Skip to main content

Writing Matters

During my years teaching English literature and composition in high school, I focused on showing students the impact of stories, of literature, of words well-crafted.  Frankly I was trying to stimulate their interest in a subject often seen as boring or difficult, particularly when compared to the social and personal changes they are navigating as adolescents. 
Some literature, some writing, has a strong effect on us all.
So this teacher enjoyed reading the recent op-ed piece by the head of the Writing Center at Harvard.
"learning to write matters because some day they may have something to say that really matters"

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Kite Runner is with us again

 Six or so years ago, I taught The Kite Runner to three successive sets of tenth-graders, and marveled at the effect the novel had on me and on these adolescents.  That age is a marvelous time for a humanities teacher, as we see callous children grow out of their self-centered cocoons and flex their world-empathic feelers.  They grow into the world outside them and realize they truly have agency -- or will have agency and responsibility for human actions.  Amir, the main protagonist of Kite Runner is so identifiable with those adolescents learning to take responsibility for their callous actions.   And of course we think of Kite Runner now that Afghanistan once again plunges into Taliban rule -- we particularly worry about the fate of the Hazara (news stories already cite random executions of Hazara men).   We can only wring hands and pray that the Taliban will have to adapt and tolerate more than they did before -- but I am not optimistic. ...

Review: Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How the Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World

Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How the Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World by James Carroll My rating: 4 of 5 stars Fascinating comprehensive worldview, with Jesuitical logic in a broad sweep that links religion in a circular way to violence and the solution to violence. The author shows a great command of history and religion, with extensive endnotes to support or expand upon most of his claims; however, some sweeping indictments will certainly be resisted by the more fundamentalist People Of The Book (that is, the Abrahamic religions). A core symbolic thread is Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac on Mt.Moriah, the supposed site later called Jerusalem -- the author deftly cites that scene throughout the many centuries since the original event, demonstrating the human tendency to misinterpret that near-sacrifice in order to rationalize our own tendency to violence and scapegoating. I started the book in audio form, but found it unlistenable -- the author's c...

Review: Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age by Sherry Turkle My rating: 5 of 5 stars I chose this because it precedes Empathy Diaries, which I recently read and adored. And I note that the first chapter of this book is indeed Empathy View all my reviews