Five Things I've Gained from Reading Literature

Families want to know why we teach Shakespeare instead of how to write business reports. Students want to know why they need to read Huck Finn instead of writing resumes. Politicians want to know why we talk about Emily Dickinson instead of doing test prep.

In her report this week, Carol Jago explains that by studying literature, students learn to read and think critically. They learn about the human condition. They learn to explore and critique the many texts that they encounter, from novels and poetry to blog posts and YouTube videos. These are true, well-established reasons, but families, students, and communities who are asking the questions sometimes have a difficulty relating these explanations to their personal experiences.
Here's my solution: rather than telling people the benefits of literature, let's ask them to tell us. Let's ask them to share what they've gained from reading literature. We can take advantage of the popularity of short surveys, quizzes, and lists on sites like Facebook and MySpace by creating our own five questions that demonstrate why people read literature.

What to Do
Copy the questions and instructions below, and paste them into a blog entry, a note on Facebook, or a discussion forum—anywhere that you can reach the people you want to. You can use the comments area on this blog entry if you'd like as well. Delete my answers to the questions, and add your own. Feel free to any extra instructions or invite specific people to answer the questions when you post them. You might ask all the students in your class to complete the questions in their journals or as part of a exam review activity, for instance.

The Questions
Think about the literature you've read—short stories, novels, plays, memoirs, and poetry. Any literature counts, from picture books to epic poems, and from romance novels to sci-fi fan-fiction. Answer each question, and explain your response in a few sentences. Just copy the questions, remove my answers, add your own, and then invite others to respond.

1.What piece of literature has stayed with you, even though you haven't read it recently? Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay" comes back to me every spring, when I look at the freshly sprouting trees. When I read this poem in college, my professor pointed to the tree outside the classroom window. As if by design, the sprouting leaves on the trees were a perfect blend of greenish-yellow. They seemed both green and gold, depending upon how you thought of the color. Each spring as the trees wake up and start to leaf, I think about Frost's poem, the incredible serendipity of reading it on that day when the tree outside was a perfect match, and how true it is that "Nothing Gold Can Stay."

2.What character or story has influenced something you've done? Richard Wilbur’s "The Writer" is a poem that I like to teach, but it's also one that influences me as a writer. Often when I'm struggling with something that I'm writing, I find myself flailing against the topic, making no progress. I get angry. I cross things out. I start dozens of sentences that trail off into nothing. I write and write and write, but I say nothing useful. And then I remember "The Writer" and the "dazed starling," both of whom struggle so hard to meet their goal. I forgive myself a little, gather "the wits to try it again," and try a bit harder, knowing that eventually I'll find the right words.

3.What character or piece of literature seemed to relate to a recent news story or personal experience? The recent stories about jurors using digital technologies (iPhones, Blackberries, etc.) to look up information about the trials they were hearing made me think about 12 Angry Men. It's illegal for jurors to check facts in Wikipedia or look up news stories on the lawyers or their clients. As I thought about the desire to look up the answers, I found myself wondering, "Was it strictly legal for Juror 8 to go out in search of a duplicate to the knife that was used to commit the murder that is the focus of 12 Angry Men?"

4.What character has make you wonder why he or she did/said something? Walter Lee Younger in A Raisin in the Sun makes me crazy. What would make someone think that opening a liquor store would be a better use of money than sending someone to medical school? When I first read the play, his actions left me angry and confused. I could have joined his mother in slapping him. I spent many hours thinking about his motivation and the personal struggles that he faces. Since then, of course, I've had plenty of time to study the play, and I think I understand his actions. Still, though, there's something about a male character deciding that his liquor store is more important than a female character's college education that makes me want to shout at him.

5.Name something from a work of literature (such as a character, setting, or quotation) that you find beautiful or vivid. The most lasting image for me is always Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro." It's a distinct, vibrant, specific image. If reduced to a description though, the summary would say simply, "The speaker sees some people waiting for the Metro." The poem, however, is a single moment that is deeper and more vivid than any summary could ever capture. The poem makes me feel as if I too can see these soulless, wandering people, there on the metro platform.

