Classroom Talk about Literature: Or, the Social Dimensions of a Solitary Act

by Robert Probst

 

“What do I want to do when I finish reading a book? Not much really, I guess, except maybe talk about it. That would be cool.”

Anita, age 14

Richard Peck said “Life imitates art. Especially bad art.” He was suggesting that we absorb our notions of the world, often unreflectingly, from the conceptions we’re offered. We learn about love from toothpaste commercials, about law and justice from television police programs, and about the difficulties of human relationships from talk shows. Ultimately, if we are lucky, the imaginative works in which we are immersed will include exploratory as well as exploitative art—books, films, and works in other modes intended to raise questions and encourage thought. Unless, however, we learn to reflect and consider, to explore other points of view, to experiment with alternatives, we are likely to be shaped inexorably by the culture rather than learn to build our visions of human possibilities rationally and humanely, drawing on but not mindlessly accepting what art, literature, philosophy, science, and politics have to offer us.

One model for that process of reflecting upon and reshaping the conceptual world in which we live is talk, especially talk focused on such shared intellectual and emotional experience as literature offers.

You know I always hated to read until I had Ms. S—. She was really cool about books. Every time we read a book, we had to like get a friend and sit and have these conversations and talk about the book. It was so cool because after someone would talk about the book then like I’d want to read it and so then I’d read it and then like we’d talk again¼ . Sometimes me and my friend we wouldn’t agree on what was happening. Like when we read Driver’s Ed [Cooney] I couldn’t believe how their parents acted but like my friend said to think about it like being a parent and then I could maybe see how they felt that way.

Ed, age 14

The single most important book I ever read was The Postman by David Brin. I guess I’ve read it 5 or 6 times by now. I read it in the summer when, um, the librarian suggested it. My dad read it too. He and I talked about it for a long time. He liked it too. We still talk about it now. I guess until we started talking about that book I never did any real thinking about responsibility. I mean like my dad is always telling me to be responsible, but that was him telling me something, not, um, not us talking about something. I’ll always remember that guy putting on that dead postman’s jacket and then having to accept the responsibility that came with that job. My dad and I spent a lot of time talking about all the things in life that we can like put on: jobs, families, relationships, lies, promises. Problem is, um, each time we put on one of those things, we have to accept the responsibility that comes with the job, or like in this book, the jacket. I’ll never get over that book or the talks my dad and I had.

Eric, age 16

The image suggested by talk—Eric and his dad talking about a favorite book or two or three people sitting around a table drinking coffee—suggests a shared interest in a topic, an exchange of ideas, a testing of one’s own perceptions against those offered by another, a mutual respect and willingness to accept difference, and an assumption that we might grow by considering other visions. These are all features we might hope to see in a classroom, especially if we have become convinced that collaborative strategies are useful, not only to teach the content of our courses, but also to develop classroom communities in which students may learn to work with one another respectfully, appreciating both difference and commonality. Talk seems to be an appropriate model for much of what we do in schools, far more appropriate than recitation or work-book or drill. Rusty, a seventh-grader offers these comments about reading and talking.

RG: I hate reading. All we do is read. Answer questions in complete sentences. Take a test. Read again.

KB: What would be better?

RG: Not reading.

KB: Well, but if not reading isn’t an option, then what?

RG: Then at least not writing answers to questions. I h-a-t-e that.

KB: So read and then¼

RG: Nothing. [15 second pause] Well like maybe just read and then talk about what you read.

KB: Why would that be good?

RG: Sometimes when we like talk about things then I understand them better. [10 second pause] You know like when you see classrooms on television, like in Wonder Years well you know like how those kids are always sitting around talking? Well, that’s how you know it isn’t real because we never get to just sit and talk about things. Rusty makes it sound simple as he requests a time to “just sit and talk about things.”

But talk is difficult. Not, perhaps at the simplest level—two or three friends chatting over coffee manage fine though they may still spar for time to speak or for control of the direction of the discussion. When, however, the issues are difficult, delicate, or both; when there is something significant at stake, either a decision to be made or values to be defended; when the groups are larger than two or three; when the circumstances are formal and public, talk isn’t easy, either for the participants or for the one assigned to conduct it. It may stray, ramble, find focus, and then lose it. Issues may be lost in struggles to dominate the group, unacknowledged personality conflicts may obscure the agenda supposedly under consideration. Talk seldom proceeds neatly and cleanly, like a solitary trip down the interstate; it’s more like a Sunday drive with five children, one who wants to stop at McDonald’s, one who want to go back home, one who would rather be watching television, and one who wants to know if we’re almost there yet. The fifth one is asleep.

