sciences - agriculture, pets, buildings, health.
700 The Arts - music, drawing, painting, sports, recreation.
800 Literature - American & British lit., criticism, foreign lit.
900 Geography & History - maps, general history of America and the world.
My plan was to take a walk through the stacks, choosing one book at random from each of the categories above. I must confess that my choices were not entirely random. I am six feet tall and so my eyes tended to scan the shelves near my eye-level. Similar to a walk through a book store, my eyes were captured by attractive binding; thus many of my choices were recently published books. However, I gave no regard to subject or author, except in the area of mathematics, which I describe below. The choices I made are reproduced in the appendices to this article. I tried to pick the opening paragraph(s) of books. But I often skipped the foreward, wanting instead to select from the actual thesis of the book, what generally can be found in the opening paragraphs of chapter 1. What I found amazed me, but it should not have been a surprise. Written by academics, for the most part, these books had been subjected to an intense editorial process. Unlike the proliferation of information on the internet, these books were commissioned, researched, written and edited according to publishing standards which have evolved since the beginning of printing. That the books are of such high quality should be a given. Why they are not read is a mystery. Why they are not studied for what we can learn about the writing process is a tragedy. Language Arts teachers assign fiction, then ask for expository papers from students. They save good papers from their students to use as models for subsequent classes while models by the thousands gather dust among the stacks.
Let’s take a look at a couple of examples. From the 400 section on language, I randomly chose this example:
Reading Between the Signs: Intercultural Communication for Sign Language Interpreters, Anna Mindess, Intercultural Press, Yarmouth, Maine, 1999, 230 pp. Call # 419
. . . a Foreign Service Institute linguist, who, while watching the evening news, discovered that a Vietnamese interpreter had simply given up when trying to bridge the gap between a CBS reporter and a Vietnamese villager. The TV audience watched the reporter ask a question, heard it go back and forth between the interpreter and the villager, and then heard the answer back in English. What the interpreter had done was simply ask the villager to count to ten, which he did. Then the interpreter reported what the villager mighthave said had he been able to understand the abstract ideas in the original question.
--Glenn Fisher
International Negotiation
This incident from the Vietnam war era provides a striking example of the challenges interpreters confront daily. Why did the interpreter in this case abdicate responsibility for accurately conveying the message? Glen Fisher concludes that the interpreter ‘faced an impossible task. The life experiences of the reporter and the villager, and their languages as reflections of culture, presented too great a contrast’ (Fisher 1980, 60-61)
As sign language interpreters, we can empathize with the interpreter described above, although it is hoped that we do not choose the same solution when faced with the challenge of large cultural differences. Cultural differences can be glaring enough to bring a meeting to a halt or so subtle that participants in a conversation do not even realize they are making erroneous judgments about each other. Why and how does culture affect our work, and what can we do when it seems to be at the core of communication difficulties? These are questions I hope to answer in this book.” Chapter 1, Introduction, pp. 1-2, pars. 1-3.
The 500 series is Natural Science and Mathematics. I had already randomly chosen a science text on the genetic revolution when I walked past shelf after shelf of mathematics texts. I stopped in my tracks and recalled all of the hours I’ve spent watching problem sets assigned and solved in math classes. I have never seen any actual reading of text assigned in these classes. What were all of these books and for whom were they intended? I pulled one down at random and copied the opening two paragraphs:
Descartes’ Dream: The World According to Mathematics, Philip Davis & Reuben Hersh, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., Orlando, Fl. 1986, 306 pp. Call # 510.1
THE MODERN WORLD, our world of triumphant rationality, began on November 10, 1619, with a revelation and a nightmare. On that day, in a room in the small Bavarian village of Ulm, Rene Descartes, a Frenchman, twenty-three years old, crawled into a wall stove and, when he was well warmed, had a vision. It was not a vision of God, or of the mother of God, or of celestial chariots, or of the New Jerusalem. It was a vision of the unification of all science.
The vision was preceded by a state of intense concentration and agitation. Descartes’ overheated mind caught fire and provided answers to tremendous problems that had been taxing him for weeks. He was possessed by a Genius, and the answers were revealed in a dazzling, unendurable light. Later, in a state of exhaustion, he went to bed and dreamed three dreams that had been predicted by his Genius.
Chapter 1, “The Mathematized World," pars. 1 & 2, p. 3.
I let this well-crafted prose take hold of my imagination and thought despairingly of all the “rise over run” equations I’ve seen chalked on endless blackboards.
Let’s take a look at a final example, from the 700 series on the arts:
Indian Rock Art of the Southwest, Polly Schaafsma, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1980, 345 pp. Call # 732.209701
For several thousand years the Indians of the American Southwest have been using as canvas and drawing board the rock surfaces of canyon walls, rock-shelters, and talus boulders that characterize the arid terrain of this region. The drawings produced by the application of paint (rock paintings) or the cutting away of the rock surface (petroglyphs) are examples of what is known as rock art. They were made for many purposes by the peoples who have occupied this area, from the early hunter-gatherer populations to the present-day Pueblos, Navajos, and Apaches.
These images pecked into or painted on stone are a valuable component of the archaeological record—graphic images that often derive from the various aspects of prehistoric cosmologies and mythic systems. Some prehistoric ideologies of the Southwest have been carried into the ethnographic present by the modern descendants of the prehistoric peoples, but other such systems, with the exception of what can be learned through the visual imagery of the petroglyphs and rock paintings, have been almost totally lost. Rock art, then, is an important means of reaching some understanding of the sacred dimension and certain related practices of the prehistoric period.” Chapter 1, “Introduction: Images on Stone,” p. 1
If I could choose so randomly such amazing examples of such fascinating subjects rendered in such engaging prose, how rich could a more purposeful walk through the stacks ultimately be?
I’m offering a different view of our task as secondary teachers. I advocate turning the current process on its head in the service of text:
I will conclude, somewhat ironically, with allegory, which is firmly rooted in the oral tradition. And with apologies to e.e. cummings:
Once there was a man named noone who fell in love with a girl named anyone. So noone married anyone and soon they had their someones. They desired their youngest play the flute. He agreed, but truly had little passion for music and less for the sound he made with the strange pipe. noone hired a teacher for someone, who willingly played for his teacher, but never practiced. Months went by and the teacher grew frustrated when his charge made little progress and the flute only squeaked. noone fired the teacher and hired another, who was himself surprised that his young student played so poorly after so many lessons. He urged noone to supervise someone’s practice. But someone remained petulantly uncooperative and would not pick up his flute between lessons. The pipe screeched and anyone held her ears. The second teacher quit in despair.
Then noone located a new kind of teacher, one who believed that knowledge could be de-contextualized, that learning could be transferred across the curriculum, and who had steeped himself in the latest reading theory. He was convinced that someone could learn the flute, if only he would try this new method. First he told noone that someone would need more lessons, especially in light of his refusal to practice. someone took lessons twice a week at first, and then moved to daily lessons. His playing improved, though not significantly. It had moved somewhere beyond squeaking and screeching, but not far.
He needed good modeling if he were to improve, felt his new teacher, and so the teacher played for him. someone liked that part of his lesson quite a bit. When improvement was still only marginal, the teacher employed the very latest theory, something called a “think aloud.” The teacher would play a few notes and then would pause and share the thought process that produced that wonderful music. someone was very impressed. Then someone would squeak a few notes himself and share the thought process that produced them, however painful they sounded to the human ear. The thought process was remarkably similar given the disparity of the outcome.
noone was convinced that this new teacher was a genius. No matter how awful someone played, noone loved it, though anyone left the house during the daily lessons. The teacher never lost his enthusiasm for new theories, being forever convinced that better lessons would make better music.
Then one day someone asked noone if he could quit the flute and start guitar lessons. someone confessed to noone that he had developed an addiction to MTV. someone now knew that if he put all the effort into the guitar that had been wasted on the flute, he could himself become a rock and roll star.
noone believed him.