The Discussion
As families, students, friends, and others answer the questions, they are actually proving that literature has influenced who they are. Each of the questions has a concrete purpose, to focus on a specific reason that we read literature. Compare the questions to these underlying messages:
1.Literature has enduring value to the reader.
2.Literature influences our actions and beliefs.
3.Literature connects to our own time and place in the world.
4.Literature inspires critical thinking.
5.Literature has lasting beauty.

Together, the five questions tell us not only what a specific person has gained from reading literature, but also the very reasons that students should read and write about literature throughout their lives. Literature matters. No question about it.

Gardner, Traci. ""Five Things I've Learned from Reading Literature"." 28 April 2009. NCTE Inbox. 20 May 2009 .

"Holding College Chiefs to Their Words"

Reed College President Colin Diver suffered writer's block. Debora Spar, president of Barnard College, wrote quickly but then toiled for hours to cut an essay that was twice as long as it was supposed to be. The assignment loomed over Wesleyan University President Michael Roth's family vacation to Disney World.

The university presidents were struggling with a task that tortures high-school seniors around the country every year: writing the college admissions essay. In a particularly competitive year for college admissions, The Wall Street Journal turned the tables on the presidents of 10 top colleges and universities with an unusual assignment: answer an essay question from their own school's application.

The "applicants" were told not to exceed 500 words (though most did), and to accept no help from public-relations people or speechwriters. Friends and family could advise but not rewrite. The Journal selected the question from each application so presidents wouldn't pick the easy ones. They had about three weeks to write their essays.

The exercise showed just how challenging it is to write a college essay that stands out from the pack, yet doesn't sound overly self-promotional or phony. Even some presidents say they grappled with the challenge and had second thoughts about the topics they chose. Several shared tips about writing a good essay: Stop trying to come up with the perfect topic, write about personally meaningful themes rather than flashy ones, and don't force a subject to be dramatic when it isn't.

As Mr. Roth of Wesleyan, in Middletown, Conn., waited in line with his daughter for rides at Disney World, he thought about his question -- describe a person who's had a significant influence on you -- and wondered whether the topic he'd chosen for his response was too personal.

"It occurred to me, that must be the question our applicants ask themselves," Mr. Roth says. "I can write this about my history teacher or a public figure, what you'd expect, or should I write something more meaningful to me, but riskier?"
In the end, Mr. Roth decided to take a risk, telling a story of his brother who died at age five, before Mr. Roth was born. His older brother's portrait hung in their childhood home.

"I was to heal the wounds caused by the death of that beautiful little boy in the picture," he wrote. "Yet I was also to remain the trace of those wounds."

Mr. Diver of Reed, in Portland, Ore., was asked to write about an experience that demonstrated the importance of diversity to him. He described a violent episode as a young man that eroded his liberal self-image. Overhearing the mugging of a young black woman outside his home in Boston's South End, Mr. Diver, who is white, grabbed a baseball bat and hit the woman's attacker, who was Latino.

"Doubts welled up in my mind," Mr. Diver wrote. "Did I really understand what it means to live in a diverse neighborhood? Or did I just want cosmetic diversity as a backdrop for imposing my white, professional-class ways?"

The incident, which occurred in 1975, is mentioned in "Common Ground," a book by J. Anthony Lukas that told the story of three families, including Mr. Diver's, in a rapidly gentrifying and racially divided neighborhood.

Robert Oden, president of Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., was asked to evaluate the impact of a significant experience, achievement, risk or ethical dilemma that he had faced. He wrote about how life should be approached as an adventure, and described running, panicked, in the streets of Cairo when a trip to the pyramids, on the western edge of the city, went awry. "Within a few short minutes, I was lost. Utterly, hopelessly, lost and confused."

Eventually, he realized that he was safe, and concluded that around the world, "people are people," and most are kind and quick to help others.
Mr. Oden says he found it tough to write an essay that didn't sound a little crazy in its attempt to be interesting. "I can think of writing an essay that would be batty and daft and wild, and I can think of writing a very conventional essay that would be neither," he says. He went with Cairo because it was a specific story, set in a particular place, with details he remembered vividly.

