Due to some indecipherable chemistry, some students will feel a spark or two or three while reading J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" or Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," while others leave high school never having felt this pleasure. Some go off to college to become English majors; others leave high school swearing off (and swearing at) literary books forever. Some catch the spark much later in life, perhaps due in part -- I can hope, can't I? -- to the groundwork put in place during their formative high school and college years.
In moments of weakness, I find myself wishing for the vital, connected social context that bound readers together in an earlier time. At the height of 19th-century print culture, while American readers awaited news of Charles Dickens's serialized novels, Harriet Beecher Stowe sat in her parlor reading her children drafts of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in an effort to determine how best to shape her story. Great literature was often read aloud, discussed publicly, and composed within close-knit social networks and dynamic reading communities -- conditions that neither surround nor support young readers today.
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Nonetheless, I stand in awe of my students as they go about their business cheerfully, with a certainty that high school boot camp will bring them well-deserved future rewards. School-year scholars, athletes and artists, my students have earned their right to some time on the living room couch -- even in front of "The O.C." reruns -- on lazy summer days.
So, teaching passion for great books in the year 2004 is, I admit, a matter of infinite hope. Nevertheless, my teenage students keep me optimistic. Critics bemoaning the end of an era are invited to my school cafeteria, where young people exhibit, every day, their compelling adventures in the life of the mind. Over cold pizza and chocolate milk, they discuss their dates for the prom side by side with subjects ranging from genocide to Biblical interpretation, from medical ethics to civil rights.
When I checked in with one graduate to ask about best lunch talks from the past year, he e-mailed this reply: "What better way to spend a lunch block than discussing Jorge Luis Borges's view of the nature of time or whether reality is a human construction?" Doesn't appear that, in the area of mental capital, we have much to worry about.
Perhaps all of us would benefit from a rereading of Dickinson's poem: " 'Hope' is the thing with feathers -- /That perches in the soul -- /And sings the tune without the words -- /And never stops -- at all -- ."
Join a motivated student for lunch. It will provide, I promise, comforting food for thought.
Author's e-mail:
nancy_schnog@potomacschool.org
Nancy Schnog, co-editor of "Inventing the Psychological: Toward a Cultural History of Emotional Life in America" (Yale University Press), will begin her fifth year as an English teacher at the Potomac School in McLean this fall.
