Fear-Based Curriculum: A Language Arts Tragedy (More on Teaching Lolita)
Tuesday, 15 April 2008 Clay Burell 
Print This Post
Extending my last post on why I think Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita should be required reading at some point in
high school language arts classes:
In Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, Oedipus kills his father, then marries and impregnates his mother: we teach this parricidal, incestuous, antique “classic” to 14-year-olds.
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the prince’s uncle murders his brother and marries that brother’s wife, enjoying her in “incestuous sheets“: again, we teach this 400-year-old Renaissance “classic” to 15-year-olds.
And let’s not forget the sentimental favorite about a 12-year-old whose father is trying to marry her off to a prize bachelor of at least 25, and in which instead the 12-year-old heroine elopes with her maybe 14-year-old lover, and spends a night of tender love-making a few paces away from her iconic balcony. Their pillow-talk the morning after their love-making is something we have 13-year-olds recite by the millions in our annual, usually painful, front-of-the-classroom recital days. Yes, I’m talking about Romeo and Juliet. Juliet would be a middle-schooler today – and her father would be in jail for pandering her to his cellmate Paris, the noble pedophile.
In Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, a 40-year-old pedophiliac professor of literature marries an over-sexed 12-year-old’s mother, who shortly thereafter dies in a freak accident, plunging the professor and the 12-year-old in a morbid love affair that ruins both their lives. Often brutal, as often tender, more often laugh-out-loud funny, but never vulgar or graphic, this acknowledged masterpiece and “classic” of modern, 20th century literature – “the only convincing love story of our [20th] century,” according to Vanity Fair – sends educators running for the hills.
It’s a tragic irony and a very telling double standard: teach controversy from old, safely removed times? No problem. (Well, maybe just skim over Paris’ age, Juliet’s loss of virginity, Oedipus’ and Gertrude’s incest.) But teach the same issues about modern schoolgirls? No, no, no. That hits too close to the real world. Let them learn about that, if at all, from their sensationalistic prime-time TV’s at home: To Catch a Predator, anyone? School is not the place for unsafe subjects. We only think critically about safe ones here.
That we should think about these subjects in our classrooms – our young females, in particular, but our young males too, as is shown below – can be supported by a few statistics (USA only):
- Teens 16 to 19 were three and one-half times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault.
- According to the Justice Department, one in two rape victims is under age 18; one in six is under age 12.
- While 9 out of 10 rape victims are women, men and boys are also victimized by this crime. In 1995, 32,130 males age 12 and older were victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault.
- Nationally, nearly one million young women under age 20 become pregnant each year. That means close to 2800 teens get pregnant each day.
- Approximately 4 in 10 young women in the U.S. become pregnant at least once before turning 20 years old.
- In the U.S., 1 in 4 sexually active teens become infected with an STD every year.
Some comments from my last post, and from the thread on Bud Hunt’s post that splintered this discussion (not your fault, Bud – you asked them to come here), give us some main reasons we choose to be (un?)witting accomplices to daily contemporary tragedies by only teaching the ancient, irrelevant ones. PaulC, who started the meme, commented:
Do I want to take a chance and have the Parents’ Club down my neck for teaching an ‘inappropriate’ novel? The principal has enough fires to put out.
Of course, the censorship debate arises occasionally for many different reasons, sometimes over trite reasons. It’s worthwhile to take a stand, but is it worth it for the study of Lolita? For that reason I think the novel should be left for post secondary study.
As the above statistics show, the damage is too often done by the time of “post-secondary study.” The principal might be enjoying a no-alarm day in the fire department, the parent enjoying a nice day in denial-land, and the teacher enjoying a nice cool neck, but at what cost to the latest quiet statistic sitting at one of the classroom desks, trying to make sense of this thing that happened last night, and that her school never warned her about in the daytime? This latest example of “fear and irrelevance in education” gives one tragically twisted twist to the term “hidden curriculum.” (Update: But Paul, I hear you: other ways than Lolita exist to educate about this – but are principals and parents using any ways at all, by and large?)
Charlie Roy gives an interesting angle in his comment, largely sympathetic to the idea of teaching the realities of over-flirtatious teens playing with fire and getting burned by unseemly adults via Lolita, when he writes,
I don’t think Lolita would fly at my school. At far as age appropriateness goes it is a hard one to nail. Some argue adolescence has been extended into the early 30’s. If that is the case then it might be an inappropriate read.
I can only respond that, if adolescence is now delayed into our 30′s, as Charlie states, isn’t that because schools perpetuate the situation by infantilizing teens? (See Dr. Robert Eptstein’s The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen)
New York librarian and teacher Diane Cordell nails an irony by now cliche, but no less pernicious, about American “family values,” I want to say, when she comments:
Re. teaching Lolita: about 5 years ago, our HS (grades 11-12) English teacher used “In Cold Blood” as the basis of a class unit. The principal asked me to find examples of other schools using this book, and I did so. No parents objected to the choice of text. When we get back from Spring Break, I’ll ask the present teacher and our HS principal what the reaction would be if “Lolita” were listed as required reading. I can almost guarantee that murder would be deemed more suitable subject matter than sex!
