Appleman Chapter 1

This opening chapter of Deborah Appleman's book does little more than lay out the game plan for the rest of the text. Her main goal seems to be to get practicing and future teachers to reconsider how schools were made and determine what changes need to be made in order to better facilitate student learning. She argues that literary theory, in all of its many forms, can have a drastic affect on the ways in which our schools today (at least the English classrooms) are run, if they were only used to their full potential. The author tells us on page 2 that "[t]he guiding assumption of [this] book is that the direct teaching of literary theory in secondary English classes will better prepare adolescent readers to respond reflectively and analytically to literary texts, both 'canonical' and multicultural. The book argues that contemporary literary theory provides a useful way for all students to read and interpret not only literary texts but their lives - both in and out of school. In its own way, reading with theory is a radical educational reform!" My assumption after this introductory chapter is that the bulk of the book will be spent focused on different literary theories and how they can be applied in a useful and meaningful way in the classroom. I am a little apprehensive right now because I feel like, at least in this first chapter, the quotations she used did a better job of explaining her ideas then her own writing. I feel like she didn't really add very much of her own insight. I did like, however, the lens analogy in describing the importance of viewing literary texts from multiple perspectives in order to discover multiple interpretations. I strongly agree with Kathleen McCormick's comment on page 8 that "readers [students] can begin to see themselves as interdiscursive subjects, to see texts as always 'in use,' and to recognize that different ways of reading texts have consequence."