Teaching the Classics

What are the classics?

• Classics are usually regarded as ‘canon’ or
books that are centuries-old. It is suggested
that classic literature has longevity.
 Issues with regard to the
Classics
1. Classic literature for the most part does not
include people of color.
2. It can be difficult for students to read
centuries old content
3. Relatability issue
4. Students are not able to see themselves in
the texts.
 Culturally Relevant Teaching
• CRT is a pedagogy of opposition, specifically
committed to collective, not merely individual
empowerment.
 3 Criteria for Success of CRT
• Students must experience academic success.
• Students must develop and maintain cultural
competence.
• Students must develop a critical consciousness
through which they challenge the status quo
of the current social roder.
 Advantages
• Bringing personal experience, cultural
background, imagination, predisposition and
idiosyncratic knowledge.
• Engagement in deeper and meaningful ways
• Allows students to imagine and create/re-create
as they are reading.
• Experiences become part of the text
• Meaning is created by both the author and the
reader.
 What is unique about CRT
• Students are given the opportunity to
challenge
• Reversal of trend: dealing directly with
controversy
• Stepping outside the comfort zone.
 Difficulties
• Canons are problematic
• They can cause marginalization
• Canonicality is bound with power.
 Framing the Texts
1. Independent reading of novels by writers of color
2. Research the process where people of color have
come to be so negatively portrayed and black so
dehumanized.
3. Historic construction of black identity
4. Reading each other’s essay (assessment)
5. How you might nurture reading, encourage careful
reading. Sometimes it is not about what text to use.
6. Literature of need (students get to choose for psychic
nourishment)