English 101 Thoughts

Rajiv Mohabir Poetry Reading
Wednesday, November 13th, 2024
Rose O’Neil Literary House

Having already attended a poetry reading at the literary house earlier in the semester, I had a better understanding of what to expect going into this reading. When poet Rajiv Mohabir was introduced in the lit house porch on November 13th, I figured that he and Cameron Awkward-Rich were very similar based on many of their shared interests with the natural environment, gender, and sexuality. I never anticipated the style of his poetry to be completely different. I also appreciated the context that Mohabir provided before reading each poem in his set and felt honored to hear some of his old poetry, recently published poetry, and some of his new work that has not been published before. I agreed with many of his thoughts such as the idea that there are multiple ways to learn. He really loved audience interaction and like Awkward-Rich was very theatrical in his readings, planning out his pauses and varying his tone. Most of the poetry he read was from his more recent published collection called Whale Aria which combined scientific knowledge about whales with what he termed “other hood”. This collection of poems touched on a variety of topics including religion, family, sex, love, and of course whales. The first poem he read was called Dominion which forwards a verse from the bible in it, Genesis 1:26, using it to discuss how man has dominion over all things. His next poem was called Boy with Balene for Teeth which had a theme of creating one’s own story which I found to be extremely empowering. The Whale Song Poem contained a pre-reading that was a history of the land and then launched into a poem that discussed the responsibility of humans to keep our stories alive in our communities. One of his last poems from Whale Aria was a poem called Why Whales are back in NYC. It told the story of how the whales at one time in history were seen in the New York harbor but because of human pollution they left. Finally, after the restoration and cleaning of the water decades later, the whales were spotted in the harbor again. This story brings so much hope for the world and one of my favorite quotes from this poem states “what was once lost now leaps before you” which relates this story back to each person who reads or hears this poem. Throughout Whale Aria, Mohabir I noticed that Mohabir used intricately woven metaphors that entranced his listeners. This is a tactic that I plan on applying to my own writing for all my future writing assignments.

Cameron Awkward-Rich Poetry Reading

Tuesday, September 10^th, 2024

Rose O’Neil Literary House

I attended Cameron Awkward-Rich’s Poetry reading at the literary house on 09/10/2024. I have not attended many readings from authors, but I figured it would be similar to the Sophie Kerr Prize presentation which I attended two years ago. Awkward-Rich I learned is a professor of Women, Gender, and Sexual Studies and the University of Massachusetts – Amherst. He has two collections of poetry that have been published: Sympathetic Little Monster (2016) and Dispatch (2019). When he stood up to read, he warned the audience that his work would be emotion evoking and potentially disturbing. I was not sure what to think but before I could form an idea he jumped right into his first poem. This poem, which I didn’t catch the name of, mainly focused on the nature of humans, specifically in reference to sex. The theme that I came to understand is that sex is natural and should not be a topic that is just danced around. The second poem was a complete reversal in its theme from the last poem. This poem had lots of referrals to mirrors and darkness. It invoked very sad emotions from both the writer and the audience. The third poem was called Palimode, and it was less of a poem, more of a series of letters that had been turned into an informal essay. The speaker in the letters talks to someone, asking a lot of questions and appearing to look up to a person named Pauli Murray. It had themes of sex, gender, and nature but was most obvious about this poem was the repetition, especially the word “No”. The penultimate poem was called My Life Closed in Choice which is directly taken from Emily Dickinson. The last poem read was a cento which is a type of poetry that is made up of the lines of other poems. Even though this work was not original, Cameron Awkward-Rich was still able to be consistent with his theme of choices and possessing the right to choose. Ultimately, I thought that his poetry was very theatrical, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but the topics that he covered are not something that I typically can relate to very well. I am not the audience he usually has so it makes sense why I wouldn’t be as familiar with his themes, however, there were threads that I did know very well, loneliness, unknowing, challenge with a personal image, and the importance of physical touch. I was envious of the world view that he possesses because it is not anything that I even feel comparable with, but I was impressed that his work produced emotions in him as well as the audience. I think that if I can apply the idea that my writing should invoke my own emotions, then ultimately, I will have a stronger piece of writing.

