The Uselessness of Literature
The Uselessness of Literature:
Why new literacies will end of teaching of literature[1]
by Tom Liam Lynch
(Download a PDF version here)A boy held a book. A committee of senators sat in front of him. The boy’s father, Arne Duncan, was in the middle of his confirmation hearing as then President-elect Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Education. One senator drew attention to the child and his book. She said, “Glad to see that your boy is there reading books instead of playing with an electronic gadget.”
Duncan smiled.
The senator’s comment gets to the heart of what I see happening in the teaching of literature. Reading literature has come to mean not-playing-with-electronic-gadgets. (The meaning of “gadgets” ranges from video games to iPods to virtually all activities involving the Internet.) There is growing concern in education about what the new fast-paced digital information age is doing to adolescents’ learning. This pedagogical paranoia seems well-founded: students spend hours online, yet don’t read for class; the conventions of text messaging seems to be usurping those of Strunk (and White, of course); reading literature does not seem to be on anyone’s priority list except our own, and perhaps Oprah’s.
Still, the issue isn’t bookishness versus technomania. Students, parents, and politicians are becoming acutely aware of new types of literacies. And, they are looking to English teachers for guidance. But English education continues to struggle with what it is it does (Applebee, 1974; Scholes, 1998, 2001). While it’s clear that English education emphasizes reading literature, fiction and poetry, it’s not often clear to others outside the field why teaching literature is important. I argue that it is the teaching of literature that is most in danger of disappearance as focus on new literacies rises. The reason has historical roots.
The Uselessness of Literature
The teaching of literature has always been controversial. Socrates called for the ousting of Homer’s poetry from the Republic because he thought it was corrupting the minds of the young (Plato, Unknown). Literature in the vernacular, like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, was sometimes hunted down and destroyed by those in authority (Jones, Yeager, Fletcher, Dor, & Dolan, 2004). Milton penned a lengthy defense for the proliferation of literature and other publications arguing that censorship was logically absurd (Milton, 1643). And yet, by the 19th century, teaching literature had already been solidified as a rote activity quite opposite of Socrates’ societal arguments, Chaucer’s vernacular protest, and Milton’s case for literary freedom. Literature was to be taught properly. Take this excerpt from a popular early literature textbook as a case in point:
Q. What reflection is necessary, that the reader may enter into the spirit of Homer?
A. That he is reading the most ancient book in the world next to the Bible; that he is not to look for the correctness and elegance of the Augustan age, but for much of the ferocity and passion of the savage state. (118-119)
And shortly thereafter:
Q. What is Homer’s style?
A. Easy, natural, and highly animated.
Q. What is his versification?
A. Uncommonly melodious; carrying a resemblance in the sound to the sense and meaning, beyond that of any poet.
Q. What is his description of battles?
A. Very masterly; such as to place the reader in the very midst of the engagement. (129) (Marsh, 1822)
The textbook’s author treats the reading of Homer as certain and factual. There are right questions to ask; there are right answers to give. He puts literature in its own bubble, as if it has always existed in the ether, majestic and transcendent. In an ironic departure from the writings and actions of English authors themselves, early English educators seem unconcerned with the dirty bits of life.
When English as a discipline gained recognition in the early part of the 20th century, it did so following in the footsteps of other more established disciplines like classical studies. The result was an emphasis on grammatical correctness, syntax and structure (Applebee, 1974). What’s more, as an emphasis on the scientific study of education gained force in the 1920s, the study of literature found it “much harder to justify [itself] in terms of concrete life-activities, [and was] protected by the widespread belief in the importance of literature in character development and ethics” (84). The significance of this is worth emphasizing: teaching literature has never really had to justify itself. English depended on other aspects of its content to satisfy requirements of scientific rigor, not literature.