APPENDICES
ONE
The Language of Literature, Applebee, Arthur N., et. al ed., McDougal Littell, Evanston, Il. 1997
Non-Fiction Selections
fromI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings 52
Autobiogaphical Novel: In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou tells about her childhood in the small, segregated town of Stamps, Arkansas
A Christmas Memory 62
An autobiographical story of author Truman Capote’s youth and his relationship with a much older female cousin, Sook Faulk.
On Being Seventeen, Bright, and Unable to Read 79
An autobiographical essay by David Raymond and his battles in school with dyslexia.
The First Appendectomy 145
An autobiographical essay by William A. Nolen about a young intern and his first surgery.
You’re Short, Besides! 282
In this autobiographical essay Sucheng Chan writes of how she defied the odds by surviving a childhood attack of polio and how she learned to live her disability.
The United States vs. Susan B. Anthony 293
An historical essay written by Margaret Truman about the suffragette Susan B. Anthony
Fish Cheeks 323
An autobiographical essay by Amy Tan about falling in love with the minister’s son at age 14.
On Writing “Marine Corps. Issue” 355
A brief statement from the author of the short story “Marine Corps. Issue” about the origin of the story.
Father’s Day 401
An autobiographical essay by Michael Dorris who, though he grew up without a father, became a father to 6 children.
fromBlack Boy 429
An excerpt from the autobiography of Richard Wright.
Only Daughter 437
In this autobiographical essay Sandra Cisneros describes her father’s ideas about the proper role of females. Coming from the culture of old Mexico, Cisneros’s father holds the patriarchal beliefs of many traditional cultures.
Fish Eyes 462
A brief excerpt from comedian David Brenner’s autobiography
“Who Killed My Daughter?”: Lois Duncan Searches for an Answer 618
An essay by Maria Simson about the search, by author Lois Duncan, for the killer of her daughter.
The Great Taos Bank Robbery 669
An historical essay about a bank robbery in the town of Taos, New Mexico, in 1957
Unfinished Business 713
An autobiographical essay in which a psychiatrist tells about her work with a dying child and the child’s family.
A Trip to the Edge of Survival 756
A read life adventure of an ordeal at sea, written by Ron Arias, originally for People magazine. It tells the story of the crew of the Cairo III and their voyage from to where they were rescued in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in June, 1988.
The Story Behind “The Cask of Amontillado” 783
Written by Edward Row Stowe, this one page essay purports to tell the story of an actual incident, the details of which inspired Poe’s famous story.
Not to Go with the Others 809
John Hersey, who, at the end of World War II, was stationed in Moscow as a reporter for Time Magazine, tells the story of Frantizek Zaremski, a Polish farmer who survived the war.
Reflections on the Holocaust 814
Three brief quotes or inscriptions relating to the Holocaust and used as a thematic follow-up to the Hersey story.
Autobiographical = 13
Historical Essay = 5
Quotations = 1
Total = 19
TWO
The Dewey Decimal System
000 Generalities - reference, encyclopedias, news, trivia.
Chaos Theory Tamed, by Garnett P. Williams, Joseph Henry Press, Washington, D.C. 1997, 444 pp. Call # 003.857
“The concept of chaos is one of the most exciting and rapidly expanding research topics of recent decades. Ordinarily, chaos is disorder or confusion. In the scientific sense, chaos does involve some disarray, but there’s much more to it than that. We’ll arrive at a more complete definition in the next chapter.” [Introduction, p. 3, par. 1]
“Summary
Chaos (deterministic chaos) deals with long-term evolution—how something changes over a long time. A chaotic time series looks irregular. Two of chaos’s important practical implications are that long-term predictions under chaotic conditions are worthless and complex behavior can have simple causes. Chaos is difficult to identify in real-world data because the available tools generally were developed for idealistic conditions that are difficult to fulfill in practice.” [Introduction, p. 7, par. 14 of the chapter]
100 Philosophy & Psychology - emotions, feelings, ethics, logic.
Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears, by Tom Lutz, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1999, 304 pp. Call # 152.4
“Weeping is a human universal. Throughout history, and in every culture, emotional tears are shed—everyone, everywhere, cries at some time. People weep during funeral rituals, for instance, in every culture except in Bali, and even there people weep in mourning—tearless funerals are made possible only by postponing the rites until two full years after the death. Around the globe, infants cry in hunger and pain and children in frustration and disappointment. However much the rules governing emotional display may vary from time to time and place to place, adults weep for myriad reasons and sometimes, a few claim, for no reason at all. In American culture, even those rare people (usually male) who claim they never cry can remember doing so as children.” [Introduction, p. 17, par. 1]
200 Religion - information about major religions.
Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions, by Walter Burkert, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1996. 255 pp. Call # 291
“Religion, though, fails to disappear. While all around us generations are growing up factually without religion, the religious forces remain unexpectedly tenacious and impetuous, nay dangerous and sometimes disastrous. We are puzzled by the drawing power of new cults and sects, we are horrified by the passions of religious strife in many contemporary conflicts, we are apprehensive of the growing tide of fundamentalism in different encampments. More than seventy years of well-organized atheistic education and propaganda did not succeed in abolishing religion in the Soviet empire, and its re-emergence is resuscitating age-old battles. It is no less agonizing to observe the failure of religion to deal with such urgent problems of the day as environment protection and population control. Religion still enjoys high moral credit and yet appears thoroughly problematic, a challenge to reason in its theory and practice as it has always been—all the more reason, then, for anthropology to take account of this phenomenon. We must at least try to make sense of the irrational in the hope of gaining some illumination, some insight from the fringes of experience, whether superhuman or subhuman.” [Preface, pp. ix-x, par. 3]
300 Social Sciences - politics, government, law, education, folklore, folktales, and customs.
The Story of American Freedom, Eric Foner, W.W. Norton, New York, 1998, 332 pp. Call #323.44
“No idea is more fundamental to American’s sense of themselves as individuals and as a nation than freedom. The central term in our political vocabulary, ‘freedom’—or ‘liberty,’ with which it is almost always used interchangeably—is deeply embedded in the documentary record of our history and the language of everyday life. The Declaration of Independence lists liberty among mankind’s inalienable rights; the Constitution announces as it purpose to secure liberty’s blessing. The United States fought the Civil War to bring about a new birth of freedom, World War II for the Four Freedoms, and the Cold War to defend the Free World. Americans’ love of liberty has been represented by poles, caps, statues, and acted out by burning stamps and draft cards, running away from slavery, and demonstrating for the right to vote. If asked to explain or justify their actions, public or private, Americans are likely to respond, ‘It’s a free country.’ Every man in the street, white, black, red or yellow,’ wrote the educator and statesman Ralph Bunche in 1940, ‘knows that this is ‘the land of the free’ . . . ‘the cradle of liberty.’” [1] [Introduction, p xiii, par. 1]
400 Language - foreign language, sign language, linguistics.
Reading Between the Signs: Intercultural Communication for Sign Language Interpreters, Anna Mindess, Intercultural Press, Yarmouth, Maine, 1999, 230 pp. Call # 419
“. . . a Foreign Service Institute linguist, who, while watching the evening news, discovered that a Vietnamese interpreter had simply given up when trying to bridge the gap between a CBS reporter and a Vietnamese villager. The TV audience watched the reporter ask a question, heard it go back and forth between the interpreter and the villager, and then heard the answer back in English. What the interpreter had done was simply ask the villager to count to ten, which he did. Then the interpreter reported what the villager might have said had he been able to understand the abstract ideas in the original question.