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines literature as ‘writings in prose or verse’. The Cambridge dictionary takes it one step further by stating it as ‘written artistic works, especially those with a high and lasting artistic value’. Over time, the definition of literature has changed to encompass many more mediums of text. What originally only meant physical printed books, now encompasses hypertext, electronic literature, AI tools, video games and many other forms. Emily Short’s First Draft of the Revolution by Liza Daly – with design work completed by inkle – is one example of interactive fiction that fits under the umbrella of electronic literature. There are many elements to this text that align my literature definition, but there are some aspects of electronic literature described by Sven Birkerts in The Gutenberg Elegies that also prove this text is not perfectly fitting into how literature is defined.

Initially when reading Emily Short’s First Draft of the Revolution I had no idea how to interact with the text – I believed that it was only four short pages long. There were no directions provided like some other electronic texts I have read. But this is very similar to a physical book. When reading a physical book, the reader is not told that they must flip the page to read the rest of the story, they just know that the story continues the next page. This form of literature is much like the choose your own adventure books that my family used to read when I was younger. The reader is presented with a scenario and then has multiple choices that impact where the story goes from by denoting what page must be turned to next. In this electronic text, the darker bold sections of the story can be literally changed to say something else or be deleted and you the reader cannot move onto the next page without looking at all the possibilities that could occur. Once I started to interact with the text more in depth, I came to understand why in the title, the work is considered a “First Draft” – each change that could be made is called a ‘rewrite’ or a ‘deletion’. To me, the physical appearance and set up of the text also plays a role in the artistic features of literature. All the pages in this electronic text were colored like old tea-stained paper, the font of the large quote at the beginning along with the image of a leather cover, and the decorative flair on some of the letters made this virtual text look like something that could be physically held.

This text does contain some constraints that make it appear less like literature though. The physical ‘send letter’ button makes it seem like the reader is in control of the story, whereas truly  excellent literature is known for immersing the reader in the story. Also, the fact that the original story is gone once you the reader make the edits to it is not what literature is like at all. With a physical book, there is never a doubt that the author meant what they wrote but an interactive text like this one where the reader decides what is written leaves the nagging thoughts in the reader’s mind of whether the right choice was made over a small detail in each letter. Because this interactive text is tailored by the reader, boredom may become prevalent leading to the inability for the text to “capture student enthusiasm” (Birkerts 125). Reading completed online has already proven to cut back on people’s ability to focus for extended periods of time. Although this text has the shortcomings previously discussed, I would consider it still a nice example of literature because there are so many aspects that help it succeed as something that should continue to be read.

References

Birkerts, S. (2006). The gutenberg elegies: The fate of reading in an electronic age. Faber and Faber.

Daly, L. (2012). Emily Short’s First Draft of the Revolution. https://lizadaly.com/first-draft/content/index.html

The advancement of technology is leading to the transformation of literature into other formats than just print. Now that the computer has become accessible to many people, texts have adapted to be read online and often not in the way that a printed book was meant to be read. The hypertext called Luminous Airplanes, written by Paul La Farge is categorized as a hyper romance, and it contains many levels of complexity. For this kind of text, there is no singular path that is followed like a printed book where the story is continued on the next page, but rather, many different directions can be taken by following the links that are embedded within the pages. This creates an intricate web of a story that a reader can come back to and never experiences the same time twice, as opposed to a printed chapter book. However, there are many people who believe that this new kind of literature is not literature at all. Authors such as Nicholas Carr take the stand that electronic text is causing a change in the mind. Carr discusses this topic in his essay Is Google Making Us Stupid?, citing both his own personal experience, the experience others have written about, and studies completed by universities across the globe. I must agree with Carr that the digital literary experience is causing a change in people’s brains.

