The article “Reading Texts, Literacy, and Textual Authority” the author Henry A. Giroux talks about how teachers have the power to give particular texts meaning and determine what needs to be learned. This power is referred to as textual authority. “Textual authority, in this case, refers to the power educators use to legitimate both the value of a particular text and the range of interpretations that can be brought to bear in understanding them” (Giroux 85). The way teachers present information determines how the students will understand it. Content of these texts that are considered “great books” is presented to the students as what they should take from what the author is saying. “Within dominant forms of curriculum theory, learning is generally perceived as either a body of content to be transmitted or a body of skills to be mastered (Giroux 87)”. There is no room left for the students to discuss the text or find a way to relate it back to their own lives. When the students have no connection to what they are being taught, they are just being taught the material as though it is something they need to memorize and then repeat. History of Western culture is taught through literature and the students feel no connection it because there is no connection being made. “Schools are seen as cultural sites and English departments become cultural fronts responsible for advancing the knowledge and values necessary to reproduce the historical virtues of Western culture (Giroux 87)”.
The English department uses its textual authority over students to prevent them from developing their own opinions about literature they are being taught. Curriculum was not only intended to teach skills, but it was also meant to silence students to reinforce social inequality by the “refusal to engage the voices and experiences that students might produce in order to give meaning to the relationship between their own lives and school knowledge (Giroux 90)”. This enables the students to conform to the curriculum’s intentions of maintaining an existing culture that keeps one group as dominant rather than learn how to change it. Students are silenced to keep them as passive learners opposed to being active in order to gain knowledge to reconstruct society to make it more diverse for all cultures. They will never be able to do this if they are ‘voiceless’. “To speak of voice within the discourse of difference as struggle and opposition is to raise questions about how textual authority can be used to validate student experiences and to give students the opportunity to read and write culture differently within a variety of subject meanings and subject positions that empower rather than disempower them (Giroux 94).
This article opened my eyes to why I felt like I didn’t know anything about other cultures and literature before I got to college. I had to develop my own desires to read other cultures’ literature instead of just reading what I was used to. The idea that students’ views are silenced in the classroom to keep the “great books” forum as the dominant genre seems underhanded. Why would the curriculum be designed to do that? My own literacy connects to this essay in the sense that I remember being in class and no one wanted to engage in the conversation about whatever literature we were discussing because it was so old and the way it was being taught was boring to us. We didn’t want to read Shakespeare, Of Mice and Men, The Great Gatsby, or Catcher in the Rye. They were all by old white people and about random white people. Now, I can appreciate the themes of these pieces, but back then I couldn’t care less. I think that if literature was discussed with students more openly and made more relevant to young students’ lives (which it can be quite easily), they would appreciate the literature for what it’s worth. As far as the curriculum keeping culture development at a standstill, it is up to the teachers to throw in the extra goodies to give their students a taste of outside culture. It should spark their interest more so than the Western culture they’ve been forced to memorize their whole scholastic careers.
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I thought your paper held some interesting views, just be careful when using quotes by remembering to always add in your comment about that quote soon after you use it. I agree that in school we are forced to read texts that we don't understand. I questioned some of the same books and their importance in our education, but by reading those books and understanding the curriculum we become well rounded individuals. We learn new writing techniques and styles that we can use in our personal lives and writing.
ReplyDeleteI do think culture and dialog play a large role in how we express ourselves and the texts we read. I would prefer teachers to include texts of all cultures and backgrounds, not just what has been written by the "white society". You can learn something good from each cultural background and that makes you a well rounded person.
I would agree with Girouxs idea about textual authority. It can seem odd for students to read certain literature that does not pertain to them at all, but in some ways I think these practices might better prepare high school students for real life. Because there are lots of things in life that people deal deal with that might not neccesarily pertain to lives of their own. Even though written by as you say old white people, I thought catcher in the rye dealt with issues that pertained to h teenage issues that any teenager could relate to. If in life we only could deal with literature one ethnic group how could we achieve a higher standard of learning? Was catcher in the rye about white people or about a teenage boy. If you were in exchange read a story about a black boy could you then say you cant relate to it because its about a boy and not a girl. Textual authority may not sit well with high school students but in college it opens the doors to new avenues...hince the term Higher learning
ReplyDeleteI thoroughly agree with Giroux's thoughts; however, a professor I once had said something I agree with: whether the students can understand or be confused by the texts they read, it is a start of somewhere. Their opinions will change every time they reread the texts, or have an encounter with similar texts, and gain some kind of knowledge of literacy. Practice of literacy gets students to a better place in developing other things in relation to literacy. I believe that students in high school have not experienced enough to relate with the literacy they read, but eventually they do as they mature with literacy. It all starts in high school; it has to start somewhere. How can the students learn how to develop their thoughts about literacy without being taught? Teaching English in high school is the baby steps of the knowledge to a development of an educated thought/opinion, and then you go on with life after high school making your own thoughts/opinions using what you have learned in high school. That alone can give you an experience to share with in terms of literacy. Textual authority may give the students in high school an awkward position but it is a step into the door once they go further in life after high school, continuing their education.
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