[Xmca-l] Re: Eighth Grade Reading and Paradise Lost

Wed Jun 10 19:42:06 PDT 2020

My proposal, Anthony and Martin, is precisely a change of pace. I'm not
sucker-punching: I'm changing the focus of attention entirely.

I did try listening to McWhorter (I don't know the other guy--never heard
of him). But I think there are two kinds of public intellectuals: people
who go public BECAUSE they are intellectuals (Michael Osterholm is one of
these--he's a public health guy, and it's basically part of his job
description), and people who are famous for playing intellectuals in
public. McWhorter whines because he expressed himself in ways carefully
designed to garner publicity and now pouts about the quality of the
publicity garnered. (Why am I not astonished that he knows a white guy who
got killed by cops who got off? Why am I unimpressed that when you take
away all the factors in which race is involved and look at tiny sample
sizes, you no longer see any racial bias?).  It reminded me a little of
teachers like me who pout when learners are less than astonished by my
astonishing insights. It makes me suspect that my insight is less than
astonishing, and I would like to try it out on a real reading teacher,
namely Anthony.

Here's the less-than-astonishing insight. We teach WRITING with the goal of
autonomy. We even teach SPEAKING with the idea of self-sufficiency firmly
in the back of our heads. As the vulgar interpretation of Vygotsky puts it,
the external mediator becomes restructured as an internal mediator (as
Vygotsky, who was a public intellectual too, put it rather better, what the
child can do with assistance today the child will be able to do tomorrow
without assistance). I find this a little beside the point, because
language isn't really designed to be internal--that's why Vygotsky makes a
distinction between inner speech and thinking.

But why don't we have a similar approach to READING? That is, why don't we
judge the success of our reading instruction in the same way that we judge
the success of our writing instruction: that is, by the hours the kids
spend reading outside class and by the quality of autonomous reading
experiences? Why is reading only judged by in-class comprehension?

Anthony: Milton's caesurae are just ONE example of a much larger
developmental phenomenon: Milton's decoupling of the sentence and the line
(the unmapping of prosody from grammar). The rhetorical purpose of a
caesura is to make the prosodic line unstoppable. My purpose is a little
different--it's to make the grammatical sentence comprehensible.

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
Outlines, Spring 2020
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!WGrAuXYRvesbVdMAvIS-626lAO6ewLFAXcNAvBNOi-tSXBRDcWiQBg2mb596TBR-leG6Yw$ 
New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological
Works* *Volume
One: Foundations of Pedology*"
 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!WGrAuXYRvesbVdMAvIS-626lAO6ewLFAXcNAvBNOi-tSXBRDcWiQBg2mb596TBS9Usb6Zw$ 

On Thu, Jun 11, 2020 at 11:03 AM Anthony Barra <anthonymbarra@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Same! But it was a Welcome Change of Pace.
>
> I'll say this: helping kids see enjambment, as a tool poets use and one
> they too can use, makes as big a difference as anything else I show them.
> And with older kids, looking at interrupted clauses in sonnets is the
> biggest bang for their buck.
>
> Cool tip David, thanks
>
>
> On Wednesday, June 10, 2020, Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net> wrote:
>
>> So what is your proposal, David? I tried reading your message vertically,
>> then backwards, and still found myself lost.
>>
>> Martin
>>
>>
>> On Jun 10, 2020, at 8:09 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Anthony--
>>
>> I have a compromise for you. You are finding it hard to quit the "My
>> Hometown Minneapolis" thread, and you are, will-he nil-he, doing exactly
>> what you once condemned Ulvi for doing (posting links instead of thoughts).
>>
>> Here's what I propose. The other day I was teaching READING. No, they
>> weren't eighth graders--they were Korean undergraduates, and I was teaching
>> Milton's Paradise Lost. Needless to say, the kids were finding it tough
>> going.
>>
>> I think I know why. If you take eighth graders WRITING poetry, a sentence
>> usually maps onto a single prosodic line. For want of data (you really
>> could help out here, you know), I give you:
>>
>> Roses are red.
>> Violets are blue.
>> Sugar is sweet.
>> . ....
>>
>> Each line is a sentence, a simple major clause: subject, verb, object.
>> Milton doesn't do that: his first sentence ("Of man's disobedience...") is
>> sixteen lines long. So he  completely decouples the line from the clause.
>>
>> Or does he? Milton loves acrostics (which is even more amazing when you
>> realize he's stone blind when he's writing this stuff)--according to
>> Melanie Phaal (not, I am almost sure, her real name), you find stuff like
>> this:
>>
>> ;;;who rather double honour gain
>> From his surmise proved false; find peace within,
>> Favour from Heaven, our witness, from the event.
>> And what is faith, love, virtue, unassayed
>> Alone, without exteriour help sustained?
>> Let us not then suspect our happy state
>> Left so imperfect by the Maker wise,
>> As not secure to single or combined.
>> Frail is our happiness, if this be so,
>>
>> Get it? You don't read it horizontally. You read it vertically, like a
>> Korean pub sign: FFAALL  (and "FALL" if you read it from the bottom up.
>> Double honor gained indeed....
>>
>> That got me thinking. Alot of Paradise Lost becomes easier when you
>> realie that it's syntax is vertical, like a Korean or a Chinese
>> crossword. Milton puts  the subject in one line, the verb in the next, and
>> the object in the last.
>>
>> No light, but rather darkness visible
>> Served only to discover sights of woe
>> Regions of sorrow, doleful shades...
>>
>> The problem is that when I teach this technique, I find that the kids
>> ignore it. A few years ago, there was a serious attempt to teach reading as
>> AUTONOMY--people like R.R. Day and Julian Bamford (influenced by Stephen
>> Krashen) wanted most reading to take place outside class, "extensively".
>> But this never really caught on, partly because we don't really know what
>> techniques to teach (besides "skimming and scanning", i.e. reading minus
>> comprehension). As usual, though, we tend to blame our own ignorance on the
>> kids (as I did in the first sentence of this paragraph).
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Sangmyung University
>>
>> New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
>> Outlines, Spring 2020
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!WGrAuXYRvesbVdMAvIS-626lAO6ewLFAXcNAvBNOi-tSXBRDcWiQBg2mb596TBR-leG6Yw$ 
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!XivomlsMRmzsPNhtZ107JW5GufxDQl52tecyALUtAf6cPg3yuDGwm0SsEv91-tvMsEeyJQ$>
>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume
>> One: Foundations of Pedology*"
>>  https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!WGrAuXYRvesbVdMAvIS-626lAO6ewLFAXcNAvBNOi-tSXBRDcWiQBg2mb596TBS9Usb6Zw$ 
>>
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!XivomlsMRmzsPNhtZ107JW5GufxDQl52tecyALUtAf6cPg3yuDGwm0SsEv91-tuGXBvkMg$>
>>
>>
>>
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