One of the largest problems that Carr touches on in his article is how we as humans are reading longer texts. He states that his “concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages” but is not just the concentration that is impacted. Carr goes on to say that “our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged” when we are reading online. It is my belief that reading online not only prevents the brain from making mental connections, but also completely squashes most if not all imagination that a person has when they are reading print. Imagination is one of the key skills that assists in developing a person’s character. Carr claims that the internet is full of attention-grabbing devices and that “in the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation…we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas”. With the internet being the source of where most reading now takes place, many of the deep thoughts and ideas that could have occurred are placed in front of one’s eyes, rather than discovered on one’s own.

In contradiction to himself, Carr introduces the topic of the printing press. Like the internet, the printing press has made printed literature much more accessible for people. Also, there were a lot of unhappy people who were concerned that the printing press would be the cause of the spread of false information and undermining academic work. One aspect of the digital literature world that is incomparable to the print world is the amount that can be written all in one space. In Luminous Airplane, La Farge states in the introduction to this massive piece that he has “plenty of space at his disposal, more space than he could fill in [his] lifetime even if [he] wrote everyday”. The internet does not take up the same real estate that books do. Also, the map of all the individual parts that visually displays how each story intertwines with the other stories is a unique and helpful aspect that this form of electronic literature offers. If a reader is following a certain path in this story, they can easily pick up where they were at or they can choose to skip around between paths. Luminous Airplanes does, however, perfectly prove Carr’s point that electronic literature is facilitating the decline of attention spans. Within the Patriot Day story, La Farge himself displays this lack of attention with the interjection “in fact….my life would be completely different, but that’s another story” with the words ‘another story’ being a hyperlink that practically begs the reader to divert their focus to another story rather than finishing the two pages left in this story. Each page has numerous colored hyperlinks on it that invite the reader to go down different paths, and La Farge specifically says that it is best to “get lost” in his work. This does not permit deep thoughts on any one story if the reader is constantly jumping around.

Overall, the digital literary experience of Luminous Airplanes is extensive, I much prefer the physical aspects that a printed book can offer and the depth of thought and concentration that I can reach when reading a printed book. The evidence that Carr provided demonstrates that there are far more negative aspects of digital literature than printed literature at this time in technological development.

References

Carr, N. (2017). Is google making us stupid? The Best Technology Writing 2009, 84–97. https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300156508-009

La Farge, P. (2021, July 20). Luminous airplanes. Macmillan Publishers. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781429949910/luminousairplanes

In the 1990s, the popularity of computers within the household grew exponentially, causing a major change in the culture around literature and learning. Many professors in the world of education began to sell their extensive book collections in exchange for a computer that offered a larger collection of sources with easy access than a physical library ever could. Sven Birkerts elaborates on his views of the transition from personal libraries to personal computers in his chapter titled ‘Into the Electronic Millenium’ from his book The Gutenberg Elegies where he witnesses the scenario discussed above. About thirty years prior to Birkerts’ experience, Marshall McLuhan created a piece of literature that demonstrated changes happening during the 1960s which he called The Medium is the Massage. McLuhan’s creation occurred before the personal computer had become available for purchasing but it heavily incorporated the work from Quetin Fiore who at the time was one of America’s most distinguished graphic designers. Technology has been evolving since the beginning of time; both authors acknowledge this fact. It is how we as humans choose to react to transformations that can set us apart from one another.

