This is how the typical high school English course goes: the student receives a fat survey textbook covering American or British literature. The student doesn’t actually get to begin wtih great literature; instead, he gets to read the textbook’s synopsis of the historical period, key events, and people. These are usually terribly boring. It’s difficult to summarize a century or two in a page without resorting to generalities. Next, the student gets to start by reading somebody really great, like Chaucer, if he’s doing a British literature survey.

Pause there. Chaucer didn’t even write in English. Old English is a completely diffferent language. So now the student gets to start on this great literary adventure by, first, reading a boring summary of a historical period and then by reading a translation of literature full of jokes and allusions that he won’t even get. How funny, tell me, is a joke that has to be explained to you? Not very, no matter how funny it was in the original.

If the student is taking an American survey, things aren’t much better. After the blah-blah historical summary, he gets to start off by reading someone like William Bradford. Now, while Bradford was a great man of historical importance, his writings belong more in the “history” box than in the “great literature that is fun to read” box.

This method of teaching literature is just, well, blech. For the student who isn’t such a great reader, who isn’t enthralled by literature, it’s simply torture and the worst possible way to try to get him interested in literature. For the student who is a great reader, who will amuse himself with anything from the cereal box to the newspaper to the unabridged historical lectures in the back of the library, it’s not challenging enough. It’s too easy and too shallow and doesn’t demand enough from the talented reader and writer.

A literature course is no longer just about teaching literature; it is about teaching history, worldview, social sciences, philosophy, and religion. Course descriptions like these should tip you off: “many of us in literary studies are in the process of asking ourselves what exactly we are supposed to do as critics of literature and how we engage people in our work. This form of questioning is called “canon revision,” which simply means that we look closely at why we read what we read and who benefits (and loses out) in the ways we define ourselves and our literature as American. As a class, we will examine writers who are considered very important (or “canonical”) by most people, and we will try as well to look at some lesser known writers and what they have to contribute to our understanding of ourselves. This course is a survey of American Literature from 1492 to the present. In trying to cover over 500 years, we will have to ask ourselves several questions:
What constitutes literature and how does it change over time?
What does it mean to call literature “American?”
What social and cultural factors affect literature and how is it produced and understood?
How do we choose what to read and what not to read?”

That’s from a survey course at Auburn University; a college course, not high school, but there’s not much difference. Here is one from a Fort Collins high school:

“Throughout this course you will develop your critical thinking skills through a variety of readings and activities. Critical thinking is the key to pushing your learning to the next level and we will strive to improve upon these skills through reading, writing, viewing, and speaking (and even some drawing/doodling). The backdrop for this learning will be our study of American literature.
The American literary tradition, beginning more than 400 years ago, contributed significantly to the unique culture that we have today. This course will trace various authors, literary genres and topics thematically rather than chronologically, paying particular attention to how the past has influenced our present culture, and more specifically, influenced you personally. We will study the effect of changing philosophies, politics, ideologies, religion, and more, on the literary and cultural landscape of America. In many instances we will challenge long-held beliefs and attitudes in order to more fully understand what it means to be “American.” In addition to reading texts, we will also view texts– i.e. movies and visual images– and discuss them as literary creations.”

All I can really say in response to these course descriptions is this: what happened to the literature? What happened to simply reading books, great books, to reading them closely and well, to letting the authors speak for themselves, to enjoying a good story or strong poem? There’s no way to answer that question without entering the fuzzy, self-enamored world of literary theory and analysis, so let’s not waste time on it. Instead, let’s compare those course descriptions to what Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (critic, education reformer, writer, editor of the Oxford Book of English Verse) had to say about reading and teaching literature:

The whole business of reading English Literature in two years, to know it in any reputable sense of the word—let alone your learning to write English—is, in short, impossible. And the framers of the Statute, recognising this, have very sensibly compromised by setting you to work on such things as ‘the Outlines of English Literature’; which are not Literature at all but are only what some fellow has to say about it…For English Literature as I take it, is that which sundry men and women have written memorably in English about Life. [Not what has been written about what has been written about Life...]

Reading is an Art—that its best purpose is not to accumulate Knowledge but to produce, to educate, such-and-such a man—that ’tis a folly to bite off more than you can assimilate—and that with it, as with every other art, the difficulty and the discipline lie in selecting out of vast material, what is fit, fine, applicable… To nurse that spark, common to the king, the sage, the poorest child—to fan, to draw up to a flame, to ‘educate’ What Is—to recognise that it is divine, yet frail, tender, sometimes easily tired, easily quenched under piles of book-learning—to let it run at play very often, even more often to let it rest—to mother it, in short, as wise mothers do their children—this is what I mean by the Art of Reading.  For all great Literature, I would lastly observe, is gentle towards that spirit which learns of it.”

Let’s include a quote from Bacon here, as well:
Some Bookes are to be Tasted, Others to be Swallowed, and Some Few to be Chewed and Digested: that is, some Bookes are to be read onely in Parts; Others to be read but not Curiously; and some Few are to be read wholly, and with Diligence and Attention.

The point is this: a set of literature courses that attempt to introduce a high school student to all the important works of literature in two years is going to fail. (Most high school students take only two literature classes.) This is a good way to make a student hate literature.

A literature course that aims to make of a student a successful reader, however, can accomplish the goal. The object of high school literature should be to introduce students and let them immerse themselves in a few great books, whether it be a particular world, a favorite author or style or genre or time period or topic of interest.
You want to fan the spark, not smother it. Forego the collected readers, the surveys, the textbook collections. Let your student meet a few great authors and get to know them well rather than have a guided but rushed tour through a hallway of “author portraits.” What can he possibly remember after that? How many paintings can you recall after a quick museum stroll?

If we want our students to have an overview of literary styles and periods, it could be included as part of the history curriculum, because that’s how it is being treated. Or it could be a part of the literature course, but as a sideline to the real work of reading a few great books.
If we have students who love to read, we can let them use those survey textbooks as a sort of tasting menu: they can (and those who love, will) browse through and find themselves caught by particular writers or selections. That can be the jumping-off point for them; from there they can dive into particular writers, books, genres without being limited by the 20 or so pages devoted in the textbook. If our students find a kindred spirit in these authors, we need to encourage the friendship, not cut it off before it has a chance to deepen.

Click here for more information about the “How to Teach High School Literature” workshop.

Image courtesy of Stewart.