--Glenn Fisher
International Negotiation
“This incident from the Vietnam war era provides a striking example of the challenges interpreters confront daily. Why did the interpreter in this case abdicate responsibility for accurately conveying the message? Glen Fisher concludes that the interpreter ‘faced an impossible task. The life experiences of the reporter and the villager, and their languages as reflections of culture, presented too great a contrast’ (Fisher 1980, 60-61)
“As sign language interpreters, we can empathize with the interpreter described above, although it is hoped that we do not choose the same solution when faced with the challenge of large cultural differences. Cultural differences can be glaring enough to bring a meeting to a halt or so subtle that participants in a conversation do not even realize they are making erroneous judgments about each other. Why and how does culture affect our work, and what can we do when it seems to be at the core of communication difficulties? These are questions I hope to answer in this book.” Chapter 1, Introduction, pp. 1-2, pars. 1-3.”
500 Natural Science & Math - animals, astronomy, botany, dinosaurs, physics.
Descartes’ Dream: The World According to Mathematics, Philip Davis & Reuben Hersh, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., Orlando, Fl. 1986, 306 pp. Call # 510.1
“THE MODERN WORLD, our world of triumphant rationality, began on November 10, 1619, with a revelation and a nightmare. On that day, in a room in the small Bavarian village of Ulm, Rene Descartes, a Frenchman, twenty-three years old, crawled into a wall stove and, when he was well warmed, had a vision. It was not a vision of God, or of the mother of God, or of celestial chariots, or of the New Jerusalem. It was a vision of the unification of all science.
“The vision was preceded by a state of intense concentration and agitation. Descartes’ overheated mind caught fire and provided answers to tremendous problems that had been taxing him for weeks. He was possessed by a Genius, and the answers were revealed in a dazzling, unendurable light. Later, in a state of exhaustion, he went to bed and dreamed three dreams that had been predicted by his Genius.” Chapter 1, “The Mathematized World, pars. 1 & 2, p. 3.
The Lives to Come: the Genetic Revolution and Human Possibilities, Philip Kitcher, Simon & Schuster, New York, N.Y., 1996, 326 pp. Call #573.21
“Each of the rooms at Children’s Convalescent Hospital in San Diego is alive with color. Around the three (or four, or five) beds, vivid pictures and brightly painted walls provide an exuberant welcome. Large stuffed toys in red, green, or purple sometimes lie scattered on the floor; more frequently they sit stiffly, untouched, the product of adult rearrangement. On the beds lie the children—the two-year-olds, the four-year-olds, the ten-year-olds, and the teenagers—some whose limbs convulse erratically, others who are unnaturally still.
“Beside the doors there are often notes, handwritten by the nursing staff, providing detailed instructions on what a particular child has achieved, what can be done to foster further development. One boy is starting to pull himself up if a pair of hands is held out to him in a particular way; a girl smiled when a music box played a certain tune. Records of small accomplishments, they are built on daily, read and revised by a team of nurses whose care permits truncated human lives still to grow, even if, for most observers, there is no pace perceived.
“Some of these children will die very young in the bright world of Children’s Hospital. For others there will be a succession of hospital rooms, without toys or murals, and a succession of nurses, who may no longer wonder how to extend their hands to elicit a response, who no longer wind music boxes, a succession of rooms, to which the children will be largely oblivious. A few will return, at least for a time, to their parents.” From Chapter 1 “The Shapes of Suffering,” pars. 1-3, pp. 13-14.
600 Technology & Applied Sciences - agriculture, pets, buildings, health.
The Story of Corn: the Myths and History, the Culture and Agriculture, the Art and Science of America’s Quintessential Crop, Betty Fussell, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1992, 333 pp. Call #633.15
“At the end of the third quarter,” the cabin steward announces over the loudspeaker,” the Cornhuskers are leading twenty-one to nineteen.” The passengers burst into cheers. This United Airlines steward knows how to milk his audience. He got laughs at the beginning of the flight from O’Hare Airport in Chicago to Lincoln, Nebraska, when he asked us to don our Mae Wests “in the unlikely event that we should land in water.” Now he congratulates our pilot on back-to-back perfect landings.: “Let’s show him our appreciation, folks.” We burst into applause. We have just landed in the city named for America’s favorite president, in the state that is the exact center of the United States.
“My cousin Eleanor and her husband, Don, meet me at the airport dressed in Cornhusker red because on Football Saturdays toutLincoln paints the town red. ‘The State Capitol is one of the top ten Wonders of the World,’ says my cousin, ‘that’s what they say.’ I’ve seen most of the classical seven but never the Capitol nor Nebraska nor my cousin, although I’m here for a reunion of cousins, the grandchildren of Parks Ira and Ellen Culver Kennedy, whose eight children were born in Nebraska. Most of the grandchildren are now grandparents themselves, most live in the Midwest, and all but one are strangers whom I’ve never met. I’ve been to Halicarnassus and the country of Peru, but never the center of America, which boasts four Perus, one of them a small town in Nebraska where my mother taught country school. As a migrant bi-coastal American, old enough to be a grandmother, I have come at last to seek and to find, as my Grandmother Kennedy would have said, the center of my family, my country, my culture—founded and sustained on the cultivation of corn.” Part One: “A Babel of Corn,” Chapter 1 “Corn Mad,” p. 3
700 The Arts - music, drawing, painting, sports, recreation.
Indian Rock Art of the Southwest, Polly Schaafsma, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1980, 345 pp. Call # 732.209701
“For several thousand years the Indians of the American Southwest have been using as canvas and drawing board the rock surfaces of canyon walls, rock-shelters, and talus boulders that characterize the arid terrain of this region. The drawings produced by the application of paint (rock paintings) or the cutting away of the rock surface (petroglyphs) are examples of what is known as rock art. They were made for many purposes by the peoples who have occupied this area, from the early hunter-gatherer populations to the present-day Pueblos, Navajos, and Apaches.
“These images pecked into or painted on stone are a valuable component of the archaeological record—graphic images that often derive from the various aspects of prehistoric cosmologies and mythic systems. Some prehistoric ideologies of the Southwest have been carried into the ethnographic present by the modern descendants of the prehistoric peoples, but other such systems, with the exception of what can be learned through the visual imagery of the petroglyphs and rock paintings, have been almost totally lost. Rock art, then, is an important means of reaching some understanding of the sacred dimension and certain related practices of the prehistoric period.” Chapter 1, “Introduction: Images on Stone,” p. 1
800 Literature - American & British lit., criticism, foreign lit.
Svengali’s Web: The Alien Enchanger in Modern Culture, Daniel Pick, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2000, 229 pp., Call #809-9335
“‘Svengali, Marvellous Svengali—a weird spectral, Satanic figure—he literally took away our breath.’ Yes, it was a creation that took away one’s breath with the sheer force of its genius, with its wealth, its unfathomable depths of fantastic, unpremeditated art. The creation was so rich, so rare, so subtle, that it was beyond estimation, and thus beyond praise.
Max Beerbohm, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree[2]
“The image of a sinister hypnotist, lurking behind the scenes, ambiguously responsible for breaking and remaking another weaker character, has been given many literary, theatrical and cinematic forms. Medicine, psychiatry and psychoanalysis also offer up their cautionary tales about charismatic charlatans who have become the dire masters of their patients. But there is one such shadowy entrancer whose name has become synonymous with psychological manipulation: Svengali.
“Mesmerist, musician and Jew, the original Svengali was invented by the Anglo-French illustrator and writer, George Du Maurier, in his novel, Trilby, a none-too-demanding tearjerker that was serialized in Harper’s New Monthly Magazineand then published as a book in 1894. Du Maurier’s story is set in Paris and London. Svengali, an itinerant conductor, is its villain. Described as being ‘of Jewish aspect, well-featured but sinister’ and with ‘bold, brilliant black eyes’ and ‘long heavy lids’, Svengali attempts to win over the heroine of the book, a young artists’ model named Trilby. He hypnotises her without her consent. She becomes ‘haunted’ by his eyes and by his name which rings in her head and ears until ‘it became an obsession.’ Trilby is eventually compelled to marry Svengali and is then transformed into an international concert star, who sings zombie-like, to ecstatic audiences while under Svengali’s spell. When Trilby finally escapes the mesmerist’s clutches in very public and dramatic circumstances it is only to collapse, broken and exhausted.” Introductory quote and pars. 1 & 2, pp. 1,2 of Chapter 1.