McLuhan and Birkerts are on opposite sides of an argument that has stood the test of time, struggling to answer this question: is the development and incorporation of new technology in society helping to better human beings or hurting them? McLuhan stands on the grounds that “electric technology fosters and encourages unification and involvement” and feels that “it is impossible to understand social and cultural changes without a knowledge of the workings of media” (McLuhan, 9). One of the most common topics that McLuhan revisits repeatedly throughout this piece is the influence that television has played in society. Because of television, people are more aware of things far beyond their immediate surroundings. It became possible to “[participate] via television in Freedom Marches, in war, revolution, pollution, and other events” even as children (McLuhan, 16). Electric technology, which has become the new medium, ensures that people are more aware of the world around them. McLuhan makes the argument that the electric technology developing is clearly propelling humans to a new level of understanding, even though he does not outright say this anywhere. However, even McLuhan had his concerns about technology. He did state that “as new technologies come into play, people are less and less convinced of the importance of self-expression” which is detrimental to imagination (McLuhan, 66). While the major benefit of people becoming informed and educated is present, that doesn’t mean that all aspects of the incorporation of technology are positive.

On the contrary of McLuhan, Birkerts utilizes his life experiences to demonstrate all the loss that has occurred with the infiltration of technology. One shocking statistic that he uses is “fifty to a hundred million people form their ideas about what is going on in America and in the world from the same basic package of edited images” (Birkerts, 120). This statistic backs up McLuhan’s doubt noted above that talks about people’s devaluation of self-expression. With so many people forming opinions and being educated through technology, which often includes sources that are plainly wrong, people are thinking less about the problems that they are forming opinions about, leading to more of a hive mind mentality. Birkerts argues that “print communication requires the active engagement of the reader’s attention, for reading is fundamentally an act of translation” which is why the introduction of electronic technology following the removal of books is so harmful (Birkerts 122). People lose the ability to use logic and formulate concepts when they stop reading. Birkerts strengthens his argument by mentioning that there have been other times in history where a drastic change in technology occurs. The example he uses is about “oral culture [being] overtaken by the writing technology” such as Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press (Birkerts, 18). Birkerts’ main concern remains focused on the development of the individual which is a powerful position to take. However, just as strong is McLuhan’s position on the importance of new technologies in education which is another aspect of life that people deeply value. These two authors make compelling arguments for both sides of the question.

If I was forced to choose who I agree with more, I would have to side with Birkerts. I am somewhat partial because of my love for physical books in my hand, but more importantly, I believe that the development of the individual is the driving force in education. If a person has not found their own personal expression that comes from literature and imagination, then they will not be as successful or driven when they are in an education setting. While McLuhan makes many valid points about how much more access the electronic medium allows, each individual interprets the information that they are presented with in their own way. Without a foundation in one’s self, that is currently developed from maintaining a connection with physical literature, there is no safety for individualism.

References

Birkerts, S. (2006). The gutenberg elegies: The fate of reading in an electronic age. Faber and Faber.

McLuhan, M., Fiore, Q., & Agel, J. (2008). The medium is the massage. Penguin.

In Volumes II and III of Frankenstein, there are significant character developments revealed before the story ends. In Volume II, the guilt that Victor has over creating the “monster” that caused the death of his brother William and secondhandedly William’s caretaker Justine is not something that will ever leave him. In his anguish Victor states that the human brain allows for imagination, curiosity, and critical thinking that lead to discovery and new ideas, but he believes that humans would be “free” without all those attributes. One day when Victor is on a hike, he encounters the monster that he created; Victor then agrees to hear the monster’s story and listen to the monster’s request while just moments prior, Victor was going over a plan to kill his creation. The monster reflects on his experiences trying to assimilate with society and his confusion as to why humans were so scared of him. The monster also discusses what he saw and learned while observing a family from the outside for months. The monster describes the feelings of jealousy over the ties that the family has with one another and the experiences of growing up in a family. When the monster comes out of hiding, the family, having seen him, immediately moved away, causing many new feelings including heartbreak and rage to fill up inside of this monster. It also forced the monster to change his trajectory and attempt to find his creator in hopes of the creator making him a companion.

Another important moment during the monster’s life occurs when saving a little girl. The monster was shot at only because he looked different, which causes the monster to develop a deep desire to get revenge because of all the wrongs he had endured. The monster admits to killing William, the brother of Frankenstein in his recounting of his life’s events and describes the triumph that he feels after completing this gruesome act. And yet at the end of Volume II, Frankenstein agrees to the monster’s request of creating a companion of the opposite sex for him.

