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With Rigor for All: Teaching the Classics to Contemporary Students

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Imagine this: You're about to teach Madame Bovary to seniors and you're faced with students who complain: "Too many pages, I can't read all that!" Or, "I've never finished a book in my life!" "Too much description; why doesn't he just get to the point?" "I read last night but I can't remember anything today!" What's an English teacher to do? You're ready to throw the book up against the wall, even though it's one of your all time favorite classics. With Rigor for All by Carol Jago addresses these problems and more, as well as provides a rationale for why we should be teaching the classics despite the connecting conflicts. How do we engage students? How do we jump over the hurdles of complicated vocabulary and syntax, antiquated settings, and our students' eternal quest for action, action, action? One of my favorite chapters is entitled "Testing That Teaches" which questions the notion of giving objective tests to assess students' understanding of the material. Jago says objective tests ring the death knell to establishing lifelong lovers of literature. She poses an important question: After reading a wonderful book, how would you like to be asked the names of characters, or to match a character with a personality trait? "I know such a test would severely undermine the pleasure I took from the last book I read, José Saramago's Blindness....I could not with certainty tell you the main characters' names. Does this make me a poor reader..." Jago asks. Instead of giving objective tests, Jago challenges teachers to devise ways of testing which actually teach students more about what they have read. Several examples of creative testing approaches are: * Write about how a character is most like (or unlike) you * Introduce a completely unrelated piece of literature such as a poem and ask students to respond to the novel using it as a model * Write an essay as a form of discovery Another chapter I enjoyed weighs the pros and cons of showing video versions of classic literature during class. You might be as surprised as I was at Jago's take on the matter. But, you'll just have to read the book to find out. Try it, you'll like it!

I came across this book at an NCTE Conference in New York City in the Spring. The publisher was really pushing it, and I bought a copy because of the nature of the "Canon Wars" that currently rage across English Departments in the US. I knew of Carol's other book about the poems of Nikki Giovanni and liked her approach. I was interested in how she planned to tell us about teaching the classics to all our students not just the select. Carol thinks the classics are for everyone. She feels that what we call "Great Literature" is great for good reason, but she fears that more and more the classics are the domain of our honors groups, our advanced college prep kids or for our gifted classes. Carol fears that high interest, easy reads may become the mainstay for many teachers and with good reason. Carol purports that teaching the classics is not an assignment from hell where bored kids are turned away from literature forever. Carol sees the teaching of the classics as a model for the way we teach thinking. She feels that kids learn content from the classics, yes, but they learn far more. Kids learn how to think about the great ideas that come from great books. She says the way we do this is by making the classics relative. The great themes of love, war, inhumanity, humanity are still the themes we all know and relate to. By making the classics relative to our kids, we examine again the questions and problems we all have been wrestling with. Carol suggests that the way to teach the classics is not in isolation. Carol believes that classics must be taught by using all sorts of other "texts". A text to Carol may be the L.A. Times if it helps her make a point. It's teachers, ultimately, who make the difference. It is how teachers themselves read and relate to what they read and then how teachers reconceptualize a content and deliver it to students. What I like about Carol's approach is that it is not about power, but about sharing and exchanging. The English teacher who knows all the answers and interpretations is not Carol Jago. Carol's reading of literature impacts her own life and her book is about how other readers...teachers as well as students...share the impact of literature on their lives. Carol does this by dealing with important issues for teachers like...what is appropriate and what isn't; whether or not to use film; assessing your teaching of the classics and assessing their reading of the classics; and how we as teachers reflect upon our own practice. Carol is obviously a real reader as suggested by her book lists at the end. There is a list for everyone. Finally, Carol talks about what the Classics are, whose notion of what is classic literature and how these works have withstood the effects of time and countless teachings. I think this book is essential reading for any high school English teacher and I challenge high school English department chairs to buy the book for their teachers, form literature circles, and continue the discussion.

Why teach pop fiction students can read on their own with the CD player blasting, the phone ringing, and the blow dryer sculpting their do? Do we need paid professionals to labor over the white knucklers of Stephen King or John Grisham? Why not make teaching more rigorous and explore the jewels of literature with students who, in all probability, wouldn't pick up Heart of Darkness on their own? Carol Jago's book, With Rigor for All, challenges teachers to raise their expectations and afford their students the opportunity to wade, then dive into text rich in plot, character, and theme. Think classic classics. Jane Eyre. Ivanhoe. Notes of a Native Son. Now think contemporary classics. A Yellow Raft in Blue Water. The Color Purple. House of the Spirits. Imagine your students bathing in metaphors, analyzing the meaning between the lines, grappling with complex relationships. This is what Jago's book is all about. Learn how to facilitate student-run discussions; how to encourage close analysis of the text; how to hold students accountable for their reading; how to expose your students to writing that will make their brain sweat during reflective journal exercises. As an English teacher and standards coach, I found the content of this book illuminating, the style engaging. Jago speaks with a convesational voice, escorting you on a journey that is a one-way ticket. After reading With Rigor For All, how can you possibly go back to pop pabulum between bells?

Jago's book made this former English teacher want to get back into the classroom. Both practical and inspiring, it is the best guide I have seen for helping teachers to re-engage the complex but oh-so-rewarding texts that we've almost given up on thinking we can teach in this video-driven and impatient age. Done right, her tough-minded but realistic advice will open up the complex riches that await the teacher and the student of enduring literature--riches we underestimate until we read how Jago, herself, has succeeded mightily in passing them on to her initially-resistant charges at Santa Monica high school. This is a book I will retun to regularly. If you are an English teacher, or a person concerned by the slow dying of the literary light, get this book and read it carefully--and buy it for an English teacher you know.

Carol Jago describes why students should read more, and particularly why they should read the classics. Carol Jago shows how the classics provide better life-long learning for readers than the usually recommended high school novels, which are quickly forgotten. The hard-to-read classics have enduring stories; stories that will stay with the readers for their life time.

Although the classics are difficult for students to read and require more of the teacher, the author believes the effort is worthwhile and she presents some techniques to make this reading easier. But, unfortunately, she fails to provide a magic pill to fight the onslaught of TV, video games and the internet.

I really liked her reading lists, and the book-to-book pairings of contemporary literature with classics. She also describes her teaching methods which surmount some of the difficulties in teaching classics to high-schoolers.

Highly recommended for anyone teaching reading, English, or Western Civilization.

John Dunbar
Sugar Land, TX

With Rigor For All: Teaching The Classics To Contemporary Students By Carol Jago (Director of the California Reading and Literature Project at UCLA) is a persuasive and engaging enthusiastic advocacy for the values and benefits of teaching classic works of literature to contemporary students. From a methodology that helps students to think about the classics and interpret the stories for themselves, to book lists of great classics for the classroom, to a cautious survey of obstacles that can interfere with learning about the classics, With Rigor For All is an excellent and recommended supplementary resource for classroom educators and curriculum developers.

After reading this book I think every high school literature teacher should give this book a chance. The author has done a good job sharing her experiences and has also shares some (what I think) great teaching tips. She has provided a list of grade level books and how the readings should be paired to provide students a better comparison of some of the classic works.

But she's fair, and good at her job, and really invested in the success of her students. She wants them to read hard, good, real literature, and she wants to help them succeed with it. This book is a big ol' pep talk for teachers, and it really is quite readable.