–and Corrie Bergeron, the “crunchy conservative” foil to my own more liberal viewpoint, does the conservative view a good deed with this bit of fresh air:
5th graders are having sex. 1 in 4 American teen girls has an STD. (1 in 2 if she’s African-American.) Not that this is a good thing, but it’s reality, today. Literature deals with the human condition, makes it accessible, gives you a proxy to explore ideas. A safe place to talk about things without getting too personal.
Teach Lolita in high school? Maybe not such a bad idea.
Oh-and-by-the-way… worldview-wise, I have a fair amount in common with the Puritans. But ignorance makes poor armor.
Meanwhile, over on Bud’s offshoot from my post, Joe, a principal, weighs in against my view:
Clay – we are public servants. We work for an elected school board, under the twin rubrics of the state and federal governments. You said: “I shouldn’t have to ask a parent’s permission to teach it any more than I do to have students read James Joyce, Huck Finn, or D.H. Lawrence.” I disagree with that line of thought for the potential pitfalls it could cause. We have an adopted curriculum for a reason. A process exists. Obviously you have a set of values that are important to you. I have a set of values that are important to me. I can almost garuntee that you would not want some of my personal views taught in the classroom. Public education should not be a free for all!
Miguel Guhlin joins the discussion over there with too many interesting lines for me to snatch, but this remark is noteworthy for a connection I want to make to Joe’s, above:
Far better the teacher who, like the local Fireman’s Halloween Haunt House, enjoys the trust of the community that nothing found in that House will be judged objectionable by anyone….
–and that connection, namely, has to do with notions of democracy, and of “public values.” With all due respect, Joe’s invocation of public education being no space for a “free for all,” no place for conflicting “values” to come under the scrutiny of critical thought and inquiry, just strikes me as un-democratic. Miguel’s ideal of ideas not “judged objectionable by anyone” seems (though I think unintentionally) similarly contrary to what democracy is. The public, to state the obvious, consists of wildly divergent and often conflicting viewpoints. If nobody finds an idea objectionable, then how relevant and engaging – at least in a humanities classroom – is that idea? And why are we devoting time to safe ideas, when the health of a democracy consists of citizens informed about those uncomfortable but real controversies demanding civic resolution? Those viewpoints can, and I would argue should, in a healthy democracy, receive scrutiny and debate in our schools. That authentic critical thinking is the remedy for the biases and prejudices that plague every democracy.
Joe, I would argue, mistakes indoctrinating students – teacher teaching what to think – with teaching students to think. Uncomfortable? Yes. But so is the uncritical, prejudiced alternative. And call me idealistic, but the possibility now, with online forums and other ways to include parents and communities in classroom debates about real-worldly issues instead of unreal schooly ones – that possibility, to me, points to schools as true centers of learning, not just for students, but for communities.
Back to Lolita. Most people, first of all, probably haven’t read it, and so are arguing from a position of misinformation, at best, or at worst, of ignorance. I just finished it for the fourth or fifth time. It is every bit as disturbing as it was the first time. It shows the dangerous consequences of young girls not conscious of the effects of their fashions and attitudes; it shows how deceptively normal and respectable pedophiles can be; it uses no curse words, no vulgarities, and generally does not dwell on carnal scenes. More interestingly, though, its fictional editor, in the preface, claims the novel contains a “moral apotheosis,” while Nabokov himself, in the cagey Afterword, claims his novel has no moral at all. That contradiction alone opens up a discussion.
And in the meantime, our students, increasingly out there blogging and tweeting and face(book)ing the ever-more-porous public world, are learning, in the safety of a modern classic, a few lessons that might save them from becoming an addition to the statistics above.
I suppose I could stick to the safe, and teach them to identify oxymorons so they get higher SAT scores. But I’d rather help them learn not to be world-ignorant morons period. Significantly, the word “moron,” according to my Leopard dictionary, originated in “the early 20th century (as a medical term denoting an adult with a mental age of about 8–12): from Greek mōron, neuter of mōros ‘foolish.’” We can keep ignoring the realities of life after age 12 in our schools at our own – and our students’ – peril.
The funny thing? My students are a matter of months away from being legal adults. Doesn’t that underline how weird it is to treat them like children until the very last minute of their minority? And doesn’t that set them up to be quite the naive young adults when they walk, all vulnerable, into the real world after graduation? It’s all so unreal – and we’re talking schools here, so that’s hardly surprising – but sheesh, it’s bewilderingly surreal.
