Revisiting Marguerite Helmers’ introduction to her Intexts compendium of reading pedagogy, I’m reminded of the separate, but unequal, approach so many English departments share for Comp vs. Lit., and the need to consider both sides of the divide in order to serve our students best. Traditionally, our educational methodology teaches reading and writing separately, as Bleich notes, which treats reading as “overdetermined and pedestrian.” (5) The chief question, as Young and Fulwiler posit, is whether we focus on the text or on the reader. (7) This discussion gave rise to Lindemann and Tate’s debates, where the former argued that there was “no place for literature in first-year composition,” while the latter bemoaned curricula deprived of reading “an entire body of excellent writing,” along with the implied writing benefits this cultivates in first-year readers. (7-8)
After nearly two years of immersion in SFSU’s largely Lindemannian perspective, it’s not difficult to support it. Emphasizing the reader generally means reading shorter works by authors in the field -- or, like William Coles, ignoring all such works and favoring the reading of student work as class text. This is because, given the limited time for homework and class discussion, reading longer works usually means less time to study critical aspects of writing. By contrast, in a class focusing on students, student attitude and technique are the primary concern. Unlike many students in literature courses, these writing students, it’s hoped, develop a consciousness for purpose, audience, genre and stance, and they become cognizant of the transactional triad of the reader, the writer and the text. The student-centered classroom teaches students explicitly authorial reading (Rosenblatt) and social-justice reading or reading the world (Freire). In addition to creating an arguably more relevant and, therefore, interesting learning environment, this approach actually offers the perspective of reading and writing as tools of empowerment to re-think, if not revolutionize, the world. All of this develops agency in student reading, which strengthens student writing; at the same time, an emphasis on writing develops strong reading skills, as Rosenblatt asserts.
By contrast, the Tatian view, where classroom focus is on the text, can be seen to offer crucial benefits that the other approach omits. Chief among these is the pleasure that can come from reading literature; even Freire says that a good reading includes strong emotions. If, like Freire, we sincerely want to help students read the world, and if such a reading is “full of feelings, of emotions, of tastes,” (Helmers) then at some point we need to help ensure that our students truly connect with their reading. (10) Unfortunately, composition studies, with its movement away from expressivism toward what Helmers calls a “Marxist-based cultural criticism,” has provided little or no consideration for the importance of reading for enjoyment, since this is considered “soft.” (14) For teachers moving in the opposite direction, the classroom can be an unfortunate “contact zone” where students think of reading as pleasurable, while instructors “expect interrogation.” (18) Lynn Schwartz laments that books, in the context of the classroom, lose their “magic” when they become texts, and what was always fun becomes drudgery. (19)
In my teaching, I will definitely try to make reading enjoyable for my students. Tate and others maintain this is next to impossible when students read only short works, but I’m not convinced; nor am I certain that reading entire bodies of longer works is, in itself, enjoyable since so much depends on the quality of the writing, the degree to which it activates student schema, the atmosphere of the classroom and the enthusiasm and skill of the instructor to make the reading come alive. Even, with all this, so much hinges on the students individually and the schemata they bring to the work.
At some point in the term, I would love to have students read some piece of aesthetic literature, even if it’s only a poem or a short story. Call it a personal bias -- I love fiction because, at its most powerful, it can ignite emotions in ways that the most brilliant intellectual work cannot. Sure, some might say that, as we move closer toward the affective, even if some students connect very deeply, other students may not relate at all. Therefore, choosing such materials requires extreme care and thoughtfulness. Most important for me, however, is not that my students enjoy themselves per se, though that would be great, but that their joy could lead to increased engagement, and this engagement to increased agency and commitment to learn.
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