Teaching History with Literature

Pop quiz! Rifle off the dates for the Punic Wars, the Gallic Wars, and the Seljuk Turk uprising — then list the major players and their respective shoe sizes.

Feeling a little overwhelmed? Welcome to how students feel when facts, dates and lists are crammed down their throats in the name of teaching history.

As homeschoolers, we dare not trivialize nor create a boring dislike of this topic. The instruction of history is important not just because of the age-old adage, "If we do not learn from history, we are bound to repeat it," but also because every other subject hinges on history. We must make our students see people of the past and their circumstances as real, facing the same problems we face, if we want to bring relevancy to this subject.

One of the best ways to make history relevant is through literature. Doubtless many have read or heard Diana Waring or Carole Joy Seid praise this method in the homeschooling realm, but even secular institutions have come to recognize the value of teaching history through literature. . . and it’s not even a recent innovation. Nineteenth century common schools used fact-based fiction stories as a curricular core. And today an indication of this trend can be seen in the number of academic and popular articles published in the past ten years relating the benefits of teaching history via literature.

But what about textbooks? Three major studies (Levstik 1986, VanSledright 1995, VanSledright & Kelly 1996) all concluded that a students’ interest and their ability to learn and retain information measurably increased when literature was used. Textbooks are what their name implies, namely text that’s been condensed and stripped of life and color. Translated: boring. Without providing some rocket’s red glare, interest and retention fizzle.

So, what about computers? Flashy software certainly can hold a student’s interest. No doubt about it, the computer is a useful tool for education. However, relegating the instruction of history to a game show format will not connect personally or emotionally with that student. Once again, it is retention that will suffer once the glitz of the animation wears off.

Textbooks and computers can be part of an overall curricular plan for history instruction, but historical fiction is what will truly captivate a student and remain in their memory.

Granted, there are those who feel a tad nervous about using historical fiction. It is, after all, fiction. Right? True, but excellent historical fiction is based on solid research. If the author’s done his job, real facts and events will be enjoyably conveyed. Also, keep in mind that even textbooks or non-fiction resources are not entirely free from error. In fact, many contradict each other.

Besides the usual classics of historical fiction such as D’Aulaire, Dalgliesh, and Sutcliff, new works are published every year. A delightful new series by Jack Cavanaugh and Bill Bright are one such example. Fire and Storm both follow the Great Awakening of the 18th century. Witness for yourself the jockeying of rural residents while they use their pastor as a scapegoat, only to be baptized by the revival for which he continually prayed. Catch the political upheaval of an infant nation enamored with the French revolution’s thirst for blood. Caught up in the action, you’ll be surprised at how much historical fact you’ve devoured once you finish one of these books.

You don’t have to break into your piggy bank to fund this excursion into historical fiction. "Google" discount and used books. Garage sale season is nearly upon us as well as homeschool conference used book sales. And don’t rule out unusual sources such as museum or history center gift shops — especially great for local history.

There are endless ways to incorporate literature-based history as a subject other than the obvious shove a book into your student’s hands. Read out loud as part of a cozy bedtime ritual. Get books on tape/cd which will make errand-running time doubly productive, not to mention interesting. Older students can read aloud to younger students, especially if you combine story time with cookies and milk.

Be forewarned that if you apply good historical literature to your usual homeschool routine, the next time you or your student is asked, "Quick! Compare and contrast China’s Hsia Dynasty to the Shang," you might be surprised at the answers that come pouring out.

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Michelle Griep has four children and wears her stay-at-home-mom badge with pride. She's homeschooled for the past thirteen years and in her spare time (as if) is a freelance author. She can be reached at mmgriep@usfamily.net

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Teaching Children to Appreciate Literature

Charlotte Huck and her colleagues (1987) have defined literature as "...the imaginative shaping of life and thought into the forms and structures of language." If life, thought and/or imagination are missing, the language alone will not suffice.

Appreciation may be explained as the capacity to understand, learn from, and above all enjoy literary works. It involves the ability to read and respond creatively, sharing the author's role by drawing on one's own imagination and experience. The text enters the reader as the reader enters the text. Their worlds are joined.

Two basic approaches to teaching literature at any level are the "structural" (traditional literary analysis) and the "reader response" approaches. While they may be viewed as opposites, they are more productively regarded as complementary. Structural analysis provides the terms and concepts that help readers interpret and discuss literature, while reader response emphasizes the integrated experience an individual has with a text, with the reader's personal response having primacy over formal knowledge of textual characteristics. A strong case can be made for beginning with reader response. If done without first establishing the personal relationship by which the reader breathes life into a text, formal analysis is likely to resemble an autopsy.