Photo by macropoulos
- Three Uses of Diigo in the History and Language Arts Classroom
- Students Respond: “Should Lolita Be Banned from High School AP Classes?”
- Refining the Message: A Re-Post and Self-Check on Fear and Irrelevance in Education
- Teaching Grammar on the Titanic: On Fear and Irrelevance in Education
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
No. 1 — April 15th, 2008 at 6:48 am
[...] online. vote on links that you like or dislike and help decide what’s popular, or submit your own!Why Lolita Should Be Taught To All High Schoolers (beyond-school.org)posted 1 [...]
No. 2 — April 15th, 2008 at 6:58 am
[...] Your page is on StumbleUpon [...]
No. 3 — April 15th, 2008 at 7:52 am
“Ignorance is not innocence, but sin.” -Robert Browning
“The innocence that feels no risk and is taught no caution, is more vulnerable than guilt, and oftener assailed.” -Nathaniel P. Willis
diane’s last blog post..I’m Afraid Not
Reply
No. 4 — April 15th, 2008 at 8:03 am
It’s an interesting topic and I wonder if this would even be an issue if taught in a small non profit school. I’d be interested in knowing if this topic is controversial in a school like “Hinschu International School”
Reply
No. 5 — April 15th, 2008 at 8:21 am
Oh, my God, this totally goes with what I was talking about with my English teacher today, so I’m going to relate it to what you were saying…sort of. We were discussing Sylvia Plath and her disturbingly mature writing.
If you’ve ever read The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath, it is not a book people normally expect–or want–a 15 year old girl to pick up. My teacher was telling me that the District doesn’t allow it, because of the maturity and the darker meaning of the work, and even her other works. The stuff that they have us read, like Romeo and Juliet, and Oedipus the King, is not very realistic, because we don’t really live in a society like that anymore, and that’s why they want us to read it: we may learn something, but it usually isn’t life altering/saving. As long as you can’t learn anything safe from it, it’s okay. But, Plath’s stuff is really dark, therefore, they do not want to pollute the minds of their younger students for the well-being of their image, but not neccessarily for the child. Because that book changed MY life. However, this Lolita books sounds interesting. It’s modern isn’t it? I never did understand why we were forced to read books that are hundreds of years old–they don’t usually pertain to the world we live in now; however, I’ve heard a real story like Lolita, but the girl wasn’t quite so young, and the man wasn’t quite that old. (Not that 40 is old; just a comparison.)
Of course, once you get into college, that all goes away and you learn about anything and everything, with very few restrictions.
Kaelie Curbxstomp’s last blog post..White Wall
Reply
No. 6 — April 15th, 2008 at 8:39 am
Clay you are a breath of fresh air and someone as a student, that I would want as a teacher – a real PIA teacher, but I would learn, have some fun and think.
But if I was your unlucky administrator you would be my worst nightmare
. Your independent and outside the box thinking would cause you and I to butt heads and I would win because I write your evaluation 
.
But I am neither, so I can just sit back and enjoy reading your posts, envy the size of your cahjonnes and wish you were on the staff where I am. I would never be in trouble then–you would be the lightning rod. hehehehe – Harold
Harold Shaw’s last blog post..From the Quick Hits Dept.: Transferring Feeds Between Accounts
Reply
No. 7 — April 15th, 2008 at 8:48 am
Harold, I take your comment in the waggish spirit with which it was offered (and thanks
), but the truth behind it is troubling indeed.
If this post at least spurs administrators to lead on this issue in ways other than teaching this very fine novel, then it’s done its job.
What I didn’t have time to add – I was almost late to school because of this post – is that the obverse of the predator problem is that we throw out all the good adults in the community (commenters on student blogs, twitter helpers, etc) with the bathwater dirtied by the mere specter of predators.
We have to educate our young in how to read adult behavior, and how to wisely navigate their relationships with them online. There’s so much learning to be gained that way.
The ostrich approach (thus the photo) most schools opt for is not the answer.
Reply
No. 8 — April 15th, 2008 at 8:49 am
Clay – I don’t know if this corresponds to this link, but a “real” book worth reading (not a classic) that will teach students a great deal about abuse and that is almost mandatory reading for anyone working with abused children is “A Child Called It” by Dave Pelzer.
It was a tough read, at time I had to set it down after just a few pages, because I was so “pissed off” and actually cried many times at the severe abuse he suffered. I am not a very emotional “on the sleeve” guy, but that book affected me like no other ever has. He came to our school to give a talk, what an amazing individual! Talk about a book that will “teach” students (many of our students read it and it changes their outlook a great deal) and teachers about the “other” side of life.
If this doesn’t belong in with this post please remove
Harold
Harold Shaw’s last blog post..From the Quick Hits Dept.: Transferring Feeds Between Accounts
Reply
No. 9 — April 15th, 2008 at 9:14 am
I hope that administrators do read this but “sigh” most won’t , and if they did they would not listen to the spirit and intent you give this post — most would only see the insubordination/independence or problems you would cause with local parents.
