Crafty Readers

By Richard Carson, PhD, Senior Editor

When I was about ten years old, a friend of my parents gave me a handsomely bound, pocket-sized volume that contained selections from the works of Robert Louis Stevenson. Printed around the beginning of the last century, the book's Preface indicated that its size allowed the owner to carry it about upon solitary walks and, should the desire present itself, produce it to locate favorite passages and be transported to places of exotic beauty and high adventure.

Such sentiments reflected the sentiments of its time, namely, that books had power. Towards the end of the last century however, critics began to argue that reading should not focus upon the book being read but upon the act of reading itself. Critics such as Robert Scholes called for "crafty readers," readers who were empowered not by themes and meaning, but by an awareness of the kinds of cultural biases involved in both reading and writing. Practitioners of the newer theories might have argued that the pleasure I took from my childhood volume had less to do with Stevenson and more to do with the class privilege that allowed for solitary walks and the gender bias that was already "constructing" my pre-adolescent consciousness.

Many teachers thought of the newer ideas as a betrayal of all that was meaningful and valuable about literature. But others found the newer ideas exciting. Graduate students brought them to their college teaching assignments, and college graduates who were lucky enough to find high school teaching jobs, wondered how they could bring to their students discussions of literary theory like those that had invigorated their college classes.

Deborah Appleman, in the recent second edition of her book Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents (Urbana, Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English, 2009) notes "Contemporary literary theory helps students reshape their knowledge of texts, of themselves, and of the worlds in which both reside (127)." In the pluralistic worlds of our classrooms, Appleman argues, students need to be exposed to canonical and non-canonical texts, as well as to empowering ways of approaching those texts.

Appleman's book, and the theories it discusses, challenges students, teachers, even editors, to creatively rethink our lesson plans. Those of us responsible for creating and producing literature and reading programs need to make certain that we empower young readers with a knowledge of reading, writing, and self, a knowledge that will sustain them on all the journeys that lie ahead.