900 Geography & History - maps, general history of America and the world.
The Oxford History of Mexico, Michael C. Meyer and William H. Beezley, ed., Oxford University Press, 2000 670 pp., Call # 972
“The distinct races of the world tend to mix more and more until they form a new human type . . . Even the most contradictory mixtures can always be beneficially resolved because the spiritual factor in each serves to elevate the whole.
Jose Vasconcelos (1881-1959) La raza cosmica
"Mexico is the product of a collision between, and ultimately a fusion of, two vastly different worlds. In the early 16th century, a generation after Christopher Columbus bumped into Watling Island in the Bahamas, Spain encountered a bewildering kaleidoscope of Mesoamerican cultures in what later became southern and central Mexico. And more would be found in the decades ahead as a series of frontiers were pushed farther and farther to the north. Although the Spaniards were not strangers to the notion that racial and ethnic confrontations could be followed by accommodation, reconciliation, and the blending of ideas, they were not prepared for the remarkable civilizations they encountered. The Native American community found itself surprised and unprepared as well. Neither party to this epic rendezvous would again be the same. Mexican historian Enrique Krauze captured the essence of this historical moment perfectly in a recent description of the first meeting of Hernan (Fernando) Cortes and Moctezuma (Moteuczoma, or Montezuma): 'They created a new nationality at the instant they met.'” Introductory quote and paragraph 1 of the Introduction, p. 1
[On May 30, 2001, when I returned one day to the same Geography class, that same student came up to me and wanted to know if I had done anything about the size of the textbooks? Her name is Ashley and I told her of the surveys I ran, this article, and the presentations I’ve given about it. She was quite flattered to see all of what transpired from the chance conversation she initiated with me.]
[1]Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (New York, 1944),4.
[2]Max Beerbohm, quoting a London critic, and recalling his half-brother Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s stage triumph as Svengali in 1895. Beerbohm 19209, p. 100
"But what I have discovered, in countless hours of watching instruction, and my own recollection of 30 years in the English classroom as a teacher, is that, for the most part, teaching is talking, and learning is listening."
The news was worse than I expected. The survey itself was partly inspired by a chance conversation with a student in a class I was visiting. I am a consultant teacher and spend most of my day sitting in on the classes of beginning teachers. She approached me near the end of a Geography class:
“Are you from the District?”
“What’s the problem?”
“I just want to complain about the size of these textbooks? Take a look at them.” She showed me. “I can’t even get them all in my backpack, so I have to go back and forth to my locker every two periods.”
“Is that a serious problem for you?”
“It makes me late to class and then I get detentions.”
“It must be difficult to carry them all home.”
“Oh, I don’t take them home!”
“If you don’t take them home, why do you bother to bring them to class?”
“I get points off if I don’t bring them to class!”
This conversation contributed to the troubling suspicion I was forming about content area textbook reading. Students don’t do it. At least they don’t do it anywhere but the classroom, and in class it’s often an oral reading.
So I ran a survey of about a dozen freshmen English classes, college preparatory and honors, at two high schools in my district. I have found over the years that students will answer you honestly if you ask them directly. I queried them about their reading of content area textbooks in the classes taught in our curriculum. The frankness of their answers stunned me. If citizens knew of the profligate way tax money is wasted on the purchase of texts that remain virginal, at $60 a piece, they would run all of us responsible for this boondoggle right out of the state.
Here’s a sampling of what they wrote (each quote represents a different student):
SCIENCE
“We don’t read in science, but we take lots of notes. I will study the notes before a test.”
“We don’t read.”
“Every day. I skim. I have an ‘A’ in science.”
“We don’t really read.”
“In science we skim the chapter.”
“We do all the vocab. But I NEVER read.”
“I don’t read anything.”
“In science we alternate from taking notes to textbook work. When I do the work it usually doesn’t require we know anything besides the key terms so that is what I read.”
“I don’t really read in this class. I take notes because we’re able to use them on the tests and quizzes. I mostly skim the chapter and write down important things.”
“I never have reading to do outside of class.”
I used the survey to inquire about mathematics next. From my direct observations of scores of classes, I knew that there was little actual textbook reading ever assigned:
MATHEMATICS
“I don’t really read the math book. I just do problems out of it. Sometimes I copy busy work from someone else just to save time.”
“We don’t read.”
“Never have to read. Assignments are easy enough for me to figure out on my own.”
“Assignment every night. No reading. Often copy assignments.”
“No reading.”
“No reading. I do take notes though.”
“Never assigned reading.”
“All basically computer work.”
“We read in solving problems or definitions of a words like ‘what is equation.’” [sic]
“You cannot usually read in math. You usually just take notes and do worksheets or problems.”
In our district all freshmen take health one semester and then a combination of geography and career choices during the other semester. Here is a sample of what the students say about their reading habits in these classes:
HEALTH/GEOGRAPHY/CAREER CHOICES
“Most of the time if I am assigned homework where we have to answer questions after reading I read the question first, and go back to find only the answer.”
“None.”
“We just started Geography but on the one assignment we’ve had so far I read only the highlighted parts because we were supposed to get the definitions of them. I read about half of it.”
“I took health for about 2 weeks. We read about 7 pages a night. I didn’t really read it, because it was so easy. I just looked at the questions and found the answers in bold.”
“Skim – looking for bold-faced vocab words. Assigned homework at the end of chapter (sometimes). Usually do the book work in class with a partner.”
“Not normally assigned any reading or even much homework. Review over things in class & given study time in class for test. Just skim over on bold faced text for question.”
The next category was foreign language which many students take in their freshmen year. There is usually a main textbook and a paperback workbook. Here is what some students had to say about their use of textbooks in foreign language:
FOREIGN LANGUAGE
“We don’t really read in French, but we take notes. I will look at the notes before a test.”
“10 pages a week. I read none.”
“We read only in class.”
“We read in class in Spanish. I take notes on what we read.”
“No reading is assigned. Mostly just answering questions.”
“I am in French IICP and we don’t use our textbooks all that much if at all. So I can’t really say.”
“Spanish – I don’t read anything for Spanish.”
“We don’t usually read except for in class.”
“We don’t really have reading assignments. I only use the book to do homework assignments.”
Certainly students read in their English classes, don’t they? Here’s what these students had to say about English:
LANGUAGE ARTS
“We read novels. We are recommended to read 20 mins. A day. I do like twice a week. But not a lot.”
“Around 3 pages every day.”
“We read on an average of once a month from the textbook, and I read it.”
“Independent reading is assigned. I usually read once a week at home. A chapter or two is read. There is no homework on reading.”
“We read a lot in English.”
“We don’t read out of textbooks. We read about 10-15 pages a night out of a novel and read about 200 pages a month of a separate book.”
“In English, I usually get half of the reading done, which doesn’t do very much for my test scores. But it seems there is always something on my mind, so when I do read the whole portion, I go nowhere. It goes from one ear out the other.”
How can students avoid virtually all textbook reading and still achieve success in school? Part of their success is, ironically, directly related to the expertise of their teachers. The professional standards call on teachers to create an effective learning environment and engage all students, and so they do. Learning theory tells teachers that prior knowledge is crucial to learning and so they effectively provide it, and in impressive detail. Theory also extols the efficacy of scaffolding learning so that students are supported all the way through the difficult process. So expert teachers now combine prior knowledge with visual support, cooperative groups and graphic organizers to ensure that students connect to text, and learn from it, the first time through. In fact, teachers are so skilled at implementing these new theories, that students have learned something completely unintended, that the actual reading of the textbook is superfluous to their learning. And students are learning; there is no mistake about that. But what I have discovered, in countless hours of watching instruction, and my own recollection of 30 years in the English classroom as a teacher, is that, for the most part, teaching is talking, and learning is listening.