With all the political pressures on schools and administrators they don’t want teachers that rock the boat (usually) and would cut you off at the knees and drop you like a rock.
The reality in the U.S. at this time is that real teaching like you are talking about is not encouraged in most schools, they would prefer the ostrich approach to keeping kids safe because that is what a minority of vocal, loud (read PIA) helicopter parents want. Like they say the squeaky wheel gets the grease, in this case the noisy parent that will call in lawyers and reporters to get what they want.
To many of these parents they don’t care about safely teaching internet safety or how to protect students in unsafe situations with adults. They don’t want anyone else to expose their children to anything possibly offensive, even if it is done safely and might save their child from making a bad mistake later. It is easier for these individuals to “bury their heads in the sand” and say it doesn’t happen instead of preparing their children for the reality of what they may encounter if they are unlucky or act in an ignorant way online or in the real world.
With NCLB, funding woes and all the limitations (local political realities) put on schools in the U.S. and many other areas of the world. Unfortunately, Lolita and books of that ilk are not going to be read in the majority of classrooms and the ones that will suffer are not the ones that stop the teaching and learning opportunities that it would provide.
Keep tilting at windmills my friend. Without your efforts many would not even think about these issues. Thank you Harold
Harold Shaw’s last blog post..From the Quick Hits Dept.: Transferring Feeds Between Accounts
Reply
No. 10 — April 15th, 2008 at 10:09 am
@Clay
Great post. Thanks for reminding me about the other torrid novels we teach. I think I’ll pick up a copy of Lolita this summer so I better understand what we are teaching. You’re probably right about schools pandering to the lengthening of adolescence. I have a friend who teaches at the University level. She claims every year more and more freshmen drag their parents along to their advisory meetings about what classes to pick. I think I hear the blades of the helicopter.
Charlie A. Roy’s last blog post..Intervention Strategies That Work
Reply
No. 11 — April 15th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Harold,
The most popular book in our high school library by far is “A Child Called It.” It’s not on any reading list, but students ask for it constantly and it is rarely on the shelf.
Other librarians in our BOCES have questioned the suitability of Pelzer’s work, but no objections have been raised in our district so we keep replacing copies as they wear out or turn up missing.
I haven’t been able to bring myself to read it yet, but I know that “A Child Called It” affects readers in a very real and meaningful way. There are students in our district who have been/are abused physically and mentally. I’d like to believe that some of our books help them cope with their realities, but how much better would it be if the literature they studied equipped them to recognize and protect themselves from such abominations?
diane
diane’s last blog post..I’m Afraid Not
Reply
No. 12 — April 15th, 2008 at 10:41 am
@diane – “I’d like to believe that some of our books help them cope with their realities, but how much better would it be if the literature they studied equipped them to recognize and protect themselves from such abominations?”
I would hope that some of our books help them learn to be safer in their “world”, but if it were only that simple, that is a tip of the iceberg type comment. The abuses can begin before some even read, but we have to start someplace and the classroom is a great place to educate children to be safer (oh that is a novel thought) (not being sarcastic at you personally diane), but isn’t that what we are supposed to do with children – teach? Then the powers that be should trust our ability to be professional in our chose profession and allow us to teach our charges in the manner they need to be taught.
Harold
Harold Shaw’s last blog post..From the Quick Hits Dept.: Transferring Feeds Between Accounts
Reply
No. 13 — April 15th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Harold,
We are a small school (enrollment K-12 is 634) but have a social worker and psychologist on staff.
Confidentiality laws protect our children but also prevent staff members from fully understanding the details of their lives. When a student of any age confides in me, I try to respond in the most positive way possible and make sure that the appropriate “expert” is alerted to possible issues.
These children are not “innocent” of the knowledge of evil. We can’t always protect our children; we need to teach them how to protect themselves.
diane
diane’s last blog post..I’m Afraid Not
Reply
No. 14 — April 15th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Hello, Clay,
Teaching Lolita is something that should be seriously considered — it humanizes the unthinkable without flinching from it. In that way, it does remind me of Capote’s In Cold Blood.
What’s missing from this conversation, however, is any sense of context. *Why* would Lolita be taught? What are the goals? If the goals are simply to teach it as a means of showing that some things are capital-b Bad, then, IMO, you are missing the opportunities provided by a text such as Lolita. To learn about Bad things, have them read the paper. Have them look at statistics, real data, that examines how and why rape/assault/incest are underreported. Better yet, have them do that *while* reading Lolita.
Or, have them read Lolita and Push (by Sapphire) one after the other. Or read Lolita alongside Mrs. Dalloway, or Pale Fire. Or have them read The Lover by Duras, or have them read Jane Eyre, Lolita, and The Wide Sargasso Sea, in that order. You have options, and these texts will sing better in harmony.