READER RESPONSE

Perhaps the best known theorist to explicate reader response as a pedagogical as well as critical stance is Louise Rosenblatt (1978), who formulated the "transactional theory" of reading and the distinction between "efferent" (utilitarian) and "aesthetic" reading. Aesthetic reading centers on a transaction between reader and text fostered through personal response, reflection, discussion, and elaboration, leading to new literary experiences, both in reading and in writing. In this process, reader and text mutually affect one another. Jim Parsons (1978) echoes this view in his description of reading as "the meeting of two meaning makers over literature...[which]...produces changes in both, the author's text and the reader's growth." (p. 18) For this to happen, he asserts, reading instruction should not seek to control the reader's experience but rather to facilitate the reader's own structuring of that experience.

For children, encounters with literature should retain characteristics of play, children's most natural activity. This principle is well illustrated in the exuberance of color and design in children's books and in themes that align the natural and the fantastic. John Dixon (1987) describes the maturing responses of young readers as "drawing on parts of the imaginary world in their play (and progressively, in drama and writing) and thus trying to explore complex situations and characters from the inside; talking and writing about personal and other familiar experiences that chime in with what's been read, thus approaching them from a new perspective; raising questions about the imaginary world and its people, discovering new connections between the imaginary and the real world, and thus discussing what human experience is actually like." (p. 764)

Probably the most frequently given advice for stimulating creative reader response is simply to surround children with good reading. Bill Martin, Jr. (1987) proposes a supportive, non-analytic approach to literature of which two major components are oral reading and an abundance of interesting books. Reading would develop "by osmosis," he writes. "Without consciousness of how or why...[t]he reader is forever rummaging and scavenging through the pages for a glimpse of self...[f]or the pleasure of finding a closer relationship of the outer world to the inner world and vice versa. For the intense satisfaction of finding a special book that speaks to both the heart and the mind." (p. 18)

Describing a literature program for the gifted, Denise Bartelo and James Cornette (1982) advocate both exposure to a wide variety of materials and the design of activities that encourage creative reader response, such as compiling a museum of personal artifacts in relation to autobiographical writing, pretending to be a book with fantastic characteristics, and putting a current events item in the form of an animal fable. In their program, emphasis is on "making reading less of a skill-related activity and more of a personal experience that could be shared and discussed." (p. 6)

At the middle and junior high school level, when analytic sophistication may begin to develop, emphasis may still be placed on the encouragement of personal response as a way of exploring the possibilities of various genres. Philip Anderson (1982) recommends exposure to a broad range of works and a lot of writing and sharing of personal responses to build awareness of the commonalities among readers of the same texts. In this way students begin to understand their membership in a cultural and literary community. He considers the intense sociability and garrulousness of students at this age as a resource too often overlooked. He writes that "it seems that more time is spent in the middle school and junior high school trying to get students to shut up than there is trying to channel that verbal onslaught into something productive." (p. 7) He would like to see more in-class publications of student work, oral reading of plays, discussion, and other kinds of literary sharing that lead to active, productive language use.

Similarly, Dixon (1987) suggests having students maintain their own journals, recording their responses to poems and stories. Personal class anthologies of selected works and excerpts from the reading journals can be compiled. Response approaches, then, emphasize both the personal and the social. Anyone who can compare the experiences of reading a poem in solitude and hearing one read and discussed in a group may understand the importance of both aspects. Sometimes the solitary experience is appropriate, but other times--and this may be most of the time for younger readers--the social reading in which they play an active role is the most enriching.

STRUCTURAL APPROACHES

As they and their reading material mature, children may need concepts and strategies for dealing with the increasing length and complexity of what they read. Michael Higgins (1986) points out such elements as flashback, conflict, and parallel structures that are common in children's stories and novels. As they encounter more varied literature, young readers must make decisions such as setting purposes for themselves and modifying reading strategies in accordance with the possibilities within a text. Higgins also believes there is a kind of literary canon at each age level, implying the development of cultural literacy. This includes acquaintance with works that Americans are often assumed to have read as children, such as, say, Winnie the Pooh, Wind in the Willows, and Alice in Wonderland. It may also entail knowledge of genres such as legends, myths, folktales, poetry, and so on, formal features of literature, and the vocabulary to discuss this knowledge.