Volume III contains many interesting developments to Frankenstein’s story; he does eventually begin to create a second creature but with much hesitation. Eventually, he decides that he cannot continue with this project after seeing his first creations looming nearby and proceeds to shred the flesh of the second creation in front of the monster’s eyes. In retaliation, the monster kills Frankenstein’s best friend Clerval, his wife Elizabeth, and his father so that Frankenstein can feel the extreme loneliness that one has with no family or friends. With this begins Frankenstein’s chase of the monster in hopes of once and for all putting an end to the life of the monster. Finally, the story circles back to the perspective of Watson reflecting in letters to his sister about all that Frankenstein has recounted. We learn that even in his weakened state, Frankenstein is still pursuing the monster and will continue to do so until he dies. With Frankenstein’s death, Watson has an encounter with the monster. This meeting consisted of the monster trying to justify his actions throughout the story and his plans for death

One passage to focus on would be when the monster spoke to Mr. De Lacy at the end of Volume II. This scene is significant because it offers hope for the creature that he may be treated with kindness by the whole family. De Lacy, being blind, does not know what the monster looks like, only what he sounds like and his choice to listen to the monster’s story shows the power that vision has on judgement. The monster was treated like a normal human by De Lacy until his children and daughter-in-law returned and were visually judged before hearing the monster’s story. The monster wants to be “allowed to converse with and acquire knowledge from beings of a similar nature: but [feels that he] was wretched, helpless, and alone” (Shelley, 209) much like how Adam in the story Paradise Lost communicates with God. Furthermore, when the monster does have an opportunity to speak to his creator, Frankenstein, about the making of a companion, Frankenstein says that he “compassionated [the monster], and sometimes felt a wish to console him; but when I looked upon him, when I saw the filthy mass that moved and talked, my heart sickened, and my feelings were altered to those of horror and hatred” (Shelley, 230). All these instances of judgement throughout the story are something that Shelley is trying to convey as wrongs in life. It is funny to me that Percy Shelley, her husband, requested that “fellow creature” be changed to “human creature” (found in the annotations on page 215), proving the point that Mary thought of the monster as one in the same as a human, but other people, including her husband, editor, and confidant, categorized the monster separately from humans based on the image that he had developed of this creature.

Ultimately, this novel leaves me confused as to whether I think about the monster as more human like or as something completely different from a human. Humans struggle daily to feel seen by their own peers. I believe that Mary Shelley’s wording demands that the monster be thought of as a human and that Frankenstein be thought of as the monster. Even though the story is being retold by Frankenstein to Watson, the monster demonstrates a desire to belong with a family, and a yearning for knowledge that is human. Shelley is trying to teach the reader that there is a serious need for people to develop the ability to look past the face and the features and truly get to know a person. If Frankenstein had perhaps chosen to welcome the monster into his family when he was first created, then there may not have been a story at all. The monster would have been able to develop the ties with the Frankensteins that he craved. To be seen for one’s potential is the true message that this novel aims to portray.

References

Shelley, M. W., Wolfson, S. J., & Levao, R. (2012). The annotated Frankenstein. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Reading – in particular, for enjoyment – one can say is a dying art. Students outside of school are participating in other activities, book clubs are common mostly in older generations, and many people would agree that the overall view of books by young people is more negative than positive. Sven Birkerts chooses to focus on the impact that technology has had on reading in his book The Gutenberg Elegies. In his experience, he noted in the introduction that because of all the new technologies changing lifestyles, reading has become a chore to many people, which he notes as a serious problem. It is because of the ease and availability of technology that people are developing the inability to sit down to read and comprehend a book. Technology is causing a change not just in lifestyle but in how the brain takes in and processes information. Ultimately, Birkerts proposes that there is no answer to his question about the impact of technology and that we will have to simply live it to find out what will happen. 