Literature has been taught as many things: an extension of Christian dogma (Applebee, 1974; Graff, 1987), as a structured object to be deconstructed (Scholes, 1998), and even as a political tool (Scholes, 1986). None of these approaches to literature argue convincingly for its value, however. They assume the value of literature. Furthermore, I suggest that even many groundbreaking works on teaching literature—transactional theory (Rosenblatt, 1983), the balancing of reader experience with authorial intention (Rabinowitz & Smith, 1998), the role of imagination students’ private readings in schools (Sumara, 1996)–while of immense importance, ignore this historical problem that teaching literature has been, at best, tolerably useless. That is, it is use-less and lacks the utility of other disciplines: physics can send human beings to the moon, foreign languages can allow people of different backgrounds to communicate, history teaches students to participate in government.
Useless.
At the end of his book, Applebee (1974) lists a number of issues the field must confront. He articulates one thus: “The knowledge and goals of the teaching of literature are in conflict with the emphasis on specific knowledge or content” (246). Here he means that English teachers are uncomfortable defining teaching literature “as a body of knowledge” because their goals are not knowledge-based but are “questions of values and perspective” (ibid). That is, teachers of literature have been, according to Applebee, in the business of literary experience and imagination. Thirty-five years later, I argue, this is still very much the case. However, we now face a new problem. It is the English teacher who is being tapped to help guide education into this era of new literacies. But, new literacies research cares little for the imaginative and aesthetic experiences valued by teachers of literature. How can a field that has only held on to the teaching of literature by historical happenstance defend literature against newer literacy needs?
New Literacies and the Old Problem of Literature
It has been commonplace recently to pit literature against technology. We read in the news about librarians who are putting books down in order to teach basic information-based research techniques (Rich, 2009). Or, respected voices weighing the effects of new literacies on reading (Gardner, 2008). In another instance, we hear the concerns teachers have that text messaging and online practices are supplanting students’ study habits (Rich, 2008). While on the one hand we read about President Obama’s own love of reading and writing (Kakutani, 2009), his Secretary of Education seemed fine with the dichotomy of books vs. “those electronic gadgets” (Dillon, 2009). English teachers, whose work has always been rooted in literary works, (Applebee, 1974), are understandably affected by new technologies and the literacies they make possible.
One way to offer a definition of new literacies is by reading the opening question from a recent comprehensive research guide called Handbook of Research on New Literacies. The authors begin thus: How do the Internet and other information and communication technologies alter the nature of literacy? (1) (Coiro, Knobel, Lankshear, & Leu, 2008). One characteristic of new literacies research that I’d like to focus on has to do with its emphasis on “information and communication” for specific solutions to problems. We see this in several studies from prominent voices in the field. In one recent study, researchers wanted to see if there was indeed any correlation between how students read online versus offline (Leu et al., 2007). Their findings suggested there was no correlation whatsoever; students who read well offline didn’t necessarily read well online, and vice versa. A limit of the study, in my eyes, is the definition of offline reading. It is decidedly non-literary. It is what Rosenblatt might refer to as efferent, rather than aesthetic (Rosenblatt, 1994). Students were not asked to read passages from Milton and use online tools to make meaning of literature. The readings in both online and offline exercises were efferent and task-oriented, void of the type of aesthetic experience Applebee notes as essential to the teaching of literature.
Another example. In a recent article in the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (Alvermann, 2008), Alverman asks thought-provoking questions like, “Do adolescents’ online literacies have implications for the research and teaching of literacy?” and “What unspoken, unexamined assumptions cause us to see as ‘natural’ the dominance of print in a world that is growing more multimodal by the second?”(14). Her questions exemplify another aspect of new literacies scholarship: a focus on multi-modality. Literature seems to have only one modality. While the surge of interest in graphic novels and film in English classroom could be cited as an example of multi-modality, such texts are not literature. Literature is print-based. It is traditionally printed on paper. Further, Alvermann’s use of the word “dominance” conveys something interesting: Do those in new literacies studies view print-based literature as residue of some stodgy oppressive regime? I am speculating, of course, but “dominance” makes such conjecture seem less outlandish.
