“On Two Ways of Reading” (Maxim)
Thursday, 7 January 2010 Clay Burell 
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Second draft:
On Two Ways of Reading: Slavery reads on its knees. Freedom reads on its feet.1
So a high school teacher’s job: to teach students to find those feet?
I’m just looking for snappy first principles here. Ones within the 15-year-old attention span.
- I know, I know — wannabee Nietszchean aphorist indulgence. But cut me some slack. Time is slow here on this beach. [↩]
- Maxim: “Give Me a Unit I’ll Learn for a Day…”
- What is Schooliness? Maxim 1: Writing Lessons
- How Modern People Read
- A Real-World Mini-Lesson in Critical Reading and Writing
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Tags: literacy, reading Print This Post
No. 1 — January 26th, 2010 at 7:22 am
I have been enjoying the posts at Beyond School quite a bit, so I raise this concern with some trepidation. From my perspective (mostly Holt/Gatto inspired unschooling) I find this painfully ironic. School as an institution is invested in students “reading on their knees.”
Do you see it differently, or just feel that good teachers should subvert the system?
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Clay Burell Reply:
January 26th, 2010 at 8:06 am
The latter. Institutions are made of individuals, and this individual, at least, thinks a critical understanding of history is a valuable service that schools, warts and all, can provide.
Search “unschooling” or “deschooling” on this blog, and you’ll see I’m sympathetic to it in general. But I also have concerns that it can deprive students of discovering interests they wouldn’t arrive at without guidance. Not a simple position, I know.
Thanks for popping in.
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No. 2 — January 28th, 2010 at 7:37 am
Again, I want to emphasize that, all other things being equal, I would rather have engaged and thoughtful teachers in school than not. Such engaged teachers can make a real difference in the lives of their students, and I continue to comment with no disrespect intended. But…
I don’t think that “a critical understanding of history” is the same as “Slavery reads on its knees. Freedom reads on its feet. So a high school teacher’s job: to teach students to find those feet?”
As I read you, the valuable change in perspective for a modern reader is in the critical approach to a text. We should not accept argument from authority; we should evaluate claims for ourselves in light of available evidence and take responsibility for our own beliefs. I agree with this whole heartedly.
But then the natural question arises; what should I read? What should I do with my time? And suddenly we are right back to argument from authority. I don’t know of any serious advocates of unschooling that believe it should be learning “without guidance.” Holt devotes a large chunk of “Instead of Education” to teasing out the difference between “natural authority” (ie. people listen to you because you know what you’re talking about and they want to hear what you have to say) and coercive authority (people listen to you because otherwise they will suffer consequences.)
School as it is currently constituted cannot function without coercive authority. And more painfully, individual good teachers cannot escape wielding coercive authority when acting as its agent. At best they can focus on developing a parallel natural authority.
Inasmuch as you are saying that the definition of a modern reader is that rejection of coercive authority I don’t see how you can say that a high school teacher’s *job* is to help their students reject coercive authority.
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Clay Burell Reply:
January 29th, 2010 at 5:26 am
Emile, in theory most of what you say (and what unschoolers and such advocate) is right up my alley. In practice, the several hundred kids in my high school aren’t part of that world, and neither am I. So we do the best we can with the situation we’re given.
Sorry no time for more. Guess I need a more pragmatic grounds to justify it. Know what I mean? Feels like the world-changing talks we used to have in college: easy to talk, but next to impossible to execute.
So: proposals?
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No. 3 — June 17th, 2010 at 9:08 pm
[...] this because so many students seem to read texts “on their knees” instead of “on their feet” — that is, they’re so busy reading to comprehend that their thinking stops [...]