Customer Reviews

Literature and Lives: A Response-Based, Cultural Studies Approach to Teaching English

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Reviewer: A reader
This book has revealed doors that I never knew existed within the English curriculum, and these doors will open worlds to my students that literature has ceased to open in the past. As a secondary school English teacher, I know the importance of literature in the students' lives, but I never knew how to show this importance to my students. After reading this book I now know the secret of achieving this goal. By using a response based cultural studies approach to teaching English, literature opens a door to the students own lives. A means for the students to value literature by drawing parallels between the literatures we feed them, and their own lives found within that literature.
English has been taught in a fashion that has raised it upon a pedestal. A place to where students will find enlightenment with study. But this book has shown me that literature does not bring enlightenment to the students, but the students bring enlightenment to literature. By creating an environment where the English curriculum is structured around the students' responses, literature can take on a relationship with the students that create an inviting and welcoming role that the students can take on in their learning. English is not simply a reading and writing based subject, but in educations past it has been treated as such. English is a subject that requires students to be actively involved. By actively involving our students in the classroom, students receive extrinsic motivation in studying literature.
This book shows teachers how to create an English classroom that is centered on the students, and their own questions and responses. Whether dealing with issues of diversity, gender, or homelessness in the classroom students can draw from the literature in ways that better their own lives. This is the goal of literature,and this book is the key to opening that door.

This book has a fair amount of helpful stuff, and it's not hard to read. The thing that bothers me is Carey-Webb's firm belief that nobody ought to be taught, or be asked to teach The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He claims it's racist; I claim he's broken the border of cultural sensitivity and entered into trite political correctness, probably at the expense of his students' exposure to great and important literature.