Lolita can be a powerful text in the hands of a skilled educator, but, as should always be the case when handling something of power, we should be sure to understand out motives, and make sure we are using it effectively.
FWIW, I’m also not entirely convinced by the line of reasoning that Lolita will serve as a sufficiently cautionary tale as to make students more aware of the risks from sexual predators. There are many reasons to teach Lolita, but to use it as a cautionary tale would be the pedagogical equivalent of following Humbert Humbert to Hourglass Lake — you’re likely to get lost in mirror image, the reflection, or the veil of time, but a moral will be difficult to come by, unless you go out your way to append it. There are better vehicles for that message.
Reply
No. 15 — April 15th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
@Bill,
Thanks for a comment that belongs in my fantasy Comment Hall of Fame.
I’m zonked, it’s almost 5 p.m. (this nocturne’s bedtime), so I’ll only say I love your suggestions, though the coverage element limits how many novels we can read in this class.
I put the pedagogical thrust of the thing in a comment on Bud’s off-shoot of my post, so I’ll paste it here:
Here’s the pedagogical justification for the novel as the perfect truly modern novel, in the framework of “the Big Four”: Darwin (shift from theology to biology), Marx (shift from Free Will and essentialism to historico-materialistic determinism), Freud (shift from rationalism to irrationalism), and Nietzsche (shift from absolute to “revaluation of all values”): Lolita encapsulates all of those things. I’m teaching the class as a chronological survey of literature from the Renaissance to the post-modern, which these students are just ready to synthesize after studying Freud in AP Psych and studying the birth of the modern in the Norton Anthology.
–so that’s a sketch. Still, there’s much to be said for flattering you through some good honest theft of your suggestions. Thanks for those.
Reply
No. 16 — April 15th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
[...] 15 April: After reading this and the comments, be sure to read this follow-up post and the comments there. Interesting stuff in those [...]
No. 17 — April 15th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Hello, Clay,
Steal away! What’s ours is ours
I love your big 4 — and it made me think of two more: Rhys’ Good Morning Midnight (btw, have I mentioned how much I heart Jean Rhys?) and Notes from Underground —
RE coverage: I feel you — for me, the hardest part of planning lit courses involves deciding what to leave out.
I’m also a big fan of books in threes — it forces students away from either/or, and helps engender bigger picture questions/discussions.
RE: being zonked: sleep well! It’s late where I’m at — pushing 2 am, and I’ve had a night filled with UI design. The digression into literature has been vastly appreciated.
Reply
No. 18 — April 15th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
I had an idea on how to help get this taught.
Find out the most conservative pastor in your school district.
Approach them saying “I want your help in setting up a lesson plan that will actually help children deal with the evil in the world”.
Let him suggest a few books, and you suggest a few books, and if he hasn’t read “Lolita”, buy him a copy and say “this is a really well written story about the dangers of having sex”. Let him read it, and if you can get his endorsement, that will help your principal defend the book selection.
tankilo’s last blog post..tankilo: @iboughtamac Okay. Updated bio link to a blog. MySpace’s setup/layout is a pain anyway.. Trying to get everyone to twitter anyhow.
Reply
No. 19 — April 16th, 2008 at 2:32 am
@tankilo, that is one of the most devious and delicious uses of marketing i’ve read in a long time- getting the town witch doctor to endorse the competition to his own medicine!
i can’t say i’m crazy about giving educational authority to a guy whose ancestors burned people for divergent thinking, but it’s definitely a fun one to imagine.
Reply
No. 20 — April 18th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
[...] follow Clay Burell’s blog and found myself really interested in what he has been saying about teaching Lolita. And then I saw that he had responded to this meme, originating from Paul C [...]
No. 21 — April 20th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
I love reading and the triumph of good over evil draws me like moth to a flame. Literature gives us a distance with which to study base human emotions and the actions that are jerked out as if by an clumsy puppet-master. T
hough my comment and the interpretation given leaves my exact position in the shadows of a safe haunted house, have no doubt, I want my 15 year old daughter to study the classics, to find beneath the cloak of societal acceptability–granted by the ignorant–the horror that lurks…and the good, as well.
While we are each flawed as humans, the love of the Redeemer can help us. But so long as we hide in the dark, cling to it like an inadequate blanket on a chill night, we make a choice to be less than what we could be. Transparency of our motives, reflection, before and after, action…that is the only way.
In the final analysis, each of us must learn to accept and love who we are–the good and the bad, and to use the energy of dissonance to transform. If a conversation in an English class can move us closer to that goal, then, that is what must happen.