Joy Moss (1984) has developed a curriculum for elementary school teachers based on the concept of "focus units," sets of stories grouped around a common theme or author. She defines categories of questions for teachers to use in story sessions, ranging from a close focus on the story and its structural elements to open-ended reader response. These categories are

1. previewing,
2. literal recall,
3. basic literary elements and devices (e.g., plot, character, figures of speech),
4. implied meanings and logic,
5. formal artistic features and genres,
6. comparing stories and finding relationships, and
7. subjective responses such as speculation and evaluation.

Jon Stott (1982) has developed the concept of a "spiralled sequence story curriculum" designed to lead students through increasing levels of complexity, with earlier stories arranged so as to introduce students to components and techniques found in later stories. For example, in Stott's curriculum a number of fairy tales and journey stories lead up to reading The Hobbit, which, in addition to being interesting to middle grade students, enables him to talk about structural features such as character, plot, setting, and so on--what he calls the "grammar" of literary construction.

Fairytales, myths, fables and legends are frequently recommended for teaching literary analysis because of their clear formal features and predictable patterns. Denise Nessel (1985) describes a program of storytelling using such material. It encourages students to use their imaginations to visualize scenes that are not shown in pictures as well as to use the structure of stories to improve listening comprehension. Bette Bosma (1981) finds that sixth-grade students are very interested in the formal features of folktales and in using this knowledge to "make evaluative comparisons, discover unstated premises, and draw conclusions"--which lead them into critical thinking.

Anita McClain (1985) also discusses teaching critical thinking through literary analysis, for example, by comparing different versions of the same fairy tale, understanding genre characteristics, and developing intercultural knowledge both of differences between cultures and of shared values.

Literature is the means by which people communicate across cultures and across ages -- across all divisions of time and space to gather the collective wisdom of the human experience. It is also the way we explore and communicate with the future. Through teaching literature, we recognize the special claim that children have on the future as well as our willingness to share the past. To appreciate literature is to appreciate what it means to be part of the entire human scene. No child should be denied that.

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This publication was prepared with funding from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, under contract no. RI88062001. Contractors undertaking such projects under government sponsorship are encouraged to express freely their judgment in professional and technical matters. Points of view or opinions, however, do not necessarily represent the official view or opinions of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement. ERIC Digests are in the public domain and may be freely reproduced. [www.vtaide.com]

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America and The Freedom Paradox

n contemporary Libertarian America, freedom is a question mainly of multiplying choices, the more the better. Freedom is a question of being unshackled from any restriction. Liberation is understood as the unrestricted pursuit of any compulsion, so long as it does not harm others. From the Christian point of view, nothing could be cruder or more destructive to the life of the soul.

I think that freedom is best understood as a paradox. We human beings are actors improvising on a stage where the possibilities truly are infinite, but as one makes concrete choices, other possibilities are grayed out; they become unavailable. So the very exercise of freedom involves a quantitative reduction of possibilities, and yet it's only by the movement out of possibility into actuality that we become truly free. Our free acts require that we become the prisoner of our choices. But restriction on the horizontal dimension of our lives creates the possibility for expansion on the vertical dimension, the dimension of grace and spiritual freedom.

Let me come at it from a different direction. Take for instance Chekhov’s Three Sisters, a play that was written in 1899 about a group of interesting, decent people who had very few future possibilities, and of their desperation in being compelled to live in a small, provincial town, which was for them like a prison cell. When someone has a sense of future possibility she makes plans and she acts to realize those plans. The sisters hated their provincial existence, but could not act to change it, so they had no plan. Instead they had a fantasy about moving someday to Moscow. And so they lived in the fantasy rather than in the real world that they inhabited, which was dominated by willful people, the Tom Delays in their neighborhood, who did have plans, plans that led to the loss of the little that the sisters had. Do I need to belabor the metaphor?

Whatever the relevance of the play to our current political situation, it is on a more universal level about how fantasies substitute for actionable possibilities, and the waste of life that ensues. Our lives take on substance to the degree than we enact possibilities, and they remain insignificant and insubstantial to the degree that they wallow in dreams, no matter how noble, not acted upon. The more we act the more real we become, and the more real we become the fewer the possibilities to be something other than what we have become. The point is to act; in the end it does not matter whether it turns out well or poorly, for we are measured not by the nobility of our sentiments, but by the enactment of a particular chain of choices, and it's those choices that give the soul a spiritual density which is what makes us most deeply human.

We cannot dither in the land of possibility for fear of losing possibilities. We must chose, let the chips fall where they may, live with the consequences. That's what it means to be a free human being. Commitment phobia is the way this dithering plays out in our personal relationships. If, for instance, one is sexually attractive enough to have many partners, why limit yourself to one? This is the dilemma that the John Cusack character faces in High Fidelity. He’s a self-absorbed twenty-something who is made emotionally claustrophobic by the idea of having to commit to one partner, but then cannot understand why the women in his life always dump him.

