Appleman, Chapter 2 - Through the Looking Glass

Chapter two is an introduction into the use of multiple perspectives in the classroom. Appleman includes four vignettes as examples.

“My Papa's Waltz” is a great example of teaching through induction. Instead of explaining how poems can be read in different ways, the teacher invited a student to interpret a poem and then read it aloud with that interpretation in mind. The teacher then asked if everyone agreed with that interpretation. When someone disagreed, he asked that student to explain his interpretation and then read the poem aloud using that frame of reference. The class was astounded by the difference in the readings (and perhaps a little uncomfortable). One student wants to know “which is one is right?” (13). This, of course, is what the teacher was hoping would be asked. There is not just one way to read a text. It is possible for two readings to be correct.

The “Little Miss Muffet” vignette was more straight forward. The teacher introduced the idea that the same story could be told from more than one point of view. First he read an essay about the story of Little Miss Muffet from other people's perspectives. He then had the students do the same exercise with famous nursery rhymes. Although the class had fun with it, at least one student failed to see the point of the exercise (15). Appleman describes the teacher's explanation to the class. I am curious if the students found use in this and if they employed this method of analyzing text in other English classes. Was this a one time exercise or a completely new way of looking at literature for them?

Although this chapter gets us towards discovering the use of employing multiple perspectives when analyzing text, I feel a little pulled along, almost as if I am her student and she is using an inductive teaching technique to encourage me to discover the truth on my own. In fact, her approach for convincing me of the value of literary theory in the classroom is akin to how she wants us to introduce it in the classroom: she wants time for theory to make a case for itself before it is fully exposed. I didn't find her tactic to be necessary. After all, she had me at “We live in complicated and dangerous times” (1).