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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 409 576 CS 215 923 AUTHOR Pirie, Bruce TITLE Reshaping High School English. INSTITUTION National Council of Teachers of English, Urbana, Ill. REPORT NO ISBN-0-8141-5668-1 PUB DATE 97 NOTE 116p. AVAILABLE FROM National Council of Teachers of English, 1111 W. Kenyon Road, Urbana, IL 61801-1096 (Stock No. 56681-0015: $10.95 members, $16.95 nonmembers). PUB TYPE Books (010) Opinion Papers (120) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC05 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Curriculum Development; *English Curriculum; *English Instruction; High School Students; High Schools; Instructional Effectiveness; Language Arts; *Literary Criticism; Reader Response; *Reading Processes; *Secondary School Curriculum; Teacher Role; *Theory Practice Relationship IDENTIFIERS Cultural Studies; Postmodernism; Textuality ABSTRACT This book takes up the question of what shape high school English studies should take in the coming years. It describes an English program that blends philosophical depth with classroom practicality. Drawing examples from commonly taught texts such as "Macbeth," "To Kill a Mockingbird," and "Lord of the Flies," the book places literary analysis within a postmodern framework. It explores recent literary and educational theory--including reader response theory and cultural studies. The book devotes attention to the process of reading and its relationship to creative writing, which is put forward as an essential rather than a supplementary cart of high school English programs. The end result is that the book provides insights on textuality, media studies, drama, and the 5paragraph essay. The book also serves as a call for increased teacher involvement in curriculum reform. While the book's primary purpose is to examine what does and does not make sense in high school English teaching in view of current theory, it offers readers examples of effective classroom practice that takes English in the right direction. (NKA) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** 11 Din 11001 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) IV his document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS BY MATERIAL HASHte.r BEEN GRANTED TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) 2 Bruce Pine BEST COPYAVAILABLE Reshaping High School English NCTE Editorial Board: Pat Cordeiro, Colette Daiute, Bobbi Fisher, Brenda Greene, Richard Luckert, Bill McBride, Aileen Pace Nilsen, Jerrie Cobb Scott, Karen Smith, Chair, ex officio, Michael Greer, ex officio 4 Reshaping High School English Bruce Pine Lorne Park Secondary School Mississauga, Ontario National Council of Teachers of English 1111 W. Kenyon Road, Urbana, IL 61801-1096 5 The following chapters in this book include material adapted from previously published articles by the author and are reprinted with permission. Chapter 4: Adapted in part from "Unlocking the Reading Process: More than Response Journals," Indirections 16.3 (September 1991). Chapter 5: Adapted in part from the following articles: (a) "Is There Life Beyond Skits?" Indirections 18.3 (September 1993); (b) "Meaning through Mo- tion: Kinesthetic English," English Journal 84.8 (December 1995). Copyright 1995, NCTE. Staff Editor: Zarina M. Hock Interior Design: Doug Burnett Cover Design: Doug Burnett NCTE Stock Number: 56681-3050 ©1997 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. It is the policy of NCTE in its journals and other publications to providea forum for the open discussion of ideas concerning the content and the teaching of English and the language arts. Publicity accorded to any particular point of view does not imply endorsement by the Executive Committee, the Board of Direc- tors, or the membership at large, except in announcements of policy, where such endorsement is clearly specified. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pirie, Bruce, 1953 Reshaping high school English/Bruce Pirie. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8141-5668-1 (pbk.) 1. Language arts (Secondary)United States. 2. English languageStudy and teaching (Secondary)United States. I. Title. LB1631.P58 1997 428'.0071'273dc21 97-15512 CIP With deep love and sincere appreciation, this book is dedicated to my wife, Jennifer Mansell 7 vu Contents 1. "What rough beast ...?" 