Despite its difficulties, however, talk is worth attending to. Important as writing is, much of the business of the world is conducted orally, in congresses, parliaments, board meetings, committees. Perhaps most of the business of our smaller more intimate communities—families, neighborhoods, and small working groups within larger organizations—is conducted through talk. Surely even more of the business of personal relationships—lovers, children, parents, relatives, closest of friends—is accomplished through talk. Regardless of its ultimate significance in the adult world, much is to be gained, immediately, in the classroom, from attention to the art of conversing. Discussion welcomes the students, asks them to declare themselves, values their unique perceptions, requires them to learn to work collaboratively with others, and alerts them to other points of view. Consider what these ninth graders graders had to say to about the importance of talk.

CG: Yeah, I like talking about books, you know where like you just get to say what something meant to you.

NR: Yeah, but that doesn’t happen much. It’s like most of the teachers, like they think there is something that they’ve got to get covered.

LH: That’s what always happens. You just get started wanting to say something that is like, like really important about something you’ve finally like figured out and then the teacher just cuts you off. Bam. You are done. Then you can’t even remember what you were going to say.

LV: We’ve got this one teacher here who last year said she was going to let us talk about the books we read, but it really wasn’t talking. She gave out these questions and put us into groups and we were supposed to spend time answering her questions.

DB: Yeah and I didn’t really care about her questions. I mean, I didn’t really care who the antagonist was or if the conflict was person against person or person against self. We had just finished reading Ender’s Game [Orson Scott Card] and that is the very best book. What I wanted to know was why, why anyone would let their six-year-old son go off with a complete stranger and why didn’t those parents miss him and where were the good adults and do we always have to be more concerned with what people want for other people instead of what is good for ourselves? Instead I had to write definitions for words and fill-in a plot chart and answer questions over each chapter. I don’t call that talk at all. I call that bo-ring.

LH: Right. Why can’t they just like give us time to talk, you know, to discuss the book?

LV: And maybe, like maybe some really broad questions that, like, the answer isn’t in the book but more like in your own thoughts, maybe that would be okay.

NR: That would work. I mean like you would learn stuff about the book, and learn to listen and you have to think about what you are going to say, and, um, like sometimes you could get really mad when people are like rude but you learn to not be rude back¼ .

CG: But mostly you’d just get to learn what your friends thought about the book.

Perhaps such discussion, such talk, enables us to reshape our conception of human possibilities. This talk, if done correctly in the classrooms, so that it is productive and pleasurable, might encourage kids to sustain it on their own as they leave school and assume full responsibility for their own intellectual and ethical growth. Literacy implies the assumption of that responsibility. Literacy is not the ability to spell out the word, or to articulate its four short syllables distinctly and accurately. It is the ability to find what we share with the person behind a text, or the person created by a text, or the person with whom we discuss it, identifying the common pains and pleasure, hopes and fears, so that we may see that we are alike. And it is the ability on other occasions to declare ourselves other than, different from, the author and his characters and perhaps readers, rejecting bigotry, insensitivity, indifference, or illogic. These students illustrate this very fact as they move from a discussion about talk to actually talking about a book they had each read.

CG: We had this one teacher who was always saying like ‘What do you think?’ and ‘What does this remind you of¼’

LH: Yeah, but that got really boring because like sometimes I don’t even want to have think about what does this remind you of. Sometimes it doesn’t remind me of anything and so then I have to make something up so that I’ve got an answer. Remember when we read Make Lemonade [Wolff]? That didn’t remind me of anything because I hadn’t ever read anything like it. I mean it looked different, like it wasn’t written in paragraphs, and it was about stuff I’ve never thought about¼

NR: Oh that book was so cool. I mean like I felt so sorry for that girl and I knew that I wouldn’t ever be as brave as she was with having two little children.

DB: Yeah, but you probably wouldn’t be dumb enough to get into her situation.

NR: That’s rude. You don’t ever know what’s going to happen.

DB: Well you better know what’s going to happen when you start sleeping with someone. How’d you think she got those babies? Adoption? I don’t think so.

NR: Well, I don’t have to like what she did and I don’t have to want to do the same thing to still understand what she must have felt like. And besides, the girl who helped her, I think I’d want to be like her and I know I’d be frustrated like her.

DB: Yeah, well, I’d want to help too, I just wouldn’t want to be in that situation to begin with. Even as these students compared themselves to the characters, distanced themselves when necessary, and claimed similarities when warranted, they commented that “this kind of talking” doesn’t happen in their classroom:

LH: I didn’t know anyone else liked it.

DB: Yeah, well who ever cares if we like it?

CG: Well, I like this kind of talking we are doing right now. It’s like really discussing what is important.

For this type of discussion to occur, literacy—that capacity to deal with the conception of human possibilities formulated in language—has to be taught in a setting that respects individuals, despises authoritarianism, dogmatism, and fundamentalism, while it models and teaches the free expression of response, the telling of our own stories, the exchange of visions, the analysis of reasoning, and consideration of consequences. If students are to flourish in and contribute to a democracy that values freedom and hopes to preserve the dignity of individuals, then they must be taught to read, think, write, and discuss intelligently. They need, in other words, the sort of experience that talk about literary experience might provide. Return to what Rusty was saying about talking:

KB: You never talk about things in class?