One interesting section that Birkerts discusses in chapter one is a particular situation he experienced with a college student English class that he was teaching. He felt that he had developed the curriculum with a variety of interesting novels, articles and segments from longer works to read but when he asked the students how they felt after reading, he found that they were unable to understand what they had read. Although some of the challenge was presented in the formal language used in the pieces he selected, many students claimed that the overall passages, including the themes, jokes, characters, and other aspects were something that they weren’t able to process. One statement from Birkerts that he observed is that “we train ourselves to computer literacy, find ways to speed up our performance, accept higher levels of stress as a kind of necessary tax burden, but by and large we ignore the massive transformations taking place in the background” (Birkerts, 16). He goes on to talk about a person’s sense of continuity and culture disappear when people stray from reading. He also ties in the idea that imagination and sensation, two key aspects of being human, are heavily impacted when the brain is no longer stimulated by books. Technology, while it can in some ways enhance these traits, it more often than not will cause a decrease in imagination and sensations because it is doing the work for the brain through images and experiences.

Chapter two consists of Birkerts recollections growing up and developing into a reader and a writer. In early childhood, he was heavily influenced by his mother and grandmother who were both avid readers. His father had a different view of reading, believing that it was a feminine activity and that his son should be outside playing and doing chores. His father, needless to say, did not stop him from having a love of books. As he grew older and developed skills in English as a student, his passion for both reading and writing grew. As an adult he has learned to “appreciate allusions, savor subtleties of expression and thematic ambiguities; I grasp the fine points of technique and heed the structural signals” (Birkerts, 45). He then contradicts himself saying that he would rather read with “uncritical engagement” like he used to do as a child. He goes on to say, “I loved just thinking about books, their wonderful ciphering of thought and sensation” (Birkerts, 39). This would lead to the development of his imagination and thought process when reading. He loved discussing books with friends, people he met at bookstores and his college girlfriend during his time at the University of Michigan. Discussing books to him was just as important as reading them and he often used reading books as validation for his emotions, reading books that he could easily relate to in his different stages of life. Reading played an extremely important role in his life, shaping the person who he has become to this present day.

I was fortunate enough to have two parents that love to read. When I was a child, every night there would be a line-up of books that would be selected and read to me. As I grew older, the picture books turned into chapter books that were read to me until eventually, I was reading off on my own. My parents never discouraged reading in my house, actually making sure to encourage us to take a book or two on vacation and always finding time every couple of months to stop at the local bookstore. I would spend hours reading the summaries and choosing what next to read, sitting crisscross in the middle of the store. I believe that this encouragement to enjoy the world of literature has turned me into an avid story lover. I enjoy telling stories, but I also am extremely excited when get to hear stories told by other people. I do enjoy watching TV shows and movies for the story aspects, but I am always excited to pick up a new book and dive into a character’s life. To me, reading is still one of my favorite ways to pass time and I firmly believe that I would not feel this way if my parents hadn’t made it so important throughout my life. I love to have images of the characters floating through my brain while I am reading and even after I have put my book down and started working on something else. That imagination has helped me become a better student as I am able to come up with new ideas quicker and imagine outcomes to problems with logic and feelings.

If I had the opportunity, I would like to ask Birkerts a variety of questions. I am a huge fan of reading for fun and believe I partake in “uncritical engagement” with books regularly. I would like to ask him why that isn’t a possibility for him anymore. I can keep books separate in my mind between reading for fun and reading for school – is that the type of separation that is necessary or should all books be looked at as if there is something to be learned from them? I also would like to know what his observations are around imagination in the current culture. Does he believe that imagination and sensation have both decreased? If they have decreased, then something must have occupied that space in the brain, and I would love to know what has been replaced. I believe Birkerts will visit some of these topics because he has talked about them, but there is a lot going on with these topics that could still be discussed. I see a flaw in Birkerts argument about technology though. Through its use, people can now access books in digital formats and more people are purchasing devices that have the capacity to not just access the internet to read, but also have the book downloaded onto the device. Utilizing the current technology was a smart decision for the literary industry so that it still interests people. If he has an argument about the benefits and the consequences of reading on a device that I agree with, then I will be completely persuaded to his argument.