The reason is clear. He’s a child who lacks substance. He is a weightless abstraction, a dry leaf tossed about by the wind, and the women in his life want someone who is real. They want him to come down to earth, to have some substance, to enact a concrete future that involves them, and that requires giving up on fantasies of other possibilities; it means making concrete choice that exclude other ones. It means moving out of a dream world into a real one. That’s how human beings become more deeply humanly real—by their choices and their commitments, not by living in a fantasy of perpetual possibility. The Cusack character finally figures that out by the end of the movie, although it's an open question whether he actually has the capacity to deeply care about another human being.

So does the graying out of possibilities mean we become less free because the fewer the choices, the more limited our freedom? That's where another dimension to the paradox lies, because freedom is not only measured quantitatively. It is measured also and more significantly qualitatively, in the dimension depth, a depth that is usually uncovered in the intensity of our commitments. Do we accept the limitations and the consequences of our choices, or do we long for the good old days when we could live in the dream of infinite possibility. Will we plunge into the murky mess, or will we seek featherweight flight? Limitation on the horizontal dimension, the dimension of quantitative possibility, lived in the right way leads to liberation on the vertical dimension, the dimension of spirit. It's not easy to do, and there are hardly any models of it that are celebrated in our culture.

Dorothy Day, one such model of spiritual density if there ever was one, was fond of quoting Dostoyevski's staretz Zossima--"Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams." Her life was a living testament to that kind of practical love. That's not an idea about love that is celebrated in the culture, and yet it's a love that so many Americans live, whether they've read Dostoyevski or not. It's just in them to do it, and they do.

Dorothy Day did, and the kind of life she lived makes no sense in the classic form of Libertarianism found, for instance, in Ayn Rand's Objectivism. The two women represented completely different models concerning the development of the human freedom and the human Self. Day makes as much sense to Rand as Frodo Baggins makes to Sauron. Ayn Rand's was a view of the Self in which it was the tail being wagged by the will to power. It is a dime-a-dozen Self that is the common tool of compulsion. Dorothy Day's modeled the development of a different kind of Self, one that grows grows only when power is renounced and love fills in the space in the soul where powerlust and self-absorption once clogged it.

Another remarkable model of the spiritual liberty that I'm aware of is found in the Etty Hillesum diaries, An Interrupted Life. In it one reads about the gradual growth in interior freedom of a young Dutch Jew during WWII whose inner spirit grows brighter as the world around her grows darker and more restrictive. It’s as if she took the darkness, this void that was all around her, and made of it a kind of fuel which she was able to ignite within herself, and her burning so brightly in turn ignited those around her. She could have been swept away by the darkness in despair or rage—many were. Instead she chose to take the darkness and she transformed it into something strange and beautiful. And her example speaks more deeply, more truly, more movingly than all the theodicies I’ve ever come across.

Christians are those who have been admonished to be as guileless as doves, but also as shrewd as serpents. I've always interpreted that to mean that we need to find a way to live and operate on the horizontal level, which is ruled by the symbolic creature which slithers horizontally across the surface of the earth. But we need to do so without being ruled exclusively by the clever, but superficial logic of the serpent. This can only be done if one finds a way to be open to the vertical, the dimension of height and depth, the dimension that reaches to the heavens and penetrates to the depths, which, again, is the dimension of grace and spiritual freedom.

Some people, the people who feel most at home in the world in which the superficial horizontal pursuits defined by sex, power, and money are the primary motivators, are more serpentine; others, usually the kindly, warmhearted, decent folk whom, in my more sanguine moments (I do have them) I believe are the real soul of America, (as many living in red states as in blue) are more dovelike. But their guilelessness is an impediment if so one-sided it leads them to trust those who are not worthy of their trust. They must cling to the guilelessness that is at the heart of their decency, but they must also wake up and use their faculty for shrewdness in order to protect themselves from the predations of the serpentine who have no compunction about exploiting them by using their guilelessness against them.

If Christians were told only to be guileless, then I suppose they should just meekly suffer whatever the guile-ful impose on them, but Christians are admonished to be bi-lingual, to be fluent in both serpent-think and dove-think. And to me that means that Christians, if they are doing their job, always, always have a subversive influence in any part of the world that is dominated by serpent-think--including all too often the churches. And insofar as Christians (and all those who are genuinely responsive to the influence of grace in their lives) succeed in bringing the vertical into their actions in the domain of serpent-think, they have a subversive effect.

