English Class Should Teach Students To Write Research Paper

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No less an authority on literature than Leo Tolstoy wrote that there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts. The same is true for English teachers: There are as many reasons to teach literature as there are teachers of literature. The most philosophical teachers could assert that fiction serves as a self-actualizing force, that people read “to set the darkness echoing” (Heaney 1463). Still more could posit that an English class serves as an introduction to the canon, ensuring that students are well-educated members of society with at least a rudimentary knowledge of literature. Some will say that an English class should teach students how to read a variety of genres and types of literature critically, helping the reader to share his …show more content…
Firstly, proponents of the current system might note that the purpose of English class is not to entertain students but to teach them how to read. This is, of course, true; but in a time when students have a paucity of reasons to read an assigned book, teachers must select novels with an eye to student interest. Of Mice and Men may be a far better novel than The Hobbit; but if no students read the former, the point is moot. A work that students truly read, and read critically, is a better choice than one for which students immediately print SparkNotes. Moreover, some will argue that students might be even less interested in reading diverse books than in reading tried-and-true selections. Books by minorities that also hold the interest of students are indeed not easy to find; but this task is certainly not impossible. Brown Girl Dreaming, a novel by African-American female author Jaqueline Woodson, has more than 240 five-star reviews on Amazon; and that book is not unique. There are over 130,000,000 books published; and most teachers would need to find only two or three new ones. Additionally, someone in favor of the status quo might posit that a selection of eight diverse books is not necessarily the best selection of eight books. This may be true, but to say that no literarily valuable books by minority authors exist is absurd. At present, no Jesuit class reads Twelve Years a Slave, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, or any Toni Morrison novel (all, notably, selections that at one point were taught at Jesuit). It is certainly possible to pick books that, while not optimally representative, are more diverse than those at present. Finally, questions may arise over the statistics that establish this supposed bias. Yes, 110 is not a large sample size. Yes, it is possible that 2015-2016 is an aberration. However, even

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