Flickering Lamp and Cracked Mirror

 Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here.

At my NYC private school, my department is engaged in an exercise to re-envision our mission in the light of the Black Lives Matter movement. I've undergone such exercises in the past, in both Singapore and New York, and have found them mostly useless. This time is different. The work with a thoughtful facilitator and willing colleagues has opened up a space for self-reflection. As part of the exercise, we were asked to write down our assumptions in teaching literature, and I'd like to share with you my contribution in the hope of dialogue. After writing down, and reviewing, my ideas, I discovered that most of my assumptions have remained steady through the years, but not all.

My Assumptions Underlying My Teaching of Secondary-School English

1. Content
 
Great works of literature are worth studying both for themselves and for their potential impact on the individual and society. They are worth studying for themselves because they are products of the human imagination, which is not necessarily perfect but is essentially expansive, complex, and creative. They are worth studying for their potential impact on the individual and society because they explain us to ourselves and so illuminate the necessity and challenges of personal growth and social change.
 
A middle- and high-school English curriculum must include authors and texts from diverse backgrounds, so that as many students as possible can see themselves represented in literary works and as literary producers. Another reason for the diversity, no less important a developmental need than the first, is the imperative to expose ourselves to literary expressions of experiences, cultures, and histories far different from our own.

2. Pedagogy
 
I teach close reading because I believe that it is the most direct road to understanding a literary work’s complex meaning and linguistic beauty. It is also the most developmentally appropriate method for teaching language use. In literary works, language is both most complex and most engaging; properly chosen, literary texts provide students with both challenge and support. However, close reading must be supplemented with biography and history, since no work exists in a vacuum, but is always entangled with its contexts.
 
Writing instruction should focus on both analytical and generative skills. The ability to develop a persuasive argument is fundamental not only to the study of literature, but also to principled engagement in the world. It is an essential skill for participation in a deliberative democracy. We write, however, not just for others, but also for ourselves. In creative writing, we discover and express original thought, personal worlds, and individual voice.  We become persons, in addition to citizens.

3. Values

The values that I wish to inculcate in my students are ranked in the following list:

  1. Love for the literary imagination
  2. Respect for intellectual achievement and rigor
  3. Self-understanding
  4. Curiosity
  5. Empathy
  6. Humility
  7. Resilience
  8. Love of justice
The first two values belong properly to the study of literature in school. They are more traditionally formulated as the love of reading and of the life of the mind. The first value, in particular, is what distinguishes the study of literature from other academic disciplines, such as history and science. To lose sight of these two values is to lose sight of the purpose for studying literature.
 
I rank self-understanding ahead of the more outwardly-directed virtues—curiosity, empathy, humility, and resilience—because I believe that it undergirds all the rest. Although I wish to build a reading community in all my classes, I acknowledge that the community is built on the fundamentally private experience of reading. In that personal encounter with literature, students discover themselves in its flickering lamp and cracked mirror. That process of self-discovery is a crucial part of secondary education.
 
I would not have added the eighth value, love of justice, if I had not learned and benefited from the social movements that call for change and are changing our world right now. To love justice is to look beyond the individual and see the systems that control and oppress all of us. Literature belongs to such systems, but it also has the power to subvert them, not least through compelling description. Systemic solutions to our problems must be sought, and I believe that they are most likely to be found by self-understanding, curious, empathetic, humble, and resilient individuals, working alone or in groups, who will also be the best advocates and agents of change.

If you are a teacher of literature, what are your assumptions in your teaching? If you are willing to share them with me, I will highlight a few ideas in my next newsletter that are different from those expressed above. Ideas for implementation too.

Jee Leong Koh
August 20, 2020

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