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Envisionment
Building
Point of Reference
When the
purpose of reading is primarily for discursive purposes — to
share or gain information (as when students read science and
social studies texts), the reader's orientation can be
characterized as "maintaining a point of reference." In this
orientation toward meaning, from early on, readers (and
writers) attempt to establish a sense of the topic or point
being made (or to be made in their own writing). Once
established, this sense of the whole becomes a relatively
steady reference point. Unlike the frequent reconsiderations
of the possibilities done during a literary reading, in this
case, students attempt to build upon, clarify, or modify their
momentary understandings — but rarely change their overall
sense of the topic. Their sense of the whole changes only when
a substantial amount of countervailing evidence leads them to
rethink how what they are reading or writing "holds
together."
There is thus an essential difference
between the two orientations toward meaning, a difference that
can have a substantive effect on our understanding of critical
thinking in education. While questions are raised in both
literary and discursive approaches to understanding, it is the
ways in which the questions are asked — where they emanate
from and how they are treated — that mark the essential
distinctions.
The exploration of horizons of
possibilities lies at the heart of a literary experience.
Here, use of the word "horizon" is critical, referring to the
fact that horizons never lead to endings but continually
advance; whenever a person (reader) takes a step towards the
horizon (moving toward closure), the horizon itself shifts
(and other possibilities are revealed for the reader to
explore). Continually raising questions about the implications
and undersides of what one understands (and using those
musings to reconstrue where the piece might go) precludes
closure and invites ambiguity. It can be argued that questions
are at the heart of discursive thinking as well, and this is
certainly the case. However, the reasons why those questions
are asked differ, thus affecting the individual's cognitive
orientation. For example, scientific researchers usually
consider their studies to be best if their initial questions
lead to other questions — research is as much to generate
questions as to uncover answers. However, the underlying
purpose of the researcher's questions is to narrow the gap
between what is known and what is not about a field of
inquiry, to move toward some form of closure, although true
closure rarely occurs; it generally is yet another question
that will help move thinking along. Thus, although "full"
knowledge may never be reached, and successive questions may
sometimes seem to muddy rather than elucidate what is known by
pointing toward more complexities, the far off goal is the
explication of knowledge. Here is the essential difference
from a literary orientation where the musing itself is the
goal.
Although I have been discussing the two
orientations toward meaning in extreme terms, as if they were
dichotomous, in actuality neither orientation operates alone,
completely independent of the other. Instead, as suggested
earlier, together they provide alternative ways of
sense-making that can be called upon when needed. Although
both purposes, literary and discursive, generally interplay in
a variety of ways during any one experience, each situation
seems to have a primary purpose, with the others being
secondary. For example, when writing a paper providing
important historical details on the Gulf war (involving a
discursive orientation), a student might momentarily slip into
a literary orientation — get caught up in describing the
day-to-day life experiences of a member of an oil clean-up
crew or of a woman soldier who had to leave her newborn when
called up from the reserves — although most of the paper
presents details and commentary on the war itself. Conversely,
when writing from a literary orientation about a soldier or
clean-up crew member (by portraying the personal lived-through
experiences of the people, their relationships — their joys
and tragedies) the student may at times "step out" of the
living text she or he is creating and momentarily assume a
discursive orientation in order to provide specific and
accurate information about the details of the bombings, or the
world's reaction to Saddam's dumping oil into the Gulf. In
each case, it is the primary purpose that shapes the student's
overall orientation to the shape of the piece, but it is the
interplay of the two that can add richness to the
understanding that results.
However, research indicates
that literature is usually taught and tested in a nonliterary
manner, as if there is one right answer arrived at through
point-of-reference reading or writing. Arthur Applebee's
Literature Center study of English classes across the United
States (1993) indicates that literature is often taught as if
there is a point or predetermined interpretation the reader
must build toward, or as a literal reworking of the plot line
from start to finish — with no room for the students'
explorations to be sanctioned or to take
form.
Similarly, in history classes, even where the
goal is to introduce literature into the curriculum, literary
narratives are often used exclusively to mine information. For
example, students are rarely given the opportunity to "live
through" the polar expeditions of the arctic explorer or to
"feel" the living conditions described by Isabel Allende,
William Faulkner, Athol Fugard, Barbara Kingsolver, Zora Neale
Hurston, Nadine Gordimer, Betty Bao Lord, Gabriel Garcia
Marquez, or Alice Walker, and therefore to explore the
possibilities involved in the worlds they create.
The
same too often also holds true in "literature-based" primary
grade classes (Walmsley & Walp 1989) where trade book
stories are basalized, with detail questions retracing the
story line instead of using students' shared questions and
developing interpretations as the primary focus of the
lesson.
Alan Purves' studies at the Literature Center
(e.g., Brody, DeMilo, & Purves, 1989) indicate that
literature tests (in anthologies, statewide assessments,
SAT's, and achievement tests of all sorts) treat literature as
content, with a factual right answer rather than with
possibilities to ponder and interpretations to develop and
question and defend. His favorite multiple choice literature
question, typical of those in many large-scale assessment
tests, is: "Huck Finn is a good boy. True or False." Such
items call for superficial readings rather than thoughtful
interpretations, or the weighing of alternative
views.
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