Not Just Which Books Teachers Teach, But How They Teach Them

By Mark Bauerlein 10/12/2010

When high school students in English class sit down to write a short paper on Huck Finn or Romeo and Juliet or “The Road Not Taken,” the odds are low that they will proceed to analyze those works in detail. The structure and language of each one might be receptive to careful, close reading, but most English teachers choose a different focus. Instead of examining the ambiguities of the final line “And that has made all the difference” or pondering how and why Tom Sawyer takes over the action in the final chapters, students typically engage in “reader-response” exercises or in a discussion of various contexts of the work, including the biography of the author, relevant social issues at the time of publication, and the ethnic identity of the characters.