This week has made me question myself more than ever and how far I am willing to go for a work of literature. In my opinion, the most challenged pieces of literature are always the best works. The are composed of powerful themes that ask the reader to examine their own lives and understand the world from a new perspective. So when I asked myself how far I was willing to go for a work of literature. My answer: I am willing to fight for something I believe in. I refuse to acquiesce to censorship and succumb to their arbitrary whims about certain literary pieces. If you are in the teaching field you must be passionate about your subject or you will be left with nothing. If you cannot fight for what you believe in then you would be better off changing your major. I have always known I wanted to be a teacher since 1st grade and I have a passion for helping young minds. I believe if we exclude certain works because of their controversiality then our classroom will be receiving a lower level product. I want to be the best I can be for my classroom but not be controversial just for the sake of being controversial.
I also want to be aware of my student's wants and needs. If you have an accurate grasp of your class's needs then you should be able to see what literature suits them. Maybe you could hold a class poll for certain novels and whichever wins is the one they will read. I think this will to alleviate some of the stress caused by censorship. Another problem that has arisen is self-censorship. This permeates throughout classrooms more than actual censorship. Teachers see the effects of a colleague being censored and begin to self-censor themselves. Soon this quality becomes inherent and they begin to censor almost every aspect of the classroom. Thus letting the administration win. Once they get into your head there is no stopping the damage that may occur. Soon simple classroom exercises will be examined to make sure their will be nothing will insight outside censorship. Therefore, we must stand up for what we believe in or our teaching quality is going to drop significantly. If we become aware of our classroom needs then censorship will become less of an issue. We also must fight to get rid of self-censorship and work with future colleagues to promote the ideal learning environment for students; teaching controversial literature may be apart of the ideal learning environment. If we keep ourselves open to new ideas and reflect daily in order to become the best possible teachers.
" I am willing to fight for something I believe in."
ReplyDeleteSame here! If we have literature that we want to present, why do we want to present them? For me, it's because I think my students will learn and connect with the literature more so than another piece of work. I also want to be able to present literature that provokes life altering/ life realizations within my students, and I do feel that much literature that contains "touchy" words, ideas, etc are able to do this.
I agree! If we let censorship get in the way, many important lessons can be lost. I do not want to have my students receive an education that is mediocre simply because a novel or a work of literature has "inappropriate" themes or words. I believe that if you introduce these themes and words in an intelligent way, that your students will respond accordingly. We need to give them more credit than most teachers do and we can't let their educations suffer.
ReplyDeleteI agree on all points, Andrew. Just think about it, what we teach to our students may impact them in some way or another for the rest of their lives. So if we have a pertinent issue at hand, but recede because of self-censoring ourselves out of fear of being controversial or unpopular, that may stick with us the rest of our lives, and is not why we got into teaching. We came into this field to use our knowledge and apply it in the classroom, not taking what we know and making it into a reduced version for our class.
ReplyDelete" I believe if we exclude certain works because of their controversiality then our classroom will be receiving a lower level product."
Exactly, it'd be like trying to teach _To Kill A Mockingbird_ but leaving out the racial conflict, the rape case, and Boo Radley.. we'd be left with two siblings who spend their summers playing with a boy who visits each year.. What would we exactly be teaching our students if we did that? Nothing except ignorance of human nature.
"This week has made me question myself more than ever and how far I am willing to go for a work of literature. In my opinion, the most challenged pieces of literature are always the best works."
ReplyDeleteRight off the bat, I thought the same thing. I am willing to go as far as I have to, to get the most out of my students' educations. I ABSOLUTELY agree that the most challenging and even controversial texts are the ones I found myself to get the most out of. They made me think and question, to get a deeper meaning.
i like your mantra of teaching with passion. And i agree that teaching safe is not teaching at all. i like your suggestion of allowing the students to decide on the ciriculum and thereby always having a reply to that parents and administration that this is what the students want to learn.
ReplyDelete"I am willing to fight for something I believe in. I refuse to acquiesce to censorship and succumb to their arbitrary whims about certain literary pieces. If you are in the teaching field you must be passionate about your subject or you will be left with nothing." Agree whole-heartedly. Keep on keepin' on yo.
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