PUSHING INQUIRY IN LITERATURE

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When it comes to teaching literature, the typical American high school moves students through a standard sequence of survey courses, like American or World Literature or Romantic Poetry. While “World Lit” also appears in the Urban Academy course catalog, so do offerings like War Stories, Cuban Film and Literature, Beyond Harry Potter, and Politics and Magic in Latin-American Fiction. These courses prepare students for the school’s literature proficiency, one of six academic areas in which Urban students must display competence to graduate. To qualify, students must first submit an analytic essay written at the first-year college level. They then must discuss with an outside expert—say, a professor at a nearby college or a local theater director—a work of fiction selected from the school’s literature list, highlight the important issues the novel raises, identify passages that shed understanding on these issues, and tie the novel to other works of fiction.

See below the detailed accounts of two literature courses at Urban: a Shakespeare class called “Just Bill” and “Little Big Books,” a course in comparative literature.

JUST BILL

“Suppose Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare but just Bill, an actor in the late 16th century ...”

See also     Little Big Books

When I first started teaching in New York City schools, I remember they told us to write on the board our aim for what students would learn from the lesson,” says Urban Academy English teacher Phyllis Tashlik. “I thought, ‘How do I know what they will learn! Maybe something will emerge from what goes on here—how would I know that beforehand?!’”

Tashlik, a 25-year teaching veteran who has been at Urban since 1995, teaches a one-semester Shakespeare course called “Just Bill.” Students start with the sonnets (memorizing one of their choice), then read at least three plays (this term’s are Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, and Much Ado About Nothing). They also see Shakespeare performed, both in city theaters and in various film versions, as well as staging it themselves.

Urban Academy Course Catalog Spring 2002 Just Bill (Phyllis) Suppose Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare but just Bill, an actor in the late 16th century who wrote a collection of popular (though unpublished) plays and was clever at making a comfortable living from show biz. Would people still find his work extraordinary today? Would you? We’ll examine Bill’s work from a number of perspectives to explore the best way to approach his plays. We’ll read them, attend them, view them, perform in them, and adapt them. We’ll study the playwright and his times. Students will write a series of papers examining the Just Bill experience and evaluating his worth for the next century’s patrons of the theater. We’ll cover the sonnets, a tragedy (maybe Hamlet or King Lear), a comedy, and if there’s time, a history. Be prepared to spend one or two evenings at the theater to see how others have interpreted Bill’s work.

Tashlik’s focus is not on whether students are “getting the right answer” to Shakespeare’s meaning. “It’s not about that,” she says, but more about: “Are you trying to figure out the text? Are you alert to the language?” As the class goes through the text scene by scene, she draws out students’ questions and connections, sometimes focusing them on certain passages. “Some humor me along; some adore it; some could get more out of another kind of text,” she says. “Sometimes we spend the whole period developing and responding to questions together,” she explains. “Other times, there will be something we need to clarify, so I will give them questions.” The teacher’s task, she believes, is to reflect on different aspects of the students’ questions, then draw out a focus.

So she pays close attention to what kids say, and then connects their observations to each other’s and to outside academic discourse. She contrasts Harold Bloom’s commentary on The Tempest, for example, with an essay that sees the play from a Marxist perspective as a parable about power and social inequities.

As a result, “students learn that readers have different interpretations,” Tashlik says, “and that interpretations can change.”

CLASSROOM NOTES| 05.23.02

Tashlik starts her class with a quiz on the scene from Much Ado About Nothing that students were to have read in preparation. The first question is simply factual: “How do the Prince, Leonato, and Claudio fool Benedick?” The second asks students to interpret the text: “How do you account for the change in Benedick’s behavior?” The third is a complex challenge that struck Tashlik in the line where Beatrice tells Benedick: “Against my will I am sent to bid you come into dinner” and Benedick replies; “There’s a double meaning in that.” Tashlik asks her students in the quiz: “What is Shakespeare’s double meaning in Benedick’s ‘double meaning’?”—a conundrum that has them scratching their heads.

“Just put down what you think—we’ll talk about it later,” she urges them cheerfully as they call for advice and clarification. “I want to know what you think! I’m never quite sure what you’re getting and not getting when you read through this alone, by yourself.”

Quizzes collected, Tashlik’s students explain the deception scene to each other. “They’re fooling Benedick partly out of amusement and partly out of pity,” one boy offers. Joey doesn’t think that Benedick’s friends are fooling him at all; his first impression is that they are telling the truth that Beatrice loves Benedick. “Why would Joey think that?” Tashlik demands, and the students launch at once into the interpretation she has asked for in the quiz’s second question.

