Alan Purves "Telling Our Story about Teaching Literature"

A bit late, but it's the 100th post!

One of the first things that stuck out to me in Alan Purves essay “Telling Our Story about Teaching Literature” was his list of terms with notes as to what he personally believed. He states that “that dubious breed called researchers or experts toss around terms like ‘reader response’ (a good thing), ‘New Criticism’ (a bad thing), ‘multiculturalism’ (good), ‘canon’ (bad), ‘social construction of’ (good), and ‘teacher-centered’ (bad).” (211) I personally agree with the terms that Purves considers “bad” as far as the terms used in relation to literature, but a lot of that is because of what we are expected to go beyond constraints that New Criticism, canons, and teacher-centered styles of teaching provide. I believe that what we need to teach our kids is to go beyond what we hand them as literature.

Purves argues that “all media should be at the heart of our literature classes.” (215) This is important in the classroom because many students learn through different styles and by presenting other forms of literature, there’s a wider net cast to catch students. People forget that films, comics, plays, and other visuals are considered literature because of it’s original form in a script or within panels of illustrations.

The last thought that Purves presents to us is the thought that “if we remain as antagonistic to the media as people like Neil Postman would have us be, we will lose our true end of helping students be disciplined reflective and refractive human beings. That practice will be lost for all but a very small number indeed. I think this would be a great loss, for it seems to me that we would then be giving in to the forces of materialism, instant gratification, and narcissism—surrendering to the culture of the mall and the huckster.” (218) This idea is intriguing as a future educator where my students will reflect me as a teacher. If they cannot interpret texts by texts alone, then my image is impacted. Education is a living being that mutates and shifts over time, and so teachers need to be willing to evolve and adjust their curriculum to the students in ways they can learn.