1 2. Beyond Barney and the Cult of the Individual 8 3. The Web of Textuality 17 4. Unlocking Reading Processes 33 5. The Unfolding Drama 50 6. Culture Makers 64 7. "Mind-Forged Manacles": The Academic Essay 74 8. Cultural Studies 95 Works Cited 101 Author 107 3 1 1 "What rough beast.. We need to reinvent English. No glib redefinition or timid reform effort willdo. Ben F. Nelms, "Reinventing English," English Journal editorial(1994) And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? W. B. Yeats, "The Second Coming" (1921) n June of 1978, I was atthe end of my second year of teaching high school English. Our department head had called a meeting,leaving the agenda mysteriously blank. As we filed into theclassroom, we were surprised to see desks drawn into a cosy circle. When thedepartment head began to speak, it was in a carefully reassuring tone. We knew something was up. The head's studied gentleness could mean only one thing: some- thing really bad was about to happen and we had better braceourselves. He told us about meetings he had been attending,workshops to which only a few chosen leaders had been invited. This small grouphad been introduced to some new ideas, he said, and it looked as if theseideas were going to make a difference to the way we were expected todo our jobs. The room became very quiet. He proceeded to tell us that it soon might not be goodenough just to assign pieces of writing for students to take home,work on, and hand in. He talked about "prewriting," about working withstudents dur- ing their drafting, and about something he called "personal"writing. He said we ought to begin thinking in terms of a writing "process." For teachers who have entered the profession only inthe last de- cade or so, it must be difficult to appreciate what athunderbolt had dropped upon us. Within a very few yearsfive, ten at themost"the writing process" had become the hottest educational ticket in town,and English departments everywhere claimed to be doing somethingabout it. In those early years, as one might expect, implementationof this new model of writing instruction sometimes seemed a bit wooden.Our pro- vincial Ministry of Education declared that, to encourage a"process ori- entation," student writing had to be kept in file folders; Iremember the deepening sense of absurdity I felt at a meeting in whichteachers ear- nestly debated whether to use single- or double-fold files,laminated or plain cardboard. At another meeting, charged with the taskof pinning 9 2 Reshaping High School English down a "writing policy," a teacher leading the session asked, "Howmany drafts do we think we should require for each Grade Ten piece of writ- ing? Three? Five? I think five sounds good." (I shuddered.) But allthat was to come later. On that June afternoon in 1978, the next chapter of local educational history had not yet been written, and,to put it bluntly, we simply did not know what the head was talking about. As the newest teacher in the department, I hadn't heard anything about this inmy teacher training. The older faculty had behind themyears of habitual practice in standing at the front of the class, leading discussions of lit- erature and assigning essays. For all of us, this new thinking didn't have any precedent in the discipline we had studied in university or in our own high school years. Did we welcome with open arms this first hint of innovation? We did not. The department head's picture of the futurewas cloudy, as early visions usually are. It seemed we were being told that whatwe had all been doingpractices that were the subject English, as faras we were con- cernedwas somehow wrong. Our professional futurewas going to look different, but the details weren't yet availableonly this nebulous shape that sounded unlike any "English" we hadever known. It was as if we had caught a glimpse of Yeats's "rough beast" slouching toward Bethlehem and weren't sure that we understood or wanted tosee this new era wait- ing to be born. We left the meeting, as I recall, in somber and private moods. In the days that followed, one senior teacher muttered darkly about how many years she had remaining before retirement. Othersre- assured themselves that this wasn't really anythingnew, or that it was just another bandwagon: this, too, would pass. Theywere, of course, wrong. The anxiety that I and others felt then mustnow seem quaint. Those new approaches grew into some of the most valuable educational developments in recent times. Writing teachers moved severalsteps closer to observing and working with the complex processes of learners, and were challenged to think in fresh ways about actually teachingwriting, not just assigning and grading it. In retrospect, itwas a great liberation, and the beast turned out to be a butterfly escaping from itscocoon. At the time, however, there was only the dread of facingan uncertain future. Something like that dread may be taking shape again. We hear warning rumbles when an Australian educational leader speculates about the disappearance of English as a subject (Boomer 1988, 102) and Brit- ish writers offhandedly comment that "the days of Englishas an academic discipline are clearly numbered" (Buckingham and Sefton-Green 1994, 213).

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