References

Birkerts, Sven. The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. Faber and Faber, 2006.

Education plays a key influence on students’ enjoyment of literature. Often the literature that is taught is not what interests the teenagers that are being assigned the readings. Gerald Graff explains in his article Hidden Intellectualism that he experienced this growing up in the 1950s and has noticed that it has persisted to now. His focus of the piece is how students have hidden intellectualism that can be drawn out if the school systems chose to focus their education efforts on subjects that students are interested in such as sports. Similarly, Wendell Berry also discusses concerns about the school system throughout In Defense of Literacy, claiming that there is a serious decline of comprehension of language. Both writers see a problem with the current education system that is directly affecting the intellect of our future generations.

One of the motifs Graff utilizes is the idea of “street smarts”, defining it as “intellectual resources that go untapped by formal school” (Graff, 22). I have observed this from my own time in high school English class; when forced to read a historically valued novels students often did not have much to add to the conversation, but when given a choice in what to read and write about, my classmates and myself included were more animated about the reading process. Our teacher was unlike the other teachers who did not give their students a choice and it showed. Graff states that when “literature was a mass of set passages to be memorized” students did not receive the value in it because there was no relevance to give the work meaning (Graff, 29). Another theme that he discusses is how conflict and argumentation display intellect that the education system only recognizes as a problem, rather than “alternative intellectualism” (Graff, 30). As I was reading through this article, I was forced to re-evaluate how I viewed harmless quarrels that frequently occur in the school setting. If a student were to argue a point, they would usually need to have supporting evidence and the ability to rebuttal opposition they faced which does show intellect. In fact, the more I thought about scenarios like this, the more I realized that much of academia is centered around arguing a belief with facts to support the claim made. A statement that really stood out to me was Graff realization that “what schooling did was prevent me from recognizing my own intellectualism” which made me stop to think about how I felt my time in school developed my intellectual abilities (Graff, 30). Wendell Berry takes his views a step farther, saying that because schools have begun to “teach our language and literature as specialties”, there because a lack of understanding of the world around us who do not choose to gain that specialized training (Berry, 1). The lack of understanding can become extremely dangerous, and the only defense is to speak “a language precise and articulate and lively enough to tell the truth about the world as we know it” (Berry, 1). This is something that I have personally seen; when someone is incapable of describing their surroundings or a situation because they lack the words that are learned through literature and language then they can easily be convince of a something that is not true.

Overall, these authors believe that some sort of change needs to occur quickly. But what should that change be is the question that neither one of them knew how to answer. They both knew what they wanted to come out of the change and yet had only vague ideas for how to get to their desired outcomes in the education system. For Graff, I would really like to ask how he planned to incorporate topics that are of more interest to current students. One aspect of schooling is the topics taught but another is the assignments that are to be completed by the students. If the topics taught change and the assignments remain the same, will we still see intellectualism being hidden away by the system or will the excitement in the students alone be enough to foster intellectualism? As for Berry, he clearly states that to fix the problem “we must know language better”, but what would be replaced if more time were to be spent on language and literacy (Berry, 1)? And how would the students be captivated to explore literature and develop language without it becoming a chore. I think that currently in high schools and beyond, these problems are being discussed more due to the age of technology and what it can bring to education but there are still many educators that feel they do not have the power to teach these topics because of curriculums and standards that they are expected to meet. These problems will not be solved overnight but the first step to fixing it is acknowledgement that it is there.

References

Graff, Gerald. “Hidden Intellectualism.” Pedagogy, vol. 1, no. 1, 1 Jan. 2001, pp. 21–36, doi:10.1215/15314200-1-1-21.

Berry, Wendell. In Defense of Literacy. 1979, https://www.fannelsbranch.com/comments/?p=82.

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