You might argue that all ideas begin in that oral part of the brain where language is constructed. We have learned then in the last microsecond of our existence as a species to encode that language for others, not present, to decode at a later time. Since all language is, therefore, oral by nature, what truly is lost when the ideas go from teacher to learner orally, with a tacit understanding on both sides, that any actual reading in between is highly encouraged, but ultimately optional? The problem stems from the discovery of what a powerful cognitive tool writing is. It is not merely a convenient process for encoding oral language. For those who have devoted their professional lives to academic research, there is the realization that the act of writing creates thought and no thinker could ever delve as deeply into a subject by musing alone. The writing process marshals the higher order cognitive skills and couples them with academic language in the pursuit of understanding the complex relationships that exist between ideas. Libraries are filled with profound and eloquently crafted books students will never read because their highly skilled teachers have made that journey unnecessary. The reduction to teacher talk, however, seriously simplifies the complex ideas students will never have the chance to read.
Part of the problem is that the language arts curriculum, from the 4thgrade on, is built on the study of fiction. And part is the commitment on the part of secondary teachers of all disciplines to the concept that “content is king”. There is a prescribed curriculum that must go down on schedule and the oral rendering of it is efficient, reliable and easy to assess. A commitment to the “learning from text” design is slow, problematic and very difficult to assess. In answer to the question, “How do you know they’ve read it,” the most consistent comment from colleagues has been a reliance on the trusty pop-quiz. The students in the middle, what some have called dormant readers, have long ago learned that the price to pay for poor performance on pop quizzes is a small one and easily overcome by steady attendance, class participation and being an all-around nice kid in the teacher’s eyes. If the pop quiz is the only true inducement to reading assigned content textbook material, then most hibernating readers may safely continue their slumber.
Any change in direction by the society of educators must be guided by what Grant Wiggens calls a big idea. The big idea should grow out of what we want as an end-product of a typical American K-12 education. I would assert that what we want is a self-starter and an independent learner. As such, this student would be a life-long learner, whose motivation is intrinsic and whose skills would support any subsequent inquiry. He would know where and how to find what he desires. I submit that current pedagogy actively works against this end product, primarily by breeding dependency and passivity. Today’s graduate is trained to learn through a system of external pressure and reward and is so dependent on the oral model of teacher talk that, once stimulated to learn, will sign up for a class, or buy an audio cassette or a video tape, rather than take that first step into the stacks!
There is a pernicious premise that underlies the theoretical framework of the language arts curriculum. The unspoken premise is that reading is very difficult and hence boring. To slay the twin dragons of difficulty and boredom the language arts theorists have relied on their favorite weapon, the narrative power of the creative artist. Match student to highly involving fictional text and you can create not only a community of readers, but can inculcate a life-long devotion to reading. If students leave school with nothing other than a devotion to fiction, you have honored your compact with the gods of literacy. Any examination of language arts texts from the 4th through the 12th grades will reveal an almost exclusive reliance on fictional text, both classic and modern. But where is a student to learn how to read his health book, or his biology or history text, if not in his language arts class? Where will he acquire the academic language necessary to success at the university should he desire to further his education?
As a case in point, I examined the 9th grade Language Arts text in my district. The book is called The Language of Literature, published by McDougal Littell. I looked specifically at the non-fiction selections. In a text over 800 pages long, non-fiction totaled a paltry 19 selections, some considerably less than a page in length. Thirteen of the 19 were autobiographical; in other words, stories that are true instead of stories that are made up, continuing the narrative flavor of the book as a whole. Five were historical essays. The last selection consisted of just 3 quotes and was used in conjunction with an historical essay on the holocaust. The design of the book itself screams out the underlying premise that text is difficult and boring. The pages look not unlike web pages, with splashes of color, pictures, graphics and icons and a near blizzard of font sizes and styles and background fill. The text is often discontinuous, adding a serious impediment to narrative flow. I have the image of a textbook editor who has found completely irresistible the twin thrills of desktop publishing, drag and drop technology and an inexhaustible supply of copyright free clip-art, and has coupled that with a sad contempt for basic human curiosity, a vision of students as hopelessly disengaged unless assaulted, Dunkirk-style, by cable t.v.-like imagery. Somewhere along the line we have forgotten what textbooks are supposed to be: books of text.
Recently I interviewed the circulation manager at the local public library in my town. I asked her what the ratio was of fiction to non-fiction books. She researched that and got back to me. Fully ¾’s of the library is non-fiction. She also shared with me the most common question at the reference desk from students sent there by teachers, whether it be to research the Civil War, or Charlemagne, or Attila the Hun: “Do you have the video?”
If students only study fiction in language arts class, if they seldom read content area textbooks, if most of what they know is the result of teacher-talk, then what tremendously awful stuff must lie gathering dust in the ¾’s of the library students never visit? I decided to see for myself. The non-fiction section of traditional libraries is organized using the Dewey Decimal system. A brief description follows:
The Dewey Decimal System
000 Generalities - reference, encyclopedias, news, trivia.
100 Philosophy & Psychology - emotions, feelings, ethics, logic.
200 Religion - information about major religions.
300 Social Sciences - politics, government, law, education, folklore, folktales, and customs.
400 Language - foreign language, sign language, linguistics.
500 Natural Science & Mathematics - animals, astronomy, botany, dinosaurs, physics.
600 Technology & Applied Sciences - agriculture, pets, buildings, health.
700 The Arts - music, drawing, painting, sports, recreation.
800 Literature - American & British lit., criticism, foreign lit.
900 Geography & History - maps, general history of America and the world.
My plan was to take a walk through the stacks, choosing one book at random from each of the categories above. I must confess that my choices were not entirely random. I am six feet tall and so my eyes tended to scan the shelves near my eye-level. Similar to a walk through a book store, my eyes were captured by attractive binding; thus many of my choices were recently published books. However, I gave no regard to subject or author, except in the area of mathematics, which I describe below. The choices I made are reproduced in the appendices to this article. I tried to pick the opening paragraph(s) of books. But I often skipped the foreward, wanting instead to select from the actual thesis of the book, what generally can be found in the opening paragraphs of chapter 1. What I found amazed me, but it should not have been a surprise. Written by academics, for the most part, these books had been subjected to an intense editorial process. Unlike the proliferation of information on the internet, these books were commissioned, researched, written and edited according to publishing standards which have evolved since the beginning of printing. That the books are of such high quality should be a given. Why they are not read is a mystery. Why they are not studied for what we can learn about the writing process is a tragedy. Language Arts teachers assign fiction, then ask for expository papers from students. They save good papers from their students to use as models for subsequent classes while models by the thousands gather dust among the stacks.
Let’s take a look at a couple of examples. From the 400 section on language, I randomly chose this example:
Reading Between the Signs: Intercultural Communication for Sign Language Interpreters, Anna Mindess, Intercultural Press, Yarmouth, Maine, 1999, 230 pp. Call # 419
. . . a Foreign Service Institute linguist, who, while watching the evening news, discovered that a Vietnamese interpreter had simply given up when trying to bridge the gap between a CBS reporter and a Vietnamese villager. The TV audience watched the reporter ask a question, heard it go back and forth between the interpreter and the villager, and then heard the answer back in English. What the interpreter had done was simply ask the villager to count to ten, which he did. Then the interpreter reported what the villager mighthave said had he been able to understand the abstract ideas in the original question.
--Glenn Fisher
International Negotiation
This incident from the Vietnam war era provides a striking example of the challenges interpreters confront daily. Why did the interpreter in this case abdicate responsibility for accurately conveying the message? Glen Fisher concludes that the interpreter ‘faced an impossible task. The life experiences of the reporter and the villager, and their languages as reflections of culture, presented too great a contrast’ (Fisher 1980, 60-61)
As sign language interpreters, we can empathize with the interpreter described above, although it is hoped that we do not choose the same solution when faced with the challenge of large cultural differences. Cultural differences can be glaring enough to bring a meeting to a halt or so subtle that participants in a conversation do not even realize they are making erroneous judgments about each other. Why and how does culture affect our work, and what can we do when it seems to be at the core of communication difficulties? These are questions I hope to answer in this book.” Chapter 1, Introduction, pp. 1-2, pars. 1-3.
