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| Editors: | |
| James Blasingame | James.Blasingame@asu.edu |
| Lori A. Goodson | lagoodson@cox.net |
A Cautionary Tale
Barely a month after the Louisville ALAN workshop--but before SATs changedtheir middle name from Aptitude to Assessment--the topic for the20-minute English Composition Test (ECT) was to explain how a clear or simplesituation turned out to be very different from what it had originally appeared.Though fastwrites may be deplored as invalid and/or unfair for predicting anadolescent's educational future, the Educational Testing Services has hadlittle trouble in finding droves of upstanding high school and college Englishteachers (including NCTE leaders) to score or read the ECT. Typically, areader handles 550-600 papers displaying a breathtaking range of skill. Butwhat fascinates me about these sessions is not how examinees write.
Instead, the fascination lies in what those rising collegefreshmen--from all over the United States and international testingcenters--write about. ECT papers show what these young writers view asimportant to include in essays to be judged by unknown English teachers,particularly since these judgments can affect where they go to college andperhaps affect the rest of their lives.
About halfway through the December, 1992, ECT reading--after some 300 papers--Irealized that ALAN would care about what I was learning, and I started takingnotes about what the writers did with the topic. The 261 papers my notes covershowed that these writers were respectful; they wanted to sound ready forhigher education. Not one television reference surfaced in this samplealthough a memorable paper on 1991's ECT prompt had proposed establishing aholiday to honor PeeWee Herman.
Most 1992 writers discussed unforeseen problems in studies although very fewreferred to sciences or mathematics. Others referred to problems in sports,jobs, driving a car, cooking, child care, family and other relationships,travel, and current events such as the recent national election and the GulfWar. By far the most common focus--at least two or three were on this in everybatch of 25--was the shock of realizing that deciding where to apply andactually applying for admission to college can be a time-consuming andcomplicated process. In 61 of the papers on which I took notes, literature wasmentioned; however, all except one focused on classics. The one non-classicreference was to Eternal Champions Cycle. But what distressed mewas that no paper mentioned a YA author or book.
Instead these 61 students invoked Willie Loman, Gatsby, and Papa (Farewell to,For Whom, Old Man and, Sun Also); Jane Eyre and P&P; Lord of the F and ToKill a MockingB; Antigone, Oedipus, Odysseus; Huck and Beowulf; Tess D'U; andAnna K, Scarlet L, Heart of D, Crime and P. One of my favorites: Inherent[sic] the Wind. Our Town. Great Expect. Shakespeare, of course: Othello,R&J, Hamlet. More than any other work of literature: the Scottish play.
No Bridgers, no Myers, no Hinton. Much imitation teacher-talk. The fartherthe writer had to reach, the more insecure the grasp:
Guilt grew to an overwhelming surplus.
Galileo had a real tough road to hoe.
Israel became a strong important power in Southwest Asia.
There were always some added complexities that served to make what was writtenreach, at best, ambiguity. And there were painful locutions, but youth andpressure provide some excuse, possibly even for avoiding literature as a topicthat could impress readers who make a living by teaching it.
I could hardly wait to try that prompt on the future and current Englishteachers in my adolescent literature course, for I was confident in mystudents' eagerness to appear familiar with the subject at hand. To avoidcontaminating the data, I didn't mention my ECT notes. Moreover, as I handedout 3x5 cards, I refrained from reminding students of the previous week'sin-class survey of their ambiguity- and complexity-laden course texts: SexEducation, Sweet Illusions, The House That Crack Built, Risky Times: How to BeAIDS-Smart and Stay Healthy.
Perhaps that is why not one of those twenty responses, written by collegejuniors, seniors, and postgrads in the second week of my spring 1993 English486 Adolescent Literature course, mentioned literature, let alone YA lit. Theonly connection to books that some of their confidently-recalled personalexperiences had was sounding like dynamite YAs in search of authors:
parenting (teaching a child to do something)
the death of a friend in a random highway shooting
relationships with in-laws
choosing a future career
buying and maintaining a used car
buying condoms
speaking before a large audience
red tape and paperwork in a local school district
raising and training 17 retrievers.
Impelled by irony in my data, for the next afternoon's department colloquium Idistributed a handout with what I had planned to say so that instead I coulduse my presentation time for getting responses to the ECT prompt. From thirtypeople I cherish--and for whom I've been writing (for their own sakes as wellas for their children's) annual post-NCTE convention summaries featuring ALANworkshop highlights--two responses were literary: ambiguities of multipletranslations of Aristotle's Poetics and the complexity of Emily in "ARose for Emily." Most responses focused on situations somewhat removed fromthe experience of students in the adolescent literature course. Provocative,if not YA material at first glance, were
maintaining cordiality toward neighbors despite a dog bite and display of theother party's political signage
the fall of totalitarianism in eastern Europe
interpreting a medical appointment for a child who is deaf
getting married at the age of twenty
teaching English in Japan
an encounter involving a girlfriend, a police officer, and a prostitute
gays in the military
conferencing with a composition student who didn't "get it," i.e. the need foran idea at the core of the essay.
Is it significant that, for both ECT examinees who would want to impressEnglish-teacher readers and future and current teachers of English meeting in auniversity setting, literature--and not just YA literature--so rarely was citedas examples of complex or ambiguous situations?
ALAN stalwarts may take some comfort in seeing that the genre important to usmay not be the only one that our students and even our colleagues don't have atthe tip of their minds.
An active ALAN member, Silver Stanfill teaches in Anchorage, Alaska.
