(no subject)

[gwynhefar]

This interesting rant was forwarded to me by one of my professors after a discussion in class today about teaching poetry in high school classrooms. The critique of modern high school teaching of "The Road Not Taken" actually mirrors my own experience reading the poem in middle school. I never took the poem as the ringing endorsement of individualism it was presented as, and wondered if I was doing something wrong because I could not reconcile my teacher's explanation with what I read in the text. Then again, I was quite upset with my high school English teacher who insisted that "Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening" was about death, when I had taken and enjoyed the poem thoroughly as simply the literal depiction of a traveller stopping for a moment to appreciate the simple beauty of the snow falling in the woods before continuing on his tiring journey. Bringing death into the equation quite ruined the poem for me, and I have never forgiven her.

I know there are some high school teachers among you, so I'm interested in what you think of Mr. Kilgore's complaint. Does he have a point? If so, do you think things are likely to improve any time soon?

Comments

[sage-and-sea.livejournal.com]

I've always read "The Road Not Taken" with that same whistful "what might have been" and thought it was very sad. I honestly don't remember what I was taught, as high school was a loooong time ago, and all I remember was that the Sr. English Honors teacher's wife was cheating on him.

[gwynraven.livejournal.com]

exactly . . . "I shall be telling this with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence"?! How can anyone see this poem as a celebration of anything? I've always loved the poem because it speaks to me of that wistfulness that you can't do everything and the awful uncertainty that you may come to the end of your life only to realise that you picked the wrong path all those years ago.

[silme.livejournal.com]

The problem often lies in the textbooks. I've had to use American lit anthologies in the States and at the American school in England that explain the poems to the students in the way you just described -- usually through analyses after the poem or the leading questions they ask students to answer.

One the joys of literature is that as long as you can support your ideas, they should be valid. And interpreting "Stopping By Woods..." to be about death is one way of seeing the poem. There are other ways. The challenge is to help your students know that they are able to view poetry in their own ways -- to figure it out for themselves -- and then be able to support their ideas. I have tried to tell students over the years it's not so much their ideas I'm looking at -- it's more how they support their ideas with textual evidence.

Often, the textbooks take that away from them.

[gwynraven.livejournal.com]

I remember those guiding questions very well. And I always hated them, because even when I agreed with the interpretation they were leading you toward, I hated that they were only teaching one view as if it were the only possible one.

[harkalark.livejournal.com]

I did a paper on different criticisms/interpretations of "The Road Not Taken" in English 102 (all those centuries ago). If you want, I can see if I still have it on disk somewhere and send it to you. Because it's not like you don't have enough to read already. :)

[gwynraven.livejournal.com]

actually, I'd love to read it.

[opakele.livejournal.com]

It was a good rant. I enjoyed it.

[gwynraven.livejournal.com]

can I just say I *love* your icon. I need a winter icon.

[phantom_wolfboy]

When he gets to the point where he demolishes their interpretation in favour of his, correct, interpretation, I stopped reading. Seems to me that you don't demolish "one-true-wayism" by announcing that you have found the true way.

Of course, I'm not a teacher; I could be wrong.

[gwynraven.livejournal.com]

well, he is a bit harsh in his delivery. Still, the "rules" of poetic interpretation are basically that any interpretation is valid as long as it can be supported by the text. The "celebration of individualism" interpretation of Frost's poem that is popular in high school classrooms is *very* difficult to support with the text. It pretty much comes from taking the famous last two lines completely out of context and ignoring the rest of the poem. In that sense, one could definitely say that that particular interpretation is "wrong". That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of other valid interpretations that *can* be supported by the text, and still be different from one another.

[silme.livejournal.com]

I had a student at the American School who'd taken a summer class at Tulane; it was a class for high-school students. Anyway, we were reading an Emily Dickinson poem (I can't remember which one), and this girl told me how the prof had stated it was all about sex. Now, I have Open Me Carefully in the classroom and I've read a lot of contemporary Dickinson criticism, but I just couldn't see it with that particular poem unless you really stretched. The student couldn't remember how the prof explained it (she couldn't support it herself), but she could remember the woman going on and on about it.

That's when I have a problem with teachers -- no matter what level -- belittling interpretations of literature that aren't their own. If their students can't see it, then the teachers certainly haven't done their jobs very well.