Georgetown University LogoGeorgetown University Library LogoDigitalGeorgetown Home
    • Login
    View Item 
    •   DigitalGeorgetown Home
    • Georgetown University Institutional Repository
    • Georgetown College
    • Department of English
    • Graduate Theses and Dissertations - English
    • View Item
    •   DigitalGeorgetown Home
    • Georgetown University Institutional Repository
    • Georgetown College
    • Department of English
    • Graduate Theses and Dissertations - English
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Why Teach Literature? Replacing Assimilation With Critical Consciousness

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    View/Open: Jones_georgetown_0076M_12364.pdf (617kB) Bookview

    Creator
    Jones, Jocelyn Michal
    Advisor
    Linkon, Sherry
    Abstract
    Distraught by the idea that literature first became an academic discipline as a way to promote a kind of gentleman's class among the commonly cultured and concerned it was possible that underneath my own teaching practice I might still be encouraging conformity even while I hoped to promote diversity, I was urged to investigate the ways the study of literature might still be promoting assimilation and what I might do to resist that. This investigation first took me back to the roots of the common school curriculum in the late nineteenth century where character development and patriotism, linked to grooming a compliant workforce, were the forthright purposes of literature's inclusion. I then examined how educational reform since the late 1970s has returned to a national promotion of commonness but now no longer primarily in the interest of cultural assimilation but in the interest of economic assimilation. Critical of how conformity put society's interests over the individual's, I searched for an alternative pedagogy with a different priority. I discovered that the progressive movement, started by John Dewey in the early twentieth century, established a different model based on student centrism and a desired mutuality between the student and society. In her “theory of aesthetic transaction” Louise Rosenblatt builds upon Dewey's model by positing that readers and texts are co-determinate in the same way that mirrors the complex relationship between people and culture. In this way, Rosenblatt fulfills Dewey's faith that education can be used to promote a relationship of mutuality, where society's interests do not take precedence over the individual's interests. Her theory suggests that education can be used to empower students to see themselves as co-determinate with the world they inhabit in the same way that they are co-determinate with the texts they read. The work of critical pedagogues takes this even further by suggesting that the goal of education should be to empower students to resist oppressive political dynamics. In contrast to offering students power through cultural and economic assimilation, progressive educators and critical pedagogues desire that education not only prepare students to live in the world as it is but that it also help students reshape society in more democratic ways. In conclusion, I posit three strategies for practicing a student centric pedagogy in a literature classroom including focusing a student's education on the knowledge she produces rather than the texts she studies, interpreting texts in relationship to specific contexts, and recognizing the partiality of all perspectives. In contrast to assimilative models, these strategies are designed to help students resist prescriptive life outcomes and have greater agency in directing their lives.
    Description
    M.A.
    Permanent Link
    http://hdl.handle.net/10822/559477
    Date Published
    2013
    Subject
    critical pedagogy; critical thinking; high school; language arts; literature; progressive education; Literature; Education; Reading; Literature; Education; Reading instruction;
    Type
    thesis
    Collections
    • Graduate Theses and Dissertations - English
    Metadata
    Show full item record

    Related items

    Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.

    • Thumbnail

      Ending in Wonder: Replacing Technology With Revelation in Margaret Edson's W;T 

      Jones, Therese (2007-06)
    • Thumbnail

      Replacing Animal Experiments: Choices, Chances and Challenges 

      Langley, Gill; Evans, Tom; Holgate, Stephen T.; Jones, Anthony (2007-09)
    • Thumbnail

      The Play's the Thing: Using Literature and Drama to Teach About Death and Dying 

      Holleman, Warren Lee (2000-09)
    Related Items in Google Scholar

    Georgetown University Seal
    ©2009 - 2018 Georgetown University Library
    37th & O Streets NW
    Washington DC 20057-1174
    202.687.7385
    digitalscholarship@georgetown.edu
     

     

    Browse

    All of DigitalGeorgetownCommunities & CollectionsCreatorsTitlesBy Creation DateThis CollectionCreatorsTitlesBy Creation Date

    My Account

    Login

    Statistics

    View Usage Statistics

    Georgetown University Seal
    ©2009 - 2018 Georgetown University Library
    37th & O Streets NW
    Washington DC 20057-1174
    202.687.7385
    digitalscholarship@georgetown.edu