Vance: “It really is true. As soon as Benedick hears that, she’s no longer a hag—he’s madly in love. It’s like Rosa says, it’s a second-grade thing; he’s really quick as soon as he hears it—he knows he loves her.” Rosa: “That’s why it’s so easily reversed; it’s at the bottom of his mind already.” Tashlik: “So all we need is a little encouragement?” Irina: “Men like spunky women. If he didn’t really love her he wouldn’t . . .” Vance: “If a girl tells me she hates me . . .” Tashlik: “Does it make your heart flutter?” Vance: “Yes, the fighting and bickering are part of the fun of it!” Irina: “From what I know of you, Vance, you’re like Benedick—you like a good fight.” Tashlik: “And how does the play begin?” Kim: “With Benedick and Beatrice bickering!” Jason: “And with a war—but I thought the war was a game.” Dion: “There’s four battles going on: the actual war, the war between the sexes, the animosity between the brothers, and the deception where everyone’s trying to figure out what the others are saying. I’ve seen that in all Shakespeare’s plays—there’s only one character who’s smart enough to figure out what’s going on.” Irina: “I disagree with you thoroughly! None of them are dumb! Claudio is just there. Hero is smart, she plays a good game, I give her credit for that.” Tashlik: “What’s Hero’s game?” Irina: “To be a lady—nice and submissive. Then Beatrice is playing Benedick—she knows what gets him hot!” Ian: “It’s not that they’re doing it consciously. They’re not aware of it.” Irina: “They know what they’re doing. Unless people in this era didn’t reflect ever on what they were doing! Tashlik: “Harold Bloom says the genius of Shakespeare is that he endowed his characters with full humanity. If that’s true, would they not have the quality of introspection?” Irina: “We don’t have an omniscient narrator here, so we don’t know what’s going on in their heads. But I know I’m a lot like Beatrice and I know she knows what’s going on.”

The conversation goes on. Students get into an argument about Shakespeare’s portrayal of women. Tashlik: “The feminist interpretation is that Shakespeare was misogynistic. What do we know from the other plays we’ve read?”

After a few more minutes’ discussion, she moves the students on to the final, “double meaning” question on the quiz. The students play with the possibilities: What was the double meaning of Shakespeare’s “double meaning” line?

Rosa: “Beatrice was ‘coming into’ dinner—was she maybe, like ‘becoming’ his dinner, like he’s going to eat her?” Dion: “Does this mean there are like four meanings? What was Shakespeare thinking?” Tashlik: Benedick thinks there was a double meaning, and Shakespeare knows we know there was not a double meaning. He’s playing with that—she doesn’t know, and he doesn’t know, they’re being played with.”

Then Tashlik does some prep work for the language in the scene they are about to read aloud. “For the Elizabethans, love translates into physical terms,” she says: “eating, sleeping, humors—livers!” The constables, who will bring comedic relief to the next scene, have mix-ups over language.

Ian: “More than he’s racist or sexist, I think Shakespeare is classist—his lower class people are funny and stupid.” Joey: “If anything, he’s poking fun at the aristocrats! His lower class people have more sense of reality.” Vance: “Shakespeare is commenting on the rules that aristocrats have to follow—it ties their hands, they choke themselves on it.” Dion: “Shakespeare’s both! He’s an aristocrat and a peasant.”

As the class begins Scene 3, Tashlik asks: “Do you believe Beatrice could make this much of a switch?” They do, and Chuck cites the text’s support for the characters’ view that populating the society is the responsibility of citizens: “The world must be peopled!”

The students read on and Tashlik continues her questions: “What does this show about Benedick? What does this show about women? What are we finding out in this play about women and their tendencies?” Vance: “That men are insecure about women.” Rosa: “That women are either pure or they’re sluts.”

TEACHER PROMPTS
Just Bill
Paper #2: Romeo and Juliet
Due: Monday, April 22nd
3-4 pages (prereq. 4-5 pages)

Suggestions for papers. (In all instances, use evidence from the play and appropriate quotations to support your opinions.)

1. Fated to Die?
Shakespeare foreshadows the tragedy’s end by providing foreboding dreams, references to death, and a history of two families’ “ancient” battles. Even the prologue refers to Romeo and Juliet as two “star-crossed” lovers. But if we saw them only as doomed characters without any ability to make choices, they wouldn’t be very interesting for us. Are Romeo and Juliet convincing as fully developed human beings, or do they never emerge strongly from the fate they have been assigned?

2. The Language of Love and Death As soon as someone mentions Romeo and Juliet, we think of love and death almost simultaneously. Other than by killing off the two lovers at the end of the play, how else does Shakespeare reinforce the union of these two realities, love and death? What language and images does he use to carry this theme throughout the play? (You might want to include an analysis of one or two sonnets that also deal with this theme.)

3. Juliet, the Feminist?
Capulet was ready to marry Juliet off to Paris, an older man who already held a position of some esteem in their society. But Juliet chose Romeo. Was she wise? Are Romeo and Juliet really “meant for each other”? Are they a good match? What do we know about their situations, characters, relationships with others, and language, and how does all that help you come to your conclusion?

4. Men Rule...Wisely?
Are these characters doomed because of the image they had of “manhood”? Consider not only Romeo, but also the other males in this pay: Mercutio, Tybalt, Benvolio, Capulet, Paris. How do they portray different aspects of manhood? Do they ever depart from those norms? What do they perceive as “threats” to their roles? To what extent do the female characters take their lead or disregard the proper role of the men in their lives?

5. “... Violent thoughts have violent ends”
Is there more violence than love in this tragic story? Consider: three murders, two suicides, and one death from grief (Romeo’s mother) occur in no more than two hours. Although Bill (Shakespeare) wrote this as a young man about an even younger couple in love, his main concern seems to be death, not life, and violence, not love. Do you agree or disagree? (You might want to include an analysis of one or two sonnets for this topic.)

Just Bill
Discussion prompts: Prospero
May 2002
Acts 4 & 5

We’ve spoken a lot about who Caliban might be, and found there are many Calibans (not that we’ve settled this question yet). But we haven’t fully examined who Prospero might be.

Consider the passages indicated below. If this is a tale of journeys and discovery (a journey to and discovery of an island as well as journeys to self-discovery for the characters), what do we discover about Prospero? Who is he and what might he represent?