The 500 series is Natural Science and Mathematics. I had already randomly chosen a science text on the genetic revolution when I walked past shelf after shelf of mathematics texts. I stopped in my tracks and recalled all of the hours I’ve spent watching problem sets assigned and solved in math classes. I have never seen any actual reading of text assigned in these classes. What were all of these books and for whom were they intended? I pulled one down at random and copied the opening two paragraphs:
Descartes’ Dream: The World According to Mathematics, Philip Davis & Reuben Hersh, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., Orlando, Fl. 1986, 306 pp. Call # 510.1
THE MODERN WORLD, our world of triumphant rationality, began on November 10, 1619, with a revelation and a nightmare. On that day, in a room in the small Bavarian village of Ulm, Rene Descartes, a Frenchman, twenty-three years old, crawled into a wall stove and, when he was well warmed, had a vision. It was not a vision of God, or of the mother of God, or of celestial chariots, or of the New Jerusalem. It was a vision of the unification of all science.
The vision was preceded by a state of intense concentration and agitation. Descartes’ overheated mind caught fire and provided answers to tremendous problems that had been taxing him for weeks. He was possessed by a Genius, and the answers were revealed in a dazzling, unendurable light. Later, in a state of exhaustion, he went to bed and dreamed three dreams that had been predicted by his Genius.
Chapter 1, “The Mathematized World," pars. 1 & 2, p. 3.
I let this well-crafted prose take hold of my imagination and thought despairingly of all the “rise over run” equations I’ve seen chalked on endless blackboards.
Let’s take a look at a final example, from the 700 series on the arts:
Indian Rock Art of the Southwest, Polly Schaafsma, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1980, 345 pp. Call # 732.209701
For several thousand years the Indians of the American Southwest have been using as canvas and drawing board the rock surfaces of canyon walls, rock-shelters, and talus boulders that characterize the arid terrain of this region. The drawings produced by the application of paint (rock paintings) or the cutting away of the rock surface (petroglyphs) are examples of what is known as rock art. They were made for many purposes by the peoples who have occupied this area, from the early hunter-gatherer populations to the present-day Pueblos, Navajos, and Apaches.
These images pecked into or painted on stone are a valuable component of the archaeological record—graphic images that often derive from the various aspects of prehistoric cosmologies and mythic systems. Some prehistoric ideologies of the Southwest have been carried into the ethnographic present by the modern descendants of the prehistoric peoples, but other such systems, with the exception of what can be learned through the visual imagery of the petroglyphs and rock paintings, have been almost totally lost. Rock art, then, is an important means of reaching some understanding of the sacred dimension and certain related practices of the prehistoric period.” Chapter 1, “Introduction: Images on Stone,” p. 1
If I could choose so randomly such amazing examples of such fascinating subjects rendered in such engaging prose, how rich could a more purposeful walk through the stacks ultimately be?
I’m offering a different view of our task as secondary teachers. I advocate turning the current process on its head in the service of text:
- Move teacher talk to the end of the lesson, rather than the beginning.
- Honor the special relationship between reader and writer.
- Acknowledge the writer’s task of engaging his reader and connecting to his prior knowledge. In other words; do not automatically assume student disengagement.
- Make sure that students learn from text first. “Text before talk” should be our mantra.
- Scaffold learning for those who need it. Remove the scaffolding from those who don’t.
- Assess continually for independence, which is the goal.
- Disappear from the process as soon as the student can strike out on his own.
I will conclude, somewhat ironically, with allegory, which is firmly rooted in the oral tradition. And with apologies to e.e. cummings:
Once there was a man named noone who fell in love with a girl named anyone. So noone married anyone and soon they had their someones. They desired their youngest play the flute. He agreed, but truly had little passion for music and less for the sound he made with the strange pipe. noone hired a teacher for someone, who willingly played for his teacher, but never practiced. Months went by and the teacher grew frustrated when his charge made little progress and the flute only squeaked. noone fired the teacher and hired another, who was himself surprised that his young student played so poorly after so many lessons. He urged noone to supervise someone’s practice. But someone remained petulantly uncooperative and would not pick up his flute between lessons. The pipe screeched and anyone held her ears. The second teacher quit in despair.
Then noone located a new kind of teacher, one who believed that knowledge could be de-contextualized, that learning could be transferred across the curriculum, and who had steeped himself in the latest reading theory. He was convinced that someone could learn the flute, if only he would try this new method. First he told noone that someone would need more lessons, especially in light of his refusal to practice. someone took lessons twice a week at first, and then moved to daily lessons. His playing improved, though not significantly. It had moved somewhere beyond squeaking and screeching, but not far.
He needed good modeling if he were to improve, felt his new teacher, and so the teacher played for him. someone liked that part of his lesson quite a bit. When improvement was still only marginal, the teacher employed the very latest theory, something called a “think aloud.” The teacher would play a few notes and then would pause and share the thought process that produced that wonderful music. someone was very impressed. Then someone would squeak a few notes himself and share the thought process that produced them, however painful they sounded to the human ear. The thought process was remarkably similar given the disparity of the outcome.
noone was convinced that this new teacher was a genius. No matter how awful someone played, noone loved it, though anyone left the house during the daily lessons. The teacher never lost his enthusiasm for new theories, being forever convinced that better lessons would make better music.
Then one day someone asked noone if he could quit the flute and start guitar lessons. someone confessed to noone that he had developed an addiction to MTV. someone now knew that if he put all the effort into the guitar that had been wasted on the flute, he could himself become a rock and roll star.
noone believed him.
APPENDICES
ONE
The Language of Literature, Applebee, Arthur N., et. al ed., McDougal Littell, Evanston, Il. 1997
Non-Fiction Selections
fromI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings 52
Autobiogaphical Novel: In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou tells about her childhood in the small, segregated town of Stamps, Arkansas
A Christmas Memory 62
An autobiographical story of author Truman Capote’s youth and his relationship with a much older female cousin, Sook Faulk.
On Being Seventeen, Bright, and Unable to Read 79
An autobiographical essay by David Raymond and his battles in school with dyslexia.
The First Appendectomy 145
An autobiographical essay by William A. Nolen about a young intern and his first surgery.
You’re Short, Besides! 282
In this autobiographical essay Sucheng Chan writes of how she defied the odds by surviving a childhood attack of polio and how she learned to live her disability.
The United States vs. Susan B. Anthony 293
An historical essay written by Margaret Truman about the suffragette Susan B. Anthony
Fish Cheeks 323
An autobiographical essay by Amy Tan about falling in love with the minister’s son at age 14.
On Writing “Marine Corps. Issue” 355
A brief statement from the author of the short story “Marine Corps. Issue” about the origin of the story.
Father’s Day 401
An autobiographical essay by Michael Dorris who, though he grew up without a father, became a father to 6 children.
fromBlack Boy 429
An excerpt from the autobiography of Richard Wright.
Only Daughter 437
In this autobiographical essay Sandra Cisneros describes her father’s ideas about the proper role of females. Coming from the culture of old Mexico, Cisneros’s father holds the patriarchal beliefs of many traditional cultures.
Fish Eyes 462
A brief excerpt from comedian David Brenner’s autobiography
“Who Killed My Daughter?”: Lois Duncan Searches for an Answer 618
An essay by Maria Simson about the search, by author Lois Duncan, for the killer of her daughter.
The Great Taos Bank Robbery 669
An historical essay about a bank robbery in the town of Taos, New Mexico, in 1957
Unfinished Business 713
An autobiographical essay in which a psychiatrist tells about her work with a dying child and the child’s family.
