Improving the education of our youth is a task far more complicated than sending a few teachers off to summer Advanced Placement training and buying good books for students to read. But AP English Literature is the ideal place to start a school’s intellectual renovation because students have been reading and writing since first grade.
The difference is that the AP work connected with these two “R’s” is on a new level of difficulty — a level that will spill over into student work in social studies and science as well. Logic and the ability to read closely are skills used in all aspects of education.
Where should a prospective AP teacher or school principal begin? Renovating student minds starts with reading they will enjoy.
Usually that means students need to be offered a variety of modern plays and novels that are about them in some way. I always gave AP students a choice among works of mostly modern literature, and the sight of them swarming all over those books and asking one another’s advice is my fondest AP memory. Almost by definition, any book required by the school or teacher is worse than any book students choose from among a list of 10 or 12.
On my “Choice Cart,” which wheeled around the room and held several of each title, were Albert Camus’ “The Stranger,” Cormac McCarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses,” Maxine Hong Kingman’s “Woman Warrior,” Gish Gen’s “Mona in the Promised Land” and some books that had enough “adult” language or sexual content that I felt more comfortable introducing them as a choice — one students should make in consultation with their parents. (Included in this category were “Beloved” by Toni Morrison, “Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger and “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien.)
The books they knew they needed to ask their parents about always became big hits.
The bottom line was simple: My students wanted to read these books. They became ideal teaching tools for me because few relied on SparkNotes in lieu of flipping the pages. Many of my students finished their books within a few days and came back for a second one.
AP is flexible enough to allow students to learn the technique of logical analysis of language from any book at all, so letting students choose has the huge benefit of encouraging them to look closely at language and why its use of particular images, or repetition, or its narrative pace creates the desired effect on the reader. It’s that analysis — distinct from the summarizing common in most English classes — that constitutes the AP method.
After teachers have gathered many good books and choices for students, they need to ensure a variety of genres (poetry, plays, novels, essays) are included in the curriculum, written in a range of centuries. Once students learn how to analyze modern novels or poems, it won’t be so hard to apply that technique to Shakespeare or Thomas Hardy — authors they might not choose to read on their own.
My last column on the AP “solution” will show why the AP method of reading and thinking can benefit every high school student, no matter what his background or ability level.
What kids are reading
This weekly column will look at lists of books kids are reading in various categories, including grade level, book genre and data from booksellers. Information on the books below came from the syllabi of Advanced Placement literature teachers.
Books Frequently on AP reading lists—Part III
1. “The Awakening,” by Kate Chopin
2. “Tess of the D’Urbervilles,” by Thomas Hardy
3. “Equus,” by Peter Schaffer
4. “Waiting for Godot,” by Samuel Beckett
5. “The Oedipus Cycle,” by Sophocles
6. “Madame Bovary,” by Gustave Flaubert
7. “Bel Canto,” by Ann Patchett
8. “The Sound and the Fury,” by William Faulkner
9. “Heart of Darkness,” by Joseph Conrad
10. “Death of a Salesman,” by Arthur Miller
Also in case you missed them, here are links for Part I and Part II of my series of columns on the AP solution.