Christianity is fundamentally a subversive spiritual impulse. And Redemption is the ongoing story of liberation, which is the gradual subversion from within of the world ruled according to the logic of the serpent. Anybody who doesn't get that, in my view, doesn't get what Christianity really is. [source]

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Popular Literature in Africa: Post-Resistance Perspectives

Author: Isabel Hofmeyra
Affiliation: a University of the Witwatersrand,
DOI: 10.1080/02533950408628688
Publication Frequency: 3 issues per year
Published in: journal Social Dynamics, Volume 30, Issue 2 Summer 2004 , pages 128 - 140
Subjects: African & Third World Politics; African Cultural Studies; African Literature; African Studies;
Formats available: PDF (English)

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A View on Gambang Semarang

Gambang Semarang is a traditional art belongs to Semarang society that is recently being thought to develop by the people. This art consists of music, vocal, dance, and comedy, which its origin is simple but potential to develop. Many scientific discussions have been done to maintain, to revitalise, and to develop this art, that is hoped to be able to be an identity of Semarang city in the field of art. However, the results achieved in the forums above have not satisfied, so it is necessary to do a research in order that the historical and cultural roots can be known and be the foundations of its development.

The purpose of the writing is to achieve the historical, functional, and the aesthetic aspects of Gambang Semarang and to inventory the elements of Semarang art and culture which can be used as the supports of the development of Gambang Semarang art. To look into the several aspects investigated, this research uses historical method, oral historical method, and anthropological method by applying the technique of observation, interview, and library research.

Gambang Semarang is an art which has a strong historical root in Semarang city. Although there is a fact saying that Gambang Semarang is derived from Gambang Kromong, in Semarang city there has been existing the forms of art similar to Gambang Kromong such as pat-iem, yan kim, and may be the gambang orchestra that is supported by the Chinese society. Thus, the effort to create a unique art of Semarang by importing a set of Gambang Kromong instruments, trainers, and organizing a art group is not without reason, but may be based on a historical consideration. The historical root of Gambang Semarang is strengthen by the fact that in the historical development, the art is supported by Semarang society, not only from Chinese community but also from native community.

By looking into its historical development, Gambang Semarang has the functions as entertainment and performance. As an entertainment, Gambang Semarang is expressed by someone for the interest of the fulfilment of the private satisfaction; and as a performance, the art is a communal supported performing art. Besides the both functions, in Gambang Semarang there is a social function as the medium of the social integration between the Chinese ethnic and the natives.

Although Gambang Semarang is derived from Gambang Kromong, this art has the aesthetic concepts and the certain order of performance which are different to the other arts, and also become its characteristics.

In the beginning Gambang Semarang has the same musical characteristics with Gambang Kromong, but in the development the characteristics are wither by showing the particular songs of Gambang Semarang, the folksongs from Central Java, the songs of Keroncong, and the Javanese popular songs. If in the beginning of its development in Gambang Semarang there are Betawian and Chinese nuances, and Javanese-Mandarin nuances, nowadays Gambang Semarang performs its Javanese nuances more and more.

The dance of Gambang Semarang has three variations of gestures such as ngondhek, ngeyek, and genjot, and all of the gestures are focused on the hip. The hand gesture (lembeyan) accompanied all of the gesture above is a gesture focused on the wrist with the medium gesture from navel up to eyesight. Meanwhile, the comedy of Gambang Semarang has three comical forms such as verbal comedy, non-verbal comedy, and musical comedy.

Based on the research of folklore, the elements of Semarang art and culture which can be used as the supports of the development of Gambang Semarang are (1) The Javanese dialect of Semarang, (2) the legends of Semarang, (3) the play songs and macapat of Semarang, (4) the traditional clothes of Semarang, and (5) the karawitan music of Semarang.

Gambang Semarang, as an art having a strong historical root, aesthetic concepts, and a certain order of performance which are different to the other arts, is necessary to maintain and to develop; and even it can be an identity of Semarang city in the field of art. In order to make them all come true, it will not be exaggerated if the art of Gambang Semarang needs a good handling and creating a composition model of Gambang Semarang as a cultural identity of Semarang.

Author: Siswo Harsono, a lecturer in English Department Diponegoro University, Central Java, Indonesia. He teaches Creative Writing, Cross Cultural Understanding, Translation, Theory of Literature, Literary Criticism, Cultural Criticism, Sociology of Literature, Psychology of Literature, and Method of Literary Research. Beyond his accademic activities, he also active in several art and culture communities. He recently launch his blog lakonet.com, a javanese plays on the net.

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