A Trip to the Edge of Survival 756
A read life adventure of an ordeal at sea, written by Ron Arias, originally for People magazine. It tells the story of the crew of the Cairo III and their voyage from to where they were rescued in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in June, 1988.
The Story Behind “The Cask of Amontillado” 783
Written by Edward Row Stowe, this one page essay purports to tell the story of an actual incident, the details of which inspired Poe’s famous story.
Not to Go with the Others 809
John Hersey, who, at the end of World War II, was stationed in Moscow as a reporter for Time Magazine, tells the story of Frantizek Zaremski, a Polish farmer who survived the war.
Reflections on the Holocaust 814
Three brief quotes or inscriptions relating to the Holocaust and used as a thematic follow-up to the Hersey story.
Autobiographical = 13
Historical Essay = 5
Quotations = 1
Total = 19
TWO
The Dewey Decimal System
000 Generalities - reference, encyclopedias, news, trivia.
Chaos Theory Tamed, by Garnett P. Williams, Joseph Henry Press, Washington, D.C. 1997, 444 pp. Call # 003.857
“The concept of chaos is one of the most exciting and rapidly expanding research topics of recent decades. Ordinarily, chaos is disorder or confusion. In the scientific sense, chaos does involve some disarray, but there’s much more to it than that. We’ll arrive at a more complete definition in the next chapter.” [Introduction, p. 3, par. 1]
“Summary
Chaos (deterministic chaos) deals with long-term evolution—how something changes over a long time. A chaotic time series looks irregular. Two of chaos’s important practical implications are that long-term predictions under chaotic conditions are worthless and complex behavior can have simple causes. Chaos is difficult to identify in real-world data because the available tools generally were developed for idealistic conditions that are difficult to fulfill in practice.” [Introduction, p. 7, par. 14 of the chapter]
100 Philosophy & Psychology - emotions, feelings, ethics, logic.
Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears, by Tom Lutz, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1999, 304 pp. Call # 152.4
“Weeping is a human universal. Throughout history, and in every culture, emotional tears are shed—everyone, everywhere, cries at some time. People weep during funeral rituals, for instance, in every culture except in Bali, and even there people weep in mourning—tearless funerals are made possible only by postponing the rites until two full years after the death. Around the globe, infants cry in hunger and pain and children in frustration and disappointment. However much the rules governing emotional display may vary from time to time and place to place, adults weep for myriad reasons and sometimes, a few claim, for no reason at all. In American culture, even those rare people (usually male) who claim they never cry can remember doing so as children.” [Introduction, p. 17, par. 1]
200 Religion - information about major religions.
Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions, by Walter Burkert, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1996. 255 pp. Call # 291
“Religion, though, fails to disappear. While all around us generations are growing up factually without religion, the religious forces remain unexpectedly tenacious and impetuous, nay dangerous and sometimes disastrous. We are puzzled by the drawing power of new cults and sects, we are horrified by the passions of religious strife in many contemporary conflicts, we are apprehensive of the growing tide of fundamentalism in different encampments. More than seventy years of well-organized atheistic education and propaganda did not succeed in abolishing religion in the Soviet empire, and its re-emergence is resuscitating age-old battles. It is no less agonizing to observe the failure of religion to deal with such urgent problems of the day as environment protection and population control. Religion still enjoys high moral credit and yet appears thoroughly problematic, a challenge to reason in its theory and practice as it has always been—all the more reason, then, for anthropology to take account of this phenomenon. We must at least try to make sense of the irrational in the hope of gaining some illumination, some insight from the fringes of experience, whether superhuman or subhuman.” [Preface, pp. ix-x, par. 3]
300 Social Sciences - politics, government, law, education, folklore, folktales, and customs.
The Story of American Freedom, Eric Foner, W.W. Norton, New York, 1998, 332 pp. Call #323.44
“No idea is more fundamental to American’s sense of themselves as individuals and as a nation than freedom. The central term in our political vocabulary, ‘freedom’—or ‘liberty,’ with which it is almost always used interchangeably—is deeply embedded in the documentary record of our history and the language of everyday life. The Declaration of Independence lists liberty among mankind’s inalienable rights; the Constitution announces as it purpose to secure liberty’s blessing. The United States fought the Civil War to bring about a new birth of freedom, World War II for the Four Freedoms, and the Cold War to defend the Free World. Americans’ love of liberty has been represented by poles, caps, statues, and acted out by burning stamps and draft cards, running away from slavery, and demonstrating for the right to vote. If asked to explain or justify their actions, public or private, Americans are likely to respond, ‘It’s a free country.’ Every man in the street, white, black, red or yellow,’ wrote the educator and statesman Ralph Bunche in 1940, ‘knows that this is ‘the land of the free’ . . . ‘the cradle of liberty.’” [1] [Introduction, p xiii, par. 1]
400 Language - foreign language, sign language, linguistics.
Reading Between the Signs: Intercultural Communication for Sign Language Interpreters, Anna Mindess, Intercultural Press, Yarmouth, Maine, 1999, 230 pp. Call # 419
“. . . a Foreign Service Institute linguist, who, while watching the evening news, discovered that a Vietnamese interpreter had simply given up when trying to bridge the gap between a CBS reporter and a Vietnamese villager. The TV audience watched the reporter ask a question, heard it go back and forth between the interpreter and the villager, and then heard the answer back in English. What the interpreter had done was simply ask the villager to count to ten, which he did. Then the interpreter reported what the villager might have said had he been able to understand the abstract ideas in the original question.
--Glenn Fisher
International Negotiation
“This incident from the Vietnam war era provides a striking example of the challenges interpreters confront daily. Why did the interpreter in this case abdicate responsibility for accurately conveying the message? Glen Fisher concludes that the interpreter ‘faced an impossible task. The life experiences of the reporter and the villager, and their languages as reflections of culture, presented too great a contrast’ (Fisher 1980, 60-61)
“As sign language interpreters, we can empathize with the interpreter described above, although it is hoped that we do not choose the same solution when faced with the challenge of large cultural differences. Cultural differences can be glaring enough to bring a meeting to a halt or so subtle that participants in a conversation do not even realize they are making erroneous judgments about each other. Why and how does culture affect our work, and what can we do when it seems to be at the core of communication difficulties? These are questions I hope to answer in this book.” Chapter 1, Introduction, pp. 1-2, pars. 1-3.”
500 Natural Science & Math - animals, astronomy, botany, dinosaurs, physics.
Descartes’ Dream: The World According to Mathematics, Philip Davis & Reuben Hersh, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., Orlando, Fl. 1986, 306 pp. Call # 510.1
“THE MODERN WORLD, our world of triumphant rationality, began on November 10, 1619, with a revelation and a nightmare. On that day, in a room in the small Bavarian village of Ulm, Rene Descartes, a Frenchman, twenty-three years old, crawled into a wall stove and, when he was well warmed, had a vision. It was not a vision of God, or of the mother of God, or of celestial chariots, or of the New Jerusalem. It was a vision of the unification of all science.
“The vision was preceded by a state of intense concentration and agitation. Descartes’ overheated mind caught fire and provided answers to tremendous problems that had been taxing him for weeks. He was possessed by a Genius, and the answers were revealed in a dazzling, unendurable light. Later, in a state of exhaustion, he went to bed and dreamed three dreams that had been predicted by his Genius.” Chapter 1, “The Mathematized World, pars. 1 & 2, p. 3.
The Lives to Come: the Genetic Revolution and Human Possibilities, Philip Kitcher, Simon & Schuster, New York, N.Y., 1996, 326 pp. Call #573.21
“Each of the rooms at Children’s Convalescent Hospital in San Diego is alive with color. Around the three (or four, or five) beds, vivid pictures and brightly painted walls provide an exuberant welcome. Large stuffed toys in red, green, or purple sometimes lie scattered on the floor; more frequently they sit stiffly, untouched, the product of adult rearrangement. On the beds lie the children—the two-year-olds, the four-year-olds, the ten-year-olds, and the teenagers—some whose limbs convulse erratically, others who are unnaturally still.