RG: Not really. We have discussions which means the teacher will ask questions and the same 4 or 5 kids will answer them.

KB: So how would talking be different?

RG: I don’t know. [pause] Like it wouldn’t be that one person has the answer and the rest are wrong. It would be like just talking, you know, like saying what you thought and then someone else would say what they thought and it wouldn’t, you know, like be about being right. It would be like, um, like just talking.

This idea of “just talking” sounds right, but is often difficult to reach. As Rusty points out in his conversation above, tightly controlled discussions, with clear structure, that move logically from one point to the next and arrive, just as the bell rings, at some decision or conclusion, may leave students feeling frustrated at best or disenfranchised from the literary experience at worst. Students may have had interesting questions that didn’t get raised because our well crafted plans excluded them. Unique responses to the texts may have been lost because teacher-generated questions suggested a different concern. On the other hand, if the discussion is more open and exploratory students may leave excited about the ideas that arose, intrigued by what they’ve learned from their own discourse or that of peers or the text in the free flow of talk, but wonder if they got anywhere, or simply chatted amicably for an hour or so.

KB: So would this ‘just talking’ be real learning?

RG: Probably not. Be hard to give tests over it.

Perhaps that’s part of the problem, though, the notion that all of learning should be able to be distilled to a 50 item multiple-choice exam. Learning isn’t a synonym for testing. Likewise, let’s not confuse reading literature with matching authors to titles, settings to plots, or statements to characters. Instead, let’s view learning as the ability to think and to question. And let’s view literature—the imaginative portrayal of human endeavor and consequence—as an ideal realm in which to encourage this reflection upon our own conceptions of what it is to be human. Literary experience is neither abstract and esoteric, nor immediate and consequential. Its great virtue, perhaps, is that it is neither of immediate consequence; nor is it inconsequential. That is to say, the events of the text, the experiences of the characters in the play, the feelings of the writer, don’t necessarily shake the foundations of own world. We can turn away from the text or lay it aside. Life and death in the novel are imaginary life and death; the thinking that we do about a text is not that of the battlefield, with lives at stake on every turn, every choice. But on the other hand, the experiences represented in significant literature do inform us, do have the potential of changing the conceptual world we inhabit. Literature falls into a wonderful middle ground, where we may participate but stand back and observe, too, where we may feel pain but ease it with reflection, where we may reshape our visions in the company of good friends rather than in the more brutal world of the streets. Listening to Anne, a twelve year old, talk to her book group about Toning the Sweep and William, a fourteen year old, discuss his book choices, reminds us that even these young readers understand this dual nature of literature.

Toning the Sweep, by Angela Johnson, is a great book. It taught me a whole lot of things. First, if you just look at the surface of something, you truly don’t know what’s there. Second, no matter how many times you tone someone’s soul to Heaven, you will still miss them. I had to put this book down three times while reading it because my grandmother is getting old and even though she doesn’t have cancer I know that someday probably pretty soon I’m going to miss her. It really doesn’t make me feel a lot better to think that she’ll be in Heaven. I’ll miss her here. Feeling sad for Emmy right now gave me an idea of what I might feel like someday. This was a good way to learn about saying good-bye before I really have to do it. This book is great. Read it. Anne, age 12 I like reading books like I am the Cheese and After the First Death [Cormier] and Chinese Handcuffs [Crutcher]. Sure they are tough books. I’d just rather meet these characters in a book first before I have to meet them in real life. With my book, if the characters get too tough, or the plot too scary, or the feelings too sad, I just close the book and walk away. But in real life, I probably won’t be able to just walk away.

William, age 14

Students understand the power of literature; more importantly, they understand the power of talk about that literature. What seems to be missing, is our understanding of the nature of classroom talk about literature. We have a good theory of literature—it’s just not quite good enough. On the one hand, it tells what might happen when a reader meets a book—discovery, adventure, rethinking one’s notion of human possibilities. On the other hand, we each can identify our own impoverished responses to texts, literary and otherwise. Laziness and inattention allow potentially good literary experiences to slip away unrealized. What’s true of life in general is probably true of reading—we let a lot get away because we don’t have the wit or energy to seize it. Discussions of literature wither away because no focus is found, or the agenda is set by one aggressive participant. Controlled discussions get somewhere, but they may sacrifice many of the diverse interests of the various students. Free discussions may be organic and flowing, but they may be dominated by the interests of one or two or may be unsatisfyingly chaotic. Our purpose then, must be to constantly look at classroom discussions in an effort to see what makes them work, what makes them fail, and how as teachers, we might make them better.