Knowledge and Emotion

Bomer’s chapters continue to introduce his thoughts about literature being not only for teaching and learning reading and writing but also a way to live our lives. Bomer took readers on a tour to different English classrooms to see how teachers guided students to respond to literature. Also, Bomer explained how strategies introduced in the preceding chapters could be used along with experiencing literature. As I read through chapters, I noticed that what Bomer carefully and purposefully presented is to show teachers’ teaching philosophy matters and how knowledge and emotion are connected.

        Usually teachers’ teaching philosophy affects how they arrange the class, select reading materials, and assign coursework. In chapter 5, we see teachers arranged their class differently every day with different reasons. The reason to do so could be summarized by Bomer, who stated that “The point is not to inject them with, for example, paired reading so that they have ‘had that,’ but to provide an experience that will add to their repertoire of situations into which they can put themselves, and perhaps to situate them in a conversation that will change their mental habits – get them to actively construct sense, test a text against their own life, or formulate questions as they read, for example – when they read on their own” (p. 99). In other words, the teachers, including Bomer, tried to construct a reading life for students, helping students to build a relationship with literature before they jump into interpreting and analyzing literature as they read. The purpose, according to Bomer, is “opening opportunities for what Frank Smith calls ‘membership in the club,” helping them [students] to see themselves as ‘the type of person’ who would meaningfully engage in and with reading and writing” (p. 105). This sort of teaching philosophy – encouraging students exploring literature via their senses, their curiosity, and even their impulse – is close to the quintessence of reader-response theory and highly related to John Dewey’s educational philosophy.

        John Dewey recognized that emotion plays an important role in thinking and learning, stating that “Knowledge is a small cup of water floating on a sea of emotion” (Fishman and McCarthy, 1998, p.21). That is, emotion is a source of knowledge. Our feelings toward a person, an event, or an incident influence the choices we make, which affects the way we reason and construct knowledge. TV commercials are examples of arousing customers’ emotion by blending sound and image to influence our choices. What happened in the courtroom at the end of the book, Monster, is another example that defendant lawyers and the prosecutor used language to appeal to jury and, to some extent, elicit their empathy for James King and Steve Harmon.

         Overall, Bomer’s texts enable me to see how teaching philosophy can be actualized and put into practice via the use of teaching strategies and the purposeful-arranged classes. I always think this is a very difficult task for teachers, but Bomer seemed to make it possible!

Reference:

Bomer, R. (1995). Time for meaning: Crafting literature lives in middle and high school. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. 

Fisherman, S. M. & McCarthy, L. (1998). John Dewey and the challenge of classroom practice. New York: Teachers College Press. 

(Source: http://bemusingjobingo.blogspot.com/2010/02/tok-again-knowledge-and-emotion.html)

Question: 

In Figure 7.1 (on p.121), Bomer showed examples of possible schedules for introducing different genres to students. Do you think they are feasible? Why?