I find it ironic, though, that you advocate for this from the relative safety of an International School, while Americans in the land of the free cower in fear of what they may say. I went for fingerprinting two weeks ago…too many criminals among our ranks, not enough teachers. The witch hunt begins. We can’t all move across the sea, nor should we…a rose in a junk yard is all the more treasured when it survives enough to bloom.
I fear that “schooliness” and “learning” are mutually exclusive in these times and that when we refuse to acknowledge who we are, to even discuss the possibility of what is unearthed in the tombs of great tomes, the only way to learn will be to walk away from our schools.
But, that’s my fear. My hope is that I will raise a generation of people who are unafraid to stare into the mirror, to see what lies behind the beautiful smile or the frown, to accept oneself as s/he truly is and do what must be done, what is right…I know I have a long way to go, but I am pleased that at least, I know my ignorance.
Again, you’ve inspired me to ramble. Thank you for the space. More at my space.
With appreciation,
Miguel Guhlin
Around the Corner-MGuhlin.net
http://mguhlin.net
Reply
No. 22 — April 20th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Miguel, thanks for the addition. I hope my parenthetical made clear that your comments on Bud’s post were more complex than my quote of you on mine.
The irony you note is one I’ve noted many times. One of my hopes with Students 2.0 was that it would serve as evidence that American students can blog publicly (and beneficially for both learning and college admissions bullets *sigh*) without, as I put it somewhere in these pages, “being torn apart by wolves.” I wonder if any US evangelists are using it as such evidence as they argue for blogging in US schools.
For the record, I have never taught in the USA. I left to explore the wide world, and the US Army was this working-class Humanities graduate’s ticket out (I was stationed in Germany, an Arabic Linguist for Military Intelligence). And I only started teaching in China as a plot complication in a (cue dramatic music) doomed love affair.
Somehow your post has inspired a little fantasy in return: wouldn’t it be grand to teach a “Banned Books” elective class? D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Henry Miller, Nabokov, Ginsberg . . . . who else?
Thanks again, Miguel.
Clay
Reply
No. 23 — April 20th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Clay,
Who else for your Banned Books list? How about Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, & Harry Potter? Authors Roald Dahl, Shel Silverstein, Judy Bloom, Robert Cormier, Philip Pullman, Mark Twain? Books have been challenged, sometimes banned, for containing witchcraft, magic, sexual content, even inappropriate attitude towards adults/parents. There is always someone, somewhere, ready to be offended. People whose beliefs can be so easily shaken must build high walls indeed to protect themselves and their children from “unwholesome” influences.
diane
diane’s last blog post..Saint Expeditus: He’s fo’ close scrapes
Reply
No. 24 — April 21st, 2008 at 9:02 am
[...] across a post at Beyond School that, at first, made me smile, but now has me thinking [...]
No. 25 — April 22nd, 2008 at 7:41 am
Hi Clay,
Thanks for initiating a great discussion. I included a link and quote from your pick along with other picks so far at quoteflections.
Paul C’s last blog post..Meme: High School Daze to Praise (3)
Reply
No. 26 — April 22nd, 2008 at 2:11 pm
While you raise some interesting and provocative ideas about literature studies in general, I must take some exception to the starting point you use in the examples you cite. Sophocles’ Oedipus the King BEGINS after the fact of his patricide and incest. Furthermore, Oedipus’ father, King Laius, attempted to murder his baby son on the basis of an oracle’s prediction that he (Oedipus) would one day murder his father and marry his mother. In an attempt to thwart this destiny, Laius abandons the child in the mountains. Rescued by a wandering shepherd, Oedipus is taken to Corinth, where he is adopted by King Polybus, and never learns of his true identity.
On hearing from an oracle the same prediction that he would one day murder his father and marry his mother, Oedipus runs away from those he assumes are his loving parents for fear of doing them harm. On his travels, he encounters his real father who he slays in a duel. Arriving at Thebes, he vanquishes the Sphinx (remember the riddle of the Sphinx?), and is elected King, finally marrying Queen Jocasta his mother, thus fulfilling the prophecies of the oracle.
This is the starting point of the play, and it begins with the wrath of the gods being visited on Thebes because the death of King Laius needed to be avenged.
Scholars over the centuries have pondered the true meaning of Oedipus the King. The point of the story is not the incest or the murder that Oedipus committed. Did he really commit either, being ignorant of his crimes and of his past? The question behind this story is rather of pre-destiny and free will.
I’m not sure if you have actually read this play, or ever seen it performed. But I would suggest that this story, as all enduring literature, provokes thought and asks questions in an unassuming manner. That Oedipus and Jocasta suffer horribly as a result of their actions is a fact of the story. Our reaction to it is neither indictment of their action nor condonement of their innocence. It should, on the other hand, represent a vehicle whereby we can sense within our selves our own evils and come to terms with them. As well, we can recognize the perennial struggle in all humanity between good and evil, free will and destiny, crime and punishment. To relegate such a timeless classic to the trashiness of contemporary dime store sex thrillers unjustly condemns this great work.