As one more example of recent new literacies research, take a recent piece called “New Literacy Learning Strategies for New Times” (Tierney, 2007). In the piece, Tierney describes how “Digital environments have the potential to support a range of collaborative engagements from the outset of the process of researching a project, through to the development of input on design and drafts, and to comments of ‘hits’ by well-known and supportive colleagues, critics and the public” (31). I agree that “digital environments” offer new possibilities for collaboration and, as others have written, that it might well change education in ways that it has changed businesses (Tapscott & Williams, 2008). Collaborative work will never be the same now that we use wikis and other Web 2.0 tools to pool our talents. Tierney goes on, “Issues of intended use and audience quickly emerge as decision areas to be considered. Without fixed walls, we may need to be mindful of the kind of dissemination that is constructive versus destructive” (31). Here, I take his point that the openness and public nature of online communities poses new challenges for teaching. However, an important word recurs: use. It’s a little word. But, as I suggested above, this word points to the single greatest difference between the research being done in new literacies and teaching literature. The teaching of literature has always been use-less. I think it is wonderfully so, but still, it is of no pragmatic use. The kinds of literary experiences that inform so much of what we do as teachers of literature—of meaning-making, transaction, imagination—are not clearly useful.
In sum, research in new literacies emphasizes information, not imagination. It focuses on multi-modal forms of expression. And, it privileges the creation of real-world products and as opposed to transactional imagination. I think that the inability of English education to identify just why studying literature is important is now coming back to haunt it. The field has been complacent in its efforts to quibble amongst itself about why we teach literature, leaving it up to others to expect of English educators whatever they wish. What I see foresee is the supplantation of teaching literature with the teaching of new literacies. It has begun already with an emphasis on teaching non-fiction texts and research skills and will next morph into teaching students to be “21st century readers”. In the wake of this digital wave, I predict, will be the bobbing corpse of the teaching of literature.
A Final Call for New Literatures
Teachers of literature must make it clearer to the public, to themselves, to our students why teaching literature is important. It is something the field has failed to do. The result has been the slow suffocating of literature in schools. We must accept that not all students will be English majors and that reading literature does not have to mean reading like a professor. New literacies has much to offer the teaching of literature, but it is up to us to make it clear what is teaching literature and what is not. What we need is a New Literatures movement. The Old Literatures approach has taken us as far as it can. I myself have few answers to the questions I raise here. But, I might suggest that we begin a group on englishcompanion.ning.com (which has become a popular place for English teachers to exchange ideas online) called New Literatures that seeks to take up the issues raised here. A fitting place, the Internet, to continue this particular discussion.
Beyond the ones mentioned above, I wonder what it means to infuse our teaching of literature with new literacies. Granted, some work has been written about the use of blogs, message boards, and wikis in the classroom. But still, these are spotty attempts to fold students’ everyday knowledge into school. The risk, similar to the risk of using pop culture texts in the classroom (Lynch, 2007), is that students will see such pedagogical moves as inauthentic attempts to win them over. What does it mean to authentically fold new literacies in to teaching literature? What do new literatures look like? As I have argued elsewhere as well (Lynch, 2008), important questions like these are best had with our students. We must ask them: what have been your experiences with literature over the course of your schooling? Ask them: how are new literacies changing the way we view literature? Ask them: why do we read literature when we have the Internet? Ask them: how might online literacies change the way we read literature together? There answers, I suspect, will amaze us. Students might, after all, make greater sense of how “electronic gadgets” affect reading literature than any literature teacher—or senator—could hope to imagine.
Works Cited
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[1] This article is slightly altered (cosmetic changes, all) from its original publication. Cite as: “The Uselessness of Literature: Why new literacies will end the teaching of literature.” California English. June 2009. Vol.14, Iss.5, p. 12.