With the assignment of picking a person who inspired him -- from fiction, history or a creative work -- Grinnell College's Russell Osgood chose history, writing about 18th-century Anglo-Irish political figure Edmund Burke. Mr. Osgood, who announced this week that he will step down in 2010, drew parallels between his experience as president of Grinnell, in Grinnell, Iowa, and Mr. Burke's philosophy.

"...Burke, like David Hume, believed that change is best accomplished by a gradual movement in structures and institutions rather than by violent upheaval. When I arrived at Grinnell as a new president in 1998, there was concern, even apprehension, about me and the possibility of change," he wrote. In response to those concerns, Mr. Osgood says he told people that any change he brought to the college would occur "thoughtfully and after learning and listening." He says he wanted to act in a way that was consistent with Burke's philosophy.

Given the same question, Marvin Krislov, president of Oberlin College, in Oberlin, Ohio, says he briefly wondered if he should write as if he were a high-school senior, but then concluded he'd write a better essay if he looked back on his experiences from an adult perspective. He described a trip he took a few years ago to South Africa's Robben Island, where anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela was imprisoned:

"Contemplating Nelson Mandela's life can make one weep at the inhumanity and cruelty he experienced. But it is also inspiring," Mr. Krislov wrote, adding that he was especially impressed by a school Mr. Mandela and his colleagues created while they were in prison. "I was deeply moved by their faith even under horrific circumstances in education as the path to social change and uplift."

One of the most challenging questions came from the University of Pennsylvania application: Write page 217 of your 300-page autobiography. President Amy Gutmann focused on her professional accomplishments, including creating a vision for the school, dubbed "the Penn Compact," when she became the university's president in 2004. "No sooner had I begun writing my presidential inaugural address than the political philosopher in me took over," she wrote. "Instead of delivering the standard omnibus address that no one will remember, why not propose a new social contract to put the ideals of higher education into ever more effective practice?"

Some presidents, like many high-school students, wrote about their extra-curricular activities. "What I love about bicycling is how close I am to the countryside, moving slowly enough to see everything, and able to stop when a spot beckons," wrote David Oxtoby, president of Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. Others took the opportunity to focus on academic policy: "We need to adjust to the new economic realities while maintaining our commitment to access and affordability," wrote Catharine Hill, president of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

The question for University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer was simply a quote by poet Rainer Maria Rilke translated from the German: "At present you need to live the question." His interpretation: "Living the question is not simple. It entails the intensity of argument and engagement. It demands intellectual risk-taking and a preference for analysis, inquiry and complexity over easy solutions or comfort."
Ms. Spar, president of Barnard College in New York, says the application exercise reminded her how difficult it is for students to write an original essay, especially when so many are answering the same questions from the common application.

"In an ideal world, I'd rather go back to the system where colleges ask more idiosyncratic questions, because really what you want to find out is, why is this particular kid a good fit for this particular school?" she says.

When she sat down to write, she rejected one of her first ideas, which was to describe her running and swimming routine. "That struck me that'd be a very, very boring and self-aggrandizing essay to write," she says.

So Ms. Spar, who once wrote a graduate-school application essay about talking backwards, used a trick familiar to many survivors of the college essay ordeal: She turned her question on its head. Asked to describe an ordinary-seeming daily routine or tradition that held special meaning for her, the working mother wrote instead about her lack of routine. She described a typical chaotic day: she was juggling preparations for a black-tie event with the needs of her three kids. Meanwhile, her husband was stuck in a snowstorm in Buffalo, N.Y. and the family cat was found with a "writhing" chipmunk inside the house.

"I pack my daughter's clothes for soccer practice and put her Hebrew homework where she has at least a remote chance of encountering it. In between, I check on the chipmunk, which is now expiring sadly on the downstairs rug," Ms. Spar wrote, later adding: "The chipmunk has died. And another day begins. Thankfully, I've never been much for routine."

Gamerman, Ellen. "Holding College Chiefs to Their Words." The Wall Street Journal 6 May 2009: D1.