Please read the play! Then, try and understand the gist of it.
Reply
No. 27 — April 22nd, 2008 at 2:36 pm
@Lorne —
You realize that with a few selected edits just about everything you say about Oedipus can be equally true about Lolita —
It’s also difficult to reconcile twin statements like this:
“That Oedipus and Jocasta suffer horribly as a result of their actions is a fact of the story.”
alongside
“The point of the story is not the incest or the murder that Oedipus committed. Did he really commit either, being ignorant of his crimes and of his past?” —
Even Oedipus would agree that he killed his father and slept with his mother — and he’ll share his eyeballs to back it up!
Of course, it took a blind man to get him there — unless, of course, we want to take Eliot’s more gender neutral version of the blind man with withered dugs.
And this is (for me, anyways) one of the values of this thread: the effort to pigeonhole certain works as acceptable while rejecting others as classics is fraught with imprecision. 60 years ago, students would have read Lochinvar, and would have been tasked with writing essays extolling its virtues. Give me three steps down the palate over Lochinvar’s hackneyed gallop any day of the week.
Cheers,
Bill
Reply
No. 28 — April 22nd, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Lorne,
I’ve read Oedipus in countless translations, written a 20-page analysis of it to “prove” my one-eyed professor read it squint-wise, and I’ve read the other Oedipus plays as well.
What I wonder, from your dismissal of Lolita as a “trash[y] dime-store sex thriller,” is if you’ve read that book. I can only assume you haven’t.
A couple of reviews to set the record straight on the lack of “prurience” and the abundance of artistry – and yes, food for moral thought of the most sublime, but decidedly modern and non-Victorian manner – in Nabokov’s acknowledged masterpiece:
and for something a little more contemporary, this 2006 review by Bret Anthony Johnston, author and creative writing professor at Harvard, on NPR’s All Things Considered
Wilde’s Miss Prism would dismiss this novel based on its content (which again, deals with taboos like Sophocles and Shakespeare so often do, just uncomfortably close ones); but lovers of literature would not regret reading it.
Again, though, the thrust of my post is this: literary merit aside, in this age of vanishing privacy and uncheckable exposure to the world via the web, our young need to be taught not only what a Lolita is – that allusion has all-too-successfully become iconic in our culture in ways we grown-ups know all to well, if we lay the cant aside – but also two more things: how not to be one, first of all, and more importantly, what a “Humbert Humbert” is.
And how to recognize his trademarks if ever they crop up on a blog comment, a tweet, a Facebook, and the avalanche of future avenues being prepared for him by our wonderful web 2.0 developers.
When “Humbert Humbert” becomes as iconic as “Lolita,” I’d wager we’d see wiser online behavior by our young. Maybe I’m wrong. But if I am, reading Lolita still rewards. It’s a great novel. It’s enthralling. It’s not one our young adults in upper secondary will skirt with a copy of Cliff’s Notes; it might be one that sets them a little more firmly on the course of life-long reading of real, uncensored literature.
Reply
No. 29 — April 23rd, 2008 at 9:04 am
[...] is the third in the Why We Should Teach Lolita in High School series. See Number One here, Number Two here, with many interesting comments. If you want to comment, please read those posts – especially the [...]
No. 30 — July 22nd, 2008 at 6:11 am
FYI Clay in case you didn’t already see this, the Modern Languages Association has just published a new volume in its Approaches to Teaching series, this one on Lolita:
http://www.mla.org/store/CID39/PID344
Thought you might find it helpful if you do ever end up teaching this text or if you need an argument for reticent administrators: Clearly someone in America thinks its worthy of canonizing…
All best,
C
Reply
No. 31 — July 22nd, 2008 at 7:09 am
@Carmen, Nice contribution, thanks for that
Reply
No. 32 — September 18th, 2008 at 5:05 am
[...] or dislike and help decide what’s popular, or submit your own!0vl['t3_6frox'] = ['0', '0', '1' ];Why Lolita Should Be Taught To All High Schoolers (beyond-school.org)submitted 5 months ago by [deleted] [...]
No. 33 — October 18th, 2008 at 10:24 am
I personally think this is a bunch of rubbish. Teenagers need to be exposed to a lot of different subject matter to become well-rounded adults. These “dark” and “mature” novels are a great getaway from the normal boring and awfully written books most teachers have you read.
And BTW–most people who commit crimes are uneducated.
Reply
No. 34 — October 31st, 2008 at 11:49 pm
I’m all one for expanding the amount of literature to which young people are exposed, and would have nothing against Lolita being taught in schools – however, I would contend with some comments that works by Shakespeare, Sophocles etc. have somehow become irrelevant and are far removed from our modern experiences. Indeed, the fact that we are culturally indebted to the ages portrayed by such dramatists and writers should compel us to look deeper into them, rather than be repulsed by them due to their apparent stuffiness or irrelevance.
