Steve Lazar at Outside [The Cave] has posted a thoughtful reaction to my recently published article "Choosing to belong: Increasing adolescent male engagement in the ELA classroom" as well as some ideas of his own on how to use choice in a social studies curriculum. He had several good thoughts, critiques, and questions regarding the article. Here are some of my responses:
On the issue of why certain texts are valued more than others:
Tim mentioned that during free-reading or during class he "began to notice similar situations with my own students—boys reading sports pages and video game manuals during class. Technically, they were reading and writing—activities we wanted them to be doing. They just weren’t reading and writing what I asked of them " (152-153). I immediately began to wonder why these texts could not be used, to some extent, in teaching general English concepts. There are likely to be just as many literary terms in a video game manual as there are in Shakespeare.
I agree. There is no reason not to use a wide variety of texts in the ELA classroom. It prepares students for real-world reading as well as recognizes the varied interests of your students. Why aren't these used more? ELA teachers are typically English/Literature majors. We love literature most of all. We are well-meaning in wanting to share that love with our students, but we overlook many viable texts as a result. In some cases, it is a matter of elitism. Many English teachers think we should teach the great works of literature and that is it. I happen to disagree with that position.
On gender roles:
My one significant critique of the article, which may very much have been outside the scope of inquiry, is that it sometimes does not offer a critical eye towards the construction of gendered roles and differences.
Quite frankly, I didn't want to get that academic with what I was doing. I think it is important to recognize biases among teachers in selecting books for ELA classes. Most ELA teachers are women or those of us men who have succeeded in a female-dominated field, so we are more likely to want to share and work with texts we like - those which many adolescent boys would find "girly". Choice overcomes that issue, as long as the teacher is able to offer the right kind of variety in the menu of choices.
On what makes a book female- or male-centered:
Similarly, Tim writes, "I thought about the books as being male or female centred, according to the gender of the protagonist" (156), but this seems to be an oversimplification (I can think of a lot of books with masculine protagonists that could be viewed as "feminine," High FIdelity come to mind, though I'm having trouble thinking of the converse example).
Steve is absolutely right; this does not reflect the true nature of how a book would be considered. I did it this way for two reasons. The first is not that thoughtful - it was simpler for me. The second was a little more thoughtful - one could only decide on the "centeredness" of a book after reading it. The students would be selecting books to read, based solely on the cover, reading a few pages, and the description. Also, I assumed that adolescents would not be as attuned as those of us critical adults and be able to see that a book about a guy could be more female-centered in terms of theme (at least upon first glance/selection). I thought of a lot of my boys looking at a book with a girl on the front cover and comparing it to a boy on the front cover, and not being very deep about which to choose.
On the effect on girls:
It also seems that the implications of Tim's argument, while having more dramatic effects amongst boys, should have positive effects for girls as well. Tim mentions this, though does not provide comparative data for his female students. I would be very curious to see this.
I do have that data. I believe the specific numbers are on my computer at school, though. From what I can remember from a year ago is in preferences. Girls were more likely to cross gender boundaries in selecting books - meaning that a girl was much more likely to pick a male-centered book than a boy was to pick a female-centered books. Girls reported liking choice almost as much as boys did, but not as quite (again, I have the numbers, just not on this computer). This makes sense - they succeeded under no-choice systems, so choice would be nice, but not nearly as much of relief as it would be to the boys, who were suffering. Anecdotal evidence suggested that many of the girls who were not succeeding began to succeed when they were able to pick their own books and topics for writing. I focused in the article on boys and didn't go into specifics about the girls because it seemed to be out of the scope of the article. I mentioned it briefly in the article to put aside common fears that focusing on boys would leave girls behind. Close to the end of the study, I began to recognize the power of choice for all students, but had begun the study through the lens of looking at boys and thus kept that focus. (I've since then begun writing and speaking about the power of choice for all students.)
Thanks to Steve for the ongoing collegial conversations. These conversations are the reasons I blog.
Check out Steve's blog, his response to my article, and his own ideas about including choice in the Social Studies curriculum. You can e-mail me for a copy of my article, published in this month's issue of Changing English.
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