“Beside the doors there are often notes, handwritten by the nursing staff, providing detailed instructions on what a particular child has achieved, what can be done to foster further development. One boy is starting to pull himself up if a pair of hands is held out to him in a particular way; a girl smiled when a music box played a certain tune. Records of small accomplishments, they are built on daily, read and revised by a team of nurses whose care permits truncated human lives still to grow, even if, for most observers, there is no pace perceived.
“Some of these children will die very young in the bright world of Children’s Hospital. For others there will be a succession of hospital rooms, without toys or murals, and a succession of nurses, who may no longer wonder how to extend their hands to elicit a response, who no longer wind music boxes, a succession of rooms, to which the children will be largely oblivious. A few will return, at least for a time, to their parents.” From Chapter 1 “The Shapes of Suffering,” pars. 1-3, pp. 13-14.
600 Technology & Applied Sciences - agriculture, pets, buildings, health.
The Story of Corn: the Myths and History, the Culture and Agriculture, the Art and Science of America’s Quintessential Crop, Betty Fussell, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1992, 333 pp. Call #633.15
“At the end of the third quarter,” the cabin steward announces over the loudspeaker,” the Cornhuskers are leading twenty-one to nineteen.” The passengers burst into cheers. This United Airlines steward knows how to milk his audience. He got laughs at the beginning of the flight from O’Hare Airport in Chicago to Lincoln, Nebraska, when he asked us to don our Mae Wests “in the unlikely event that we should land in water.” Now he congratulates our pilot on back-to-back perfect landings.: “Let’s show him our appreciation, folks.” We burst into applause. We have just landed in the city named for America’s favorite president, in the state that is the exact center of the United States.
“My cousin Eleanor and her husband, Don, meet me at the airport dressed in Cornhusker red because on Football Saturdays toutLincoln paints the town red. ‘The State Capitol is one of the top ten Wonders of the World,’ says my cousin, ‘that’s what they say.’ I’ve seen most of the classical seven but never the Capitol nor Nebraska nor my cousin, although I’m here for a reunion of cousins, the grandchildren of Parks Ira and Ellen Culver Kennedy, whose eight children were born in Nebraska. Most of the grandchildren are now grandparents themselves, most live in the Midwest, and all but one are strangers whom I’ve never met. I’ve been to Halicarnassus and the country of Peru, but never the center of America, which boasts four Perus, one of them a small town in Nebraska where my mother taught country school. As a migrant bi-coastal American, old enough to be a grandmother, I have come at last to seek and to find, as my Grandmother Kennedy would have said, the center of my family, my country, my culture—founded and sustained on the cultivation of corn.” Part One: “A Babel of Corn,” Chapter 1 “Corn Mad,” p. 3
700 The Arts - music, drawing, painting, sports, recreation.
Indian Rock Art of the Southwest, Polly Schaafsma, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1980, 345 pp. Call # 732.209701
“For several thousand years the Indians of the American Southwest have been using as canvas and drawing board the rock surfaces of canyon walls, rock-shelters, and talus boulders that characterize the arid terrain of this region. The drawings produced by the application of paint (rock paintings) or the cutting away of the rock surface (petroglyphs) are examples of what is known as rock art. They were made for many purposes by the peoples who have occupied this area, from the early hunter-gatherer populations to the present-day Pueblos, Navajos, and Apaches.
“These images pecked into or painted on stone are a valuable component of the archaeological record—graphic images that often derive from the various aspects of prehistoric cosmologies and mythic systems. Some prehistoric ideologies of the Southwest have been carried into the ethnographic present by the modern descendants of the prehistoric peoples, but other such systems, with the exception of what can be learned through the visual imagery of the petroglyphs and rock paintings, have been almost totally lost. Rock art, then, is an important means of reaching some understanding of the sacred dimension and certain related practices of the prehistoric period.” Chapter 1, “Introduction: Images on Stone,” p. 1
800 Literature - American & British lit., criticism, foreign lit.
Svengali’s Web: The Alien Enchanger in Modern Culture, Daniel Pick, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2000, 229 pp., Call #809-9335
“‘Svengali, Marvellous Svengali—a weird spectral, Satanic figure—he literally took away our breath.’ Yes, it was a creation that took away one’s breath with the sheer force of its genius, with its wealth, its unfathomable depths of fantastic, unpremeditated art. The creation was so rich, so rare, so subtle, that it was beyond estimation, and thus beyond praise.
Max Beerbohm, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree[2]
“The image of a sinister hypnotist, lurking behind the scenes, ambiguously responsible for breaking and remaking another weaker character, has been given many literary, theatrical and cinematic forms. Medicine, psychiatry and psychoanalysis also offer up their cautionary tales about charismatic charlatans who have become the dire masters of their patients. But there is one such shadowy entrancer whose name has become synonymous with psychological manipulation: Svengali.
“Mesmerist, musician and Jew, the original Svengali was invented by the Anglo-French illustrator and writer, George Du Maurier, in his novel, Trilby, a none-too-demanding tearjerker that was serialized in Harper’s New Monthly Magazineand then published as a book in 1894. Du Maurier’s story is set in Paris and London. Svengali, an itinerant conductor, is its villain. Described as being ‘of Jewish aspect, well-featured but sinister’ and with ‘bold, brilliant black eyes’ and ‘long heavy lids’, Svengali attempts to win over the heroine of the book, a young artists’ model named Trilby. He hypnotises her without her consent. She becomes ‘haunted’ by his eyes and by his name which rings in her head and ears until ‘it became an obsession.’ Trilby is eventually compelled to marry Svengali and is then transformed into an international concert star, who sings zombie-like, to ecstatic audiences while under Svengali’s spell. When Trilby finally escapes the mesmerist’s clutches in very public and dramatic circumstances it is only to collapse, broken and exhausted.” Introductory quote and pars. 1 & 2, pp. 1,2 of Chapter 1.
900 Geography & History - maps, general history of America and the world.
The Oxford History of Mexico, Michael C. Meyer and William H. Beezley, ed., Oxford University Press, 2000 670 pp., Call # 972
“The distinct races of the world tend to mix more and more until they form a new human type . . . Even the most contradictory mixtures can always be beneficially resolved because the spiritual factor in each serves to elevate the whole.
Jose Vasconcelos (1881-1959) La raza cosmica
"Mexico is the product of a collision between, and ultimately a fusion of, two vastly different worlds. In the early 16th century, a generation after Christopher Columbus bumped into Watling Island in the Bahamas, Spain encountered a bewildering kaleidoscope of Mesoamerican cultures in what later became southern and central Mexico. And more would be found in the decades ahead as a series of frontiers were pushed farther and farther to the north. Although the Spaniards were not strangers to the notion that racial and ethnic confrontations could be followed by accommodation, reconciliation, and the blending of ideas, they were not prepared for the remarkable civilizations they encountered. The Native American community found itself surprised and unprepared as well. Neither party to this epic rendezvous would again be the same. Mexican historian Enrique Krauze captured the essence of this historical moment perfectly in a recent description of the first meeting of Hernan (Fernando) Cortes and Moctezuma (Moteuczoma, or Montezuma): 'They created a new nationality at the instant they met.'” Introductory quote and paragraph 1 of the Introduction, p. 1
[On May 30, 2001, when I returned one day to the same Geography class, that same student came up to me and wanted to know if I had done anything about the size of the textbooks? Her name is Ashley and I told her of the surveys I ran, this article, and the presentations I’ve given about it. She was quite flattered to see all of what transpired from the chance conversation she initiated with me.]
[1]Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (New York, 1944),4.
[2]Max Beerbohm, quoting a London critic, and recalling his half-brother Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s stage triumph as Svengali in 1895. Beerbohm 19209, p. 100