Also, let us not forget that while it is certainly important to allow the darker side of literature to have its exposure, we should also be teachings kids about really good, FUN literature – the danger is that “book-learnin’” might end up as a ghastly, indecipherable and (most dangerous of all where young adults are concerned) boring place. Let’s show them Joyce as well as Nabokov; put the tragedies and the comedies on the same shelf; encourage equal interest in “Hamlet”, “The Oddyssey” and “The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.
Reply
Clay Burell Reply:
November 1st, 2008 at 12:05 am
Hi Iwan,
Oof, if you read any deprecation of Shakespeare, the Greeks, or “fun” and humor in my post, I pitched it really badly.
I agree with you, in other words. (Search the site for David Sedaris and Gilgamesh and you may see proof of that
).
Thanks for stopping by.
Reply
No. 35 — November 7th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
dude, are you aware you country sounds like a state controlled socialist entity where people are not allowed to think or choose for themselves? No wonder kids are board and doing silly things. teach Lolita it’d be a better education than they are apparently receiving in school in from their peers.
Reply
No. 36 — July 7th, 2009 at 1:53 am
I just finished freshman year of high school. English was terrible with horrific “classic” pieces of horrid literature once again pushed down a generation’s throats. The two books I actually liked were the two I got to pick for an individual novel project. For the first book I chose Lolita.
I would not strike anyone as being the type to voluntarily read such a bizarre tale – especially with its colorful history. I chose to read it after spending three hours digging through online lists of classic literature. I love to read, but I’d have taken an English/Spanish dictionary two times over over most all of the books on the list. I finally stumbled upon Lolita on one of the lists. I had heard of the book and I, curious, pulled it up. It actually looked good. I bought a copy of the Annotated Lolita the next day.
Of course, I stil had to convince my English teacher to approve it – and I figured that that would be easier siad than done. I mean, considering the book’s reputation, what young English teacher would possibly allow a freshman to present a project on such a novel? That’s when I found your page here. (I was looking for validation and evidence to use when making my case.) Luckily, she had apparently never heard of it and trusted me to pick a good book. She said she was fine with it.
So I read it. And it took forever reading it at lunch with all of the notes. I read it all day some days after a week of only having time for reading during my half-hour lunch. Here’s the shocker: I absolutely loved it! The book was amazing and the project was a huge success. During my research, I also became a huge Nakokov fan (a man practically nobody my age has ever heard of). Anyway, the book was clean, funny, and well-written.
And that comes from a 14 year old.
Reply
No. 37 — October 20th, 2009 at 2:25 am
sure, teach Lolita in high school. I read it then and i certainly found it more valuable than the feminist suicide classics I had to read. But don’t call it a love story. I would even contest that the girl in the story is per-se “over sexed.” Children of both sexes at that age are often trying to figure out how to understand their own sexuality, and their clumsy attempts are often confusing and awkward for witnessing adults. Also, this is Humbert Humbert’s perspective and he is the ultimate unreliable narrorator.
Actually its funny mentioned the adolescent adult phenomonon. It a sense I would say that delayed adult development is major theme in Lolita. You have a character who, despite all of his intelligence, has never learned to opporate in way that isn’t essentially selfish impulse. He uses the girl to recreate his lost childhood love.
Anyways, in general yes, teach Lolita in schools. While we are at it, read Anais Nin and Story of the Eye.
Reply
No. 38 — November 27th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
Melissa,
You have an English teacher who hadn’t even heard of Lolita? I hope that’s not true.
Clay,
Thanks to this blog post I think I will pick up Lolita again after putting it down when only 1/4 the way through. I am not opposed to teaching the subject matter to students in high school, but I would disagree it should required. I actually don’t know if any book should be required if the teacher feels unfit to teach the material, but I especially feel this way about Lolita. I’m more comfortable with having it be on a “project basis” the way Melissa explains it, unless the teacher feels especially familiar with the material and ready to tackle that kind of subject.
While not too demanding for a bright student, I believe it would be a heavy dose of heavy prose and weighty content. I also may be underestimating high school students, a sentiment far too prevalent in our society. I’m thinking The Perks of Being a Wallflower might be more accessible while still addressing sexual mores — for the record, it was probably my favorite book in high school.
I would say that Lolita should probably be reserved for AP, honors, and college classes. If I were an English teacher, with all the great books in the world to teach, and too little time to teach them all, I would probably not subject all students to Lolita, or at least what I read of it. That said, 2 pages in I knew Nabakov to be a master wordsmith and all students should be exposed to near-perfect prose writing (my opinion) like his at some point.
In general though, I think I’m mostly on board with you.
Toolbit out.
.-= Toolbit´s last blog ..Expanding Waistlines and Standards =-.
Reply